Only the Greens Will Defend Colchester Library

Only Colchester Green Party will defend Colchester Library from further downgrading. At the Pensioners' Action Group Hustings yesterday, the representatives of ALL the other parties defended moving council services into the library and changing its purpose. Indeed they are all threatening to move even more public services into there using the ridiculous "Community Hub" piece of flim flam. Which means that Colchester library could end up with a small stock of populist fiction of the Catherine Cookson/Jackie Collins ilk and little else.
I care passionately about libraries because, as a teacher of History for 26 years, I know that it is only by reading developed arguments, extended explanations and different interpretations in books that students can learn the skills necessary to write extended prose themselves. You simply cannot learn as effectively by reading bite-sized chunks of information.

The Sinister Implications of the Prevent Strategy

I must admit that until around six months ago I had never heard of the government's Prevent strategy. Indeed I know of many people outside education, politically well-informed people, who are completely unaware of it. The Preventing Violent Extremism strategy (Prevent) is a £140 million programme run by the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a branch of the Home Office. All schools and the teachers within it are required by law to be aware of it and to abide by it, indeed it is an OFSTED requirement that schools and colleges make every pupil/student aware of it.

Prevent  Strategy Aims

The Prevent strategy aims to stop the radicalisation of children and young people by terrorist groups. While clearly created as a response to Al Qaeda,  Iraq and the rise of IS/Daesh, for understandable reasons it has not been limited to Islamist terrorism but rather encompasses terrorism and political violence in all its forms. The Prevent Strategy is intended to create a narrative where 'vulnerable' young people are seen as being targeted by predatory groups and 'groomed' into extremism via the internet and strategies not dissimilar from those used by paedophiles. This 'radicalisation' narrative carries the implication that there is no valid political motive behind the young person's actions and that they are the victims of grooming and manipulation.

Clearly there are good intentions behind this. Groups like IS/Daesh and those that sympathise with them should not by propagandising in schools and universities and inciting people to violence. There should be no platform for anyone sympathising with the killers of Lee Rigby or wanting to commit terrorist attacks on the public.

The Dangers within the Prevent Strategy

The problem with the Prevent Strategy stem from its vagueness. Far too much is being left to individual institutions and teachers to decide. Because the government cannot simply target Islamist terrorism for fear of being termed 'racist', the net is being cast rather wide in terms of what sources of terrorism are being targeted.  The government suggests 'far right groups', 'eco-terrorists' and 'animal rights protesters' be included as possible sources of terrorism. Oddly there is very little mention of the IRA or UVF. While one would assume that any reasonable person would be able to distinguish between violence and non-violence, this is not being clearly defined in the instructions sent out to schools. Therefore I know of examples where terrorism has been defined as 'acts which break the law'. I'm sorry, but did not Rosa Parks, the Suffragettes and many other political activists sometimes fall foul of the law? Are we to regard Caroline Lucas as a terrorist for getting arrested at an anti-fracking protest?
This may not be the intention behind the Prevent strategy but that is not the point. Giving individual institutions and teachers free reign to put their own definition on what constitutes terrorism or not without crystal clear guidance is dangerous.

The Policing of Freedom of Speech

Teachers are now fully used to having to fill in huge five-page risk assessment forms whenever we take students/pupils out on a trip of visit. However now this also applies to whenever outside speakers come into a school or college. So if a visiting professor comes in to talk to the students about the Crusades you can just imagine the potential avenues of controversy that one could throw up. Outside speakers now have to be vetted by senior managers to assess whether their opinions pose a threat to vulnerable young people. It is a safeguarding issue; young people must be safeguarded against unorthodox opinions. You may have detected a cynical tone here and with good reason. I think we all know that inviting a spokesperson for IS into school to talk about jihad would be unacceptable. So why is there a need to fill in risk assessment forms unless it is to generally police all outside speakers and restrict the spectrum of opinions allowed to be voiced?

British Values

It is also a requirement of the Prevent strategy to teach 'British values'. Again this is vague and the set of values recommended are more universal values such as freedom of speech, human rights and the rule of law than anything specifically British. Unfortunately its hard to see how teachers can promote freedom of speech and at the same time report pupils to the police for exercising their freedom of speech. Moreover since government ministers have stated on several occasions that they wish to repeal the Human Rights Act, should I be reporting them to the police?

Teachers as Agents of the State

In 25 years of teaching, this is the first time that I've ever felt like I've been asked to be an agent of the state, spying on the activities of students. Fine if we are at war, and arguably we are. But again, if the target or 'enemy' is not defined in precise terms then we are on the road to McCarthyism.
Furthermore the government power point sent to schools lists possible indicator signs that a pupil/student is being radicalised. These 'signs' included :

- The student starts demanding more attention in class than other students.

- The student has become critical of government policies.

In the case of the former, it is called being a teenager. In the case of the latter it is called having a brain.

Absurd Cases

Many people will have read the story of the 10 year old boy who couldn't spell terraced and was reported to the police by a teacher for writing that he lived in a terrorist house. Expect such cases to increase. I doubt very much if the teacher concerned was particularly thick, rather I suspect that the Prevent strategy has created such a climate of fear in the school concerned that the teacher feared having his/her collar felt by the police if they didn't act. This is the danger.

How Do We Combat Radicalisation?

The radicalisation narrative has been called into question as an explanation for why young people join groups like IS/Daesh. I'm not going to examine the complex arguments here. However even if one accepts that the basic premise of the Prevent strategy to be correct, the manner in which the strategy is being imposed is not only sinister in its implications for freedom of speech but also not likely to have a negligible effect on the problem. Most IS fighters are not from the UK and if this group are to be defeated it will be by military means on the ground combined with finding political solutions to Iraq and Syria's problems. That said I think the vast majority of people would welcome sensible attempts to stop anyone from the UK travelling to Syria to swell their ranks and then coming back here to commit terrorist acts. However the Prevent strategy as it stands is vague, badly thought out and needs reform.

Academies and Free Schools: A Failed Experiment

 INTRODUCTION: THE PRIVATISATION OF EDUCATION

 "Ask me my three main priorities for government and I tell you education, education, and education." Tony Blair 1996.

 “My next ambition is this: five hundred new free schools, every school an academy, and yes – local authorities running schools a thing of the past.” David Cameron 2015

The education system in the UK has, since New Labour came to power in 1997, been undergoing a revolution which has picked up speed under the Coalition and then Conservative governments. These successive governments have largely dissolved the model of state-owned schools and universities staffed by public-sector employees. Today most children attend schools that are self-governing charitable trusts which are completely independent of local authority control, in other words academies. David Cameron, in 2015, set out the current government's goal that all UK state schools should be converted to academies by 2020. The concept of free education no longer applies at all to universities, with fees of £9000 per year and rising. The influence of unaccountable corporate business is slowly replacing that of local authorities which are accountable to communities and subject to the democratic process.

WHY IS EDUCATION A GREEN ISSUE

Green Party education policy starts out from the principle that education should provide everyone with the knowledge and full range of skills they require to participate fully in society and lead a fulfilled life. The Green Party rejects market driven models of education that see its role only in terms of international economic competitiveness and preparation for work. Clearly education is about more than a narrow utilitarian approach of fitting people into the labour market, important as that is.
It is also about developing young people's interests and abilities, broadening minds, fireing imaginations, creativity and, from a Green perspective, encouraging an appreciation for the natural world and experience with the world of nature.  
In order to achieve this it is clear that schools need to offer as broad a curriculum as possible, meaning one that encompasses the arts, music and drama as well as offering specialised subjects such as Classical Civilisation, Environmental Studies and Archaeology as well as traditional 'core' subjects such as English and Mathematics.
Unfortunately the current direction of travel is leading to the opposite; a narrow utilitarian curriculum framed to serve corporate interests.
Furthermore there is also the issue of social justice. Education is a right and an entitlement and should be free at the point of delivery to people of all ages. Education is social rather than market provision and the Green Party opposes any attempt to privatise state-funded schools or to enable them to become profit-making.

 ACADEMIES AND FREE SCHOOLS

Academy schools are state-funded schools in England which are directly funded by the Department of Education and independent of local authority control. They are self-governing charitable trusts and may receive additional support from personal or corporate sponsors, either financially or in kind. There are two types of academy. Sponsored academies are maintained schools which have been forced by the government to become academies and which have a government-approved sponsor. Converter academies are schools which have themselves chosen to become academies and are not required to have a sponsor, although they may choose to do so. Free Schools are completely private institutions set up from 2011 via the Free School Programme. An academy trust that runs more than one academy is known as an Academy chain.
As of June 2015, there are 4,676 academies open in England. There are hundreds more in the pipeline.The number has grown dramatically under the coalition government, from 203 in May 2010. Now over half of all secondaries in England are academies.

So what is the problem with this?

1) Academies and free schools are not accountable to local people via local councils. They render laughable the government's promise of 'localism' and represent the centralisation of contol over education into the hands of central government.

2) Academy sponsors and free school founders can be corporate businesses and sectarian religious interests. As such the education of children can be in the hands of organisations with a profit motive or religious agenda to push. In Sponsored Academies, the sponsor is able to influence the process of establishing the school, including its curriculum, ethos, specialism and building (if a new one is built). The sponsor also has the power to appoint governors to the academy's governing body.

3) These schools are able to make their own changes to staff pay and conditions ie pay them less and also to employ marginally qualified teachers.

4) These schools are essentially private providers. Currently they are state funded. Currently.....

5) Academies and free schools have more freedom set their own admissions policies and exclude the less able.

6) Academies are costly. A recent report by the Public Accounts Committee, the parliamentary select committee responsible for ensuring value for money for the taxpayer, condemned the programme as 'complex and inefficient', leading to more than a billion pounds of overspending. In 2013 the budget for education was cut by 5.7% in real terms. While infrastructure spending was cut by 81% and the non-academy budget for education was cut by 4.31%, the budget for academy schools was increased by a huge 191%.

7) Free schools, which are private institutions, suck funding from state schools. So far more than £1.4 million of capital funding alone has been provided by the taxpayer for businesses to open schools.

THE PERFORMANCE OF ACADEMIES & FREE SCHOOLS

A study carried out for the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2015 compared the attainment of pupils at academy schools with those at maintained schools which had similar characteristics. It found that progress made by students in sponsored and “converter” academies was no greater than that of children at maintained schools.
In 2013 Michael Gove's flagship free school, The Discovery Free School in West Sussex was given Ofsted's lowest rating of 'inadequate' and placed in special measures.  Later that same year the Al-Madinah Free School in Derby hit the headlines due to female teachers being compelled to wear a headscarf while teaching pupils, while lessons were routinely scrapped in favour of prayers, fairy stories were banned for being 'un-Islamic' and girls were made to sit at the back of the classroom.
A third of free schools have been found to 'require improvement' by Ofsted, which is marginally worse than ordinary maintained schools.
Students also face a decrease in time dedicated to lessons such as drama, art, music and physical education.
This picture is one of huge financial cost at the expense of the taxpayer, no convincing increase in standards, religious extremism unchecked and a narrow 'bog-standard' curriculum.


The Green Party would reintegrate both academies and free schools into local authority control, therefore restoring democratic accountability on a local level.

Education Should be Debt Free

Don't Reduce Tuition Fees : ABOLISH THEM

                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Ed Miliband's announcement that a Labour Government would reduce student tuition fees from £9000 per term to £6000 per term is a step in the right direction but is not good enough. It is a classic Labour compromise designed to try and persuade student voters not to vote Green and it won't work.  Natalie Bennett is the only party leader currently talking sense on this issue. The Labour compromise has been roundly condemned by all the usual suspects and vested interests that Ed Miliband is too frightened to fully stand up to. However the bottom line is that the existing fee system is unfair; it punishes the younger generation while leaving the older generations, who enjoyed free higher education, better off financially than the youth of today will be. Higher Education should be free, not made into a commodity to be purchased. Raising fees to £9000 per term was always and purely a cynical political move. It was about imposing a stealth tax on the young because the coalition parties saw believe that the 18-24 age group are less likely to vote than the older generations and that they will only realise the financial implications of debt repayments further down the line. 

Universities should be funded through general taxation, through income tax or a specific graduate tax on all of us who benefited from higher education, regardless of age. The fee system discriminates against young people. Today there have been many university spokespeople railing against Ed Miliband and Labour. Well they should be made to rail even more, rail till the cows come home. They should be thoroughly ashamed of how the universities are using students as cash cows to fund unnecessary refurbishments, huge salary increases and commercial activities. Universities should be independent, state funded centres of learning not commercial business with compromised curricula which play down and cut arts subjects.
It is a bit rich of Labour to want to reduce fees now when they introduced the principle of fees in the first place, shortly after the 1997 election. By doing so they set a precedent and made it easier for the Tories and Lib Dems to increase them later.

Tuition Fees: A Tale of Two Pledges

The above image may remind you of someone. Google search Nick Clegg tuition fee pledge 2010 and a similar image may appear. Well when I say similar, there are a few noticeable differences. Nick looks rather happy and smiley while I'm striking a rather serious look. His pledge sheet is nicely word processed where as mine is home made.  Yet on the whole the images are similar and you may be thinking that this extends to their intent as well. Both Nick Clegg and I belong to neither of the main  two political parties. We are both fully aware that there is slim chance that either the Lib Dems or the Greens will form a majority government on our own following the next election but there is a chance that we may help to form a coalition government in a hung parliament scenario. However this is where the similarities end. In 2010 Mr Clegg knew full well that he would not be able to deliver the above pledge as leader of a majority Lib Dem government. Yet he and his party still trot this out as their excuse for not keeping their promise ie that they 'surprisingly' didn't win the election. About as surprising as Autumn following Summer.
Mr Clegg could have insisted on the keeping of his pledge as part of the coalition negotiations and deal. He didn't and it was dropped at the first hurdle. His much parodied apology was for making the pledge in the first place and not for dropping it. The simple truth is that the Lib Dems were only ever half-heartedly against tuition fee rises in the first place and only then in order to gain the student vote. The Conservatives and Labour will simply increase the fees whenever they feel like it, that much is clear.
However the Green Party can be relied on to oppose tuition fees regardless of circumstances. On a personal level I will never break the above pledge. This is because tuition fees add to long term inequality. A student who goes to a fee-paying school is likely to have his/her fees paid upfront by their parents, given that they are lower per year than the school fees in many private sector schools. They will emerge from university with no debt. Yet a state school student whose parents cannot afford to pay the fees up front will emerge with £27.000 fee debt as well as living cost student loans debt on top. Later in life when the latter student is hit with loan repayments with added interest (in other words a massive stealth tax), the former student pays nothing.
Therefore I will never vote for for the keeping of or the extension of the fee system.

Towards a Green Approach To Education

"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."
- C.S. Lewis

I do think its time for the Green Party to be speaking louder and more frequently about education. The current education system is under unprecedented attack from the coalition government and I'm not convinced that the departure of Mr Gove will change the general direction of policy. Moreover it is a cliche because it is true that youth are the future and the values and attitudes imbued into them from school and college matter and make a difference. Therefore in this piece I'm going to address two key themes: a Green approach to general education policy and the system and secondly a green approach to educational values and the curriculum.

Firstly the system. The key change that the coalition have made is to prevent local councils from having the power to open new schools. All new schools must be free schools or academies. Moreover the government is encouraging as many existing schools as possible to convert into academies, which means that local councils will no longer have any control over them. Free schools are set up and run  by 'interest groups' independent of local government while academies are still run by their existing management and governors. Both are free to set their own curricula and overall educational ethos.
Some people in the Green movement may be wondering what the problem is with this direction of travel, regarding free schools and academies as giving more choice to parents and greater freedom to teachers in terms of teaching radical ideas. However in reality neither of these is the case. For a free school to be given the go ahead there has to be a 'proven local demand' demonstrated, which in practice means a vocal and well organised 'interest group' with lobbying experience and organisational skills. The vast majority are set up be either religious interests, business people or organised groups of middle class parents who don't want their children mixing  with the "riff raff" at the local comprehensive. The dangers in this are massive. Firstly there has been much reporting in the media recently about the alleged 'Islamic Trojan-horse plot' in Birmingham, involving schools supposedly pushing segregation of the genders and so forth. All I seemed to be reading was about Islamic extremists this and Muslims that as if the problem was an ethnic one and not a systemic one. The simple fact is that if you rip schools away from local authority control and let local interest groups set the agenda with limited accountability then more of this will happen. Christian fundamentalists pushing creationism, businesses using the school to push their products and all manner of twisting and turning of the curriculum becomes easier. In addition, the changes fuel greater inequality as whenever a free school or academy opens up then it sucks funding in that area away from other schools. Free schools get thousands more per sixth form student than do ordinary school sixth forms for example. However don't expect the quality of teaching to be better in the free school as part of their 'freedom' is the ability to pay their staff less and recruit less well qualified teachers.
It is hardly compatible with Green ideas to see a system emerge which creates a fragmented education system where the curricula can be heavily influenced by big business or religious fundamentalists and where more and more 'sink schools' emerge as a result of losing funding , thus increasing inequality.
Furthermore, the more fragmented the system becomes and the greater the role that business plays in schools, the easier it becomes to increase the level of privatisation. Clearly it would be virtually impossible to just privatise all of the compulsory sector however the introduction of fees for sixth form provision is already being talked about in right-wing think tanks. Add to that schools obtaining a major sponsor and that major sponsor (a major corporation) then gets to influence the curriculum and ethos of the school in the direction of their values and interests. You may think I'm scaremongering if I ask you to envisage the 'McDonalds  Academy Colchester' with a big yellow M over the entrance or the 'Simon Cowell Academy of the Performing Arts'. However the direction of travel that the government is taking the system is in the direction of greater corporate sponsorship. The Green movement needs to oppose this loudly.

Regarding values, it seems to me that we live in a time where it has never been more the case that schools need to make the effort to encourage concern for the environment and wider social concerns rather than just becoming exam factories. There is so much testing in the system now and so much cramming for tests and exams that there is a danger that an arid utilitarianism will reign free, where young people are prepared for the 'world of work' with all their exam qualifications and IT skills and the wider enrichment and social and environmental values provision gets squeezed out. Or worse, the corporate business interests and religious fundamentalists determine that enrichment.
Schools can make a difference to social values. One of the big successes has been with E&D (Equality and Diversity) with regard to racial diversity in particular. Thirty years ago racist language was far more common both in schools and in wider society and yet today its very unlikely that you'd hear a pupil using the 'N' or 'P' words in school and where it happened it would be very rapidly dealt with. I'm not suggesting that there are no problems at all anymore and certainly there remains a massive issue with E&D as regards homophobic bullying and language in schools. However compared to thirty years ago much has changed and this is because it has been taken seriously in schools and colleges.
Therefore social enrichment in schools matters because it can make a difference. What should Green social enrichment be like? I'd say the following would be a start:

1) Young people need to be given the opportunity to see and appreciate the natural world not just turned into IT experts. If they spend all of their lives cooped up in front of a computer screen all day then how on earth should they be expected to gain any environmental sense or concern for nature? Schools have a duty to provide opportunities for engagement with the countryside and to instill an interest in wildlife and the state of the planet.

2) Education should be varied and different paths encouraged and equally valued. Trying to force everyone down the academic route is like hammering square pegs into round holes. The system of league tables and constant testing just encourages this barmy attitude that all young people must succeed academically or else they are something lesser. Nowadays this attitude is disguised beneath a veneer of political correctness such as banning the word 'fail' etc but this is just silly. Its the attitude behind it that needs to change. The talented carpenter needs to be seen as just as important as the grade A mathematician. Young people should be encouraged to follow their dreams or learn a trade , whatever, but neither should be seen as lesser than passing academic exams. Schools should not just be judged on exam passes in some crass utilitarian way.

3) Schools should be about learning about social issues, the wider world and about gaining a political sense. In my day there were CND groups in the school and all kinds of political stuff went on. They should be centers of debate not centers of sitting in front of a computer all day. I'd allow all pupils/students up to five days off per year to attend demonstrations of their choice. Imagine the reaction to that one from the Daily Mail.

Why it is Right to Support Public Sector Strikes

As a member of the NUT I have been on strike today and I am proud of the fact. Of course the television news tonight and the newspapers tomorrow will be awash with coalition politicians condemning the strikes and the chief criticism will be that they cause inconvenience to the public. In addition the strikes will be described as 'the unions' trying to bully the government and public sector workers thinking that they deserve more than 'the rest of us'. Hardworking teachers, firefighters, civil servants and support staff will all be attacked. On another day it will be nurses and NHS staff. Even the police, who are not allowed to strike, are now being denigrated by politicians such as Theresa May who want us to believe that they don't deserve decent pensions either.
Its high time that someone took a critical look at these critics of the unions for a change. For a start, 'the unions' are not a bunch of grim and grey faceless conglomerates that represent nobody. Trade Unions exist because people choose to join them to represent their interests as employees and they cannot go on strike without holding a ballot of members first. They are simply collectives of people, and by that I mean working people rather than wealthy employees or multinational corporations which seldom attract the same bile from the politicians and media. They are organised on democratic lines in that if more people vote against strike action than for it then the strike cannot happen. That is the law. The first ever major sustained and successful Trade Union strike in England was the 1888 matchgirls strike at the Bryant & May match factory in London. The dispute was over the fact that the girls were made to breathe in sulphur fumes all day with no safety masks and were getting cancer of the jaw as a result. At the time the strike was condemned as a bully boy tactic by politicians who presumably saw no problem with teenage girls getting facial cancer as a direct result of workplace conditions. Earlier in the 1830s, when unions were 'illegal combinations', the Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported to forced labour camps in Australia for the heinous crime of daring to swear an oath of loyalty to each other. Odd that the same punishment was not meted out to employers guilds.

As regards the public sector strikes of today, although they will inevitably cause temporary inconvenience to some members of the public, the last thing that they are is directed against that public.They are actually for the public. For example most parents want their children to be educated by dedicated, well-qualified teachers who are energetic and enthusiastic. I've yet to meet a parent who wants their child to be educated in the cheapest way possible by somebody under qualified. Well if you want the best then you have to pay for it, its as simple as that. Isn't it strange how whenever bankers' bonuses are attacked, the retort is always, "oh well if we don't pay them their £100,000 bonuses then the best of them will just go and work elsewhere", when the same principle never seems to be applied to teachers, firefighters or nurses. The reason for this is that the politicians couldn't care less whether or not the public get bog standard public services so long as the high earners get their tax breaks. For example the people who can afford to attend Mr Cameron's infamous £200,000 a head lobbying 'dinner parties'.

Many people who work for the private sector are struggling at the moment with low pay, risible pension provision, zero-hours contracts and bullying managers. The politicians want these people to despise public sector workers as a gilded elite as it creates a divide and rule schism. Yet this is not an argument against the worth of Trade Unions but a massive argument for them, since a reason that millions of private sector workers are in such grim terms of employment is the de-unionised nature of their jobs. As atomised individuals they are powerless against their employers. These private sector workers still need teachers to teach their children, firefighters to come and put out their house fires and an NHS that they don't have to pay massive fees or insurance premiums to use. They deserve the best, not a collection of run down public services staffed by cheap, under-qualified staff who leave after two months.

The coalition government attack public sector strikes for one reason only and that is because they disagree with the whole idea of a public sector and certainly disagree with services funded by general taxation. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives believe that as much as possible should be privatised in order to reduce taxes. Privatisation means that the public will have to pay directly for those services or, as in the case of student loans, rack up mortgage-like debts. This shifts the burden of funding from the highest earners to the middle earners who suddenly find a new raft of bills coming their way. If anyone believes that private services are always cheaper and better run than the public sector then I have only one thing to say: private care homes for the elderly.

Engaging Those Who Don't Vote

The overall national turnout for Thursday's local elections was around 36%. In my ward New Town it was worse, around 29%.This means that 71% of the electorate did not feel inspired, engaged or motivated enough to vote for anyone. The winning candidate has the mandate of less than 20% of the electorate to represent this ward as over 80% of voters didn't support her. Its just that they supported the rest of us even less. All of this shows that there is a massive problem, especially in local and European elections, in terms of voter disengagement and apathy. Many people feel that politics is a dirty word, politicians corrupt and 'in it for themselves' and political promises are regularly and inevitably broken by candidates.
The causes of the current climate of disengagement are complex and inter-linked. Statistics regularly show that the main disengaged voter groups are the 18-24 age group and sections of the working class. Regarding the latter, part of the problem lies in the social composition of the 'political class', particularly on a national level. The House of Commons is still overwhelmingly made up of middle-aged, middle-class white men. Political parties choose leaders from a narrow range of public school Oxbridge types who look good on camera and exude a degree of confidence such as Cameron and Clegg. While this is fine for presentation purposes, it means that the party leaders have a major problem in comprehending the attitudes, outlook or fears of the average voter due to having never had to walk their walk.
The traditional route of working class people into politics was via the Trade Unions. Often this was coupled with a protestant nonconformist drive to make a difference within the community. Since the Thatcherite revolution of the 1980s, both the unions and civil society in general have declined in favour of an atomised individualism in which working class people lack a political framework provided by community activities. This is not helped by the current cultural climate of popular culture, 'I'm a Celebrity...', 'Britain's Got Talent' and the trashier aspects of the internet all of which show choice acting as a form of entertainment social control and easily digestible ignorance.
Furthermore this even permeates down to a local level. When I attended the count at Colchester's Charter Hall on Thursday night, I gazed around the room and apart from a few of the Labour and UKIP people it looked very much like a middle-class social club. While the groups were temporarily divided on political lines, it would be easy to imagine them all chattering away together at some dinner party afterwards, their temporary mild political differences forgotten. Part of this is also due to the Blair factor. As a result of Tony Blair turning the Labour Party into a centre (and some would say centre-right) party and David Cameron softening the Conservative Party position on social issues such as gay marriage, the main parties all occupy much of the same political space. When voters complain that politicians are 'all the same' it is because they are, well many of them. There is an old revivalist hymn which contains the lines:

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose firm,
Dare to make it known.

In the current political climate, each line should have the word 'Don't' placed at the start of it. Politicians such as Mrs Thatcher and Tony Benn certainly dared to be Daniels, however with the passing of that generation the uniformly bland, slick and nonthreatening (at least in outward appearance) dominate.  Part of the appeal of UKIP, and it should be the appeal of the Greens as well, is that they are partly outside of this cosy club and not afraid to tell it as they see it and rock the boat.
Regarding younger voters, 18-24 year olds, it is a real tragedy that the group of people who most need to vote do so the least. The reason that they get tuition fee hikes, face the prospect of working until 68 or older and face sky high rents and house prices is because the political class see them as an easy target. It is easier to take money off those who don't vote than the baby boomer generation who do. The young have been well and truly shafted by the coalition government, yet many don't see it because the consequences lie years down the line for them and very few 18 year olds like to think of themselves as ever being old or even middle-aged. In my day both college, university and youth culture were more politicised than today. CND groups  run by the Vice-Principal, packed out NUS meetings, the Smiths and Billy Bragg railing against the establishment in their lyrics. It all seems a very long time ago.
So how do we turn this around and engage the disengaged, many of whom need a green alternative to the major parties? Well certainly we need to publicise our wider social policies beyond the environment via high profile local campaigns. We should be present at every demonstration against hospital closures, tuition fee rises and similar key issues. We need to lead the campaign against rising rents and show how the green economy will create thousands of jobs. Above all we need to change the perception that we are Lib Dems lite, the 'nice' party who like the environment and are soft and nonthreatening. We need to ruffle a few feathers in the political establishment.