As we mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Ben Duncan takes a moment to celebrate Green Party policies on human rights, crime and policing, which are increasingly resonating with voters on the streets.

There are two philosophical fissures at the heart of global human rights protection. The first, between so-called ‘economic and social’ rights, like the right to housing, food or health and ‘civil and political’ rights, like that to free speech or assembly, or freedom from torture. This distinction was considered an East-West divide during the cold war. Though the Universal Declaration concerns them both, and all such rights are guaranteed by international law, here in Britain human rights tend to be seen as the latter: we enjoy the right to life, but not the right to a certain quality of housing, or food, for example. The Green Party makes no such arbitrary distinction and would guarantee both types of rights in a written constitution.

The other concerns responsibilities. To what extent should we enjoy rights just because we are human beings? Should rights be ‘earned’ through responsibilities? The Green Party does not believe in rights without responsibilities. It’s up to all of us - not just the state - to contribute to a society in which we all enjoy freedom not just from oppression, but also from poverty.

Of course we have a slew of policies on economic welfare. As the triple crunch of climate change, peak oil and bank failures hits, people are increasingly seeing the Greens as the party with the best economic answers. But as poverty worsens, crime increases - and the largest affront to our human rights is, for most people, becoming the victim of crime.

That’s why we Greens see our crime and justice policies as fundamental to the way we think about human rights here in the UK. The police, all too often seen as an agent of state repression, should be there to protect our rights. They should be locally and democratically controlled, as far as possible, and should focus their energies and resources on neighbourhood policing and crime prevention. Green Party members of police authorities in London and Sussex have been pushing for exactly that.

The Green Party believes we need to address the social causes of crime so that crime and criminals are not able to flourish in the first place.

Policies on crime should go hand in hand with those on education, social care, health, economics and housing.

We want officers to spend far more time working in local communities rather than being taken away by other duties. The police should know their communities - operating out of more local police stations - and should concentrate more on preventing crime before it happens.

All too often the Westminster parties try to outdo each other in a bizarre and macho race to see who can be toughest on crime. But, as they do, burglary rates are on the rise and wholly unacceptable levels of men, women and children are currently imprisoned at great cost to themselves, their families and dependants, and to society in general. Just last month, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child criticised the UK government’s use of ASBOs and its tendency to lock up children.

We need to be clear about the objectives of our crime and policing policies: to reduce the amount of crime; to assist the victims as much as possible, to require reparation for any crime committed and, crucially, to integrate offenders into the community.
Rather than just keep on building prisons, Greens believe we should keep incarceration as a very last resort, and seek to ensure that the thousands locked up because the state hasn’t got any other ideas are dealt with more appropriately.

We would repeat successful experiments in ‘restorative justice’, which, while denouncing the crime, deals constructively with both the victim and the offender. The primary aim will be to restore and, if necessary, improve the position of the victim and the community; the offender will be required to make amends.

It is essential that all our human rights are fully respected - and that means all of us taking responsibility for making our communities safer, guaranteeing our rights in a written constitution, and putting an end to poverty in all its forms.

And if the government diverted some of the billions it wastes annually on wars in the Middle East and schemes like the ID cards it would have no trouble doing so. All it takes is a bit of political will. And a dose of good Green thinking.

Ben Duncan is a Green Party Councillor in Brighton and Hove. He is a member of Sussex Police Authority and is the Green Party’s Parliamentary Candidate for Brighton Kemptown. He blogs at http://greenkemptownben.blogspot.com

Greetings my green lovelies, I bring you dispatches from the front line of the PR war with my favourite transnational corporation, The Coca-Cola Company.

I spent the first eight months of this year travelling, researching and writing a book on Coca-Cola. You can tell by the title “Belching Out the Devil” that it is an impartial assessment of the company and I was delighted when the company described me as “hostile” to them.

Having interviewed trade unionists who witnessed murder in a Coke bottling plant in Colombia, talked to a working class shopkeeper who took the company to court in Mexico and Indian workers forced to work handling toxic chemicals with no protection, it would be fair to say I am hostile to The Coca-Cola Company. Damn hostile.

However, it would be silly to write a book like this without trying to get the company to respond to the specific allegations raised against them. Though trying to get Coca Cola to answer a straight question with a straight answer was not easy, frankly it would have been easier trying to get Sarah Palin to merely understand a question.
From day one the company dodged the awkward issues refusing to let me visit their plants and denying me formal interviews.

Though I finally did manage to catch up with them. Here is what happened…

Without any sense of irony Coke sponsored a series of talks on Corporate Social Responsibility, one of which was to be held in Parliament. Arriving early I went for a cup of tea in the visitors café. There was only one other person in the room and I got chatting with her.

“Are you going to the debate?” I said

“Yes.”

“Can I join you at your table?”

“Sure.”

“I’m Mark Thomas” I said extending my hand.

“I know,” she said “I’m Claire I work for Coca Cola”

Then she asked me the best question anyone has ever asked me. She said “Why are you picking on us?”

Wow! Why am I picking on a $6 billion profit a year company, working out of 200 countries, with a brand more recognised than the crucifix? I guess I am just a bully.

Still the company would not meet or interview. So when a couple of weeks before the book was published the company wrote asking for an advance copy for “internal review” purposes I was not well disposed to giving them a copy. This situation did not change when Coke’s lawyers sent a blustering missive full of unspecified threat.

I do not react well to this behaviour and instead of an advance copy I sent them a box of ‘poetry on the fridge’ magnets with a note saying “All the words used in the first chapter are contained in this box - rearrange them to find out what I say about you.”

Though the bulk of the research was conducted this year and the stories cover current issues the company has said my allegations are out of date. Twelve years ago a Coke union leader working in the bottling plant in Colombia was murdered under the company’s own logo inside his place of work, and the company has still failed to have an independent investigation into what happened there. The only thing out of date here is the company’s response. Four years ago the company was criticized for stressing community water supplies in India, which resulted in the plant in Kerala being shut down. New campaigns and allegations have recently sprung up in Uttra Pradesh and Jaipur around similar issues, though the company buries its head in the sand and insists it has answered its critics.

So here is my challenge to the Company: come debate the issues raised in the book. You name a venue and a time, make it open to the public and we can discuss the issues raised. Until you do that your company, The Cola Cola Company, is a tarnished brand. Your Corporate Social Responsibility charter is meaningless PR and your existence is designed to reap profit without responsibility and the one thing the past two months has taught everyone is that responsibility eventually will catch up with you.

Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca Cola by Mark Thomas is published by Ebury Press and is out now.