Greens reveal manifesto

The Green Party today launched its election manifesto on a slogan of "peace, people and the planet".

It promises cleaner air, healthier food and better public transport - but also higher taxes, dearer holiday flights and to drive millions of private cars off the roads.

After making breakthroughs in last year's European elections and the London Assembly contest - winning seats for two MEPs and two assembly members - the tiny party is aiming to win a Westminster vote for the first time.

Darren Johnson, one of the two assembly members, hailed the 5 May contest as "a really important election for us" and urged voters to give the tiny party a chance.

"It is ridiculous that we have not got any Green representation in Westminster when we have seven members in the Scottish parliament and members at London and Europe," he told the Evening Standard. "We are represented at every other level of government and we are looking to this election to crack Parliament."

The party believes it has massively improved its targeting of key seats since the 2001 election, when its best showing was nine per cent for veteran campaigner Keith Foster at Brighton Pavilion. That is now their number one target seat, with Mr Johnson hoping to get the best showing in London.

Mr Johnson claimed the Greens' anti-war stance was wooing disenchanted Labour voters and launched an attack on the Liberal Democrats for failing to oppose the Iraq invasion strongly enough.

The Greens were formed in 1974 by a group of friends in Coventry. Originally called People, they changed their name to the Ecology Party before settling on the Green Party and have fought elections since 1975. They have a panel of "speakers" but no leader.

Despite losing out under the firstpastthe-post voting system, they have built up a campaigning base and have been markedly successful in inner London in recent years. They have 63 councillors and a peer in the Lords as well as the seats in Europe, London and Scotland.

In 1989 the Greens won 14.9 per cent of the vote at the European elections but failed to secure a single seat. But 10 years later, with the change to proportional representation in Europe, they polled more than a million votes and took two seats, which they held in 2004.

Their target seats are: Brighton Pavilion, where Keith Foster is their best hope of overturning Labour's 9,643 majority; Lewisham Deptford, where Mr Johnson, twice a London mayoral candidate, is standing against Labour's Joan Ruddock, who has a 15,293 majority; Bethnal Green and Bow, where journalist John Foster, 30, is tackling Labour's Oona King, with a 10,057 majority; and Norwich South, where Adrian Ramsey, 23, is taking on Home Secretary Charles Clarke with a majority of 8,816.