Brighton and Hove’s Green Councillors Betray the Cause of Anti-Racism as they get into bed with the Tories and New Labour

Brighton’s Labour Group Proposes IHRA Motion as part of its war on the Left and Corbyn and the Greens join in

In an interview with The Times of Israel it was reported that Israel’s Education Minister, Naftali Bennett, had stated that ‘he would instruct the IDF to shoot and kill any Palestinians who cross into the country from Gaza’. When questioned as to whether or not that would also apply to children Bennett responded ‘“They are not children — they are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves. I see the photos.” Bennett says IDF should shoot to kill Gazans who cross border [8.10.18]

The statement of Bennett, who is the leader of HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home), a religious settlers’ party, is that of a Nazi. It is reminiscent of Himmler’s speech to Nazi leaders in the Polish city of Posnan on October 6^th 1943 when he explained why the killings had to include Jewish children: “I did not assume to have the right to exterminate the men… and have the avengers personified in the children to become adults for our children and grandchildren.”[Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p.259]

Palestinian children to Bennett are no different from Jewish children to Himmler. To both they represent the devil in child form. That was why Israeli polymath and orthodox religious scholar, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz described the settlers as Judeo-Nazis. Naftali Bennett is a prime example of a Judeo-Nazi. He subscribes to a racial philosophy of Jewish supremacism no different from Nazi ideology.

But under the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ can be anti-Semitic even though Israelis regularly make such comparisons themselves. For example even Deputy Chief of Staff General Yair Golan at a Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration two years ago caused a storm when he stated that

‘If there's something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance it's the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016. IDF Deputy Chief Likens 'Revolting Trends' in Israeli Society to pre-Holocaust Germany

Education Minister Naftali Benneftt, a Judeo-Nazi

Another member of Netanyahu’s Cabinet, Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman remarked that he would like nothing more than to see the drowning of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. Again the label Judeo Nazi would be apt. His Deputy as Defence Minister, Rabbi Eli Dahan is also no slouch. In a radio interview he explained that to him Palestinians ‘“are like animals, they aren’t human.” and that “A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile [non-Jew] , even if he is a homosexual,”

Anti--Gypsy Signs in Barns Green, West Sussex

To understand the full import of the above it is important to recognize that for Orthodox Jews being gay is an abomination which merits the death penalty, but even a gay Jew has a ‘much higher soul’ than a non-Jew. These are just some of the people who inhabit the present Israeli cabinet. Yet to call them what they are, Judeo-Nazis is anti-Semitic under the shabby, incoherent and contradictory collection of words that goes under the title of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

Yet amazingly enough, the IHRA ‘definition of anti-Semitism’ is what Phelim McCafferty and the Green Group on Brighton & Hove Council has signed up to.  A defence of Israel which renders criticism of racists like Naftali Bennett antisemitic.         

The Latvian Waffen SS are lauded by the LNNK Party which the Tories are allied to in the European Parliament

Next Thursday Brighton and Hove Council is set to be the latest right-wing Council to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.  It is a definition whose main purpose is not to combat anti-Semitism but to demonise support for the Palestinians.

The arguments against the IHRA have been well rehearsed for example in my most recent Open Letter to Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion. Simply put there is a very simple definition of anti-Semitism.  It is the OED: ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ The IHRA is 500+ words because that is how much it needs in order to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Tony Janio - leader of the Tories  professes opposition to antisemitism but has never criticised the link-up of the Tories in the European Parliament with antisemitic parties

The actions of the Labour Group, which consists overwhelmingly of supporters of Progress and the Labour Right, in moving the IHRA have more to do with their opposition to Jeremy Corbyn than any concern about anti-Semitism.  Likewise the Tories are supporting the motion, not because they are worried about anti-Semitism but for similar reasons to Labour.  They too want to see an end to Jeremy Corbyn.  What is surprising is that the Green Party Councillors are playing #me2.

What kind of political degeneracy and stupidity leads anyone on the Left to sign a motion against racism with the Tory Party? Phelim McCafferty comes from Southern Ireland. He knows full well the bloody record of the Tories in Ireland. The Tory Party is the party of the British Empire and racism is its bread and butter. Racism was the justification for Empire through the belief that those we conquered were less civilised than ourselves. Racism isn’t an illness you catch or some moral deficiency, it is the oil that makes the wheels of imperialism turn - from the Atlantic slave trade to the Amritsar massacre and the starvation of Bengal. What kind of moral turpitude and political opportunism is it that leads the Greens of Brighton to get into bed with a party for whom racism is second nature? 

For sure the Tory party now has some Black and Asian MPs just as it now has some Jewish MPs. The British in India also relied on native collaborators to maintain the Raj but their rule was no less racist or bloody because of this. Today Sajid David presides over the Windrush scandal and the Tories ‘hostile environment policy’ towards migrants.

Most people think of the Green Party as some kind of anti-establishment party on the left of British politics but Brighton Greens when in power have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to the prevailing political ambience.

Up to 2015 the Green Party ran a minority administration in Brighton.  Because that administration was widely seen as a disaster, their representation fell from 21 to 11in 2015 and the Council is now run by Labour. The Greens during their time in power came into conflict with the refuse workers and together with the Tories imposed the hideous Eyesore (I-360) on Brighton.

We were led to believe that with the replacement of the previous leader, Jason Kitcat by Phelim McCafferty, that the Deep Greens had been put to bed.  By seconding the IHRA resolution to Council with the Tories the Greens have demonstrated their political shallowness.

Anyone serious about anti-racism would ask why it is that ‘anti-Semitism’ is being singled out.  Jews may be a minority but they are not racially oppressed. According to the Pew Research Centre 7% of British people have unfavourable attitudes to Jews, compared to 26% and 50% with respect to Muslims and Roma respectively.

Daniel Yates - right-wing leader of Brighton Labour Group

There are no Windrush-style deportations of Jews.  Jews are not stopped and searched on the street or likely to die in police custody nor do they suffer from racial attacks or economic discrimination.  Jews are not overrepresented in prisons and under-represented in Parliament. Jews are a privileged part of the White population.  The idea that passing the IHRA resolution has something to do with opposing racism against Jews is fanciful.  It is about a political narrative concerned with Israel, Zionism and Jeremy Corbyn. 

The mere fact that ‘anti-Semitism’ is being privileged above any other form of racism is itself racist.  It is a slap in the face of those groups who really do suffer from racism.  

The Tories are the traditional party of anti-Semitism. At the beginning of the 20^th century they opposed the immigration of Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia and in 1905 under the ardent Zionist Arthur Balfour they introduced the Aliens Act to keep Jews out.  In the 1930’s they opposed the immigration of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, supported by the Times, Telegraph, Mail and Express. The war-time government of Churchill adamantly refused to admit Jewish refugees who were able to escape Nazi occupied Europe because they were considered enemy aliens!

An email from Jewish Green Party member Les Levidow to Phelim McCafferty

Message to Phelim McCafferty from Debbie Fink, a Jewish member of the Green Party

Of course as the Jewish community has moved upward socially and politically to the Right the Tories have shed their overt anti-Semitism which resulted in someone like Michael Howard having to face over 40 selection contests before becoming an MP.

But although the Tories are ardently pro-Zionist and anti-Palestinian they have not shed all their attitudes.  They are allied with the European Conservative and Reform Group in the European Parliament.  This is a group consisting of a number of anti-Semitic parties such as the Swedish Democrats, Poland’s Law and Justice Party and Latvia’s LNNK/For Fatherland and Freedom. The LNNK for example has one MEP, Robert Zile, who on one Saturday every March demonstrates alongside veterans of Latvia’s Waffen SS.

Over 95% of Latvia’s Jews perished in the Holocaust, the second highest of any European country.  Part of the reason was the hostility of the native population many of whom joined the Waffen SS, the section of the SS responsible for running the concentration camps. Yet the Tories, including ex-Conservative Friends of Israel Chair Eric Pickles ardently defend their tie up with overtly anti-Semitic parties.

See Monica Lowenberg’s Riga, Capital of European Culture: Waffen SS, Stags and Silence? for a description of the Tories friends in Latvia. If Tony Janio, the Tory leader in Brighton Council were sincere in his opposition to anti-Semitism then he would challenge his party’s membership of the ECHR group in the European parliament.  Otherwise he is just being the normal Tory hypocrite.

For the Green Party to ally itself with right-wing Labour and the Tories use of ‘anti-Semitism’ as a stick to beat supporters of the Palestinians demonstrates how shallow their support for the Palestinians really is. Whenever the Greens gets their hands on the levers of power, they behave no different to their Labour/Tory counterparts.

It remains to be seen whether all 11 of the Green Party councillors follow the lead of Phelim McCafferty into the lobby with Warren Morgan and the Tories.

Let us be clear what this is about.  The IHRA states that

"Manifestations [of antisemitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. "  

In other words if you criticise Israel because it is fundamentally different from a normal state, from an anti-Zionist perspective, because it is a state based on ethnic supremacy, then you are antisemitic.  This is what the Green group and the Labour group have signed up for. This is anti-Palestinian racism, pure and simple. Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Phelim McCafferty – Leader of Green Group on Brighton and Hove City Council

Dear Phelim,

I wrote to you earlier today regarding the fact that you had jointly seconded, with Tony Janio of the Tories, the IHRA resolution that is going to the next meeting of Brighton and Hove Council. You have chosen not to respond.

I sent you and the Green Councillors over the weekend a letter explaining why the IHRA has nothing to with opposing anti-Semitism and everything to do with undermining support for the Palestinians. No one has yet explained why a ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism of 500+ words is required when the Oxford English Dictionary definition ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ consists of just 6. The fact that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is based on ‘hatred’ rather than ‘hostility’ demonstrates it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.

 Even the IHRA’s principal author Kenneth Stern has criticised its use to chill free speech on campuses. The IHRA has been the subject of withering criticism by a variety of legal and academic figures, such as former Court of Appeal Judge Sir Stephen Sedley, Hugh Tomlinson QC and Geoffrey Robertson QC who has described it as ‘not fit for purpose.’

The reason why the Labour Group is proposing this pernicious statement owes more to their hostility to Jeremy Corbyn than any concern with racism against Jews or others. Hostility to Corbyn is also the prime motive of the Tory group.  It is stretching credibility to believe that a Tory Party which has deported possibly hundreds of Black British Windrush Citizens under their ‘hostile environment policy’ is seriously concerned about racism against Jews.

A Tory Party which, when Jewish refugees were fleeing from the pogroms in Czarist Russia, introduced the 1905 Aliens Act and which also opposed the admission of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany is now apparently concerned about anti-Semitism. This is the same Tory Party which is in alliance with anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament and whose MEP’s have just supported the racist Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary.

What makes this even more sordid is that you led people to believe that the Green group in the Council would not be supporting this wretched motion.

The only effect of adopting the IHRA will be to threaten the free speech of Council employees and others.  For the Green Group to support such an anti-democratic resolution is shameful. The IHRA has been used to close down Israel Apartheid week on university campuses. A staff member of Hammersmith & Fulham Council was dismissed for contravening the IHRA.  Clearly your support for civil liberties is skin deep.

This resolution is also racist. You have ignored the letter written to the Council by some 18 Black and migrant groups in this city opposing the IHRA. By what right do you privilege opposition to anti-Semitism, which is a marginal prejudice, compared to racism against Black people, Muslims and Gypsies?  There is no state anti-Semitism in Britain and where it does exist, in Poland and Eastern Europe, the Zionist movement has nothing to say because these regimes are also the most ardently pro-Israel.

Racist attitudes to Roma in this country are over 7 times higher than that against Jews and anti-Muslim racism is over 3 times as high.  It is clear that it wasn’t anti-racism which motivated this resolution.

Some people have fondly imagined that the Green Party and its councillors represent a break from the traditional two parties and their mode of operation. In supporting this racist resolution, not least in the way you led people to believe that you would be opposing the IHRA, it is clear that your real goal is for a greater share of the spoils rather than a desire for fundamental change in society.  Some of us had hoped that the Green councillors had broken from the Jason Kitcat era.  Clearly we were wrong.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Fatal Attraction – Brighton Green Party’s Love-in With Property Developers

Brighton Greens Propose the Destruction of Toad's Hole Valley

I remember a hustings held at the Friends Centre in Brighton’s Ship Street in 2005.  I stood as a candidate for the Alliance for Green Socialism.  Although I obtained a handful of votes others, such as the Sussex University student newspaper, judged that at the hustings, at the University and in town, I had won the debates.  Arguments for socialism have always defeated the tired, cliched and worn-out excuses for the failures of capitalism.

I remember at the town hustings  launching into the Green Party’s political pretensions.  Keith Taylor, now an MEP (replacement for Caroline Lucas) for the Green Party and somewhat on the right of the Party, was their political candidate.  He freely confessed when I asked him a simple question, in a quiet aside on the platform, why is it that whenever the Green Party gets into power they jackknife to the Right?  Keith was on the right of the Green Party and sincerely believed he would get elected (in fact he came third in the end, but creditably so).  The  honour of becoming the first Green MP fell to Caroline Lucas and even then she only gained it by little more than a thousand votes.

The local business community just loves the 'one planet' idea of destroying the environment

You Can’t Green Capitalism

The answer to me was simple.  If you take over as the manager of capitalism, then however wonderful your ideas about a citizens’ income and all the other god, mother and apple pie ideas you have, then you are constrained by an anti-human and the predatory economic and political system we have which feeds on war and poverty.  Capitalism is anti-human because whereas the natural tendency of human beings is to co-operate in the quest for life, capitalism sets people against each other.  They call it competition and we see its logical outcome in the current economic crisis where investment bankers competed against each other and the market to obtain as high a price as was possible for their derivatives and financial instruments, regardless of the actual value of their toxic investments.  Of course it was all built on sand and collapsed like a pack of cards.

GREEN LUNG: Toads Hole Valley

Of course the political pundits and right-wing soothsayers tell us that competition is 'natural' - part of 'human nature', as if the latter is fixed.  But read a book on the second world war.  I'm reading at the moment Francis Wheen's excellent biography, Tom Driberg - His Life and Indiscretions.  Dribert, a Bevanite Labour MP and someone who had to live with the perils of being gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal.  His sexuality was widely known about but he remained prey to blackmailers and all the other hypocrital scum that make up the British establishment.  He also went to Lancing College and is the most famous resident of the otherwise boring Sussex town of Crowborough.  Driberg was what is known as a champagne socialist, who was expelled by the Communist Party.  He has a country seat in Essex, Bradwell Lodge and was the first and most famous William Hickey columnist of the Daily Express when Lord Beaverbrook was the proprietor (now the paper is owned by Britain's largest pornographer, Richard Desmond!).

For the duration of the war Bradwell Lodge was impounded for the RAF.  Economic planning was instituted by the Tory led government on a scale undreamt of by socialists.  All this because it was recognised that private enterprise couldn't fight a war of survival.  You cannot have economic competition triumphing over the  battler for national survival.  Everyone had to contribute and you couldn't do that whilst the privileged classes were immune from sacrifice.

Yet today, instead of humanity co-operating in a joint quest to eliminate poverty and disease we have the grotesque and obscene situation of a race to the bottom.  If we don’t pay poverty wages, another country or company will.  If, as Norman Tebbit once said, we don’t produce instruments of torture then someone else will.  Capitalism, as one of the few intelligent speculators George Soros (child of the Hungarian holocaust and an opponent of Zionism who has been called a cog in Hitler’s machine by these debauched prostitutes for American imperialism) proclaimed is ‘amoral’.  It also contains within it the seeds of humanity’s destruction.  Global warming can only be combated by human co-operation world wide.  Instead capitalism, which is notoriously short-sighted, because it eschews long-term planning, which is necessary to combat global warming, instead churns out CO2, eroding the Arctic ice cap and then starts drilling for more oil in the Arctic, presumably so that it can finish the job of frying the world.

It is plain as a pikestaff that you cannot tackle the global environmental crisis as long as capitalism exists.  Just as you cannot guarantee the safety of a child in its crib as long as you have a rattlesnake sharing its sleeping quarters.  The Greens however have no strategy.  To them capitalism is a neutral vehicle and one can harness the market to green society.  So when they come into power they make deals with whoever is around, plead how responsible they are and then get on with the business of making the world unfit to live in.  In Germany, the Green Party under its leader and Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer, was the first German government to send its army abroad to fight (in Afghanistan).  In Ireland, the Green Party disappeared off the political map when it supported Fianna Fail and its vicious programme of austerity.  In Scotland the Green Party showed how loyal it was to the Monarchy by attending the Queen’s inauguration of the Assembly at Holyrood, unlike the Scottish Socialist Party, which boycotted it.

Brighton has always been a political oddity, a liberal island amidst Tory Sussex.  It is no surprise that the Green Party gained its first seat here in 1996 when Pete West took one of 3 seats in Labour's St Peters ward, following that up with 3 councillors the following elections.  By 2011 they had 23 seats and were in control of the Council.  Unfortunately they learnt nothing of other Green Party administrations in other countries nor did they think through what they could do or even whether it was wise to take power.

I remember telling Bill Randall, the first Green council leader, and other Green Party members I knew that the Green Party in Brighton, which in 2010 had captured its first parliamentary seat in Pavilion with Caroline Lucas, was mad to take power in the Council.  They would simply be in the position of administering the vicious cuts of the Liberals and Tories nationally.  And so it has proved as they propose to close down 3 Adult Learning Centres for the mentally disabled.

But even I assumed that when it came to Green issues, the Green Party wouldn’t be seen to buckle and become the friend of the property developer.  Instead the Green Party administration and their leader, Jason Kitcat, have welcomed plans to develop the last major green space in Brighton, Toad’s Hole Valley, which should have been included in the South Downs National Park and would have been but for political machinations.

The Council's plans

I can remember arguing with the then aspiring Green candidate and now councillor for Hollingdean, Sven Rufus, about the Green Party.  He told me it was a socialist party and I disagreed.  It shared many aspirations of socialism but it was a petty borugeois, middle class party that didn’t seek to change capitalism but to tame it.  Instead it would end up being tamed.  Sven  has now lost his co-councillor, Christine Summers, a Christian fundamentalist who voted to oppose gay marriage.

Erstwhile radicals such as Phelim McCafferty, who promised to oppose the implementation of cuts, have become deputy leader of the administration instead!

The Green Party administration in Brighton is beginning to make itself extremely unpopular.  Having done nothing, because there is nothing it can do about public transport, it has nonetheless implemented an absurdly high parking regime whereby it costs you £3.50 an hour to park in  central Brighton, thus ensuring that as few people as possible come to shop or visit.  It has now proposed to develop part of the historic Level in Brighton, as part of its madcap schemes.  And now Toads Hole Valley, where it is the local Tories who are posing as the opponents of development (& to their credit have indeed opposed any such development) whereas the Green Party i now the friend of the ‘eco property developer’.

I have a vested interest.  I help run Brighton Unemployed Centre.  In its 30 year existence we have never been asked to pay the 20% of rates which are discretionary.  But this year we had to pay 10% for the first time ever under a Green administration.  Under the previous Council, I had the blue parking badge for my disabled son renewed automatically.  This year it was refused and despite writing to all Green Party councillors, nothing was done to reverse an officers' decision.  In the end I was forced to bring Judicial Review proceedings against the Council before a High Court judge instructed the Council to hand back the badge.  At times of cuts they Council laid out some £20,000 I would imagine hiring barristers and paying court fees.

I make a prediction.  That at the next local elections the Green Party will do well to hang on to even 10 seats.  The real question is whether the Green Council is so unpopular that it drags down Caroline Lucas, who is a good MP with radical credentials, in its wake.  Jason Kitcat and the rest of the ‘business friendly’ Greens will go off to a well merited obscurity.  Which in many ways is a tragedy because it will allow New Labour, which in Brighton is particularly awful, to come back by default.

Below is an article by a good and long-standing friend, Dave Bangs, who is a well-known environmentalist.  He campaigned long and hard for the South Downs National Park and is the most authoritative and knowledgeable person about the fauna and wildlife of the South Downs I know.  Going on a walk with him on the Downs is to see the ground one treads on and the fields in the distant in an entirely different perspective.  He is author of ‘Whitehawk Hill – Where the Downs Meet the Turf’ (2004).

We now have the prospect of the Green Party administration going in to bat on behalf of the Business Community, with its 'one planet vision' [wonderful how they pick up greenspeak so easily!] and the Conservative councillors and local Tory MP opposed to it!  Strange bedfellows indeed.

Tony Greenstein

Toads Hole Valley...down the plughole?

By Dave Bangs, dave.bangs@virgin.net Tel: 01273 620 815 September 2012

co-leader Brighton and Hove Community Wildlife Groups National Park Campaign 2002-4
co-leader Brighton and Hove Defend Council Housing 2004-7

A decade ago local residents and countryside activists  - including Green Party activists - campaigned for the inclusion of Toads Hole Valley and the rest of the Brighton downland fringe in a new National Park of the South Downs.

- Aided by Green Party councillor Pete West, a coalition of all the Green and Tory Party councillors, plus two pro-downland Labour councillors, won the full Council vote to recommend an inclusive boundary to the National Park right up to the edge of the built-up area, taking in Toads Hole Valley, Whitehawk Hill, Sheepcote Valley and much more...

- Later, the National Park Public Inquiry Inspector included Toads Hole Valley in his recommended Park boundary, submitted to the secretary of state. 

We thought we had succeeded [1] ...and so we should have...for the case was open-and-shut...

- Toads Hole Valley is a ‘pinch point’ on the long chain of the South Downs...almost the narrowest point on the whole open downland chain...which is here reduced to a mere 2.6 miles wide. It is the point at which the integrity of the down landscape is most threatened. 

- Toads Hole Valley is thoroughly inter-visible with the rest of the open 1.5 mile West Blatchington Valley (of which it is a part) all the way up to the Dyke Golf Course. Development at Toads Hole will bring serious visual damage to the wider National Park downs at the point where they are most vulnerable. 

- The A27 bypass – remarkably - does NOT constitute a major visual intrusion to this downland valley...and the whole downland valley is protected from the visual intrusion of the built up area by the spur of Snakey Hill (King George V1 Avenue).  

- Toads Hole Valley had long been judged as of National Park quality, because it was part of the Sussex Downs AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) in which landscape standards are the same as National Parks.

HOWEVER, a second National Park Public Inquiry to re-address boundary issues (chiefly in the western Weald) reversed the decision to include Toads Hole Valley.

NOW the Valley landowners and Green Party developmentalist councillors are having a field day

Their mad plans make NO MENTION that Toads Hole Valley was judged to be of National Park standard and is a critical part of that wider, inter-visible National Park landscape. 

- The plans cram built development all up the most highly inter-visible parts of the valley...on the higher ground of  the Snakey Hill spur and up by Court Farm.  

- They put new greenspace (in the school grounds and next to the SNCI slope) down in the most sheltered (visually and aurally) part of the valley...the reverse of any rational policy of amelioration of the wider landscape damage...which would keep all the higher ground open.-

They cram a major road along the bottom of the Toads Hole SNCI slope and shave off its southern tip to accommodate that road – and shove in a mess of cycle ways, zig-zag paths, and a funicular railway.   

- AND THEY CRAM, CRAM, CRAM !!!...700 houses, an industrial estate, a school, a community hub, and an even longer version of the busy Snakey Hill road, 

Why all this madness ?...What is the wider context ? 

- A hyper-developing south eastern region, where the best rural landscapes and the greatest national biodiversity are threatened with destruction, PLUS a low wage economy, PLUS severe housing stress exacerbated by inter-regional migration of the well-off  in search of pleasure and the poor in search of jobs...WHILST the peripheral regions and poorer countries suffer under-development and regression. 

- These patterns of uneven development are an inherent feature of capitalism, and bring with them misery and environmental destruction.

They must be challenged and not pandered to.

A sustainable future for both Brighton and the South Downs depends on redistribution and the strictest environmental protection, NOT developmentalism and cosmetic environmentalism... 

- 60% of this development’s housing is to be not affordable...and most ‘affordable’ housing is not truly affordable. 

- Yet 100% of this development will be environmentally damaging.
- Over twenty years ago Hove planners rejected the idea of housing on Old Shoreham Road at the bottom of Benfield Valley because of the road’s noise and air pollution...NOW the Green Party proposes housing next to the Brighton Bypass with much greater traffic levels, noise and fumes... 

- Organise the community take-over and clean-up of the neglected and abused Valley. We first did that nine years ago...and were praised by the National Park Public Inquiry Inspector for our efforts.

REJECT THIS DEVELOPMENT
PROTECT THE SOUTH DOWNS NATIONAL PARK
....FOR EVERYONE...FOR EVERMORE

[1]...Despite the attempt of senior Planning Department officers to frustrate our campaign by ignoring their duty to attend the Public Inquiry and argue for the council’s policy. One of these officers told me afterwards that they had not attended because they did not want to be seen to be arguing for a reversal of the council’s previous policy...a bit like a senior civil servant refusing to support the policy of a new government because it contradicts the policy of the old government!