I just found this piece while checking through my archive to make sure the 1992 chapters of my memoirs were accurate. I hope this piece disabuses those of you who think my PhD has anything to do with my writing practices or anything else about me of such a notion. This is an essay by a twenty-year-old who dropped out of first-year university.
IS CONSENSUS POSSIBLE IN THE GREEN PARTY?
By Stuart Parker
Several people have put it to me that the consensus process has been harmful to the development of Green Parties because it is a cumbersome and ineffective means of making decisions. I disagree with this strongly. I have seen consensus work effectively in a number of situations and believe consensus to be a valuable process for making decisions in groups. It is my belief, however, that the Green Party of B.C. is doing a great disservice both to itself and to the cause of advocating consensus by perpetuating the myth that the decision making process it is currently using on the provincial level is consensus, or even a distant relative of the process.
Having been an advocate of consensus decision making, and having applied it to groups I have organized outside of the Green Party, I had been puzzled by the lack of success in using the process experienced by the Greens and had always put the problem down to the behavior of a number of individuals. It was not until the B.C. Greens Annual General Meeting of 1992 that it occurred to me that a key and essential element of consensus was missing from Green Party decision making. I was reading and copying down the notes left by a workshop on values important to the functioning of consensus. The notes said, “trusting and respecting everyone.” It occurred to me that the element of trust had clearly been missing since I became involved with the B.C. Greens in 1989.
According to those practicing consensus, it is clear that trust is absolutely essential to the process. Unlike unanimity decision making, wherein concessions on unrelated issues are exchanged for consent on a particular issue, consensus presumes that every person operating within the process is working for the benefit of the group. It also presumes that every participant needs to have a high level of trust in the intelligence and motives of all his or her fellow participants. Under the original definition of the consensus process (as opposed to the one now used by the B.C. Greens), the facilitator is charged with phrasing and proposing all decisions adopted by the group, based on his or her sense of the group’s feelings on this issue.
The party’s faith in the intelligence and selflessness of its facilitators was obviously so seriously jeopardized by 1989 that the facilitator had been demoted to the role of chair in meetings, simply to keep a speakers’ list and receive motions from the floor. The term “enrichment” had been demoted to “friendly amendment” and a voting fallback had been introduced to the process so that blocks could be overridden.
The 1992 Annual General Meeting saw a movement by the party closer to the original definition of consensus, with a one day workshop devoted to consensus decision making, the reintroduction of trust building exercises and increased socializing between the participants. While a sense of trust in the process was not fully restored, the party moved closer to a group capable of using consensus. The 1992 meeting was also by far the most culturally homogeneous, being comprised, almost entirely of participants not only politically but socially part of the alternative movement, virtually all of whom felt fully comfortable and appreciative of the fact that the meeting took place at someone’s home. With a narrow cultural base, the meeting was more comfortable with a consensus process.
1991-92 also saw a sharp (50%) membership decline in the party and an even sharper decrease in funds. While during the growth years of 1988-91, consensus had changed into a unanimity oriented version of Robert’s Rules, after the party’s extremely disappointing showing in the 1991 provincial election, full unanimity, trust oriented consensus came back into vogue. This interestingly parallels the original adoption of consensus in 1985, which had followed the boom years of 1983-84. Membership had dropped from 1200 in 1983 to 700 in 1984 to roughly 350 in 1985. This had followed extremely disappointing electoral showings as well.
When political parties suffer emotionally crushing defeats, as with the Alberta Social Credit Party in the early 1970s and the B.C. Social Credit Party in 1991, where a party’s showings have fallen short of their expectations by orders of magnitude, there are what is known as “back to the roots” movements. In the case of right wing parties with a populist base, this means more barbecues, more meetings in rural areas, policies further to the right, active promotion of “Christian principles,” a movement away from active support of transnational business to small business, etc. In essence, such a movement attempts to create a culturally homogeneous party of white, rural, Christian people, driving away even faster the few mainstream supporters the organization the party has been able to hang on to. After all, it is much easier to handle a crushing defeat, when all the remaining supporters can feel better socially about one another because they not only have similar politics, but similar friends, are of a similar age and class and of the same religion.
Most political movements with populist roots tend to want to go back to those roots to cope with major defeats. Perhaps if the New Democrats had ended up with seven seats in 1991, instead of the Socreds, we might be seeing militant, old line socialist trade unionists taking over the party, pushing feminists and environmentalists to the fringe.
So, here we are with the Green Party and its own “back to the roots” movement. The 1992 Annual General Meeting Agenda invited people to enjoy “drumming and cappuccino” and “invoking the goddess from within.” The Canada Day weekend was forsaken in favour of the summer solstice, which is not a long weekend, in the extreme southwest corner of B.C., on a farm. The reaffirmation of consensus was only the crowning touch, and no wonder that it worked better, when the cultural base to which the meeting and party appealed were narrowed so effectively. We were able to send signals to career oriented people, members of organized religions and generally anyone not a member of the Gulf Islands, Kitsilano, New Age culture that they would not fit in culturally to our AGM.
As was explained to me by the writer of the agenda (whose views on Green policy I respect tremendously and whose work on hosting the meeting I do appreciate) “Well, that’s ‘island life.’” Well, the fact is that most of the people in BC, we are trying to reach, including many environmentalists, don’t live on our island. We are not here to promote a culture, we are here to promote a political program. Counter culture and electoral politics are not easily compatible. While both are necessary to achieve social change, the active fusion of the two strategies will render both impotent.
It is not the Green Party that will save the world, and there is no single strategy that will. The Green Party should be making itself the most effective tool to engage in electoral politics, while it leaves other groups working to save the planet to make themselves the most effective lobbying tools, or monkeywrenching tools, or alternative cultures. For the same reason that environmental groups do not limit themselves by supporting a single political party, and thereby narrowing their base of supporters, so the Green Party should not be narrowing its base culturally.
So how does this reflect on consensus? It is clear that consensus is an effective process in an affinity group of culturally similar people, and I believe, capable of enhancing such a group. But when it is applied to a larger group, without a basis of trust, with membership criteria based solely on paying a fee, either the process breaks down or the group consciously or unconsciously undertakes a policy to discourage the membership of people with whom they cannot easily establish a basis of trust. From 1988 to 1991, we have watched the first process happen and now we are switching to the second. It seems that we have a choice: either to make a farce of the process or create additional membership criteria. Because right now, the membership form mentions neither trust nor culture.
If the Greens are to move ahead, it is my belief that we must create a party inclusive of all people who share our concern for the imminent breakdown of planetary life support systems. We must therefore adopt a process which does not have trust as a prerequisite.
