Outgoing Oxford WDM chair Sam Partington gave the following Chair’s Report at our AGM last week.
Over the past year, we’ve had stalls at events including Cowley Road Carnival, Elder Stubbs, the Green Fair and the One World Fair. We even got to Banbury again! And we’ve protested on Cornmarket about the role of Barclays in Food Speculation.
Apart from stalls and stunts, what else have we been up to? Well…
Our year began with a fascinating talk by Peter Dwyer, professor of “radical economics” at Ruskin College. Covering the failures of the free-market model, alternatives to the goal of economic growth, the role of China and the ideologies of economics degrees, this was a wide-ranging discussion with a very interesting guest.
We were fortunate enough to have another speaker in July last year – a guest speaker in two senses, as she was visiting Martin & Ruth and also a guest at our meeting. Helen Magombo spoke about aid and development from a Malawian perspective.
The Carbon Capital campaign was launched, with a very popular “web of power” infographic and accompanying booklet.Deborah Doane stepped down as chair of national WDM, and her successor Nick Dearden came to speak to us. We discussed the idea of “The Commons” and the future of WDM in an inspiring evening at the Friends meetings House in November.
We continued campaigning about Food Speculation, and won a victory in the form of new EU legislation and another in Barclays’ withdrawal from speculative trading on food. Continuing the food theme, we held a well-attended film-showing on the theme of Food Sovereignty in January.
And the new Agribusiness campaign was launched! We marked this campaign with a stall at the Oxford Folk Festival – this was a first for us as we’d never attended before. It was also novel in that we moved beyond simply getting people to sign postcards, having a game for passers-by and lots of cake!
I’d like to say thank you to everyone who’s been involved in any of the many things we’ve been up to this year. Thank you for your ideas, your enthusiasm, your time and your sheer hard work! On the horizon is WDM’s new campaign protesting the role of British banks in financing dirty coal projects, so I look forward to working with you on that!
And finally, you’re probably wondering how I have such a good memory for what we’ve done this last year. By way of revealing my secret, I’d like to say an extra thank you to Andrew for Oxspur and to Kate for her excellent blogging on our website. Thank you!
