Tag: Cathedral

Kate Allen of #Amnesty International at the Sixth Form Conference in #Salisbury


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Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International with David Davis MP, Peter Oborne the journalist, and Ed Probert of the Cathedral posing for a photo during the sixth form conference which took place at the Cathedral on 15 June.

Attendance was good with several hundred 6th formers from the local schools who listened to the speakers and then asked questions.

Kate also took part in another event in the Playhouse in which she was joined by Prof Guy Standing, author of The Precariat and A Precariat Charter and Ben Rawlence writer and researcher and author of Radio Congo.  Ben used to be a country representative with Human Rights Watch.

The event was called Magna Carta Now and was looking at the relevance of the Magna Carta in today’s world especially as it was the 800th anniversary of its sealing.  Edward Fox the actor read out sections of the charter and the panel debated their significance and relevance today.  Local member, Peter Curbishley was in the chair.  Around 140 people attended.

Playhouse event. L to R: Group members Fiona, Karen, Lesley, Kate Allen, Peter Curbishley, Ben Rawlence and Prof Guy Standing. Photo: Paul Donovan
Playhouse event.
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Magna Carta Now – panel discusssion with readings by Edward Fox OBE


A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH READINGS BY EDWARD FOX, OBE

MAIN HOUSE

Monday 15 June at 2pm

MAGNA CARTA

Magna Carta’s importance meant that it was traditionally read out at the opening sessions of Parliament and in English cathedrals. This panel discussion about its relevance today will include Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK, Professor Guy Standing, author of The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class and Ben Rawlence, formerly of Human Rights Watch. Excerpts from the charter will be read by one of our most celebrated actors, Edward Fox OBE.

Chaired by Peter Curbishley.

Presented in partnership with the Playhouse and Amnesty International.  Tickets from Salisbury Playhouse http://www.salisburyplayhouse.com or 01722 320333

 
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Display goes up today in the Cathedral


We today erected the display in the cloister at Salisbury Cathedral to celebrate the signing of Magna Carta and to illustrate the #StopTorture campaign.

Display in the cloister

It will remain in place for many weeks.  There is also a panel on the Human Rights Act.

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February minutes


The February minutes are below thanks to Karen.  A full agenda as you see with a lot going on.

February minutes

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#MagnaCarta


UPDATE:  Where to obtain tickets for 12 March now at the end of that item.

Our group is planning a number of events to mark the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta.  We have been working with the Cathedral in Salisbury which has one of the surviving copies of the document.  Our focus will be on its relevance to the present day and in particular, the Human Rights Act and its place in modern politics.

We have several projects planned and we will update these pages as time goes on.  But for the moment, this is a brief introduction to what we have planned:

  • A standing display in the cloisters of the Cathedral outside the Chapter House where the Magna Carta is kept.  This will
    Torture wheel
    Torture wheel

    feature images to illustrate the #StopTorture campaign and will have the torture wheel, based on the one used by the Philippine police.  In case you have not come across this, it is a wheel on which the various methods to torture their victims are displayed.  They then spin the wheel to decide on which one to use.  This display will be set up in March and will run for at least a month.  To read more about the torture wheel follow this link.

  • On 12th March at 7pm we will be delighted to welcome Dominic Grieve QC MP who will speak on the relevance of the Human Rights Act today.  In June 1999 he was appointed Conservative spokesman for Scotland and in September 2001 the Conservative spokesman for criminal justice and community cohesion as part of the Shadow Home Affairs team.  From 2003 to 2009 he was Shadow Attorney General.
    Dominic Grieve QC MP
    Dominic Grieve QC MP

    Under the coalition Government Dominic Grieve became a Privy Counsellor and appointed the Attorney General for England and Wales and the Advocate General for Northern Ireland and he held that post until July 2014.

    He has spoken often on human rights matters arguing that despite the Conservative leadership’s recent announcement of fundamental change to both the HRA and the national relationship with the ECHR, there is much that remains undebated and misunderstood about both. 

    He will try therefore tonight try to lay out reasons why – while not free of imperfections – the ECHR and its direct application in our law through the HRA is of enormous benefit to our country and our collective wellbeing.  He is determined that this argument can and must be made with some passion because he believes that it goes to the heart of our identity as a nation and of our national interest.

    It will be an interesting talk and will follow the annual Choral Evensong in aid of Amnesty in the Cathedral.  Tickets: apply to magnacartaevents@salcath.co.uk.

    In the summer on 15 June, we are planning, with the Playhouse, an event where an actor will read selected passages from the Charter and then a panel of guests to discuss their significance.  The guests are likely to be Kate Allen, the Director of Amnesty UK, Prof Guy Standing author of The Precariat and writer and researcher, Ben Rawlence.  This will be in the afternoon so it’s a date for the diary at present.  Details will be both here and at http://www.salisburyplayhouse.com.

    On the morning of the 15th, there will be a 6th form conference involving local schools and Kate Allen has been invited to that.

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Monthly meeting


UPDATE

The last meeting was on Thursday, 8th January.  An agenda is attached.  The minutes of the December meeting are also attached.  Note that you can see all recent minutes by going to the ‘About Us’ tab on the front page.

We discussed:

  • the results of the carol singing which had been very successful
  • there was the December Death Penalty report
  • we discussed North Korea and the increasing interest in that country, and in particular the human rights situation there, was noted
  • the website numbers were given and that we now have 60 followers
  • there was an update on the Magna Carta events and there is to be a meeting soon with the Cathedral to start doing more detailed planning
  • the complete lack of interest by any of the sixth forms in the area to submit an essay was noted.  This was extremely disappointing in view of the efforts made with leaflets and contacting the schools ahead of time to promote it.
  • details on the Cathedral service are awaited

Minutes will be posted here as soon as they are available.

Agenda January 8th

December minutes

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Stop Torture campaign


The local group will be manning a stand on 15 November to highlight the #stoptorture campaign which was launched by Amnesty in May this year.  The practice is alive and well throughout the world and Amnesty has recently ramped up its campaigning to stamp out the practice with the Stop Torture campaign.

'Waiting for the guards'
‘Waiting for the guards’

Ahead of its launch, Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General said governments around the world are “two-faced on torture” – prohibiting it in law, but facilitating it in practice”.

He added: “Torture is not just alive and well – it is flourishing in many parts of the world.  As more governments seek to justify torture in the name of national security, the steady progress made in this field over the last thirty years is being eroded.”

Stop torture will be a key part of the Amnesty display as part of the Magna Carta events at the Cathedral next year.

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Ursula Milner-White


On Monday 21 April 2014, Easter Monday, there was a Service of Thanksgiving at Salisbury Cathedral for the life of Ursula Milner-White who died on 12 February.  Ursula was one of the longest serving members of the local group and became a member soon after the group was founded.  She rarely missed a meeting or a campaign action 3925 and she will be sadly missed.

It is always surprising that when someone dies, you often learn more about them than when they were alive.  We discovered that Ursula had lived in India and for a long period in New Zealand where she had helped bring up two girls after their mother died.  She was a war time evacuee and spent the war years in Canada where she stayed and got her degree from McGill University.  She had a deep interest in natural life and gardens and was a keen walker.  She loved opera and music and used to attend meetings of the Recorded Music Society in Salisbury.  She was a member of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust.

She was a committed Christian and her faith led her to long time involvement in Amnesty and prisoners of conscience.

One of our longest serving members, Michael Stokely, has written:

The monthly meeting of the local group — held on the second Thursday of the month — will no longer be quite the same without Ursula Milner-White.  Whatever the weather, and if she wasn’t on her travels, she would be present.  Bending forward, hand raised, ‘Mr Chairman …’ and some sharp, pertinent point would be made.  We shall miss her enormously.

Ursula wrote a short piece for the October newsletter last year on why she joined Amnesty and this is included here:

“I had been rather vaguely interested [in Amnesty] and then heard the story of a particular man Raoul Wallenberg.  He was a Swedish diplomat who was sent to the Nazi run government of Hungary during the war with the brief to do what he could to help the Jews there.  He did so with vigour and considerable success, so that he was thought to have saved twenty thousand lives.  Then the Russians captured Budapest and sent for him.  He went off cheerfully, saying that he wasn’t sure whether the Russians were inviting him as a guest or a prisoner, but he was never seen in freedom again.

Some people who were later released from Russian prisons witnessed seeing him there and after two years the Russians reported he had died of a heart attack which of course may or may not have been true.

His family in Sweden thought he’d been taken for his possible exchange value and were bitter about the Swedish government which apparently released Russian prisoners in Sweden without making sure that Wallenberg would be freed.  Perhaps they believed that he was already dead?

I was greatly distressed and impressed by this story.  I thought that if people had – disastrously – not protested soon enough, or hard enough, about Wallenberg, the least I could do was to try and help other people unjustly imprisoned.

So I joined Amnesty.

It is open to others to make a contribution to this page.

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