here are memo from the meeting from Joseph
Here is a quick summary of what happened tonite:
Some background:
1. Christine Lee has been called away from London unexpected for the last 2 weeks, so her lobbying work has to take a slower pace even though her staffs has tried to make as much progress as possible.
2. Unfortunately some the original guests cannot make it tonight because of work and other commitments. For Example, Mr Thomas Chan, Chair of Chinese Takeaway Association, and Edmund Yeo, Chair of CIAC who has expressed his support for the campaign cannot be here tonight as they are standing for the Local Election next week and need the time for canvassing.
3. Just fewer than 100 people turn up, although it represents many more community groups then last meeting, there were representatives from: Christine's caterer clients, Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners, SayNotoHO, Immigration Board / LKCN users, Church Representative, Local Activists, The Turkish Group, The Arabic Group, Sri Laken Bankers and many others.
4. Media representation included TVB Europe, Sing Tao and Spectrum Radio.
5. The Panel of Guest were Mr David Ho, solicitor; Dr John May, Management Consultant; Christine Lee, Solicitor; Andrew Dismore MP, Chair of Chinese in Britain Parliamentary Group.
6. The meeting begin with Christine giving update of her work, and then the audience take part in a Q &A session sharing what they have done so far and see how it can all fit in with Christine work in progress.
7. Andrew Dismore arrived shortly after 8pm, after explained briefly of his strategies, the remainder time were spend mainly for audience to raise points of queries with the MP. Meeting finish just before 9.30.
What stage is the campaign now?
The overall strategy is still very much based on lobbying with the Home Office.
Christine has scheduled an informal meeting with Tony Mcnulty on May 17th.
It is important she received as much support as possible by this date so she can lay the greatest pressure on the minister at the meeting.
What is being done to maximise the impact at the meeting:
1. Andrew Dismore has already agreed to be the spokesperson for the campaign in the House of Common.
http://www.dodonline.co.uk/engine.asp?l ... y&id=25638
2. He will submit a PUBLIC PETITION at the House of Common on the change of rules.
Public Petition is a special procedure at the parliament for the public to air their grievances. Although unlikely of getting a full debate at the common, the MP can make a statement on the petition in the Common. This would force the department responsible to investigate the grievances and lay a reply to the petition. Typically we will need to gather at least 1000 signatures for this to be of any significance, although, it is possible to submit the petition with less signatures.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/p07.pdf
http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_ ... itions.cfm
As this is an Official Procedures, the rules for the layout of this petition are very strict and a special petition form needed to be signed. I will post it here as soon as I can a copy.
3. He will also talk to other MPs to gather support and get them to make direct call to Tony Mcnulty to putting pressure on him.
4. As the chairman of the Common Select Committee for Human Right, he will also look at any breach of Human Right Law on the Change of rules.
5. Lord Dholakia, Liberal Democrat has agreed to be the spoke person for the campaign; He has already gathered support from a few other peers and hopes to raise the issue at the House of Lord.
http://www.dodonline.co.uk/engine.asp?l ... y&id=26795
6. General Public must now be encouraged to sign the new petition so we can get this issue raised at the House of Common. Herbalists, Supermarkets, Clansmen associations and other suitable venues should be targeted to place a book of petition to gather signatures not only from the Chinese, but also customers and general public who come to the premises.
7. All the existing Petition should continue and be presented either to Mcnulty or the Prime minister. This form of petition do not required the small stringent layout, so a mixture of any form of petition would be acceptable as long as it is for the issue. It can partly be Christine's original petitions, partly from the print-out of the e-petitions, and partly be other petitions.
8. Continue to write to the MP with a clear aim of getting him to present your case/letter to the HO minister. If a lay person sends a letter to the HO, HO can easily ignore it, but HO has to response to an MP letter.
9. Continue to invite the MP to support the Early Day Motion EDM, but do not let them off the hook once they sign the EDM, make sure he write to HO minister as well and follow it up. From Andrew Dismore's personal experience, there are over 2200 EDM at one time, most of them will be buried, NONE will ever get debated. The key is to get cross-party support by phrasing it in a way acceptable to all so everyone can feel they can subscribe to it.It is more like a special OPIONION POLL for the government to see how the MP feels and has little real power. It can however exert additional pressure to Mcnulty if enough MP subscribe to it. But this kind of pressure is a lot less then having the MP send a letter or even make a call to HO. Many MP use EDM as a kind of cope up, so it appeared to have done something for the affected public, but he know he haven't affected anyone in the Government by this kind of "vote"
10. Start a new campaign to get people to visit the MP's Surgery and get the message across directly.
11. Whenever there is a response from the MP, send it to Christine, so she can collect it as part of the evidence to Mcnulty and also draft a new letter to tackle the MP.
12. The Turkish Community will work closely with Christine's team and try to come up with an e-version of the letters with a choice of hardship example for supporters to produce their tailor made MP letters.
13. The Arab community has provided names and contact of MP who has already agreed to support the campaign. Letter of support or letter of hardship evidence should be send to them so they will continue to support the campaign. The tone of these letters should show our appreciation for their efforts while reminding him/her the dire situation faced by the migrants waiting for an extra year.
Common Concerns
Demonstration YES OR NO
Andrew Dismore urge the supporters to focus on the Public Petition and the MP letters rather then planning street action. The time for the lobby process is very limited; supporters need to focus their action right now. The Anti-Iraq War demo attracted a lot more people than this campaign ever can, and yet it did not stop the war. An alternative way would be to collect thousands of petitions and do a march from Chinatown to Downing Street and present it to Tony Blair. This would probably give you the desire press coverage.
All Communities with similar concern join force and working together YES or NO
Andrew Dismore reply, it is good to have it, but it will take time to organise everyone, and it can be hard from his experience of working with many groups to keep everyone on the same goal. The best way is to keep a close communication among the groups and everyone look at what other groups are doing and try to support each other the best they can. Also he pointed out that the number game can be presented in many ways, rather than having 2000 petitions submitted by him on his own, the Turkish community can take halve of the petitions and submit the petitions with the help of another MP. The end result will have a lot more impact.
Can someone get the support of a MP before he/she become a British Citizen?
The answer is likely to be YES. In many metropolitan area, a typical MP would see about 100 case a week, and as much as half of them are non-British citizens, such as Asylum Seekers, etc. Andrew Dismore feels that many MP look at the MP, if they help you to write a letter and you eventually become a British Citizen, you are more than likely a loyal supporter of that MP for the remainder of his parliamentary life.
Other Comments
A lot of participants today still only focus on themselves to sign the petition and the MP Letter. A much better campaign must be launched to mobilise people not directly affected to support the campaign if this is to receive the same amount of attention from the government as the last campaign by Christine.
The TCM Practitioners told some very hollowing tales, many of them have already uprooted their whole family and all their assets to this country. many of them will have to renew their visa this year., The next 12 month, instead of being able to follow their original plans to buy their own house here and settle down as a full resident, will be an extremely nerve-wrecking time for them worrying about the future not just of their own but also of their children and their family. The practistioners group has a serious lack in English skill, and feel very isolated. They feel there must be many hundreds more practistioners like them in the country, but feel frustrated that they cannot bring them together and take some action together.
One participant raise the point that Andrew Dismore as the Chair of the Parliamentary Chinese in Britain Group, he should be better inform on the change of rules. Dismore explain he cannot know everything at all time and the position as the Chair and on other committee are voluntary. He does rely on the public to bring to him any grievance and concern so he can follow them up on their behalf if necessary. He feels that for the long term, Chinese people must take a more active role in the politics so that they can influence in the decision-making process in the government better. Christine expressed her gratitude to Andrew Dismore for his support not only for this and the last campaign, but also for his support over the long term in the last few years.
This is as much as I can remember. Really exhausted today. haha
This post has been edited by joseph.DJ@558.net on 28 Apr 2006, 1:41
