Announcement by Howard Farmer – Chair of Cornwall for Europe
Election of the new Chair of the European Movement.
As many of you know, Lord Andrew Adonis resigned a little while ago from the post of Chair of the European Movement. During his tenure in the post, he achieved major goals in developing the structure of the organisation, allowing it to grow, and to pass decision making from a small committee to a large Council. The Organisation he inherited was a small, establishment pressure group that had some scattered, regional groups in the UK, and these generally remained independent of the “For Europe“ network that sprang up to fight Brexit. Andrew sold the idea of a mass membership organisation to us at ” Cornwall for Europe”, and many similar groups were encouraged to either affiliate, or become full branches of EM. This boost in membership has laid the groundwork for a mass membership organisation that can take us on our journey to eventually return to the EU.
We now have the opportunity to elect a new Chair. There are three candidates: Tom Brake, a former Lib Dem MP and spokesman on Brexit in 2019; Patience Wheatcroft, former Telegraph editor and crossbench member of HoL, who has been a strong critic of Brexit, and the third candidate, Dr Mike Galsworthy, who is well known to a great many of us.
Mike set up Scientists for Europe in 2015 and has been tirelessly prominent in every campaign since then. His insight, enthusiasm, and wonderful ability to communicate has been clear to us all. He has worked behind the scenes too – he supported many 4EU groups on social media, with hands on help and funding. More recently he has been responsible for the launch of the Bylines groups.
Both Bev Haigh-Jones and I are members of the European Movement National Council and were able to support Mike with his nomination and during this process he secured the highest number of nominations of all three candidates. Last night, with very popular support, the Executive of Cornwall for Europe decided to formally endorse his nomination on behalf of the Group, and encourage all our members to vote for him.
As one committee member said, “I am happy to endorse Mike, it’s simple for me; do we want EM to be a campaigning organisation, or remain an establishment pressure group.”
