Photos from our January 2013 meeting on International Development

 

Our speaker, Brian Davies (left), with WFS Chair, Steve Birkett

 

 

Speaker meeting on International Development: Thursday 24 January 2013

Happy New Year! Our next Warwickshire Fabians speaker meeting is as follows:

EVENT: Brian Davies speaking on “Raising awareness of international development challenges”
DATE: Thursday 24 January 2013
TIME: 7:30 pm (to 9 pm)
PLACE: 28 Regent Place, Rugby, CV21 2PN

Brian Davies is a former Head of Education at CAFOD, the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development, and a member of the congregation at the Sacred Heart Church in Bilton, Rugby. He is an engaging speaker with an extensive knowledge of his subject.

This is our first event on international development issues, and it promises to be a very interesting evening. All are welcome at our meetings. I hope to see you there!

Best wishes

Ben

Ben Ferrett
Secretary, Warwickshire Fabian Society

Photo from our November 2012 meeting with Lord Philip Hunt

 

L to R: Steve Birkett (Chair), David Morgan, Philip Hunt, Ben Ferrett (Secretary)

Lord Philip Hunt to speak on NHS: Thursday 22 November

Our next Warwickshire Fabians speaker meeting is as follows:

EVENT: Lord Philip Hunt speaking on “The NHS – The Challenge for Labour”
DATE: Thursday 22 November 2012
TIME: 7:30 pm (to 9 pm)
PLACE: Friends’ Meeting House, 28 Regent Place, Rugby, CV21 2PN

Philip Hunt entered the House of Lords in 1997 and held a variety of Ministerial posts under the last Labour government. He is currently Labour's Deputy Leader in the Lords, and spokesperson for Health, Lords Reform and the Cabinet Office. His professional background is in health services management. He was the first Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, which is the representative body for organisations that commission and provide NHS services.

All are welcome at our meetings. I hope to see you there!

Finally, after our last meeting, which provoked a great deal of comradely discussion and debate, Kevin Hickson wrote a guest post for our blog: http://warwickshirefabians.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/guest-post-by-kevin-hickson-following.html. It is well worth reading. Please do feel free to leave your views as a comment at the bottom of the page!

Best wishes

Ben

Ben Ferrett
Secretary, Warwickshire Fabian Society

Guest post by Kevin Hickson following his speaker meeting. Please add your comments!

I very much enjoyed my visit to Rugby to talk to your local Fabian Society.  You have an excellent group and I found the discussion stimulating.  The fact that there were so many people there who were willing to raise issues and ask questions shows, I believe, the desire to talk seriously about ideas in the Labour Party and the left more broadly.  When I spoke recently to a local Labour Party meeting those present said that it was the first meeting they had attended for some time which discussed ideas.  The Labour Party had been hollowed out by the end of its time in power and needs to draw inspiration from its rich socialist tradition.

I write this piece, firstly, to thank you for turning out to listen to me.  I hope it was as interesting for you as it was for me.  But, secondly, I would like to continue the discussion if possible.

In the ‘In Praise of Social Democracy’ article published in The Political Quarterly earlier this year, which I wrote with Roy Hattersley, and the ‘Socialism Now’ essay in the Fabian Review we made several arguments of which the principal ones are as follows:

• That the best, if not the only way, to win the next General Election is for the Labour Party to be overtly ideological.  There are those, still, who argue that a ‘scientific’ approach is all that is required and still stick to the electoral strategy which the Labour Party had in the mid-1990s of targeting voters and focussing exclusively on focus groups and opinion polls.  The ‘median voter’ determines election outcomes and parties must seek to capture an unchanging centre ground.  They fail to realise that the Labour Party lost 5 million votes between 1997 and 2010 and that a sizeable proportion of these voters abstained in the belief that the Labour Party was no longer their party.  If Labour is to win again it needs a new electoral strategy, one which is based on a clear sense of ideology, capable of inspiring people to vote for it.  It has to offer people a positive reason to vote for it and not just against the Coalition.

• Secondly, that this ideology must be recognisably socialist (or social democratic if you prefer), including a commitment to equality and social justice.  Since then Ed Miliband has advocated the idea of ‘One Nation’.  Although originating outside the socialist tradition, it does effectively help to articulate the case for equality and social justice in a context in which social class no longer has the relevance it once had.  Socialism not only provides the way towards the just society but also to economic stability and efficiency.  It is the rise of inequality and the promise of vast bonuses which so destabilised the economy.

• Finally, that socialism cannot be achieved without a strong central state and that alternatives to orthodox democratic socialism such as ‘Blue Labour’ are distractions because they fail to recognise that only the central state can do certain things fairly or, indeed, at all.  The crucial role of the state is something which all Fabians recognise!

I hope that you will agree that these socialist ideas are rational, right and reasonable.

Remaking the Case for Socialism: Thursday 25 October 2012

Our next Warwickshire Fabians speaker meeting is as follows:

EVENT: Dr Kevin Hickson speaking on “Remaking the Case for Socialism”
DATE: Thursday 25 October 2012
TIME: 7:30 pm (to 9 pm)
PLACE: Friends’ Meeting House, 28 Regent Place, Rugby, CV21 2PN

Dr Kevin Hickson is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Liverpool. He specialises in British politics, especially political economy and political ideology. He wrote the Political Quarterly essay “In Praise of Social Demoracy” with Roy Hattersley and the essay “Socialism Now” in the Fabian Review (see http://www.fabians.org.uk/socialism-now/). He is now working on a book on the future of socialism in Britain, again with Roy Hattersley.

All are welcome at our meetings. I hope to see you there!

Best wishes

Ben

Ben Ferrett
Secretary, Warwickshire Fabian Society

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Photos from our AGM with James Plaskitt, Labour's candidate for Warwickshire Police Commissioner