By Bev Haigh-Jones
European Movement Membership Action Day – 20 January 2024
The European Movement has been in existence since just after World War II, when it was set up to promote friendship, peace and cooperation between European countries. In the early years and, more latterly while the UK was an EU member, friendly communication was their main objective. Since Brexit, however, their focus has gradually evolved and the movement has now become the figurehead for the majority of pro-EU groups in the UK, with more than one hundred becoming branches, or affiliates.
Cornwall for Europe (CfE) affiliated to the European Movement several years ago and 2024 is the third year when CfE have provided representation on the EM National Council, helping to formulate ongoing policy decisions. For too long, pro-EU groups worked almost independently, coming together for occasional marches in London, but otherwise mostly operating in their own geographical areas. As a result, the impact was low and often unrecognised at a national level.
In 2023 Mike Galsworthy was elected as the movement’s new chair and, since then, many prominent figures have joined the organisation (Michael Heseltine, Dominic Grieve, Vince Cable, Caroline Lucas, etc), and its membership has grown to over 21,500. The benefit of the new structure of the European Movement is that it gives us all the opportunity to work together, using joint resources, sharing campaign ideas and operating collaborative working.
If you feel as we do, that the bigger the drive within the UK for rebuilding the relationship with the EU, rejoining Erasmus+, rejoining the single market and, eventually, becoming full members of the EU again the more chance we have of success, then please join the European Movement today, if you are not already a member. The membership cost is very low and it is as easy as scanning the QR code shown above and filling in a few details. Alternatively, you can join via their website; https://www.europeanmovement.co.uk/join-actionday
December Street stall
Truro Opinionometer – 15 December 2023
For our last stall of 2023 we set up in Truro, hoping that the Christmas shoppers headed for the Lemon Quay Christmas market would make for a busy day. It was not as busy as we had hoped, perhaps the cold weather had deterred them, but nevertheless the results on our Opinionometer largely mirrored the results that we are getting at all our stalls.
We had some interesting conversations too, particularly with one young lady who admitted that she knew little of politics, but encouragingly wanted to learn. Once provided with some facts she made her choices on our board and answered in a very considered way. She will now be following politics – and CfE – more closely in the future, we hope.
Taking the same approach with the results as we had at the two previous stalls, we sent a copy of the Opinionometer board, plus an invitation to speak to us about party policy, to Cherilyn Mackrory, the local constituency MP. Sadly, as with the two previous approaches to Derek Thomas and Steve Double, the response was not positive. In fact, in Ms Mackrory’s case we did not even receive an acknowledgement.
Latest stall event
Hopefully, by the time that you’re reading this, we will have held the first stall of 2024 in Falmouth on Saturday 20 January. It’s always more difficult at this time of year, as adverse weather does occasionally result in a postponement, or cancellation, but we do avoid that if we can.
This stall was planned for this date as it coincided with the European Movement’s Membership Action Day, as detailed above. If the weather has been kind and the stall has taken place, we will report on it – and the success or otherwise of the membership drive – next time.
Whether January stall went ahead or not, we will be arranging further stalls in the new year, so do keep an eye out for announcements. Full details will be posted on our Facebook Events page and on our website.
Embrace Erasmus+
“The Young European Movement, in partnership with European Movement UK and the British Youth Council, is calling on the UK Government to restore Britain’s membership of the Erasmus+ Programme, which was ended abruptly in 2020 despite promises of its continuation.”
After the success of the campaign to rejoin Horizon where we have at least become associate members, YEM and EMUK are now campaigning for the UK to rejoin the Erasmus+ scheme. They are running a petition to gain support and you can sign it, as well as obtaining more details of the campaign via this link.
