Scottish Green Party

The Scottish Green Party (Pàrtaidh Uaine na h-Alba) is the Green party of Scotland. It currently has two MSPs in the devolved Scottish Parliament, Robin Harper, representing the Lothians, and Patrick Harvie, for Glasgow.

The Scottish party is fully independent, and works closely with the other green parties of Britain and Ireland: the Green Party of England and Wales, the Green Party in Northern Ireland and the Green Party of Ireland. It is a full member of the European Green Party.

The party currently has eight councillors: three in Edinburgh and five in Glasgow. All were elected in 2007 after the Greens stood substantial numbers of council candidates for the first time.

At the 2005 Westminster election, the party contested 19 seats and gained 25,760 votes. Its top result was 7.7% of the vote in Glasgow North, a major breakthrough in the West of Scotland. In the European Parliament election of 2004, it missed out on a seat with 6.8% of the vote. However, the Party lost 5 of their 7 seats in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election.

According to accounts filed with the Electoral Commission for the year ending December 31, 2006, the party had an income of about £139,000 that year, and expenditure of around £76,000 and a membership of 963, up by 50 on the previous year.

History
The Scottish Green Party was a constituent part of the former UK Green Party until 1990, when the Scottish Green Party became a separate entity. The separation was entirely amicable, as part of the green commitment to decentralisation: the Scottish Green Party supports a referendum on Scottish independence.

The Scottish Green Party benefits from the fact that the British government created a Scottish Parliament, which is elected using the additional member system of proportional representation. In the first election to this Parliament, in 1999, the Scottish Green Party got one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) elected by proportional representation, Robin Harper, the UK's first Green Parliamentarian. On May 1, 2003 the Scottish Greens added six new MSPs to their previous total.

In the 2007 elections, the Party lost five seats in Holyrood. However in the council elections, taking place under the new Single Transferable Vote voting system, they gained three Councillors on the City of Edinburgh Council and five Councillors on Glasgow City Council.

On the 11th of May 2007 the Greens signed an agreement with the Scottish National Party, which meant that the Greens voted for Alex Salmond as First Minister and supported his initial Ministerial appointments. In return, the Nationalists backed a climate change bill as an early measure and promised to legislate against ship-to-ship oil transfers in the Firth of Forth. The SNP also agreed to nominate Patrick Harvie, one of the Green MSPs, to convene one of the Holyrood committees: Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change.

Policy
The Scottish Green Party is committed to forming a sustainable society. Their policies are guided by these five interconnected principles:
 * Ecology: Our environment is the basis upon which every society is formed. Whenever we damage our environment, we damage ourselves. Respect for our environment is therefore essential.
 * Equality: A society that is not socially and economically just cannot be sustainable. Only when released from immediate poverty can individuals be expected to take responsibility for wider issues.
 * Our society must be founded on cooperation and respect. We campaign hard against discrimination on grounds of gender, race, sexuality, disability, age or religion.
 * Radical Democracy: Politics is too often conducted in a polarised, confrontational atmosphere and in a situation remote from those that it affects. We must develop decentralised, participative systems that encourage individuals to control the decisions that affect their own lives.
 * Peace and Non-Violence: Violence at all levels of human interaction must be rejected and succeeded by relations characterised by flexibility, respect and fairness.

These principles taken together give the Scottish Green Party a holistic view that is in common with all Green Parties around the world.

Scottish Green Party MSPs
All of the Scottish Green Party's Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) have been elected under the list or "top-up" system of representation in the Parliament.

Current MSPs

 * Robin Harper is Party Co-Convenor, and MSP for the Lothians.
 * Patrick Harvie is MSP for Glasgow.

Previous MSPs

 * Shiona Baird for North East Scotland.
 * Chris Ballance for the South of Scotland.
 * Mark Ballard for the Lothians.
 * Mark Ruskell for Mid Scotland and Fife.
 * Eleanor Scott for the Highlands and Islands.

City of Edinburgh Council

 * Steve Burgess (Southside/Newington Ward)
 * Maggie Chapman (Leith Walk Ward)
 * Alison Johnstone (Meadows/Morningside Ward) is also is Party Co-Convenor

Glasgow City Council

 * Danny Alderslowe (Southside Central Ward)
 * Nina Baker (Anderston/City Ward)
 * Stuart Clay (Partick West Ward)
 * Martha Wardrop (Hillhead Ward)
 * Kieran Wild (Canal Ward)

Previous Councillors
Prior to the 2007 elections, the Party had only ever elected one councillor at local level: in May 1990, Roger (aka Rory) Winter, representing the Highland Green Party (Uainich na Gàidhealtachd), was elected in Nairn as Scotland's first Green regional councillor to the then Highland Regional Council. Cllr Winter broke away from the Greens in 1991 and continued his four-year term as an Independent Green Highlander.