We were pleased to be joined by Katharine Talbot, WDM’s Network Development Officer, who helped us explore WDM’s latest campaigns. We were surprised to hear that whilst we thought we had a small group we get more than the average number of attendees compared to other WDM groups.
Group Meeting – 10th May 2011
We were joined at our meeting on the 10th May by our friends Chris and Elsa who live in Mexico. They provided an interesting insight to life in Tizapan, near Guadalajara. We found that there were many issues in common relating to food production. Hopefully we can continue to share ideas.
AGM – 18th January 2011
We held our AGM on Tuesday 18th January. Last year we organised or took part in a variety of campaigning and social activities:
The election was called in May. During the campaign Guy organised and chaired a hustings which was attended by the three main parties. Unfortunately this was not actually a WDM event but we can claim that the inspiration for it came from our group.
Also in April we organised a showing of the ‘Yes Men Fix the World’. This was shown at the Grapes in Scaling. We were entertained by the film and we got an audience of 15-20 but we did not actually draw in any new potential members.
In the summer we had our summer walk which was led by Jacky around Marske Woods. We attracted a few extra people to this event and we ended up at Tocketts Mill for the usual sandwiches and chips and a WDM quiz on the world cup.
Our sitting Labour MP died suddenly in February of this year. The new Labour party candidate managed to hold the marginal seat despite a national swing towards the Conservatives. We made contact with Tom and said that we would like to continue the dialogue which we had enjoyed with Ashok. He agreed to meet us.
At the same time David Golding from Make Poverty History offered to come down to our area to give a talk on Climate Change. We therefore arranged our meeting with the MP around this. One of our members also gave a short presentation on the new food campaign. Tom listened to the talks and joined in a discussion with us, setting out his views. We asked him to write two letters which he did immediately. At the time of writing we have not had a response.
The day that we had chosen for our meeting at the end of November was unfortunately very snowy. As a result, only people from Saltburn managed to attend. A number of other people had planned to come but were unable to. Despite this we had about 14 people at the meeting, who represented several different groups. This proved to be about the right number for a discussion. We were pleased with the meeting and thought it was a very useful start to our working relationship with the new MP.
Following the meeting a small piece was put in the Darlington and Stockton paper. It was inaccurate and did not present us in a good light as it said that we intended to ‘hassle’ the MP. One of our members wrote a letter clarifying the type of relationship that we hoped to build and also explaining the issues around climate change. This letter was printed in full.
In addition to this meeting individual members have also written letters to various ministers and MP’s as part of WDM campaigns. (Our members live in four different constituencies so we have a number of MP’s who we need to lobby).
