This was outside the Guildhall on Thursday 26 June. It’s not the first time we’ve worked with Cambridge Amnesty.
I was a teen in the 1970s when the allegations of army torture in Northern Ireland began to come in. How quickly people moved from indignant denial to ready justification of its use! The justifications are all the readier now.
The group did a tour of banks in St Andrew’s Street on 15 June 2014.
It was a respectful imitation of Cambridge’s Blue Guides, stopping not outside the colleges and historic labs but the branches of NatWest, HSBC, Barclays and Lloyds. The aim was to draw attention to the role these banks play in financing harmful coal mines. More on that story here.
Aidan, Clare, Sue, Nicola, Bernard, Angela and some others took part, and pumped out leaflets and action cards. And what we all said afterwards was, Let’s do it again!
Watch this space…
We fielded a stall at Strawberry Fair! Thanks Bernard Rudd for loan of gazebo, and Beth and Colin for loan of picnic table. The rounds were to distribute leaflets in connection with WDM’s Carbon Capital campaign. We gathered signatures on 78 postcards calling on Lloyds Bank to pull out of bankrolling coal.
Next thing is to take that same message to the banks on the streets.
The new rules will limit the number of food contracts that banks and other financial institutions can hold, and will make for greater transparency in financial trading. So there’ll be less to drive food prices up. This goes some way towards what WDM’s been campaigning for. The news broke on 14 January.
And we’re up for that further campaigning, Nick. Those of us who’ve written to Vicky Ford MEP, or visited her in her Hardwick office, won’t be calling it a day just yet.
It’ll be on Sunday 2 February, 12:30 for 13:00.
If you’re not yet much involved in the work of the World Development Movement, this can be your chance to meet Cambridge members and and find out about the Movement’s hard-hitting campaigns on food justice and the bankrolling of climate change.
Or it might just be a time to meet old friends for food and an exchange of news. Kids welcome — & we hope to have a kid-friendly video or two in case food justice is not yet their scene.
Email Aidan Baker for details of the venue!
This was at the Cambridge WDM meeting of 16 October 2013. Members (from left) Angela Macquiban, Clare Baker, Sue Woodsford, Bernard Shaw and Angela Kalinzi Ditchfield joined Jubilee Debt Campaign‘s protest against the continuing transfer of money from poor countries to rich.
Here comes a letter to Vicky Ford on food speculation, licked into shape by Sheila, and delivered by Clare on behalf of the entire group.
Clare took it in person to the Tories’ Hardwick office on Monday, and staff promised to email it on to Vicky Ford in Brussels. Not quite a photo-opportunity, but one way to be noticed.
30 August 2013
Dear Vicky Ford
You will remember we have had some correspondence since a group of us met you in May last year to discuss the review of the Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). Experience since that meeting has underlined how this legislation provides a vital opportunity to protect the lives of millions of poor consumers worldwide.
There is a growing consensus, with evidence from a wide range of sources, that excessive financial speculation is itself exacerbating food price volatility and amplifying the impact of poor harvests, higher fuel and fertilizer costs, competition from bio-fuels and other pressures. While financial players profit, the poor face hunger and long-term damage from malnutrition, especially children. The situation in countries such as in sub-Saharan Africa dependent on food imports gets increasingly precarious.
More disturbingly, risky products & strategies that are emerging in the complex commodity derivative markets (SOMO “Challenges for Regulators – Financial Players in the Food Commodity Derivatives Markets“(Nov 2012) http://somo.nl/news-en/somo-news/challenges-for-regulators ) also reinforce the case for pro-active intervention by regulators, co-ordinated across Europe. The report highlighted the increasing role of “especially opaque financial players in commodity markets such as hedge funds and commodity exchange traded funds (ETFs)”.
In October 2012, European parliamentarians showed their commitment to tackling food speculation by ensuring position limits were mandatory rather than voluntary, and including some measures to make limits more difficult to circumvent. However, there are still more dangerous loopholes in the MiFID text that risk rendering the legislation ineffective.
As this legislation enters the trialogue phase, please will you act to ensure that these loopholes are eradicated and the need for strong mandatory position limits is reaffirmed.
Please will you write to the rapporteur for the legislation, Markus Ferber, and Kay Swinburne as the lead MEP on MiFID for your group, to ask them to support all the points included in the enclosed briefing in the final compromise text
Thankyou for the interest you have already shown in our concerns about this important issue.
Yours sincerely,
pp. Sheila Brookes
On behalf of Cambridge World Development Movement
