Fringe Meeting 2011

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rebekah Gronowski on June 7, 2011 at 8:57

Martin - is the Bank Account set up yet?

Permalink Reply by Janet King on August 7, 2011 at 16:12

Looking forward to seeing everyone again. Wisdom suggests that a demo would not succeed so I'll see you inside with some searching questions! Just one word of advice - don't spend a fortune on nhotel snadwiches. Last year they were stale and there were not enough and we paid too much for them. We shall all have had dinner before the meeting or be going on to eat later. Janet

Permalink Reply by Rebekah Gronowski on August 7, 2011 at 17:59

If the meeting is, indeed, after dinner then I suggest a cup of tea or coffee would be appropriate, nothing more. I hope many of you can go - I cannot go, I'm afraid.

 

 

Permalink Reply by Janet King on August 16, 2011 at 12:37

Message to all Lib Dem supporters of SNTT.

If you want to find out a lot more about one of the earliest Liberal peacmakers, why not come to CELEBRATING JOHN BRIGHT study day at BMAG (Birmingham art gallery) on 19th November? More info and a booking form at Conference SNTT fringe.

Permalink Reply by Janet King on September 8, 2011 at 13:33

Martin,

Let me know asap whether you want to use the invitations/info leaflet at the fringe. Do you want to wait til we get there to print or get a few hundred to take with us??

Permalink Reply by Janet King on September 23, 2011 at 8:15

SNTT Fringe 18th Sept 2011

Well, folks, it was a great success - thanks to Martin's hard work in setting it all up and inviting speakers and a couple of hundred free invitations and some emails to local peace activists by myself. The room was full with one or two standing - and this was at a Conference when defence was hardly on the agenda with no policy motions re Trident. We are biding our time to put forward a policy motion until after Nick Harvey's review(which we hope will be made public - you can help here by emailing Nick to ask that it should be),

Dr Peter Burt of Nuclear Information Service (he deals with Freedom of Information requests re what is actually happening at AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield) was a mine of information re the real costs of Trident, much of which is not actually spoken about by the Governmnet. Millions are being spent just now at AWE to build a virtual nuclear bomb testing facility so that, although we have signed up to the Test Ban treaty we can happily continue to test the nukes of the future. This suggests that HMG has no intention of eliminating nuclear weapons (as promised 40 yrs ago and repeated at intervals ever since). It really is as dire as that - make no mistake we are having an uphill struggle and will need to work with other organisations if we are to succeed in persuading HMG that our nuclear arsenal poses more of  athrat to us than a safeguard against attack.

This is why we were so pleased that our audience of 50 included members of CND, CAAT. UNA (Birmingham), the co-ordinator of the WMD Awareness group and ordinary Lib Dems, who asked very searching questions.

Kate Hudson , General Secretary of CND, spoke of the dangers of the Continuous At Sea Trident deployment and the folly of at least £2 bn per year expenditure on our nuclear arsenal (part of a £37 bn pa Mo D expenditure) when so many other services are being cut and jobs in all 3 Armed Services are being lost too.

Martin chaired really well and we could have gone on much later into the evening. Keeping the debate open through this site and maybe getting involved with CND in local meetings seems the way forward now. If anyone can make it to London on 8th October (Anti War Assembly in Trafalgar Square) could you get in touch,please?  There may be an opportunity to have a stall. . .

Permalink Reply by Rebekah Gronowski on September 27, 2011 at 8:11

Well done to you & Martin for doing this. I was sorry not to be able to go.

 

I hope that the debate will continue and not go cold. We need to keep this on the Agenda.

 

I'm going to be posting on Twitter & FB shortly - will be uploading a new poster "Cut Trident not Jobs!" (see below for file) in the light of today's announcement of the loss of 3000 jobs at BAE systems, 500 at one site alone in West Yorkshire out of a total of 1200 jobs there. There is also going to be a cut of 1000 Servicemen and Women. This is not good enough. We need to keep up the pressure folks!

 

Will update you with any further news as I receive it.

 

 

Attachments:

• Cut Trident Not Jobs.pdf, 6 KB

Permalink Reply by Janet King on September 27, 2011 at 14:14

Rebekah Gronowski said:

Well done to you & Martin for doing this. I was sorry not to be able to go.

 

I hope that the debate will continue and not go cold. We need to keep this on the Agenda.

 

I'm going to be posting on Twitter & FB shortly - will be uploading a new poster "Cut Trident not Jobs!" (see below for file) in the light of today's announcement of the loss of 3000 jobs at BAE systems, 500 at one site alone in West Yorkshire out of a total of 1200 jobs there. There is also going to be a cut of 1000 Servicemen and Women. This is not good enough. We need to keep up the pressure folks!

 

Will update you with any further news as I receive it.

 

 

Permalink Reply by Janet King on September 27, 2011 at 14:23

Janet King said: Rebekah 9and all readers)

I am wondering whether we should not be making more of the illegality of Trident (indeed all nuclear weapons) as well as the job losses in certain areas. It is certainly possible to get new products introduced where you have a lot of unemployed engineers tho governments/companies never seem to get their timing right here but it is not so easy to deny that any use of  nuclear weapons (being indiscriminate) contravenes the present legal standards for warfare. They are inhumane and therefore cannot legally be used - it is not just a moral judgement but a legal judgement. It will take some painstaking research into all the various legal opinions and judgements. which have been made, but WCP/INLAP have published a lot of useful material. I wonder whether we could produce a paper to present for cnsideration as a policy motion for 2012 or 2013. We do not want to be too late for the 2015 manifesto but not too early to be overlooked in 2015. Worth a try??

Rebekah Gronowski said:

Well done to you & Martin for doing this. I was sorry not to be able to go.

 

I hope that the debate will continue and not go cold. We need to keep this on the Agenda.

 

I'm going to be posting on Twitter & FB shortly - will be uploading a new poster "Cut Trident not Jobs!" (see below for file) in the light of today's announcement of the loss of 3000 jobs at BAE systems, 500 at one site alone in West Yorkshire out of a total of 1200 jobs there. There is also going to be a cut of 1000 Servicemen and Women. This is not good enough. We need to keep up the pressure folks!

 

Will update you with any further news as I receive it.

 

 

Permalink Reply by Rebekah Gronowski on September 28, 2011 at 5:38

My point was that, whilst money is being spent on Trident which we, as a gorup, feel is unnecessary, they are making members of the Armed Forces redundant in a cost-cutting exercise. If they didn't spend money on Trident they wouldn't have to cut jobs because they cannot pay Armed Forces personnel!

 

3000 jobs lost in BAE Systems when there are not 3000 other jobs for their employees to go to seems to me rather like "putting the cart before the horse". The  Government needs to be investing time & money into creating jobs. I know that BAE have been considering this for some time but it will not have been in a vacuum - the current economic situation is bound to have had some influence on the decision to axe that many jobs.