The Harrogate Agenda: and so to Oslo
Monday 29 July 2013
Before we go any further, let me give you a date for your diary – Saturday 19 October. This will be our very first workshop – an intensive one-day course on The Harrogate Agenda at the Cairns Hotel in Harrogate, which is now in the advanced stage of planning.
At this workshop, we will be launching our 30-page pamphlet on the Movement, which has been re-written on is in its final draft. The proceedings will then be opened with a background to the Chartist Movement from a senior academic, followed by the update position on The Harrogate Agenda, and the first full showing of our two films – one the "foundation" video and the other the "Norway option".
Places are limited to no more than 35. To book your place, e-mail Niall Warry via this link and he'll process your application.
Meanwhile, we are flying to Oslo today for an intensive week of filming. We intend to interview farmers' representatives, local politicians, an academic, secretary of the "no" campaign, fisheries experts and others.
This will be the final phase of filming in a prolonged exercise which also had us in Bristol, interviewing the Norwegian head of a Codex committee. I have no doubt that this will be a powerful weapon in what we believe will be one of the main battlefields of the coming referendum campaign.
Alongside that, we will be producing a detailed pamphlet on the "Norway Option" which we hope will be a Bruges Group production, published later in the year, to coincide with the annual conference at which I, Booker and Mary Ellen Synon expect to be speaking.
Neither of the films would be possible without the generous sponsorship of Peter Troy, who has donated £30,000 towards production costs for what will be two half-hour, professionally-made documentaries, and a film specially forYouTube.
This week is, for obvious reasons, going to be hectic, and blogging is going to be uncertain. I will have full internet access and will aim to give a resumé of our interviews on each day, along the lines that we did for Mr Knudtsen.
Nor then will there be any peace for the wicked. The following week we plan to be in Portugal, filming the location of the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, plus much else, completing our filming schedule.
The end of the filming will represent another landmark in a year of real progress. Deliberately, there has been little to show up-front, despite some concerns about our strategy.
However, some of you may remember an initiative in September last year by Andreas Whittam Smith founding editor of The Independent, who launched a campaign to save our democracy. For all the hype, where is that now?
The reality with political movements is that they take time, and require sound, detailed planning before they can be expanded and take on a life of their own. I am very pleased with our progress and we are well on track for our first annual conference, which will be in Harrogate in the Spring.
More of that later.
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Richard North 29/07/2013
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