Phil Amos
I won’t claim to have known Phil Amos well but I do want to remember him. He was the one senior figure in the Labour Party who followed Anderton into the NewLabour Party in 1989. He had been a cabinet minister (Education) in the third Labour govt (1972-5) and shared Anderton’s horror at the new right politics of the fourth Labour government.
I interviewed him in 2001 (I think from memory) and he was still firm in his convictions. Like the rest of us in the Alliance he found Anderton incredibly difficult but he did not resile from his actions in leaving Labour and forming the NLP. The formation of the NLP was critical to the formation of the Alliance that was in turn critical to the halting of the new right revolution and the victory of proportional representation. There were of course many others who played vital roles in these two events but Phil was there.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:44 am
So that’s the “new right” dispensed with. What are the Greens going to do about the domination of the party by the old left?
jh
June 18th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
We keep showing them big pictures of the planet with a sign next to it that says “x 1 only”.
June 18th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
And it seems to work!
Interestingly, Keith Locke and Sue Bradford seem to be the two Green MPs that bloggers from the right try to associate with the “old left”.
Interestingly, Sue Bradford left the NLP and joined the Greens way back in 1991, so old-style socialism obviously wasn’t her thing. And Keith Locke, who’d joined the Alliance as an NLP member left the Alliance with the Greens when they split from it. Hardly the actions of an “old left” politician, especially given that the Alliance appeared to be a vibrant political force with the prospects of real political power and the Greens were below the margin of error in the polls right through to just before the 1999 election.
BTW, I went to Phil’s funeral - and caught up with a few friends from the “old left” there too!
June 18th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Sorry I didn’t realise the person you were referring to had died. it doesn’t say so in the blog.
jh
June 18th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
# Russel Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
We keep showing them big pictures of the planet with a sign next to it that says “x 1 only�.
…………
Good!, but #1 issue should be given top priority, the other famous issues shouldn’t be linked to #1. They should be campaigned on outside the Green brand.
jh