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Pictures of NO2ID Public Meeting

IMCer | 26.01.2005 00:24 | Cambridge | London

Tonight's (Tuesday, January 25th)long-planned NO2ID cards public meeting was a huge success, with many hundreds of people turning up, wanting to know more about the proposed National I.D. Card scheme and how they can oppose it.

Setting Up

What The Punters Saw...

What The Speakers Saw...

It was most definitely...

...A Full House!

Speakers in Session #1

Speakers in Session #2

Thinks...

...209radio at Work

There was a Question...

...and Answer session after the main speakers

Then there was this mysterious brown object in the toilet..!

There were very few empty seats at Fisher Hall tonight, which may have been due in no small part to the concerted door-to-door flyering campaign around town that took place for several weeks beforehand, and other careful publicising in the local media.

There has also been a regular Saturday Stall, which has collected several hundred signatures on a petition against this wise government proposal.

There were several speakers from all the main Parties, as well as reps from local civil liberties groups (more info on the speakers to follow soon).

209radio not only kindly provided their PA and sound engineering expertise, but, also recorded all the speech, with a view to this being edited and broadcast very soon (Watch this space:

http://www.209radio.co.uk/).

Indymedia Cambridge also filmed the meeting.

After the main speakers, there was an open mike session for the audience to pose questions to the panel.

Given the amount of public interest (and disgust in equal measure) this issue has generated over the last couple of months, it bodes well for any further campaigning against a National Identity Card, of which the government White Paper gets it's third reading in The Commons THIS WEEK (January 29th), before it heads off to The Lords.

So, if you want your voice to be heard, don't delay - do it NOW, because it's quite clearly being railroaded through before the forthcoming General Election!!

On the whole, this meeting was a resounding success, but, it doesn't stop here!

IMCer
Homepage: http://www.no2id.net/

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Trot buster

26.01.2005 08:10

If Swappie front groups aren't your thing get involved with

http://www.defy-id.org.uk/index.htm .

Gary Fisher

Clowns to the left of you, jokers to the right

26.01.2005 17:04

I don't think No2ID is a trot front group, although perhaps the trots would like it to be. Even if the national organisation is, the Cambridge group most definitely isn't; I don't believe it contains any Trotskyists, although there are some Lib Dems, Greens, anarchists and others who wouldn't come under any of those labels.

Defy-Id is indeed a good initiative - but there's nothing wrong with letting the No2ID people get on with their bourgeois-liberal 'writing to MPs' and 'collecting petitions', while others take more direct forms of action. That, after all, is what diversity of tactics is all about.

Voluntary Slave

no, fight each other!

27.01.2005 17:40

No don't you see? The main aim of Defy-ID must be to attack No2ID at every opportunity!

That way you'll all be busy and Tony can get his plan through.. er I mean the Trots will be beaten and anarchist revolution will triumph!

;-)

Defy Tedium!

29.01.2005 01:54

As someone who has worked within this Cambridge arm of the NO2ID campaign, I should now like to dispell all these malicious rumours about it being some kind of SWP front group.

IT IS NOT!

What it ACTUALLY is, is a coaltion of various groupings of people from Lib Dem and Labour voters, to more Anarchist/Libertarian groups - yep, hard to belive I know, but we all do get along! And the reason why is because, quite early on, we agreed to keep individual political agendas out of the mix and concentrate saying no to National I.D. Cards.

And you know what, it works well doing things that way.

It's called adhering to the old adage of agreeing to disagree, and not being at each others' throats all the time because of some ideological disagreements.

It's just a shame that doesn't happen more often in the world really, isn't it?

Now, can we all get on with the job of killing this Bill before we all wake up one morning and find out we now live in "The Village" and have numbers instead of names.

I don't know about you, but, I find the idea of living in that kind of Totalitarian State quite unappealing. Things ain't too rosy now, but, at least we still have some freedom of movement.

Not Hot To Trot

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