wpjf blog

Free Film Screening in Wrexham
Originally uploaded by Vertigogen.

Come and find out about a campaign to stop arms manufacturers from carrying on their trade in death and destruction.

WMTS, 1 Salop Road, Wrexham.

Anti-racist, anti-fascist march and rally in Wrexham

Wrexham Trades Union Council organised an anti-racist, anti-fascist march and rally in Wrexham on Saturday 12 April as part of the Hope Not Hate fortnight.

This week four BNP community councillors were returned unopposed in the local elections in Wrexham county. With Gordon Brown saying things like ‘British jobs for British workers’, with the Daily Mail and most of the rest of the mainstream media promoting bigotry and hate, and with a draconian and punitive immigration policy which treats victims of torture and other asylum seekers as criminals and locks them up in detention centres under appalling conditions, the BNP is seeing more and more of its views ‘legitimised’ in the mainstream, to the point where it felt able to have an election stall in the middle of Wrexham.  After the event, a group of the marchers went back into town to counter-campaign.  Our ‘End Fascism Now’ banner was held up in front of the stall and hundreds of anti-BNP leaflets were given out to passers-by.

Hopefully, this will not be an isolated event, but will mark the start of an active anti-racist movement in Wrexham.

Cycling to Aldermaston for ‘The Bomb Stops Here’ CND Demo

It’s nearly a couple of years since I cycled from Parliament Square in central London to a demo at Aldermaston.  It turned out to be further than I’d anticipated, mainly because the map I’d very stupidly assumed was 4 inches to a mile was, in fact, 8 inches, so everything was twice as far as it looked.  That, combined with a relentless headwind which made the virtually level route feel like a steep hill all the way, and my cycling mate Karl’s borrowed bike, which proved to have only one usable gear and very poor brakes, made what should have been a pleasant summer’s ride into a waking nightmare.  After about eight hours we had completely exhausted our energy resources and resorted to sleeping in a field in bivi-bags about 6 miles from Aldermaston. This bit was not as bad as it sounds. After two nights under tarps in Parliament Square, with tubes rumbling under us and sirens wailing all night and being attacked by drunk revellers, sleeping in a peaceful field was pure bliss.  Day dawned dewless, clear and calm, but by the time we’d re-packed and cycled the last few miles, the demo was all but done. This time round I was determined not to make the same mistakes.

Read on…