Rugby Green Party Statement on Terry White

On Tuesday, Terry White re-joined the Liberal Democrats and made a Press Release to the local media – this is our response.

Rugby Green Party Statement on Terry White
24/07/2015

Terry White made several references over the last year that he felt betrayed as a young person, and former student, by the Lib Dems.

From 2010 to 2015, the Lib Dems were part of a coalition government that deepened NHS privatisation and savagely cut our public services.

We’re surprised at Terry’s objections to the Green Party wanting a far better gender balance among our general election candidates.

Terry stood for election as our local co-ordinator only two weeks ago without any objection over how the Green Party nominates our local or general election candidates.

We’re proud of having a female leader (Caroline Lucas or Natalie Bennett) since 2008 and the most women general election candidates in both 2010 and 2015 across the entire UK.

We also do the same with encouraging young people to be active. Terry was one of seven Green Party general election candidates across the West Midlands alone who were 30 or younger on election day.

The Green Party is and will remain a champion of the rights and positive contribution of disabled members to the Green Party, including internally having a national officer responsible for this work on our executive committee, and a very active disability group - we note at no time has Terry formally raised his concerns with the local party who after all selected him as our General Election candidate.

 In Rugby, the Green Party is already preparing for the next local and 2017 county council elections. We have tripled our membership in Rugby in the last year, and, in May, Green Party received over 1 million votes in a general election for the first time.

Notwithstanding these points, Rugby Green Party wishes Terry White well and note that he references disagreements with the national party and not the local party who Terry readily admits have always been supportive to him.

Rugby Green Party