Letter: The virtues of being Green

I KNOW of no Green Party member in my area who thinks that the Regional Council's suspension of Jonathon Porritt was a good move, but Geraldine Bedell's crass generalisations about the party should not go unchallenged (28 August).

Far from being entirely obsessed with internal matters, Greens have been in the forefront of anti-roads protests throughout the country, sometimes incurring serious injury in the process. It was Welsh Greens whose research on patterns of radiation-induced disease helped to bring about the closure of Trawsfynydd power station. The Green Party drafted last year's Energy Conservation Bill and brought together a coalition of major campaigning organisations, such as the Association for the Conservation of Energy, which gained it the support of a majority of MPs. This Bill would now be law if the Government had not misused parliamentary procedure to kill it with filibustering.

As for her accusation about not doing much for the Third World: if the Green Party gained power it would increase foreign aid, cancel Third World debt and - most important - begin to reverse the insane process of accelerating over-consumption by the 'developed' world, an essential first step towards a fairer and more sustainable world order. Until that time, most of us, whether or not we eat lentils and wear bobble hats, do what we can.

Brian Fewster

Leicester