Last week's German election results have confirmed the Green movement's place in the mainstream of European politics. Meanwhile, at their autumn conference, delegates of the Green Party of England and Wales were celebrating a rapprochement with the trade unions, as left-wing rail workers' leader Bob Crowe described the Green's policies as "similar or exactly the same as those of my union [the RMT]". Fresh from slashing the RMT's contribution to Labour's finances by over 80 per cent, Crowe told the GP delegates: "If the other political parties are going to denounce us for standing up for the people, then we are going to have to look for a political voice elsewhere."

Meeting in the wake of the disastrous anti-climax that was the Johannesburg Earth Summit, the mood might have been morose. But the four-day event found English Greens in good-hearted and combative mood, voting overwhelmingly to oppose what one party member called the "Bush-Blair axis of evil" and their plans for war on Iraq, and reaffirming their decision to take a leading part in the campaign against Britain joining the Euro, a referendum on which may be called as early as next autumn.Frederick Bowie travelled to Lancaster to speak with three leading Green personalities about Labour's betrayal of the working class, the war on terrorism and reinventing the world economy

From Boston to Babylon

Buying up the world

New Labour, new empire?