Green Party Disciplinary Process… and where it has gone wrong
The Green Party disciplinary process is set out in the Standing Orders for Party Discipline (SOPD) and the Code of Conduct (CoC) and on the members-only website at my.greenparty.org.uk.
Any member of the Green Party of England and Wales who believes that another member has breached the CoC or the Constitution may make a complaint by sending a form to the Complaints and Information Governance Officer, who checks that it has been correctly completed and, if so, passes it to the Disputes and Complaints Referral Group (hereafter the ‘Referral Group’), which decides what should happen next.
The Referral Group is comprised of three members: a chair or deputy chair of the Disciplinary Committee (DC), and a co-chair plus an ordinary member of the Green Party Regional Council (GPRC), the body tasked with overseeing ‘party wellbeing’.
Unfortunately, GPRC and DC have been ‘captured’ by the gender ideologist faction in the Party, and the complaints system has been weaponised to suspend, punish and remove members who are openly gender-critical, that is, who speak out against men self-identifying into single-sex spaces and sports, or object to so-called affirmative care for young people who think they might be born in the wrong body.
The Referral Group
The Referral Group has a triage role. It is supposed to weed out frivolous and vexatious complaints, multiple complaints by the same person, and complaints that are about differences over policy, rather than about alleged breaches of the CoC. If they deem a complaint is legitimate, the Referral Group then decides whether it could be disposed of at a local or regional level. This is on the assumption that every local or regional party has its own disciplinary policy and procedure – which is not always the case – and the subsidiarity principle, which is that decisions should as far as possible be taken at the lowest possible level, with the local or regional party best placed to investigate and resolve the issues before it.
If the complainant is not satisfied with the outcome at the lower levels, they may escalate the complaint to the national level, that is, DC. But the Referral Group frequently ignores the subsidiarity principle and sends complaints straight to DC. Hence and unsurprisingly, DC is overwhelmed and has a backlog measured in years.
Prior to Spring 2022, there were eleven reps on DC: one elected by each of the nine regions in England, together with Wales, plus one additional rep elected at Autumn Conference. In order to speed up the workflow, DC numbers were doubled to twenty-two but the backlog remains.
Greens in Exile believe that the main reason for this is that the complaints system has been weaponised to suspend, punish and remove gender-critical members. Members with gender-critical beliefs have been vilified in the party for many years and from the top down.
- In February 2021, Siân Berry, former co-leader and now a Green MP, gave an interview to Pink News, which reported that “Siân Berry thinks you should reconsider being in the Green Party if you don’t believe trans rights are human rights”.
- Speaking to Left Foot Forward in March 2023, Deputy Leader Zack Polanski said, “those members who claim that trans women are men and trans men are women should not have a place in the Greens.”
Expressions of gender-critical views, however politely made, are censored and attacked, but the attackers are rarely reprimanded, even when they use language that is blatantly against the CoC.
Greens in Exile believe that the Party rides roughshod over the rule in the CoC that disagreement over policy should not be a ground for complaint. When it comes to policy RR530 (trans women are women, etc), the Referral Group and DC seem willing to take on cases where the complainant has alleged that someone has disagreed with this policy. The same does not apply to disagreements over, say, NATO, nuclear power or HS2, which is why Greens in Exile believe that the complaints system discriminates against gender-critical members.
DC Investigation and Hearing
Some cases are decided ‘on the papers’, which is where all the material evidence is in the complaint form and the respondent’s rebuttal (such as a case as to whether the respondent did or did not post such and such a message on X). Complaints of this nature may still be delayed for many years. For other complaints, DC usually appoint investigators who may interview the parties and witnesses and gather evidence to put to the DC hearing.
Complaint hearings are usually held online. The complainant and respondent are invited and may be accompanied by a McKenzie friend if they so wish. A minimum of four members of DC will hear the complaint, alongside a minute-taker and, where relevant, the appointed investigators. Usually, the investigators present their report first, then the complainant and respondent present their arguments, and then members of DC may ask questions. The complainant, respondent and investigators then leave and the DC panel decides on the outcome by consensus or a vote and, where the complaint has been upheld, which sanctions to apply.
Appeals
If DC finds that the respondent has breached the CoC, it may apply a disciplinary sanction, which normally takes immediate effect. Both complainants and respondents have a right to appeal if they are not satisfied with the outcome (SOPD 6.17). The appeal is heard by the Appeals Committee (AC), a subcommittee of GPRC comprised of five GPRC reps. Just as with DC hearings, an appellant may be kept waiting for months or years for an appeal hearing.
Before about 2022, the AC decision was always final. Anyone unhappy with it would have to seek a remedy externally, for example by seeking judicial review in the High Court, which is an expensive and stressful process. Nevertheless, it has been done, or at least threatened to be done in some cases, which was sufficient to bring about an internal revision.
In about 2022, however, GPRC changed its own rules and granted itself the power to overturn an appeal decision and have the appeal heard again. This change contravened SOPD 7.10:
“The Appeals Committee appeal decision shall be final and binding and not subject to further appeal”. GPRC has ignored this.
Expulsion under clause 4(viii)
One of the original reasons for setting up the Disciplinary Committee was to keep GPRC at arms-length from the disciplinary process. But in recent times, GPRC have taken it upon themselves to expel members using clause 4(viii) in the party constitution, which states that GPRC “shall have the power to expel or suspend any person from membership and/or refuse membership to any person for a specified period if in its opinion it is in the Party’s interest to do so.”
Clause 4(viii) was designed to protect the Party in extreme cases.
It also states that “no member may be expelled without proper consideration”. The Standing Orders Committee (SOC), which is tasked with ruling on issues about the party constitution, defined ‘proper consideration’ as a decision by DC or a tribunal or a court.
Greens in Exile believe that GPRC is in breach of the SOC ruling – and therefore in breach of the party constitution – because it is expelling members summarily, that is, without ‘proper consideration’.
Expulsion for supporting Alison Teal
GPRC has also decided that, where a member supported a campaign by someone standing against a Green Party candidate, that member has expelled themself. While it is normal for a party to expel anyone who campaigns against a duly-chosen Green Party Parliamentary candidate, a recent high profile case in point concerns Rachel Hardy and Alison Teal. Alison was the duly-chosen Green Party Parliamentary candidate until she was unfairly replaced, without being properly deselected, just before the July 2024 General Election, after spending 19 months on a no-fault suspension over a trivial allegation. Another Parliamentary candidate was unfairly put in her place, leaving her to contest the Parliamentary election as an independent candidate.
This type of expulsion is being justified under paragraph 4.7 of the Constitution which deems a member to have ‘forfeited their membership’ if they campaign against a properly selected Green Party candidate. Fair enough, one might say. However, GPRC have recently taken it upon themselves to use this sanction based on a complaint from a single complainant. Furthermore they are making such decisions with no investigation, hearing, defence from the member thus accused, or appeal. And there are cases of members being thrown out of the Party under 4.7 on a false assertion, with no evidence provided of the assertion and no opportunity for the member concerned to rebut the accusation. See Mandy Vere and Amanda Stones.
No fault Suspensions
The use of no-fault suspensions is another aspect of the Green Party disciplinary process which Greens in Exile believe has been weaponised by GPRC. No-fault suspensions are supposed to be imposed sparingly, for a short duration, and only in the most extreme cases, However, since GPRC became dominated by gender extremists, the use of no-fault suspensions has markedly increased.