DOCSLIB.ORG

Socialist Fight: Where We Stand

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Socialist Fight: Where We Stand Socialist Fight In political Issue No. 4 Spring 2010 solidarity Price: Waged: £2.00, €3.00, Concessions: 50p. Vote Labour—but prepare to fight! Make the bosses pay for the crisis! page 2 Contents Page 2: Editorial: Vote Labour—but prepare to fight! Page 4: Birmingham Care Homes face the axe by Steve Bagal. Page 5: Reinstate Abdul Omer! Page 6: Rank and File Campaign. Page 7: Support Jerry Hicks for Unite General Secre- tary: The Jerry Hicks Dilemma by Tony Fox. Page 8: Who are the United Left in Unite. Page 9: UNISON United Left witch hunts From PR. Page 10: Fighting Fascism by Tony Fox. Page 11: Unite Against Fascism & the rise of the EDL by Mark Brown. Page 14: Defend Jewish anti-Zionists by A J Byrne. Page 16: Obama’s America: Where's the socialism? by Billy Wharton. The reality of class is the elephant in the room in this election; Gordon Brown Page 20: Roman Polanski, Rape Shield Laws and the bounces in the polls under chauvinist attacks from the Tory Sun. Sparts by AJ Byrne. Page 20-23: Letters Pages. Page 24: Roman Polanski and the capitalist state – disclaimer— Socialist Fight: Where We Stand. Page 25: Maghaberry Repression: Political Status now! Page 26: Reply to Roy Wall on Transitional Demands and the “three whales” of Bolshevism. Page 27: A Tale of Two Cusacks: Come What May. by Dónal Óg Cusack, Review by Tony Fox. Page 28: Trotsky: A Biography by Robert Service Review by Ret Marut. Page 29: A review of the reviewers. Page 31: HOPI: Freedom for Jafar Panahi!. In Maghaberry prison the members of the Prison Officers Association brutally repress Irish Republican prisoners whilst their General Secretary, Brian Caton, Page 32: Statement by the CWG/LLC/BSC to the dons the mantle of revolutionary Trotskyism, courtesy of the Socialist Party. conference of the Democratic Left, South Africa. Socialist Fight is published by the International Trotskyist Current. Signed articles in Socialist Fight do not necessarily represent the views of the Contact: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, [email protected] International Trotskyist Current. đoàn kết là sức mạnh, Jedność jest siła, ykseys on ,اتحاد قدرت است . ,Unity is strength, L'union fait la force, Es la unidad fuerza, Η ενότητα είναι δύναμη kesto, યુનિટિ થ્રૂ .િા , Midnimo iyo waa awood, hundeb ydy chryfder, Einheit ist Stärke, एकता शक्ति,है единстве наша сила, vienybės jėga, bashkimi ben Ní neart go ,الوحدة هو القوة ,unità è la resistenza, 団結は力だ", A unidade é a força, eining er styrkur, De eenheid is de sterkte ,אחדות היא כוח ,fuqine chur le céile, pagkakaisa ay kalakasan, jednota is síla, 일성은 이다 힘 힘, Workers of the World Unite! Socialist Fight Page 2 Vote Labour—but prepare to fight! Make the bosses pay for the crisis! stop their excessive bonuses, clamp down on local election at 2.7%, half the total it got Editorial the non-dom tax avoiders and stop the war in when it called itself Trotskyist and advocated Afghanistan then all would be well. That was policies twice as radical when it was the Ligue he reality of class is the elephant in the theme of all the speakers at the Save the communiste révolutionnaire (LRC). French the room in this election; Gordon Welfare demo on Saturday 10 April at Trafal- workers were evidently not impressed by its Brown bounces in the polls under gar Square and it is the main message in the move to the right, which the comrades of attacks by the Tory Sun as seen on centre-page spread of the Socialist Worker of Workers Power ridiculously told us was a Tthe cover. Class has established itself in this the same date – Why there’s no need to slash move to the left. Revolutionaries cannot sup- election despite the best efforts of all sides to spending; The deficit is £310 billion, if we port a centrist group who has become reform- prevent this happening. Looming over this crack down on tax evasion and avoidance we ist, this remains a shared Trotskyist attitude, election is the universal understanding now will bring in £123 billion (how likely is that?), if so WP has to deny reality. that whoever wins the election they are intent we stop the war and abolish Trident we will The Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) calls on saving capitalism by imposing massive cuts save £136.5 billion (not going to happen) and for a vote for itself, Jill Montford in Camber- on the working class and the welfare state. by taxing the rich we would bring in only well and Peckham, and Labour elsewhere but £27.5 billion (turns out this is only making Jonathan Freedland makes good points on this not the TUSC. Their electoral intervention is them pay full national insurance and increas- in his Guardian article on 14 April. The Gene called ‘the socialist campaign to stop the To- ing the top rate from 40% to 60%, an ex- Hunt poster backfired on Labour because the ries and fascists’ (SCSTF). It seems principled tremely modest proposal for Tories are still delighted that Thatcher dealt enough on first glance and the demands are ‘revolutionaries’). Of course all these things such blows to the working class in defeating radical so the campaign is supportable. But apart from the last, (surely we can propose a the miners’ strike, privatisation etc in the 80s they refuse to support TUSC candidates and far higher rate and a decent wealth tax too?), and Hunt was a popular TV detective charac- Respect who are standing against Labour are excellent demands as part of a Transi- ter; portraying Cameron as Hunt was an own because they ridiculously allege that the TUSC tional Programme. But on their own, as advo- goal. But the ‘step outside posh boy’ poster and Respect are to the right of Labour ‘if we cated by the SWP and other lefts, they are did work very well. Brown was afraid to face thought about it’. This indicates they are on Keynesian rubbish, quite compatible with the down the captains of industry who slated his another opportunist entryist trajectory to- future of capitalism and designed to be so. increase in national insurance as a ‘tax on wards the Labour party, which they stymied There is a need for the capitalists to slash jobs’ and it was left to the Social Democrats’ as a ‘stinking corpse’ just a few years ago. In a spending to save capitalism, they are going to Vince Cable to condemn this as ‘nauseating’; previous period of entryism in the LP, they do it and we must be prepared to fight it with they were trying to escape their taxes whilst capitulated to the bureaucracy, even de- revolutionary politics. But these are thin on the workers and poor were about to be pum- nouncing other leftists like Lesley Mahmood the ground now. melled. Labour’s claims that the Tories are to save themselves. She was the bureaucrati- putting tax cuts above public spending also So why does it matter who wins the election if cally excluded Militant Tendency “official hits home. Freedman recounts that a Prospect all are intent on making the same cuts? “From Labour” candidate in the Liverpool Walton by- magazine survey found that 40% of those the stand point of the working people, it election, caused by the death of Eric Heffer in questioned thought that Margaret Thatcher makes no difference whether Gordon Brown’s 1991. The AWL even canvassed for the im- had made Britain a better place and 41% Labour Party or David Cameron’s Tories win posed right-wing candidate Peter Kilfoyle; thought she had made it worse. The class the general election” say Workers Hammer. they presumably argued he was really to the battles of the 1980s are clearly about to re- “General election, general fraud, don’t vote, left of Mahmood ‘if we thought about it’. emerge and the relationship of the ideological organise!” say the third period Stalinists of the The majority of the 1991 split in the Militant struggle to the strike struggles in now being Revolutionary Communist Group and the Tendency left the Labour party and became determined. Revolutionaries have something Socialist Party simply calls for a vote for the Militant Labour until 1997 and are now the to say, hopefully a decisive thing, in both the Trade Unionists and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) Socialist Party. The minority is Socialist Ap- one and the other. and no vote for Labour. The SWP calls for a peal, still in the Labour party. It calls for a vote Labour vote where the TUSC is not standing. A really false dichotomy is being posed now for Labour and is still trying, a la Ted Grant, to Workers Power calls for a vote for itself, Jer- by left establishment figures, the Stalinists ‘reclaim the Labour party and fight for social- emy Drinkall in Vauxhall, and a vote for La- and even so-called revolutionary groups. That ist policies’. It still advocates its Enabling Act, bour elsewhere, whilst advocating its “build is that a type of con is being perpetrated on which would allow the Executive to rule by the Anti-capitalist party” line, in isolation. The us, there is really no crisis of capitalism at all; decree, avoiding parliament, and impose the French version has “bombed” in the recent if only we could control the greedy bankers, nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights of Leon Trotsky: I am confident of the victory of the Fourth International; Go Forward! Socialist Fight Page 3 the economy’ by nationalising the 150 biggest sary to call for a vote for Jerry Hicks for monopolies.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • How the SWP's Bureaucratic Factionalism Is Wrecking Respect
    How the SWP's bureaucratic factionalism is wrecking Respect https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1330 Britain How the SWP's bureaucratic factionalism is wrecking Respect - IV Online magazine - 2007 - IV393 - October 2007 - Publication date: Wednesday 31 October 2007 Copyright © International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine - All rights reserved Copyright © International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine Page 1/4 How the SWP's bureaucratic factionalism is wrecking Respect No one who supports left unity could be anything other than deeply disheartened by the turn of events inside Respect, which has created a crisis that threatens the future of the organisation. The current crisis is unnecessary and the product of the political line and methods of organisation of the Socialist Workers Party. [https://internationalviewpoint.org/IMG/jpg/respect23-2.jpg] Happier days - Respect founding conference The real meaning of the crisis, its roots and underlying dynamics are however being obscured by the SWP's propaganda offensive, an attempt to whip its own members into line and throw up a smokescreen to fool the left in Britain and internationally. How so? The crisis was started by a letter from Respect MP George Galloway to members of the National Council on August 23, a time it should be remembered that a general election seemed a short-term possibility. In his letter Galloway drew attention to organisational weaknesses of Respect, the decline of its membership and political life in general, but also to the (not unrelated) lack of accountability of the National Officers, including the Respect national Secretary John Rees. These criticisms reflected those that had been made for several years by supporters of Socialist Resistance.
    [Show full text]
  • Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War: Transnational Activism, Networks, and Solidarity in the 1930S
    Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War: Transnational Activism, Networks, and Solidarity in the 1930s Ariel Mae Lambe Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Ariel Mae Lambe All rights reserved ABSTRACT Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War: Transnational Activism, Networks, and Solidarity in the 1930s Ariel Mae Lambe This dissertation shows that during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) diverse Cubans organized to support the Spanish Second Republic, overcoming differences to coalesce around a movement they defined as antifascism. Hundreds of Cuban volunteers—more than from any other Latin American country—traveled to Spain to fight for the Republic in both the International Brigades and the regular Republican forces, to provide medical care, and to serve in other support roles; children, women, and men back home worked together to raise substantial monetary and material aid for Spanish children during the war; and longstanding groups on the island including black associations, Freemasons, anarchists, and the Communist Party leveraged organizational and publishing resources to raise awareness, garner support, fund, and otherwise assist the cause. The dissertation studies Cuban antifascist individuals, campaigns, organizations, and networks operating transnationally to help the Spanish Republic, contextualizing these efforts in Cuba’s internal struggles of the 1930s. It argues that both transnational solidarity and domestic concerns defined Cuban antifascism. First, Cubans confronting crises of democracy at home and in Spain believed fascism threatened them directly. Citing examples in Ethiopia, China, Europe, and Latin America, Cuban antifascists—like many others—feared a worldwide menace posed by fascism’s spread.
    [Show full text]
  • Middlesex University Research Repository an Open Access Repository Of
    Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk McIlroy, John (2012) Strikes and class consciousness in the early work of Richard Hyman. Capital & Class, 36 (1) . pp. 53-75. ISSN 0309-8168 [Article] (doi:10.1177/0309816811429738) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/10188/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Works, including theses and research projects, may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from them, or their content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). They may not be sold or exploited commercially in any format or medium without the prior written permission of the copyright holder(s). Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author’s name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pag- ination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address: [email protected] The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated.
    [Show full text]
  • The English Defence League: Challenging Our Country and Our Values of Social Inclusion, Fairness and Equality
    THE ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE: CHALLENGING OUR COUNTRY AND OUR VALUES OF SOCIAL INCLUSION, FAIRNESS AND EQUALITY by Professor Nigel Copsey Professor of Modern History School of Arts and Media Teesside University (UK) On Behalf of Faith Matters 2 Foreword This report focuses on the English Defence League (EDL) and asks whether the organisation poses a threat to our country and our values of social inclusion, fairness and equality. This report demonstrates clearly that the English Defence League does not represent the values which underpin our communities and our country: respect for our fellow citizens, respect for difference, and ensuring the safety and peace of communities and local areas. On the contrary, actions by the EDL have led to fear within communities and a sense that they are ‘under siege’ and under the media and national ‘spotlight’. Many within these communities feel that the peace and tranquillity which they deserve has been broken up by the EDL, whose main aim is to increase tension, raise hate and increase community division by the use of intimidating tactics. These are not the actions of a group ‘working against extremism’. These are the actions of extremists in their own right, masquerading as a grass roots social force, supposedly bringing their brand of community resilience against ‘Muslim extremism’. It is essential to inoculate communities against the toxins that are being injected into these areas by the EDL and other extremist groups like Al-Muhajiroun. Letting these groups go unchecked destroys what we stand for and damages our image globally. This report has been put together in partnership with Professor Nigel Copsey and we hope that it activates social action against those who seek to divide our communities.
    [Show full text]
  • No. 75, January, 1986
    _____ 2 N075 January 1986 20p Monthly paper of the Spartacist League British troops out now! o o 's relan eal! ~ Not Orange against Green " but class against class! ;, ~o sooner had a beaming Margaret Thatcher and Garrett FitzGerald emerged from signing their vaunted 'Anglo-Irish accord' than American president Ronald Reagan signalled his congratulations. Reagan instantly called the British and Irjsh ambassadors into the White I~ouse to wax rhetorical about tbis ! promise of pe2ce and a new dawn for the troubled communi­ ties of Northern Ireland' ((;/iarcJj an. 26 ~T,'!\.. "Cl:1b<-·r ~q85). Within weeks of the 'new dawIl', Orange l'e­ actionaries were leading 100.000 outraged Loyalist marchers through the streets of Belfast, prominent Sinn Fein activists were beine hunted down and arrested in a major I crackdown ~nd several hundred more British troops from the crack Spearhead Battalion were being shipped in to carry out the imperial­ l~ ists' bloody 'promise of peace'. One minute into the New Year ehe IRA signalled its opinion on the Hillsborough agreement by ~ blowing away two RUC cops. In the meantime Republican prisoners launched an abortive hunger strike in protest at yet another of the Labour Herald Margaret Thatcher and Irish prime minister Garrett FitzGerald's celebrated Hillsborough accord means more British government's massive frame-up 'super­ imperialist terror and communalist fratricide for Northern Ireland. frass' trials. The British imperialists and their Green NATO's anti-Soviet arsenal. But short of a struggle for an Irish
    [Show full text]
  • ARTICLES Rebel Or Revolutionary? Jack Kavanagh and the Early Years of the Communist Movement in Vancouver, 1920-1925
    ARTICLES Rebel or Revolutionary? Jack Kavanagh and the Early Years of the Communist Movement in Vancouver, 1920-1925 David Akers DURINGTHE1919VANCOUVERGENERALSTRIKE, the guardians of conventional 'law and order' in the city, the middle-class Citizens League, bemoaned the evils of "Kavanagh Bolshevism" and its "red-eyed vision of Soviet control."1 Jack Kavanagh — a member of the general strike committee, prominent "platform speaker" for the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC), and the provincial chairman of the One Big Union (OBU) in British Columbia — was a prime target for the establishment backlash against labour militancy in Vancouver.2 Red Scare hysterics aside, Kavanagh did, from October 1917, openly embrace the Russian Revolution and its "proletarian dictatorship," as he labelled the Soviet 'Vancouver Citizen, 25 June 1919. "On Kavanagh's role in the 1919 Canadian labour revolt, see Paul A. Phillips, No Power Greater: A Century of Labour in British Columbia (Vancouver 1967), 66-84; Martin Robin, Radical Politics and Canadian Labour, J880-1930 (Kingston 1968), 138-98; A. Ross McCormack, Reformers, Rebels, and Revolutionaries: The Western Canadian Radical Movement, 1899-1919 (Toronto 1977), 145-54; David J. Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men: The Rise and Fall of the One Big Union (Toronto 1978), 57-170; Gerald Friesen, '"Yours in Revolt' : The Socialist Party of Canada and the Western Canadian Labour Movement," in Labour/Le Travail, 1 (1976), 139-55; Dave Adams, "The Canadian Labour Revolt of 1919: The West Coast Story," in Socialist Worker, 161 (November, 1990). David Akers, "Rebel or Revolutionary? Jack Kavanagh and the Early Years of the Com­ munist Movement in Vancouver, 1920-1925, Labour/Le Travail 30 (Fall 1992), 9-44.
    [Show full text]
  • Freedom of Information Team Northern Ireland Office Stormont House Stormont Estate BT4 3SH
    Freedom of Information Team Northern Ireland Office Stormont House Stormont Estate BT4 3SH T: 02890765431 E: [email protected] www.gov.uk John Kelly [email protected] Freedom of Information Request Dear Mr Kelly, Our Reference: 16/118 Thank you for your email dated 04 October providing clarification of your request for information dated 03 October 2016, in which you requested information from the Northern Ireland Office (NIO): Can you please provide me with any documents/emails/meeting minutes and other forms of information that the Home Office holds that mentions how the status of Irish citizens living & working in the UK may change after Brexit actually takes place. Your request has been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). However, because the cost of complying with your request would exceed the limit set by the Freedom of Information Act, on this occasion we are afraid that we will not be taking your request further. The law allows us to decline to answer FOI requests when we estimate it would cost us more than £600 (equivalent to 3½ working days’ worth of work, calculated at £25 per hour) to identify, locate, extract, and then provide the information that has been asked for. You can find out more about Section 12(1) by reading the extract from the Act and some guidance points we consider when applying this exemption, attached at the end of this letter. You can also find more information by reading the full text of the Act, available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/12.
    [Show full text]
  • Samuel Maharero Portrait
    SAMUEL MAHARERO (1856-1923) e id Fig noc hter against ge Considered the first genocide of the 20th century, forerunner to the Holocaust, between 1904-08 the German army committed acts of genocide against groups of blackHEROIC people RESISTANCE in German TO South THE . NATIONAL HERO West Africa. Samuel Maharero’s by the German army has made him a MASSACRE First they came for the Gustav Schiefer communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Esther Brunstein Anti Nazi Trade Unionist communist; Primo Levi Survivor and Witness (b. 1876) Then they came for the socialists, han Noor k Chronicler of Holocaust (1928- ) Gustav Schiefer, Munich Chairman and I did not speak out—because Anne Frank Courageous Fighter (1919-1987) Esther Brunstein was born in of the German Trade Union I was not a socialist; Lodz, Poland. When the Nazis Association, was arrested, Leon Greenman Diarist (1929-1945) (1914-1944) Primo Levi was born in Turin, beaten and imprisoned in Dachau Then they came for the trade eil Italy. He was sent to Auschwitz invaded in 1939 she was forced to Simone v Witness to a new Born in Frankfurt-am-Maim in Born to an Indian father and concentration camp. Members unionists, and I did not speak in 1944. Managing to survive wear a yellow star identifying her Germany, Anne Frank’s family American mother in Moscow, of trade unions and the Social out—because I was not a trade Holocaust survivor and generation (1910-2008) he later penned the poignant as a Jew. In 1940 she had to live went to Holland to escape Nazi Noor Khan was an outstandingly If this be a Democratic Party were targeted by politician (1927- ) Born in London and taken and moving book in the Lodz ghetto.
    [Show full text]
  • Development & Resistance
    Development & Resistance to the Empire of Capital John Saul Realizing “developmental socialism” which, as recently as the changes seem equally necessary now – for, as Colin Leys and I 1970s, seemed a prospect worth fighting for has come, to many, have much more recently noted, “the dream of a transformative capi- to seem much less so now. True, the goal still has moral force, this talism in Africa remains just that: a dream.” This is true even if, con- encompassing the judgment that people can resolve economic fronted with an ever more ascendant globalized capitalism, the goal and political tensions and potential contradictions collectively and of a developmental socialism, key to the only genuine “develop- democratically rather than having to build centrally on competi- ment” that is really possible for Africa, seems at least as difficult to tion and the entrepreneurial greed of the few as the ultimate cen- realize as it did when Arrighi and I first wrote. tral keys to the welfare of everybody else. One cannot afford to Of course, the African case may be, globally, the most ex- be naïve, of course. Quite apart from questions of divergent class treme example of capitalist failure. Nonetheless, more generally, interests, it is also true that “human nature,” however much mis- the logic of socialism (but also the extreme difficulty of realizing shaped and distorted it may be within a world of ascendant mar- it) seems clear, at least to those who care to look. For Africa, like ket norms, will, even in the best and most propitious of times, be much of the rest of the underdeveloped world, is now “invited” pulled between the claim of individuality (and family) on the one (in fact, largely forced – by the IMF, World Bank, WTO and the hand and that of humane collectivity on the other.
    [Show full text]
  • A Socialist Schism
    A Socialist Schism: British socialists' reaction to the downfall of Milošević by Andrew Michael William Cragg Submitted to Central European University Department of History In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Marsha Siefert Second Reader: Professor Vladimir Petrović CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2017 Copyright notice Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. CEU eTD Collection i Abstract This work charts the contemporary history of the socialist press in Britain, investigating its coverage of world events in the aftermath of the fall of state socialism. In order to do this, two case studies are considered: firstly, the seventy-eight day NATO bombing campaign over the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, and secondly, the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in October of 2000. The British socialist press analysis is focused on the Morning Star, the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world, and the multiple publications affiliated to minor British socialist parties such as the Socialist Workers’ Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee). The thesis outlines a broad history of the British socialist movement and its media, before moving on to consider the case studies in detail.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Cultural & Social Affairs Department Oic
    Cultural & social affairs Department OIC islamophobia Observatory Monthly Bulletin – March 2014 I. Manifestations of Islamophobia: 1. UK: Legoland cancels Muslim family fun day in fear of “guest and employee safety” – Legoland cancelled a family outing organized by a prominent Muslim scholar in fear of guest and staff safety after they received a number of threatening calls, emails and social media posts. The family fun day which was organised by Sheikh Haitham al Haddad of the Muslim Research and Development Foundation (MRDF) for Sunday 9th March and would not be going ahead after a barrage of violent messages were made by far- right Islamophobic extremists. The English Defence League, Casuals United and other far-right groups vowed to hold a protest outside Legoland, many threatening to use violence to prevent the family outing. Legoland issued the following statement: The Legoland Windsor Resort prides itself on welcoming everyone to our wonderful attraction; however due to unfortunate circumstances the private event scheduled for Sunday 9th March will no longer take place. This was an incredibly difficult made after discussions with the organisers and local Thames Valley Police, following the receipt of a number of threatening phone calls, emails and social media posts to the Resort over the last couple of weeks. These alone have led us to conclude that we can no longer guarantee the happy fun family event which was envisaged or the safety of our guests and employees on the day – which is always our number one priority. “Sadly it is our belief that deliberate misinformation fuelled by a small group with a clear agenda was designed expressly to achieve this outcome.
    [Show full text]
  • Consider This…
    Consider this… Research reflections for the 2016-2021 mandate Editors: Caroline Perry and Tony Marken Graphics: Aidan Stennett Maps : Anne Campbell Foreword Northern Ireland Assembly Research and Information Service John Power Head of Research and Information Service (RaISe) Foreword To all returning and new Members In Consider This, the Assembly’s Research and Information Service (RaISe) has set out a wide range of issues arising from the last Assembly mandate which I hope will be of interest to both returning and newly elected Members. It does not intend to cover all outstanding matters or set your agenda. It aims instead at engaging you with RaISe, which is an important resource available to you and your staff to support the work that you do in the Assembly and in your constituency. RaISe employs subject specialists and library professionals to provide you with research and information support across the range of Assembly and constituency activities. RaISe can provide information and analysis to help you and your staff deal with constituency matters; prepare for plenary or media debates; scrutinise the work of ministers and departments; consider legislation as it makes its way through the Assembly, or assist in bringing forward your own legislation in a Private Member’s Bill. Whatever your reason for contacting RaISe, we will provide you with a timely, confidential and evidence-based response. Members are invited to participate in RaISe’s Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series (KESS) where academics highlight their latest research findings important to Northern Ireland and the Programme for Government. Details of KESS are published on the Assembly’s website.
    [Show full text]