After an unexpectedly longer hiatus than anticipated we're back in the custodial and editorial seats and the site has been taken off auto-pilot for a batch of new material to be prepared and uploaded and several new articles to be written and published here.
We remain convinced that it is essential to make history accessible in unmediated form as well as providing commentary and interpretation. We recognise that all writing about events in the past carries a baggage of, often unrecognised, assumptions, prejudices, and biases. This is especially insidious when the author is presented as some kind of authority or expert on the historical era being discussed.
This is as true of the articles on this website as it is of any dusty tome. We make no claim to being 'experts' in history of the green political movement in the UK from 1972 to the present day, aside from having lived through and experienced at first hand some of the events.
As regards the items in our growing document library these are scans of original documents - the source material for developing an understanding of the development of green politics. The quotes at the top of every page remind us that without an understanding of history it is easy to get lost and repeat the same mistakes. Einstein probably never said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting a different result, but there is more than a grain of good sense in the quote. Sometimes, after 50 years of trying variations of the same model for change, one might wonder whether the green movement has only succeeded in driving itself insane by forgetting to learn from its past.
On the other hand we do not live in a mechanical world, and so sometimes things do work out differently. Thus whilst being aware of what came before is undoubtedly useful, being a slave to it is certainly unhelpful. You can be a slave to history either by knowing it and repeating it, or by knowing it and striving to avoid repeating it. The way lies through the middle.
We hope that the resources on this website - the source material and our commentary - will prove useful to developing a more effective form of activism; it is desperately needed today.
We will continue, as we continue to learn ourselves from the past.
RogerCO March 2023