Jonathon Porritt

Lord Porritt, who served as a senior officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II, was also the bronze medalist in the 1924 Summer Olympics "Chariots of Fire" 100 metres race.

Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE (born 6 July 1950) is a British environmentalist and writer.

He is known for his advocacy of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Porritt frequently contributes to magazines, newspapers and books, and appears on radio and television.

As well as receiving a life peerage, Lord Porritt had previously been awarded a baronetcy in 1963.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Porritt was a prominent member of the Ecology Party (now the Green Party of England and Wales).

Porritt started training as a barrister, but switched to teaching English at St Clement Danes Grammar School (later Burlington Danes School) in Shepherd's Bush, West London, in 1974.

He taught there from 1974 to 1984, serving as Head of English from 1980 to 1984.

Porritt served as chair of The Ecology Party from 1979 to 1980, and from 1982 to 1984.

He presided over changes that made the party much more prominent in elections, himself standing as a parliamentary candidate in general elections in 1979 and 1983.

In 1979 he achieved 2.8% of the vote in St Marylebone, and in 1983 he achieved 2.1% in Kensington, receiving attention from national media.

Under his stewardship, membership grew from a few hundred to around 3,000.

He noted that many of the policies in the Ecology Party's manifesto of 1979 were now accepted by mainstream political parties, and emphasized the importance of active support.

Although criticized initially as inexperienced, in the long term he has been seen as an important factor in the group's success in the late 1980s.

In 1984, Porritt published his first book, Seeing Green: Politics of Ecology Explained.

It was written while he was policy director of the Ecology Party.

In 1984 Porritt gave up teaching to become Director of Friends of the Earth in Britain, a post he held until 1990.

In 1985 he married Sarah Staniforth CBE, daughter of Malcolm Arthur Staniforth.

He edited the Friends of the Earth Handbook (1987)

and encouraged Friends of the Earth to promote practical solutions in its local environmental campaigns, as well as thinking more globally and internationally.

During his time as director, the membership of the organization expanded from 12,700 to 226,300.

The Greens achieved 15% of the European Parliamentary vote in 1989, but were able to win only 1.2% of the vote in the 1992 general election, in which environmental issues were largely ignored.

During this time Porritt became a strong public advocate of change in the Green Party.

Along with Sara Parkin, he advocated for a more professional organisation with identifiable leaders, a change that was eventually approved.

In 1992 Porritt backed the election of Cynog Dafis who was elected to Parliament as the joint Plaid Cymru-Green MP for Ceredigion.

Porritt attended United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, eventually writing an introduction for The way forward : beyond Agenda 21 (1997).

From 1993 to 1996 he chaired Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future, then known as United Nations Environment and Development UK (UNED UK).

Jonathon Porritt therefore became the 2nd Baronet on Lord Porritt's death on 1 January 1994.

Porritt was educated at Wellesley House School, Broadstairs, Kent; Eton College; and Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he earned a first class degree in modern languages.

However, in 1994, the regional council of the Green Party suspended Porritt for supporting Dafis, and demanded that Dafis stop identifying himself as Green.

Between 1996 and 2009, Porritt largely withdrew from active party politics, concentrating instead on non-partisan and activist roles independent of the Green Party.

As of 1999, it was still described as "the best general guide to the politics of ecology by an 'insider'".

Reviewed nearly 30 years after its publication, it stands up as "prophetic in many respects", although somewhat off in the timing of its predictions, perhaps in part because Porritt did not anticipate the rise of indebtedness.

Writing before the rise of the internet, Porritt even predicted the development of an "information-rich, knowledge-poor" age.

In March 2009, Porritt spoke at the launch of the South West Green Party European Election campaign in Bristol, stating that he had always remained a member of the Green Party and that it was the correct time to reaffirm his support.

"'Every single one of the issues that the Green Party has been campaigning on for the last 35 years is getting worse and worse, which means that people should no longer put off the day when they accept that the future is either Green or not at all.' Porritt, 2009"

Jonathon Porritt was born in London, the son of Arthur Porritt, Baron Porritt, 11th Governor-General of New Zealand and his second wife, Kathleen Peck.

Looking back in 2012, Porritt stated that becoming director of Friends of the Earth "was probably the best decision of my life."

Prior to the 2015 general election, he was one of several public figures who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.

However, his affection for the organization has not stopped him from harshly criticizing it, as he did in 2015, when the group's top ten priority issues list did not include nuclear power.