PEOPLE Party as the party of environmental concern. Party co-founder Tony Whittaker noted in an interview with Derek Wall '… voters did not connect PEOPLE with ecology. What I wanted was something that the media could look up in their files so that, when they wanted a spokesman of the issue of ecology, they could find the Ecology Party and pick up the phone. It was as brutal and basic as that. PEOPLE didn't communicate what we had hoped it would communicate'. Derek Wall, in his history of the Green Party, contends that the new political movement focused initially on the theme
Ecology Party member. That same year the Leader Tony Whittaker and National Secretary Lesley Whittaker (founder members of the original PEOPLE party) greatly reduced their involvement with the party. At the 1977 Party Conference in Birmingham, the Party's first constitution was ratified and Jonathon Porritt was elected to the Ecology Party National Executive Committee (NEC). Porritt would become the Party's most significant public figure, working, with David Fleming, "to provide the Party with an attractive image and effective organization". With Porritt gaining increasing prominence and an election manifesto called "The Real Alternative", the Ecology Party fielded 53 candidates in the 1979 General