Many supporters of the Greens are uneasy at the party's oppositionto the Nice Treaty, maintains John Bergin
'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive", or so some of us at least felt in 1989, when Roger Garland was the first Green Party TD to be elected in Ireland. Those of us who voted Green from the start were greatly heartened by the party's advance from the late 1980s onwards, and I am proud to have given my vote to a Green candidate in every general, European and local election when the party had a candidate in my constituency.
I and many of my friends voted Green above all because we wanted an environmentalist voice in Irish politics. We felt further, however, that the party's first victories had a greater significance and were part of a general opening up of Irish society, then beginning to emerge from the gloom of the 1980s.
In the early 1990s we saw the first stirrings of economic revival and a glimmer of hope for the North, and we began to sense that the right-wing promoters of the Catholic moral control agenda might have overreached themselves. We started to experience a phase of rapid modernisation and intense engagement with other European countries.
The Green Party's successes had perhaps little direct connection with these processes, but it was of a piece with them. Green politics, whose impact in other European Union countries we had noted with eager interest, had arrived in Ireland.
Now we find the party which embodied our hopes for the future allied with groups which seem to include a reformulated Youth Defence and others who play the anti-immigrant card without compunction.
The leadership insists that the Green Party is not taking a position against the EU. I certainly hope that this is the case, but I am not reassured by an alliance with forces whose commitment to Europe, to modernisation and to international co-operation are all in doubt.
I and other friends who have long looked to the party for a distinctive voice in Irish politics are currently forming a Green Party Supporters for Europe group and hope to hear from others who share our unease at the party leadership's current strategy.
It is not possible in this article to rehearse the arguments for Nice in detail. I wish simply to highlight two stark facts: that the leadership of the Irish Green Party is out of line with its own support base in Ireland, and with most of the other EU Green parties.
Our newly-formed group noted with much interest the MRBI opinion poll published last Saturday (September 28th) in The Irish Times which indicated that Green Party supporters divided 27 per cent in favour of the Nice Treaty, 27 per cent against and 38 per cent undecided.
We found these proportions quite consistent with our own experiences. Unfortunately, it seems that the views of the large majority of Green Party supporters - who intend to vote Yes, or who are undecided - find no echo in the unrelentingly anti-Nice campaign, particularly as articulated by Patricia McKenna, John Gormley and Trevor Sargent.
After nearly two years of intensive campaigning against the Nice Treaty, the party has persuaded barely more than a quarter of its own supporters.
Where do Green parties stand in the rest of the EU?
Four of the 15 EU governments which negotiated the Nice Treaty were coalitions which included the Green parties. Ten of the 15 national parliaments have Green members; in seven the Greens voted to ratify the Nice Treaty, while three - including the Irish Greens - did not. The European Parliament's resolution supporting the Nice Treaty was supported by 34 Greens and opposed by one.
Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister and Europe's most prominent Green representative, holds the view that ratification is essential for enlargement. I will not - no more than anyone else in Ireland - have my decision made for me by Green parties in other countries; but nor will I accept for a moment that opposition to the Nice Treaty is inherently a Green position.
How did the Irish Green Party end up in a position which many supporters believe carries grave dangers for the party and for this country?
Did the party find the prospect of "victory" on Nice so intoxicating that it was prepared to work with figures such as Justin Barrett and Anthony Coughlan?
Is the party so desperate to land a damaging blow on Ireland's political establishment that it will risk undermining one of the few positive achievements of that establishment during the last generation, namely constructive engagement with the European Union?
The Green Party's leaders and active membership have made an enormously positive contribution to Irish politics. Is it possible, however, that they have, by a tragic irony, fallen into the trap of talking only to each other and of not listening to their support base? Is it possible, in other words, that the Green Party is suffering from a democratic deficit?
John Bergin is a historical researcher and co-ordinator of the Green Party Supporters for Europe group