A 99-year-old Green Party member has likened the party to post-WWII Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
In an account of the changes she has witnessed under different governments, Ella Moody, of Wandsworth, described what has influenced Green Party thinking over the years.
She claimed that the party walked in the footsteps of famous progressives such as Attlee and political movements that tried to restore land to the people.
“I did get the council to put up a plaque of where Mr Attlee grew up in Portinscale Road,” she told SW Londoner.
“But it is a poor showing for one to whom I and millions of others owe much of their present security in the welfare state.
Ms Moody explained how she had been educated by the government-run Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and lived on the Dover House Estate, which was set up by the as part of the government’s commitment to build ‘homes for heroes’ in 1919.
Houses on this estate were designed in clusters that either overlooked or had access to green spaces.
She said: “The Winstanley Estate surely commemorates The Leveller magazine, which tried to restore land to the people and the Putney Debates at St Mary’s Church should never be forgotten,” she said.
“Although Cromwell turned out not to be a man of the people, the debates on the franchise did start something with which Lord John Russell made some progress by the nineteenth century.
“I like to think that the Green Party walks in the footsteps of these men and movements.”
