Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Young Greens
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Young Greens are the youth and student branch of the Green Party. We organise and empower young people and the wider student-movement to make radical change happen, inside and outside of the Party.
If you are a Green Party member aged below 30, or a full-time student, then you are a Young Green. However, you don’t have to be a member to get involved! Throughout the year we’ll organise exciting debates, guest speakers, pub trips, and help elect more Green Councillors through powerful action days.
The 2023/2024 Committee
The Young Greens Stand For:
- Implement a global Green New Deal, mobilising our huge economic resources to drive a rapid transformation of our economy away from fossil fuels and destructive polluting industries
- Create millions of well-paid, unionised and green jobs in renewable energy, transport, land management and other sectors essential to decarbonising the economy
- Apply a Carbon Tax on all fossil fuel imports and domestic extraction, rendering coal, oil and gas financially unviable
- Bring energy, water, railways, buses, the Royal Mail and care work back into public ownership to give communities real control of the public services that has been lost over the past 30 years
- Phase in the introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) sufficient to cover an adult’s basic needs. UBI will be an unconditional payment, paid to all UK residents regardless of employment status
- Reverse a decade of cuts to local councils and reopen vital social services like youth centres to provide more opportunities for young people
- Introduce a Living Rent through rent controls, ban ‘No Fault’ evictions, and fund councils to fight ‘slum landlords’
- Empower renters unions to allow collective bargaining on rent prices and expose exploitative landlords
- Empower local councils to bring empty homes back into use and create a total of 100,000 new homes for social rent a year, built to the Passivhaus standard
- Increasing the Living Wage to at least £15 and extending it to workers aged between 16 and 21, ending age discrimination
- Ensure that apprenticeships and internships are fully paid at living wage or above
- Ban ‘zero-hours’ contracts and change the law to recognise ‘gig’ workers and afford them full employment rights
- Scrap student tuition fees in Higher Education, re-introduce the Educational Maintenance Allowance, and cancel all student debt issued by the Student Loans Company
- Increase school funding to provide a varied curriculum and smaller class sizes
- Reverse the academisation of schools, resist the creation of new grammar schools and remove private schools’ charitable status
- Replace the current system of prohibition with an evidence-based, legalised, regulated system of drug control
- Decriminalise sex work involving consenting adults, affording sex workers full workers’ rights
- Update the Gender Recognition Act to allow for the self-identification of trans and non-binary individuals
- Introduce Proportional Representation for all elections and scrap the House of Lords, replacing it with an elected chamber
- Introduce Votes at 16 and introduce compulsory political education in our education system
- Introduce a Digital Bill of Rights and ensure independent regulation of social media providers.
Statements from the Young Greens:
At Thursday 15th of February’s full council meeting, the Cambridge Young Greens, the student and youth wing of the Cambridge Green Party, requested a clear statement on whether representatives of the city council consider the recent actions of the Israeli government to be an attempt at genocide, and for the council to promote services that support people suffering in the Middle East.
‘I’ve seen for myself that residents in Cambridge are distressed by what is currently happening,’ said Cllr Elliot Tong (Abbey). ‘Many have friends and relatives living there, and some are even Palestinian themselves. It’s essential that Cambridge City Council takes a clear position on the actions of the Israeli government that acknowledges the gravity of the situation.’
Local student Joshua Morris-Blake, the group’s chair, notes that the war has had a big impact on many students in Cambridge. ‘For many in the Cambridge student community, witnessing the situation in Israel and Gaza hits close to home,’ explained Joshua. ‘It's imperative for our city council to recognize the reality - the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. Silence is complicity; our community demands accountability and solidarity with the oppressed.’
Chloé Mosonyi, a PhD student and secretary for the Cambridge Young Greens, highlights that many of these students have a direct connection to Palestine. ‘Students with relatives and friends who have been killed, injured or displaced during the Israeli government’s occupation, or are Palestinian themselves, have been facing a particularly difficult time,’ said Chloé Mosonyi. ‘The University of Cambridge has so far failed to name the killing of Palestinians as a genocide. By doing so, Cambridge City Council can send the message that the voices of impacted students are not going unheard by this city’s institutions.‘
The Cambridge Young Greens emphasised that the children and young people of Palestine have been particularly affected by the Israeli state’s violent activities. ‘The impact of recent events in the Middle East on the children and young people that live there has been devastating,’ said Cllr Tong. ‘Around 70% of the people living on the Gaza strip are under the age of 30, with around 50% of them being children. It is no surprise, then, that over a third of the casualties since October have tragically been
children.’
‘From then onwards, we have witnessed the needless waste of nearly thirty-thousand lives, both Palestinian and Israeli,’ continued Cllr Tong. ‘While the Hamas-led attack that took the lives of over 350 children and young people in October of last year was undeniably dreadful, we cannot let that excuse the genocide perpetuated by the Israeli military, which has remained unchallenged by the majority of politicians for decades.’
The Cambridge Young Greens also aim to see Cambridge City Council work harder to promote services that support victims of the current crisis in the Middle East. ‘When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the local authority created multiple web pages to let people know what they could do to help the people affected,’ said Joshua Morris-Blake. ‘Why aren’t the people currently suffering in the Middle East being given the same treatment?’
Thursday’s meeting had to be temporarily adjourned after chaos broke out in the council chamber. ‘Several Palestinian rights groups attended full council this week, and nobody was happy with how the council responded to our concerns,’ said Chloé Mosonyi. ‘We were disappointed ourselves, as we were not given a clear position on whether or not the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza are considered to be genocide. It was no surprise, then, that the session had to be halted when some people caused an uproar, frustrated that they weren’t actually being listened to - the city council completely lost control of the situation. Hopefully, now, we’ll begin to see them pay a bit more attention.’ For more information on this release, please contact the Cambridge Young Greens at cambridge@younggreens.org.uk.
