Events This Weekend

A number of left events in England this weekend - First, the Demonstration planned at RAF Brize Norton. I reproduce the press release below from our Green MEP, Caroline Lucas' office.

GREEN EURO-MP DEMANDS TROOPS HOME FROM IRAQ

LUCAS ADDRESSES THOUSANDS AT PROTEST RALLY OUTSIDE RAF BASE

Event: Green MEP addresses national ‘Stop the War’ rally at RAF base
Place: Recreation ground, off Alvescot Road, Carterton, Oxfordshire
Time: Saturday, December 2nd, 2.15pm.


GREEN Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas will add to the pressure on the
Government over Iraq on Saturday when she will demand it brings British
troops home at a peace rally outside RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

“Families are losing their sons and daughters, children are being orphaned,
and with every month that passes Iraq becomes a more and more dangerous
place to be,” she will say during the national demonstration, which has been
organized by Stop the War and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

“It’s time to wake up to the fact that the UK occupation is part of the
problem – not the solution – and bring the troops home safely now in time to spend Christmas with their families here in the UK.”

RAF Brize Norton is the UK’s largest military base, and transport hub for
all British troops going in and out of Iraq. It has been used to forcibly
expel asylum-seekers back to Iraq.

The demonstration, which is expected to attract thousands of peace
protestors from across the country, will hear calls for an end to British
involvement in conflict across the region. RAF Brize Norton should be used
to co-ordinate bringing the troops home.

Participants will lay flowers outside the RAF base as a mark of respect for
all who have died, of any nationality, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dr Lucas, who is a member of CND’s national decision-making council as well as co-founder and co-president of the European Parliament’s cross-party Peace Initiatives Intergroup, will say: “Our message today is very simple:
Tony Blair, bring the troops back home from Iraq now – men and women are
dying and all the while your disastrous policy is making conditions in Iraq
worse, not better.”

The rally will assemble at Caterton at noon before marching past the base,
leaving at 1pm. The Green Euro-MP for South-East England will address the
rally at about 2.15pm, shortly after the march passes RAF Brize Norton.
Other speakers include Jeremy Corbyn MP, CND Chair Kate Hudson, Stop the War’s Lindsey German and Andrew Murray and a speaker (tbc) from the British Muslim Initiative.

The rally has been called by CND and Stop the War. For more see: here

Secondly , the big Latin American Solidarity event in London on Saturday -

Linked here

Guest speakers include:
•WAYNE SMITH: Former Head of US Interests Section, Havana

•DOLLAN CANNELL: Director fo the documentary: 638 Ways to Kill Castro, C4

•AIDA AVELLA: Former Colombian Congresswoman, Patriotic Union

•CESAR NAVARRO: Head of the MAS group in the Bolivarian parliament

•HAROLD PINTER: Nobel Prize Winner, author, playwright, political activist

•TARIQ ALI: Broadcaster, author, (Pirates of the Caribbean and Axis of Hope), Telesur advisory board

•BARRY CAMFIELD: Assist.Gen.Sec.T&G

•VICTORIA BRITAIN: Journalist and playwright

•COLIN BURGON MP: Chair, Labout Friends of Venezuela

•JOHN CRABTREE: Research Associate, Oxford University Centre for Latin American Studies

•FRANCIS O'GRADY: Deputy General Secretary, TUC

•HUGH O'SHAUGHNESSY: Journalist and author

•JEREMY CORBYN MP: Vice-chair, All Party Latin American Group

•KEITH SONNET: Deputy General Secretary UNISON

•RUTH WINTERS: President, FBU


Thirdly Socialist Resistance (the newspaper involving the ISG claimants to British representation of the "Fourth International" and others) is organising a conference on Ecology and Socialism with the guest speaker being Michael Lowy, joint writer of the Ecosocialist Manifesto with Joel Kovel.

2.12.2006 London: 'Ecosocialism or Barbarism'
Speaker Michael Lowy
Day long conference on climate change hosted by Socialist Resistance
ULU, Malet St, 10.30am till 6pm
£10 waged, £4 unwaged