THE LEADER of the Green Party addressed a meeting in Fishguard on Tuesday (Mar 22).

Natalie Bennett was joined on the stage by constituency and regional Green candidates, as well as local health and education activists Dr Kay Dearing and Dr Chris Overton.

Dr Overton kicked off proceedings with a brief history of the Save Withybush Action Team over the past 11 years.

He expressed his fears that the new emergency services boundaries, which were introduced as a temporary measure last year, had put extra pressure on Glangwili and Prince Philip Hospitals.

“They promised that this was a temporary measure, but they have employed new doctors and the boundaries have stayed the same,” he added. “I believe that if the same administration returns in May, the changes to Withybush as a rural general hospital will come into fruition.”

Dr Kay Dearing, who has been instrumental in leading the fight to save sixth form education in the county, pointed out that fortunately Wales had not gone down the free school/academy route, but still faced cuts to the education budget.

Dr Dearing pointed out that Pembrokeshire’s ‘interesting’ schools reorganisation ignored good performances in A-level results and concentrated on poorer GCSE results.

She also stressed that the cost of building any new schools would come out of the county’s education budget.

“This will lead to less money being available to teach 11-16 year olds,” she added.

Organiser Jim Scott, who has set up a petition calling for Stephen Crabb to resign as patron of Mencap Pembs, claimed that the public sector, especially the NHS, is ‘being stripped away at every level’ under the present government.

“The struggle is between those who recognise that, and those who are furthering their own agenda,” he added.

Natalie Bennett got one of the biggest rounds of applause of the night. The UK Green Party leader told a receptive crowd that 2020 was ‘too far away.’

“We can’t allow this Tory government to cause more damage for the next four years,” she added.

“Communities are being hollowed out – that’s what austerity means.”

Ms Bennett said that improved local public transport was a major part of her party’s plans – something that resonated with a north county audience. She pointed out that poor public transport services meant that many everyday activities were impossible for some people.

“How can you even hold down a job? A third of job-seekers don’t have access to a car,” she added.

Building strong local communities was another main theme of her talk. Ms Bennett suggested that rather than shopping in supermarkets, ‘where 1p in the pound goes back into the area and the rest goes to tax havens’ people should buy from smaller local shops, where the money goes straight back into the local economy.

Other areas discussed included fuel poverty, which Ms Bennett claimed was the result of ‘lousy’ housing stock, and the ‘living wage’ introduced by the chancellor, which only applies to those over the age of 25.

Concluding, she described the Green manifesto as ‘the anti-UKIP philosophy.’

“Theirs is one of fear, ours is one of hope,” she added.

A detailed question and answer session led to members of the audience expressing concerns about a number of local and national issues, including one about the ‘very successful disenfranchisement of young people’ through a combination of zero hour contracts, low pay and lack of eligibility for union support.

In response Ms Bennett discussed the SOAS cleaners’ strike in UCL, only to be told that ‘that was Bloomsbury, this is Pembrokeshire.

Dr Dearing pointed out that in Pembrokeshire this disenfranchisement had not been helped by consulting school pupils on the sixth form changes, then ignoring their input.

Regional Assembly candidate Alice Hooker-Stroud discussed her aims for the Assembly, including reinvigorating a ‘stale’ government.

“What we see is lots of lovely ideas coming out, and high targets to be met, but not much is coming through,” she added.

“We have a strict climate change target, but emissions are still going up.”

As someone brought up in west Wales, Ms Hooker-Stroud described seeing communities ‘broken apart.’

“The danger in the long term is that we stop feeling we should care for each other,” she said.

Constituency candidates Frances Bryant and Val Bradley joined the Welsh Greens leader to answer questions on local issues, including the party’s plans to reinstate services at Withybush, and solutions for the housing shortage in the area.

Closing the meeting Ms Hooker- Stroud reminded the audience that this election was: “the best chance yet of getting our first Green Assembly Member, here in mid and west Wales.”