How is it that I can make this claim with any certainty? Well, part of it is a definite trend to better publicity and media presence over the last 12 months, with Caroline Lucas and Siân Berry gaining increasing presence in print and television.

Caroline’s strong message about policing and the climate camp, and then a full page in yesterday’s Independent has pulled in a bunch of members, much as happened in London during the Mayoral campaign.

But there is a much more basic reason: nearly all the new members have joined using Direct Debit. Around 800 new members used Direct Debit when they joined this year. Very few of them will lapse next year, as they will simply pay their subs automatically. Historically, it seems that most new members would lapse after one or two years.

This August, the first of 70 of these DD members renewed successfully. Every month from now on, more members will renew without the palaver of renewal notices and forms in the post.

Over the year, with a big election coming up, we should see at least 1,000 new members join: and again, most of these will not lapse. We should be on for steady membership growth over the next two to four years, along with higher party income as a result.

And with more efforts from local parties to recruit, we can go onto even greater success, meaning more grassroots activity, more involvement, and more democratic action from Greens at all levels of government.

The challenge, of course, is to get new members active. They are most enthusiastic when they join. They will want to do things which are meaningful, and contribute to real successes. Just as importantly, we need to show that we have a strong participatory democracy, where people’s views are respected.

Nearly every other political party’s membership is declining. The Green Party – even as recession bites and money gets tight – is likely to be the only major party whose membership is growing.

[ Technical note: because we count everyone up to 6 months overdue as a member, these increases will only be visible in the membership figures in six months time, although the increased income will be visible from now on in ]

The toughest call for me is Chair. I’m standing but I think James is a great candidate. We’re offering different things, I think. James Humphreys has greater external experience, including at Downing Street, whereas I’ve perhaps done more internally.

But please give this one some thought. I’m not counting on your vote – you should make the choice that you think best suits the party.

[ UPDATE: See Rupert Read, Green Diplomat and Charlie Bolton. ]

[ UPDATE: find the article here. ]

Thanks to Rayyan Mirza for spotting this bold move from the Lib Dem communication team.

Crucially, for parliamentary selections, they do make membership contact data available to the candidates (as do Labour).

They do not, however, for committee elections like the Executive, but it seems that they do for their leadership election.

The reasons I am sure are similar, that they don’t want too much campaigning to the point that it gets obtrusive, but some elections are very important and need to engage the membership.

Andy Hewett, a London Green Party campaigner, came up with this slogan for the Kingsnorth protests, which helped capture Green Party presence in a number of outlets yesterday, including the Guardian, Metro, London Paper and this on BBC online.

Note how the layout works – four short words:

Scuttle
Brown’s
Coal
Plans

This makes it easy to make a placard, but best of course is that it is good line. We’ve had a few others, like the climate demo’s “Go solar, not ballistic” and “More wind, less CO2”. It’s a massive step forward from a few years back when rather embarrassingly one placard had six slogans on back and front as the committee involved didn’t wish to leave anyone’s suggestion out.

And much better than the bemusing “Contraction and Convergence NOW!”. (Or “over an agreed Period” perhaps?)

Well done then to Jonathan Essex and Andy Hewett for this.

More seriously, Stuart Jeffrey has just blogged about the ongoing disgraceful police behaviour. Caroline has been taking a lead in drawing attention to this.

Someone in Edinbugh (please own up!) but not Two Doctors who is apparently dead set against Twitter has set up this service to send out titles, authors and URLs of new green blogs on Twitter. That’s actually really useful, as you catch them as they’re published. Find it here.

(Thanks to Adopted Domain btw for nominating me for a political blog of significance for at least this week. What happens next week?)

Is AdoptedDomain responsible for GreenFeed, or someone else? Let us know.

A track record of building success and fundraising

Over the last four years on the Executive, three as External Communications Officer, I have had a track record of building success. I have:

• Written the motion to create a Leader and Deputy create and campaigned for it
• Overseen the introduction of Direct Debit, which now 1600 members are using, worth £65,000 a year, due to double in the next two years
• Secured two full time press officer posts and sorted out their office
• Pushed for a professional, fully empowered Head of Office
• Professionalised our communications, introducing external communications agencies
• Produced one of our best TV broadcasts this year
• Got the party onto Youtube and boosted our Facebook and blog activities
• Introduced a range of communications volunteers into party office

These have been bold steps, when some people have wanted to hold back.

But we don’t have the time for holding back. We have to get on, or we will be a political irrelevance.

Getting Greens elected

I believe the party wants to be successful and implement our policies, rather than just talk about them. That is why people join and pay their subs – not to navel gaze, but to see Greens elected and doing good.

As Chair I would:

• Do my utmost to make sure we elect our first MPs, in Brighton, Norwich and Lewisham
• Fully support the new leadership team and extend their ability to do the job
• Push for more and greater fund raising, building on our huge Direct Debit success
• Push for professional management of our core job, running elections
• Push for proper support of Councillors and local parties
• Ask Conference to dedicate the Spring Conference to training and Autumn Conference to policy
• Ask Conference to set our strategic objectives, rather than leave the current vacuum
• Ask Conference to set executive election regulations
• Push for an open democracy where members are asked what they want