In the fourteenth of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet Green Party candidate Tina Rothery – standing against Labour’s Lorraine Beavers
Tina Rothery is running as a Green Party candidate in the recreated Blackpool North and Fleetwood in the general election. The constituency it is replacing was run by controversial Conservative Paul Maynard. Indeed, Tories of questionable character have had significant power in the area in recent years. So the Torified Labour Party is likely to take many of their votes. But as Rothery told the Canary:
Unless they’ve got people like me and others snapping at their heels, and a few other voices in parliament that aren’t from the Labour [Party] or the Tories, then how will they ever change anything?
Establishment parties ‘have control of the media and the narrative – and we need to shatter that’
Making the argument for people to stop voting for the establishment political parties, Tina Rothery insisted:
[people] look at parties like ours and you’re constantly told in the media ‘there’s no point voting for them, they’ll never have power’ but not realising ultimate power isn’t everything. You just need a bit of it… to make government more palatable.
How the main parties keep winning, she stressed, “is that they have control of the media, they have control of the narrative, they can shut us down”. And that makes people think “maybe you have got the answers, and you sound like you were educated to be able to get us out of this mess. It’s just a myth, isn’t it! It always reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, you know, you pull back the curtain and it’s a some short guy with a phony voice and… it’s just lies.”
And she suggested that class war is alive and well today, with the upper class winning the battle:
It’s like when someone puts a white coat on. All of a sudden you trust them with some medical advice… It’s just all myth. And I think we need to shatter that. There needs to be a revelation of what life really is and that these people just got there by virtue of someone else putting them in their place because, you know, they were connected.
It’s a class system… I’ve lived in places where there was… different levels of existence and poverty but never seen a class system like it is here. Never. Not like this.
‘This is not a joke. It’s our lives. So we need to occupy politics!’
Speaking about her activism against fracking near Blackpool, Tina Rothery argued that it’s always important to remember why you’re fighting and to avoid getting dragged down by the ugliness of the struggle:
When we did the thousand days at Preston New Road, every day we walked up into ugly ugly ugly, angry, police were brutal. We were all hurt, we were damaged, we were harmed, arrested countless times. And it just got uglier every day.
And then we started bringing ribbons, and we tied ribbons on the fences, and we made art and we brought food, and we danced and we sang, and we had a playlist, because you had to remember what you were fighting for and not just be in the ugly.
She also stressed how sad it is that the awfulness of most establishment politicians makes such an important profession so off putting:
It’s part of the joke when you say the words, ‘oh yea, trust the politician, haha’. That’s the punchline. How did that become the punchline to the critical system that controls how our children are educated, what dignity I get in old age…how my healthcare is taken care of, who we go to war with and who we decide bombs to go and kill?
But it’s not a joke. It’s real, and it’s true, and it’s necessary that we get involved.
As she insisted:
We need to occupy politics. We need to occupy governments… We need to smuggle ourselves in as politicians
The kind of fighter that Blackpool sorely needs
Tina Rothery’s passion for where she lives is clear. She loves it, and has a strong record of defending it with all she’s got. As she emphasised:
I actually genuinely love this place. It’s insane that I’ve lived in all sorts of beautiful places in the world… but every time I come back here. And there’s a raw honesty to the people that I love, and that I love Lancashire – it’s the accent, the people. And it’s just a reality here that no one pretends to be anything they’re not.
We all accept it’s really bad here but we get on with trying to make it better, and people try to make it better for each other. I love this place and I genuinely care about it and I will genuinely fight for it like I would for anything I cared about like this. And… I can make you million promises backed up my our manifesto but really, like anyone else in this race, we can all say that.
But what really matters is ‘why are they doing it, why? And who will they represent when they get there?’ And I can 100% say, based on my… record defending this town against threat, that I will 100% represent the people here.
For more on Rothery’s comments on the Green Party, the general election, and other issues, see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Watch and read all our #CanaryCandidates interviews here.
Featured image via the Canary
