Derek Wall

Derek Norman Wall (born 26 May 1965) is a British politician.

Wall first became involved in the Green movement in 1979.

He joined the Ecology Party (later the Green Party of England and Wales) in 1980.

By 1987, Wall was standing for the Ecology Party against Chris Patten in Bath.

At the time of the European Parliament election in 1989, Wall was one of three National Speakers in the Green Party.

In the elections themselves, which saw the Green Party gain over 2 million votes (14.5% of the national poll), Wall received 15% of the vote in the Bristol constituency.

During his time in the Green Party, Wall has been a Parish Councillor.

Wall rose to national prominence in the wake of the 1989 result, when he presented himself to the national press as a 'left wing' candidate for the ruling Green Party Council in opposition to the leadership.

He styled himself a Green 'fundamentalist'.

He was then in turn attacked as a 'parasite' by pragmatists such as Sara Parkin and Jonathon Porritt.

These divisions contributed to highly negative press coverage at the time.

Wall is a visiting tutor at the Department of Politics at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he teaches a course on the new radical political economy.

His PhD thesis was titled The Politics of Earth First! UK.

He has written a series of books on eco-socialism and green politics.

Getting There: Steps Towards a Green Society was published in 1990, and looked at the strategies of green politics.

A Green Manifesto for the 1990s, also written in 1990, outlined the Green vision.

In 1994, a book examining the roots of ecological politics, Green History: A Reader in Environmental Literature, Philosophy, and Politics and Weaving a Bower Against Endless Night: An Illustrated History of the Green Party as a Green Party publication appeared.

Having taken a BSc in Archaeology at the University of London, he subsequently completed a PhD at the University of the West of England, later published in a revised form in 1999 as a book entitled ''Earth First!

and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements''.

Academic reviews for the book were mixed.

One academic reviewer commented that the book offered "valuable and often original information about the radical environmentalist movement" but "fails to provide a systematic analysis of the topic" and uncritically paid little attention to possible personal agendas of the activists interviewed.

Wall was also a prominent figure opposing the organisational changes by the group known as Green 2000 along with Penny Kemp and John Norris.

Organising a faction within the Green Party known as the Association of Socialist Greens, this left grouping was accused by pragmatists such as Mallen Baker as being responsible for ensuring the party was "going knowhere fast".

Wall is an eco-socialist and anti-capitalist who believes that "an infinitely growing capitalist economy destroys nature, fuels injustice and leads to an alienated way of life".

He describes Green politics as "the politics of survival", stressing that "unless we build a green economy based on meeting need rather than greed our children face a bleak future".

Distinguishing between socially-oriented development and capitalist growth, Wall asserts that there is "no contradiction between development and ecology," while, on the other hand, there is "a contradiction between capitalist economic growth and human life – and the life of all other species."

He adds that "a world dominated by the need for constant growth puts people and the rest nature behind a blind economic system of accumulation."

He says of the Green 2000 project to modernise the executive structures and reduce the number of Principal Speakers to two:

"'The right around the Green 2000 faction wanted to make us into a mainstream party with mass appeal, ditch the radicalism, re-engineer the Party constitution and centralise power. We fought them. I remember Sara Parkin talking to the Independent about 'socialist parasites' i.e. myself and Penny Kemp who had been members nearly as long as her. They won and then imploded, when the Party received just a couple of percentage at the 1992 General Election. When the 'realists' believe in achieving a Westminster Parliamentary government by 2000 (thus Green 2000), give me fundamentalism.'"

Wall has continued to be an out-spoken member of the Green Party, particularly on the issue of entering into alliances with other parties.

Babylon and Beyond: The Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements (2005), looks at the history of anti-capitalism, including reformist capitalists (such as Joseph Stiglitz), anti-corporate critics (namely Naomi Klein and David Korten), monetary reformers, eco-socialists (especially Joel Kovel), Marxists, green localists (including Caroline Lucas, Mike Woodin and Vandana Shiva) and anarchists (particularly Michael Hardt and Toni Negri).

It includes a foreword by Nándor Tánczos, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand MP.

Wall has written for the left-wing magazine Red Pepper and is an advisory editor of Socialist Resistance.

He has also published articles in academic journals such as Environmental Politics, Social Movement Studies and Capitalism Nature Socialism.

He is a founder member of the Green Left, an anti-capitalist and eco-socialist faction within the Green Party, which held its first meeting in June 2006.

His critique of Green Party politics is that ambition tends to dilute policy, reduce democracy and lead to failure.

He was the joint International Coordinator for the Green Party of England and Wales and stood against Prime Minister Theresa May as the Green candidate for Maidenhead at the 2017 general election.

Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent eco-socialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism.

Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having published on the subject of ecosocialism and the wider Green politics movement.

He is a contributor to the Morning Star newspaper and a blogger.