Profile: Scottish Green Party

Robin Harper said the Greens offer an alternative to "dinosaur politics"

The Scottish Green Party will field 20 candidates in the UK General Election.

Robin Harper, the party's co-convener, said it was aiming for "a Westminster breakthrough".

He said the voting system is biased in favour of the larger parties, but the Greens offer an alternative to "the dinosaur politics" of the others.

Mr Harper said the Greens were targeting voters who normally vote Liberal Democrat but who had lost faith in the party.

The Scottish Greens were founded as the Scottish Ecology Party in 1979 as part of the main UK Ecology Party.

In 1990 the Scottish Greens became a separate party from the Greens in England and Wales, and produced its own manifesto, "Towards a Green Scotland".

The UK election will be the best opportunity to date to set some real progress in motion with the election of the first Green MP Robin Harper Scottish Green co-convener

Although the party shares campaigns and ideas with the Greens south of the border, some policy differences have emerged - for example, on the EU constitution, which the Scottish Greens will support, but their English colleagues will oppose.

Mr Harper became the first Green parliamentarian in the UK in the first Scottish elections in May 1999.

The Greens won seven seats at the Scottish Parliament elections in 2003 and are confident of gaining an electoral foothold at Westminster.

'Fresh hope'

In launching the 2005 campaign, Mr Harper said: "Greens offer fresh hope of a better future for Scotland. The other parties still do not recognise sufficiently the seriousness of the environmental and social problems that face us.

"They are like rabbits trapped in the headlights of a car. The UK election will be the best opportunity to date to set some real progress in motion with the election of the first Green MP."

Shiona Baird MSP, Green co-convener, said: "The Lib Dems and Labour have lost all credibility - charging ahead with climate wrecking policies, supporting war in Iraq and standing by whilst community and public interest is trampled over by the interests of big business and corporations.

'Step forward'

"The rhetoric of the other parties is devoid of real substance and fresh ideas - only the Greens are serious about real change for a sustainable future.

"People are beginning to see that standing for the environment means standing for real economic progress and social justice.

"The increasing problem of climate change and pollution makes it obvious that growing the economy at any cost blights people's quality of life and threatens the environment upon which we, and the economy, all ultimately depend."

In 2003, the Scottish Greens' greatest success came in the Lothian list, where Mr Harper was returned along with colleague Mark Ballard after the party gained 32,0000 list votes.

Single seats were also secured on the lists for South of Scotland, Glasgow, Mid Scotland and Fife, North East Scotland and the Highlands and Islands.

Mr Harper described the result as "an enormous step forward" for Green politics.