On 22 February 1973, a new political organisation named “PEOPLE” was formed at 69 Hertford Street, Coventry, becoming the first environmentalist political party in Europe. Founded by a “Gang of Four” – solicitors Tony and Lesley Whittaker and surveyors Michael Benfield and Freda Sanders – the party was established to confront what its founders described as an imminent ecological and social collapse.

The party adopted a zero-growth or de-growth agenda, calling for a “transition to a stable society in which people and places matter, which recognises that the Earth’s resources are limited and that we must learn to live as part of nature, not as its master”.

***

The party’s origins lay in the “Thirteen Club”, an environmental discussion group that first met on 13 November 1972 at the Bridge Pub in Napton, near Daventry. This collective was heavily influenced by contemporary ecological tracts, including the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (March 1972) and Edward Goldsmith’s A Blueprint for Survival (January 1972). These publications predicted social chaos and ecological collapse unless the unchecked quest for economic growth was abandoned. The latter referred to the “breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life-support systems on this planet”.

The principal catalyst for the group’s formation was a 1970 interview in Playboy magazine with Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford University’s professor of population studies. The interview was publicised as a “candid conversation with the outspoken population biologist and prophet of environmental apocalypse”. Ehrlich warned that growing resource scarcity would cause friction between nations, potentially escalating to “thermonuclear war”, and claimed that air pollution could alter weather patterns in ways that might “very easily lead to massive starvation in the United States within the next two decades.”

Ehrlich, the author of Eco-Catastrophe (1969), also predicted that “lead, zinc, and tin will probably be exhausted by the end of the century.”

The founding meeting of PEOPLE was attended by approximately 50 individuals. Edward Goldsmith, publisher of The Ecologist, merged his “Movement for Survival” into the new party.

The new party’s electoral baptism occurred in the two general elections of 1974. In February, PEOPLE fielded seven candidates, including Lesley Whittaker in Coventry North West, where she secured 3.9% of the vote. Collectively, the party won 4,576 votes. Goldsmith, standing in the constituency of Eye, won 395 votes (0.73%).

In June 1974, PEOPLE adopted the neo-Malthusian A Manifesto for Survival and elected a national executive committee.

The manifesto argued that modern society was “sick”, owing to the “careless way in which we have let the obsessive quest for material things dominate the process of industrialisation.” It warned that such ambitions could “literally cost the Earth” and lead to total “social disintegration, famine, warfare over dwindling raw materials and the slow poisoning of the natural world.”

The document identified economic growth and population increase as the “twin evils” driving these crises. It called for transition from a “growth-orientated society” to one whose guiding principles were “minimum disruption of ecological processes; maximum conservation of materials and energy; a population in which recruitment equals loss; and a social system in which the individual can enjoy [life]”.

It supported a population reduction to a “sustainable level” of approximately 30 million (down from 56 million at the time). To achieve this, among other policies, the manifesto proposed an ideal family size of one or two children and supported “freely available contraception and sterilisation.” (This maximum child policy was lifted directly from Ehrlich’s 1970 Playboy interview.)

PEOPLE also advocated “strict” immigration controls and the introduction of grants, incentivising emigration to countries with lower population densities.

The manifesto called for the replacement of the welfare system with a “national income scheme”, under which every resident of Britain would be “entitled to a basic subsistence allowance”. Simultaneously, a new Ministry of National Income and Taxation would set income and corporation tax scales to “encourage work and reward profits”, with any earnings above an agreed threshold taxed at 100%.

On top of this, a new state-run “task force” would employ anyone seeking work in projects “to deal with cosmetic environmentalism, clearing derelict land, creating parks and leisure areas, making canals serviceable, ensuring that footpaths are clear, demolishing disused factory buildings and unfit housing, and clearing and recycling the contents of scrapyards and dumps”.

In addition to these economic policies, PEOPLE called for unilateral dismantling of nuclear weapons and the effective abolition of the professional standing army in favour of a “compulsory national part-time militia”. The manifesto argued that “the resulting millions of trained potential guerrillas represents the ultimate deterrent to any would-be occupying power.”

Meanwhile, under the PEOPLE manifesto, all new buildings would be required by law to have solar panels, wind generators, on-site sewage treatment “to provide methane gas and humus”, and improved insulation.

The party also advocated withdrawal from the European Economic Community (the forerunner of the EU). It argued that the EEC would “hamper” Britain’s ability to adopt the necessary “survival policies”.

PEOPLE condemned the two-party system as an “historical accident” and criticised the parliamentary whip system as “the root of this particular evil.” The manifesto called for the introduction of a “compulsory register of the interests of Members of Parliament”.

The manifesto reflected ideological splits in PEOPLE between left- and right-wing elements, and authoritarian and more liberal tendencies.

At the October 1974 election, the new party’s vote share across four constituencies fell to 0.7%. This decline has been attributed to the entry of Liberal candidates into seats previously contested only by the major parties and PEOPLE.

***

In 1975, the party rebranded as the Ecology Party and drafted a new Manifesto for a Sustainable Society (MFSS), which continues to this day as the official record of Green Party policy. Tony Whittaker later remarked that “PEOPLE didn’t communicate what we had hoped it would communicate”.

Whittaker explained: “What I wanted was something that the media could look up in their files so that, when they wanted a spokesman of the issue of ecology, they could find the Ecology Party and pick up the phone. It was as brutal and basic as that.”

Jonathan Tyler was elected as the party’s chairman in 1976 shortly before the Walsall North by-election, precipitated by the resignation of disgraced former Labour MP John Stonehouse. Standing as the Ecology candidate, Tyler won 181 votes (0.48%), placing eighth.

In the 1976 local elections, Ecology Party candidate John Luck won a seat on Rother District Council in East Sussex. The party’s campaign secretary, John Davenport, secured a seat on the Kempsey Worcestershire Parish Council.

The late 1970s marked a period of professionalisation, spearheaded by Tyler, David Fleming, and Jonathon Porritt. Porritt, who would become the party’s most recognisable public figure in the 1980s, joined in 1976 and worked to provide the party with an “attractive image and effective organisation.”

Porritt, the party’s deputy chairman at the time of the 1979 general election, was instrumental in the decision to field over 50 candidates (53). This platform, while requiring £50,000 worth of deposits, would see the party qualify for a five-minute party political broadcast. Porritt viewed the broadcast as essential to dragging the party out of “total obscurity”. But the £50,000 sum was significant for a party whose membership numbered only around 500.

The party’s manifesto for the 1979 election, The Real Alternative, stated: “Economic growth rests upon the unlimited consumption of resources, energy and land. It has generated ever rising material expectations that are increasingly difficult to satisfy.

“The warning lights are flashing. It is time to change direction now, before it is too late.”

The party’s programme maintained that Ecology had no “political connection with either Right or Left”. In practice, the Ecology manifesto advanced a series of progressive social policies and articulated a scathing critique of the capitalist economic model.

Porritt’s gamble paid off. Ecology (or “ECO”) averaged 1.5% in the seats it contested. The national exposure saw membership jump tenfold from 550 in 1978 to 5,000 in 1980.

This “first green surge” had significant implications for the character of the party. It attracted activists committed to alternative lifestyles and direct action, such as the Greenham Common peace camp. This development reinforced an emerging cleavage in the party between “decentralists”, who were instinctively sceptical of a traditional party hierarchy, and so-called “managerialists”, who supported a more conventional leadership structure.