“I think the time is right for Medway to elect its first Green councillor”
What Steven asked Grace Duffy, Chair of the Medway Green Party
Following issues at the Medway Greens Annual General Meeting last year, conflicts arose over the election of a new Chair, and the local party was directed to try again. Grace Duffy was elected as a unity candidate, and Steven met her and her dog Brook in The Granville pub, where they talked about whether Medway could have a Green councillor, travelling to China and working for Liz Truss...
What is your official occupation?
I am Director of Policy, Influencing and Engagement at Bridges Outcomes Partnerships. It's quite a mouthful, but BOP, as they're known, is a social and not-for-profit social enterprise that creates place-based partnerships to support people that have got multiple and complex challenges. We work with people with long-term physical and mental health conditions. We work with people who've been out of the job market for a long time, children on the edge of care, homelessness, refugee integration, domestic abuse, any of those aspects of wicked social challenges, which are not effectively dealt with through public service silos.
For a really long time, so much money and time and effort have been thrown at these challenges, and they're just getting worse. That approach doesn't work. For where you have really entrenched, complex, multifaceted problems and multiple deprivation, you need to take quite a different approach to supporting these people to make real changes in their own lives, to do things with people, not to people, and to see a whole person, not just a public service silo. That's what we do.
I'm the first one to do my job. The policy and influencing stuff, because I worked in the civil service for years, I have a good understanding of how government works, but also the flaws of it. A big part of my job is speaking to government and trying to make the case for actually quite fundamental reforms to public services.
You're part of what Liz Truss would refer to as the group trying to ruin the West?
Liz Truss was my minister briefly when I was at DEFRA. She has said a great many silly things.
What additional roles, paid or unpaid, do you currently have?
Well, I'm very much unpaid, but I'm also the chair of the Medway Green Party.
What political parties have you been a member of?
Just the Greens.
When did you join the Green Party?
I realised that I should have checked this before coming to have this conversation, because I actually can't quite remember. I feel like it was maybe ten years ago.
I joined whilst I was a civil servant, which is completely allowed, because I was, at the time, in a junior role. You're allowed to be a member of a political party, but obviously not to have that influence throughout your day. I would say I just couldn't be active in the way that I am now. It wasn't until I left that I became more active in the local party.
Brook disappears under a chair.
What's he got under there? Must have seen something. He's found a bit of crisp or something. Is that what you've done?
Labour have never taken the environment seriously, including now.
Was there a particular reason you joined the Green Party?
It's the only one that made sense for me to join.
I'm someone who cares about the environment, cares about animal rights, and cares about climate issues. I became a vegetarian when I was a child. I got into animal rights when I was young and really had what I think a lot of children do, that instinctive understanding about nature and the beauty of it. I was already predisposed on the environmental side. As I grew more politically interested, more politically aware, it wasn't until I was maybe 30 before I joined the Greens.
But I'd voted for the Greens for a long time. I think it's because it's not just the green bit of the Green. It's everything else. It's the only party that's actually talking about structural problems in our economy and in our society and has a decent idea of how to change them. It always made sense for me. Labour have never taken the environment seriously, including now.
In the ten years you've been a member, who has been the best leader of the Green Party?
Caroline [Lucas]. I shouldn’t have said that so quickly. Zack's doing amazing. But I think that over that time, Caroline was the leader. I said that so quickly. Zack is wonderful. I think he's taking us to a whole new level. I think it was Caroline who was my entry into the Greens, and I think would always be my touchstone. I like her politics, and I like her way of doing things. She is someone who spoke well about collaboration and cooperating with people, and she got stuff done. She was by herself, and I just think that that is a leadership. I think she's quite inspirational. But don't get me wrong, I love Zack. I love what Zack's doing. I think Zack is on track to be at least as good, if not better, than Caroline. But he's very new, give him some time. But he's just taken us into a whole completely different place, and that's enormously welcome. I think it's important not just for us as a political party, it's important for our politics, and for our society at the moment, to have this voice, to have this voice countering what's going on elsewhere in the political spectrum, who is able to communicate in the way that he is.
The Greens run Maidstone Borough Council. We've got Greens as a group on Kent County Council. Why has there never been a Medway Green councillor?
Do you know what, I don't know. I only moved back to Medway a few years ago. I was born and raised here...
I might let him wander a little bit. We'll see.
Brook wanders through a doorway.
Then I moved back here during the pandemic, just from London...
Brook wanders back.
Good boy. He's like, 'You're being boring.'
Why have we never had a Green Medway councillor? I don't know what the politics was at this time, but I think that next year's the time. Because it's not like people don't feel this way. We have so much support, and I think that that's what I really want to try and focus on for the next year, to let people know. I'm very grateful to you to do an interview, but letting the people know that we're here, that we are here to work, I think that's the thing that we actually want to do. We actually want to do the work of helping to support our neighbours, of helping to make Medway a better place. I think that Medway's got so much potential. I've always thought this about Medway...
Brook begs for a snack to stay still.
This is just like blackmail, effectively, but this is why I bought so much.
What was I saying?
I think the time is right for Medway to elect its first Green councillor.
Elections next year could be for the new North Kent unitary authority. Does the Medway Greens have relationships with Dartford Greens and Gravesend Greens?
I'm sure that others have, who've been more active in the local party than I have. I haven't yet reached out and made those links. But I think that'll be really important. We certainly do have the members who are better connected across the regional and local Green parties than I am. I hope we can do that and begin working together.
The movement, the cause, is bigger than any of us, than any one individual
Why did you decide to stand as chair for the Medway Greens?
Well, it was a bit…
Grace feeds Brook a snack.
There we go.
It was a bit of a surprise to myself, but Cat Jamieson, who you will have met because she was our candidate, I blame her for this. She said for a while that she thought that I would be good at being chair and that I should consider myself in the role. Then at the AGM, there was obviously two last year. I missed one because I wasn't that active in the party. I just had a lot going on in my life, I just didn't really have a lot of time for meetings, et cetera. I wasn't really keeping up with things, but I did understand that like there had been, um, there had been some
Tension.
Tension. I find it's a good word. Because there had been tension, there had been conflict, there had been disagreement between people, and it had resulted in the party effectively becoming quite inactive. They weren't able to go and do things. We're having to repeat these processes.
I was like, 'Bloody hell, what's going on?' I went to the AGM. It was a surprise. The vote was taken by the outgoing exec at the time to reopen nominations for chair. I thought that it felt like a good time to put my hat in the ring. I think something I have been able to do well in the past is to build teams, like professionally when I was in the civil service. I had quite a lot of experience of creating new teams and of leading teams through change, through organisational change, machinery of government changes, government, ministerial changes, all of that. I felt I had some professional skills that seemed to be needed to be able to take the party forward. I was one of four siblings. I was a barmaid for a long time. I don't know if these are appropriate things, but I just feel I can be quite good at conflict resolution.
I felt this is something that I would be able to deal with and to help. I said in my speech at the AGM that it feels like we need healing, and that because I wasn't involved in any of the tension, and I wasn't there for it, I can be something to help those groups move on.
I decided to go all in, and it's loads of work. It's loads of work.
I appreciate these are internal matters, but as a news website, we did cover the fact that there was AGM tensions.
I read it, yes.
Ed Jennings
What confidence can readers have that you are able to, as a group, move past those tensions? That you are able to work together to focus on the challenges that matter?
That's such an important question, but I would just say that everybody from the previous, say, two execs or however you're going to count them, has been very supportive, was gracious, have publicly and privately expressed their support to me and the vice chair. We have grown literally every week since. We just had our first branch meeting [since Grace became chair] last week. There were people there that had joined literally in December. It was amazing. We had more people at that branch meeting than had ever come before. The one thing that everybody can agree on, and everybody does agree on, because we've talked about this, is that we've got work to do. There's so much work to do. The movement, the cause, is bigger than any of us, than any one individual. The reasons that we're doing this are beyond any interpersonal conflict, and that is what people are focused on. That is what we are coming together to do.
