If you did not know whether the government proposing this measure was a benign liberal democracy or a malign totalitarian dictatorship, then would you want this measure to be implemented?

All is well when cuddly-wuddly New New Labour proposes these measures, and people nod and hum and let it slide. If it was the Burmese military regime, I wouldn’t be so bloody sanguine about it, would you?¹ The question to ask is not whether your government is benign or malign, but whether this the sort of information that you think the government should have in the first place.

1. Perhaps you would.

Not only has The Sun removed the skipper on the left, they’ve also removed the boat’s engine. Prince William, drifting around the Caribbean during a hurricane. Extra laughs:

Prince William’s campaign to try on every uniform Britain has to offer is a wow - next week it’s baker, then butcher, then cub scout, before a week as a traffic warden in Slough, then a few days as a Beefeater before ending the summer as a lap dancer.

HT: The Daily (Maybe)

This is very moving - that plane looks positively distraught as it turns away from our accusing eyes - but it’s not entirely clear what they’re sorry for. Are they merely sorry for the inconvenience to passengers, a casual expression of solidarity which extends as far as a 260×140 pixel graphic on their website? Or are they more deeply sorry - perhaps filled with sorrow at being so utterly incompetent - an existential cry for forgiveness from the gods of aviation?

Willie Walsh, BA’s Chief Executive (but not for long *cough*), had this to say:

We are sorry for the disruption and inconvenience caused to customers whose flights have been cancelled or whose bags have been delayed.

Question answered. Slap a graphic on the website and pray those 400 “volunteers” show up to sort the 15,000 bags we’ve got in “temporary storage”. The gods of aviation can suck my - I’m sorry, is this microphone still on?

What burns me up is that the chaos at T5 may jeopardise the chocolate fountain that I was promised by Executive Club Manager Sarah Keyes in a personal email to me. Let me add that this was only the latest in the long string of personal emails that we have exchanged, and leave it there. Never let it be said that I allow my personal feelings to affect my harsh but fair judgment on the affairs of man.

Too much detail.

Anyway, religion was on my mind last week as I joined the discussion on euthanasia at Cranmer and OurKingdom - and thanks to everybody who contributed to those discussions, particularly David at Britology Watch. As I said in my original post, this is one of the few areas where the religious insist that their views on life be taken as the standard for everybody else, but to their credit most of the commenters on those other threads presented credible non-religious cases against legalising euthanasia.

Paying a visit to Britology Watch, I revisited the “controversial” statements by Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali following Archbishop Rowan Williams’ prolonged bout of stupidity “controversial” statements. Have you noticed that comments by the clergy only get labelled as controversial when they try to say something about politics? That’s probably because of the separation of church and state that we have - no, wait, that’s the US I’m thinking of.

In an interview with Bishop Nazir-Ali, I was greatly amused by these lines:

The real danger to Britain today is the spiritual and moral vacuum that has occurred for the last 40 or 50 years. When you have such a vacuum something will fill it.

That “moral vacuum” metaphor should be put out of its misery as soon as possible, since it manages to be simultaneously banal and meaningless.

Is morality something that can be pumped out of society as if we lived in a bell jar? Is there an optimal level of morality that we should be striving for? If it’s possible to have too little morality, is it possible to have too much morality? What people like Nazir-Ali mean when they say this is that they don’t like the morality that they see around them.

Unfortunately this is a common meme amongst Christians and Christian nostalgia buffs who long for a time before the 1960s, when apparently we didn’t live in a spiritual and moral vacuum. It’s strange that anybody thinks that prior to the 1960s we lived in a more “moral” time, back when we thought crushing the natives underfoot, firebombing German cities and winning at football were morally justified. Quoth Nazir-Ali:

Do the British people really want to lose that rooting in the Christian faith that has given them everything they cherish - art, literature, architecture, institutions, the monarchy, their value system, their laws?

The article then points out - with no apparent irony - that he is “a Pakistani-born immigrant who has suffered racist abuse - he was called a “Paki papist” by Anglican clergy.” So apparently I should be taking my moral cues from bigots - good to know. While these thoughts were percolating through my brain, clogging it up like coffee grounds, the Rev Dr Peter Mullen weighed in with his thoughts. Guess what? He feels similarly to Nazir-Ali:

We might have expected the Church to resist the decay, but instead it has connived with the destructive sexual and social revolution begun in the 1960s. Back then, I voted for homosexuality to be decriminalised. But this meant “between consenting adults in private” - where “between” meant two, “adults” meant men over 21 and “private” meant behind locked doors. I did not foresee the obscene and coercive “Gay Pride” pantomimes that now disfigure our high streets.

The Reverend should probably have thought more carefully about what he was voting for; in any case, the 1967 Bill decriminalised homosexual acts, not homosexuality. Criminalising homosexuality (i.e. the state of being homosexual) takes us into the land of crimethink, which isn’t somewhere I particularly want to go. The Reverend isn’t upset by homosexual acts (as long as they’re kept behind locked doors, of course) but by the sight of buttless chaps; and I’m not certain that buttless chaps are a moral issue.

I don’t particularly like Gay Pride marches (although I do like pantomimes) but you know how I deal with that problem? I DON’T GO NEAR THEM. It’s a controversial approach, but I’ll stick to it.

Mullen’s opinion piece is entitled “Without Christianity, our society is doomed”, but neither he or Nazir-Ali seem to have noticed the slight problem with their thesis. When Mullen says “We might have expected the Church to resist the decay” - well, wasn’t that his job? When Nazir-Ali laments the spiritual vacuum that’s magically appeared, does he stop to ask which institution usually addresses spiritual issues? It was their job, and they failed to do it, failed so badly that CofE attendance has fallen precipitously even while other denominations have risen.

Nazir-Ali says

If people are not given a fresh way of understanding what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a Christian-based society then something else may well take the place of all that we’re used to and that could be Islam.”

Well, it could be. It could also be Christianity, which has approximately 26 times more adherents than Islam, a comprehensive network of churches and other institutions across the country and a privileged position in the establishment. I would rather that the UK celebrated its religious heritage, and I would rather that Christianity continued to inform our social and political development. However if the pair of them - and all the others that follow their view - don’t want to live in a “spiritual vacuum” or an “Islamic theocracy”, then I humbly suggest that you fill it with something more substantial than a love letter to pre-1960s Britain, the era that brought us two worlds wars, institutionalised racism and sexism, and spam fritters.

Bah. I wanted to be the Lord of the Dance, but it turns out I’m the Scrooge of Easter.

What’s the problem with all this? For people like ourselves, interested in researching population trends here at Demography Matters and elsewhere, this sort of rhetoric creates yet another set of myths that have to be debunked. It is interesting to trace out some of the likely population futures of different regions, countries and continents, as is determining the different factors operating in different communities within a given territory. Turning a field that could be filled by an ongoing stream of productive research into an endless cycle of disproved popular mythologies would be boring. More to the point, the constant repetition of myths like the ones enunciated by Romney — that the European continent is declining, that Europe is threatened by foreigners — poisons public discourse by legitimating ever more radical statements. If Europeans at large are concerned about the extent to which communities of recent immigrant origin are or are not acculturating to the norms of a wider society and want to influence public policy accordingly, how likely will the debate be calm and rational if many the people who participate seriously believe things scarcely more sophisticated than “OMG the Muslims are going to P3WN Europe”?

My thoughts exactly. Imagine if, in the real world, every discussion you tried to have was dominated by somebody who did nothing but shout in your face about how it was all the Muslims (or Jews, or Hispanics, or blacks - take your pick). It would be utterly unbearable, and people would eventually stop talking about those issues because they couldn’t face the prospect of being harangued by a incoherent belter. That’s Steyn, right there, riding his hobby-horse and protesting that he’s just misunderstood.

These are interesting and important issues which need a healthy public discourse, see? Specifically, what it needs is more people like Randy and fewer people like Steyn, otherwise we’ll all end up like the poor benighted souls that Johann Hari wrote about in his classic piece on The National Review cruise. While acknowledging that Johann was always going to be biased against the sort of people who would go on the cruise on the first place, he wasn’t making any of that stuff up:

But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss “the Muslims” as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block – already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times – I counted – when I am fleeing Europe’s encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States of America.

Look, it’s 2008 - forget about my jetpack, all I want is an internet that isn’t an echo chamber for people who would previously have been confined to their bedrooms, where they could safely fulminate about how their genius has never been recognised by ignorant fools such as myself. They were better off there, and so were we.

But Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts - I think that’s a bit of a danger… There’s a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some other aspects of religious law.”

No there isn’t. People who predict the Islamopocalypse are barking idiots, and my problem isn’t with Williams’ saying that we should accommodate aspects of Muslim law into our legal system. My problem is his assumption that religion has any place in our legal system at all, apart from in measures to protect the freedom to pursue those beliefs - and protect others from those beliefs. Without that separation, the entire legal system is undermined, as we all merrily pursue our own ideas of what the law should constitute and who it should cover.

Of course, that’s a completely separate question to why Rowan Williams, the head of the established Church of England, feels the need to advocate for Islamic law. Perhaps he misread the job description?

UPDATE: I find more intelligences more subtle and profound than I writing about the same issue at Cranmer and Our Kingdom, while Stumbling and Mumbling emphasises that “civil society” has a place in this discussion that goes mostly unnoticed.

So far, the campaign has resulted in the Government changing its policy - but the changes weren’t comprehensive enough and are not being implemented quickly enough to make a difference to many of our former employees. So there’s a need to keep up the pressure on the government in order to secure further changes and a more rapid response. Dan has therefore proposed the following:

Your MP’s address is The House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA. His or her email address is probably SURNAMEINITIAL@parliament.uk (eg BROWNG<at>parliament.uk ). Please use the talking points below to send an email and a print letter to your MP, and chase them for an answer. And be courteous: an insulted MP will not raise this matter with Ministers, and that will lead to more avoidable deaths. When you get an answer, email me at danhardie.blog<at>gmail.com and let me know what they said.

I agree that it seems egocentric for me to ask you to put your MP in touch with me: but what alternatives do we have? I am in direct contact with Iraqi employees pleading with me to do something to help them. I cannot help them. Members of Parliament- including David Miliband- need to read what these Iraqis are saying.

If you want to take part in this campaign, then you may find the following information useful. However I urge you to read up on the situation for yourself and make your own judgement - this is important not just for individual lives but for the precedent it sets.

• On October 9th David Miliband announced that the British Government would assist former employees in Iraq, so long as they had worked for it after 1st January 2005 and for 12 months or more. That abandons several hundred Iraqis who have been targetd for murder because they worked for the British before that date- and in 2004 fighting between the Mahdi Army and the British was at its peak- or because they worked for less than that period, often leaving their jobs at the end of a British battalion’s six-month tour. The British Government must help Iraqi employees on the basis of the risk they face, not according to an arbitrary time stipulation. This only affects a few hundred Iraqis, whom we are well able to shelter, and for whom we have a direct moral responsibility.
• Even those Iraqi employees who qualify for assistance are not being properly assisted. Iraqis in Basra are not able to apply via the British Army in Basra Interational Airbase, since it is ringed with militia checkpoints. Iraqi ex-employees in Damascus are being screened by Syrian policemen guarding the British Embassy and delayed by lengthy bureaucratic procedures when they apply for asylum, although many of them are illegally overstaying their Syrian visas and face deportation back to Iraq.
• A blogger called Dan Hardie is directly in touch with a number of Iraqi employees via email and phone. He is willilng to brief MPs- as concisely as possible- either over the phone or via email. He can be reached at danhardie.blog@gmail.com.

With all that in mind, what exactly is at stake here? Who are these people that we’re campaigning for? Below the fold, you can read about some of the discussions that Dan has had with former UK government employees in Iraq who have been affected by this situation - and who are not being helped by the current government policy.

I’ve had emails from three people who claim to be - and who almost certainly are- Iraqi former employees of the British Government. All three say that they and their former colleagues are still at risk of death for their ‘collaboration’.

We’ll call the first man Employee One. He worked for the British for three years: ‘I started in the beginning of the war with Commandos (in 30 of March 2003) then continued with 23 Pioneer Regt, and in 08 / 07 / 2003 I have joined the Labour Support Unit (LSU)’. His British friends knew him as Chris. The British Government has announced that he can apply for help if he can transport himself to the British base outside Basra, or to the Embassies in Syria or Jordan. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that there might be problems with this. I can email and telephone this man: so can any Foreign Office official. It should not be impossible to verify his story and then send him the funds he needs to get to a less unsafe Arab country. But that is not happening.

Here’s an email exchange we had the other day. My questions are in italics.

1) Are you still in Iraq?

‘Yes, I’m still hidden in somewhere in the hell of Basra.’

2) Is there any reason you cannot travel to the British Army base at Basra Airbase to ask for asylum?

‘Of course, we cannot travel to BIA (Basra International Airbase) due to the militia keep watched all the ways to BIA and they got their own fake check points there although, we claimed for asylum through the internet (we sent our application to the claim office at BIA) . But we afraid that the British are going to take a long time to process our claims also we are very worried if they will offer just some money instead of asylum, please sir inform all the British people that we looking for asylum and just the asylum will save our lives, also we can’t travel to Syria anymore to claim for asylum there as the Syrian government issued new conditions for Iraqis who want to travel to their country.’

3) Can you tell me how and when the militias threatened you?

‘In 2006 I have threatened by militia that hated me because I work and help coalition forces in Iraq, I told my bosses about that but they said we can’t do anything for you because we have nothing to do with civilian and we don’t have any army rules or orders to help you, then I continued my daily work with British army, few days later the militia attacked my house trying to catch me but I was at the work at that time, they beaten my family and told them: we want your son or we will kill all of you!!!!

‘Since that day I decided to leave my job and change my home place but until this moment the militia trying to find and kill me, I’m always changing my place trying to hidden from them, they know that I left my job but they don’t care, they just want to kill me they called me collaborator and traitor and they asked everybody know me about my place, they told them: anyone know anything about (name) he should tell us immediately and also they said: we will never give up until we catch (name). They work for ministry of interior so they controlled most of government departments and they work under that cover.’

4) Do you have any family members who are also threatened by militias or who depend on you? If so, how many of them are there and how old are they?

‘Of course, my family depends on me especially in the finance side as I’m the older son between seven sons and daughters they got, on other hand my parents cannot working as they are very old.’

Employee Two is in Syria, and is applying for aid from the British Embassy in Damascus. He can prove that he has worked for the British for over 12 months, after the magic date of 1st January 2005. But he still isn’t safe.

He is staying illegally in Syria, having considerably over-run the 15-day visa on which he entered the country. He’s been obliged to get forms for asylum or resettlement aid from the Syrian Government security men who guard the British Embassy. He tells me ‘If I see any syrian officer i really get fear , becuase of my expired visa.’ The British Government, which asked us to accept that it was invading Iraq in part because of its horror at the brutality of the Ba’athist dictatorship, is now perfectly happy to leave its own former employees to the mercies of Syrian Ba’athists.

Colleagues of this man are also hiding in Damascus and are even worse off than he is, because they don’t meet the perverse and arbitrary time stipulations. He writes: ‘I know 4 former interpreters worked less than a year (for the British: DH), but they went to the embassy and they filled the paper with out telling the guards we had worked for less than a year. The syrian guards have got instructions from the embassy (British Embassy in Damascus: DH), that (they) do not give that form to any interpreter who worked for British less than a year or any former interpreter who worked in 2003 and fled to syria before 2005.’

Employee Three sent me copies of his Army ID card and photos of him with smiling Scottish soldiers. He worked for the Army in 2003, who then recommended that he work for Erinys- a private security firm which the British Government hired to form an Oil Protection Force. Both when working for the Army and when working for the British Government’s proxies, he was identified as a target by the militias. The British Government made him a death squad target.

That same British Government will not be giving him any kind of assistance; not even a small cash handout to help him live elsewhere in the Middle East. It has announced that it will not help any Iraqi whose direct employment ended before the 1st January 2005: that Johnson Beharry was awarded the Victoria Cross for acts of courage in May and June 2004, when the Mahdi Army attacked the British and were fought off with many hundreds of casualties.

Bear in mind that letters, faxes and phone calls to MPs do work. You can get all the contact details for your local MP from theyworkforyou, and you can write to them online at writetothem. Tell other people about this at church or at work, wherever, or write a letter. Here are some bullet points for a letter - don’t send it unchanged, you can edit it so that it reflects your own views. If you write to your MP, include your full address (including the postcode) to indicate that you are a constituent.

Bullet points:

• David Miliband’s Statement on ‘Iraq: Locally Recruited Civilians’ of 9th October stated that Britain will help to resettle- in the wider Middle East, or in the United Kingdom- Iraqis who can prove that they have worked for this country’s soldiers or diplomats for a continuous period of twelve months.
• Hundreds of Iraqis have been targeted for assassination for having worked for this country. Some have worked for a period of twelve months exclusively for the British and can prove this. Some have not but have been pinpointed for murder anyway. We have a responsibility to save these people from being murdered for the ‘crime’ of working for the British.
• There are a lot of local employees who fled their jobs before 12 months precisely because they had been targeted, or who did a 6-month tour for one British battalion and were then told to go and work for the Americans, or who did 12 months or more with interruptions, or who the Army didn’t give proper documentation too.
• Iraqi staff members must be given shelter not because of their provable length of service but according to whether they have been identified for murder by local death squads. This can be investigated on the spot by Army officers and referred rapidly to London: the process needs to start now.
• Mr Miliband’s statement did not mention the families of Iraqi employees. As Iraqi militias also murder the families of their ‘enemies’, we must resettle our employees’ families as well. Mark Brockway, an ex-soldier who hired many Iraqis, estimates that we are talking about a maximum of 700 Iraqis to resettle: this country admits 190,000 immigrants net every year.
• Iraqis have already been targeted for murder for having worked for this country. We will be shamed if we allow more to be killed for the same reason. Our soldiers, who are angry at this betrayal, and our diplomats, will be placed at risk if they gain a reputation for abandoning their local helpers.

There’s a form letter below the fold here. You can make a difference, so do it today.

(MP’s Name)

The House Of Commons

Westminster

London. SW1A 0AA.

Your full name and address.

Dear (MP’s Name)

As you will have read in the Times, Iraqis who have worked for British soldiers or diplomats are being targeted for murder by local militia. An unknown number have already been killed and more have been forced into hiding.

On October 9th, David Miliband’s statement on ‘Locally Recruited Civilians’ in Iraq said that Britain would offer assistance with resettlement for Iraqis who had worked with British forces, but only if they could prove that they had worked for us for 12 months or more. This is effectively leaving hundreds of Iraqis, who have risked their lives for this country’s forces, to the mercy of the death squads.

Mark Brockway, a former soldier who employed many Iraqis, told Channel Four News on 9th October that local staff often worked for six months for British units, during which time they were frequently identified as ‘enemies’ by the local militias. I believe that the Government has a direct responsibility for the safety of these people.

I feel that it is morally unacceptable that this country is following such a policy. I also believe it will endanger our soldiers and diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can I please ask you to write to the Foreign Office, and also to the Home Office which has charge of asylum policy, to ask why the Government is prepared to ignore the plight of hundreds of people who were placed at risk serving this country’s soldiers.

Yours sincerely

Not many birthday cards, then, for Gordon Brown or David Miliband’s from our Iraqi employees. This post could get a bit long and I could get a bit ranty, so I’m just going to focus on the main points here:

1. An assistance package has been offered to some Iraqi employees, the nature of which is not clearly defined, but seems to be limited to financial assistance. That’s the positive part, but it goes downhill from there.
2. The package will only be available to staff “who have attained 12 months’ or more continuous service”. I’m not convinced that the militia that are targeting those working for the British government are using length of service as a criteria for selection, and the government should not either.
3. In addition, the statements make no mention of the families of these staff, who are equally at risk. The offer should be automatically extended to include any members of family that staff also believe to be at risk.
4. Staff are also able to apply for exceptional leave to enter the UK or to apply through the Gateway programme for resettlement in the UK. A number of people have pointed out that this is utter bullshit - essentially the government is saying that they can apply for refugee status, a right which they already have. The point is not simply to recognise their rights, but to act on them, and quickly.
5. Former and contracted (as opposed to directly hired) staff may be covered by this offer, but the government makes no commitments in this regard. Once again, I’m not sure that the militias will make this distinction - they tend to be quite inclusive in their death-dealing.

In order to have any impact, this offer needs to be made as widely as possible - the criteria of 12 months should be withdrawn, families should be included and all categories of staff eligible. Of course this sets a problematic precedent - should any future staff also be covered by this, and will that then lead to people applying for jobs solely in order to get out of the country? Luckily I don’t have to worry about stuff like that, because I’m not the one who’s got to implement the policy.

I’m glad that the government is acting on this, but they need to act quickly and comprehensively if this is going to have any impact. As well as the rumbling of the blogosphere, the meeting at Parliament apparently went very well, the Times has been carrying sterling coverage, the BBC has weighed in, the British Army Rumour Service are on it, and there’s a MySociety-style website called weoweittothem. Even the Heavy Metal community is involved, sort of.

I knew this post would go on longer than planned. You probably stopped reading about eight paragraphs ago, didn’t you? So I’m going to break this off and tell you what you can do in a separate post. After a slice of burek and a glass of yoghurt, of course.

Let’s put it this way - they’re still dying. There was an interesting podcast on Iraqi asylum from 5Live the other day, which you can listen to here courtesy of Ministry of Truth. The podcast has words from Dan Hardie, the co-ordinator of this campaign, and Mark Brockway, a former UK soldier who hired many of the people who are now persecuted for their employment. It’s fairly depressing stuff, but what will be more depressing is if the UK government fails to live up to its most basic obligations as an employer.

The US Senate has now acted on the issue of allocating visas for Iraqi government employees, much to its credit (and against the efforts of the Bush administration, but now probably isn’t the time for scoring cheap points). Meanwhile the British government is still failing to respond to calls from various campaigners (yes, including the bloggers) to take similar steps for their employees and ex-employees from Iraq.

So the meeting at Parliament will be going ahead on Tuesday October 9th, to call for the British Government to recognise its responsibilities and give shelter to the Iraqis endangered by their work for this country’s troops and diplomats. If you want to support this campaign - and you should, because it is literally a life or death issue - Dan Hardie has a guide to how you can invite your MP, and a form letter you can use to invite them.

Although this is a complicated issue (in terms of what it implies about the situation in Iraq, and setting precedents for refugee claims) it’s not a particularly difficult one from a moral point of view. Let’s hope that this meeting starts to shift the Home Office towards taking some action - or we can expect to see a lot more dead Iraqis whose only crime was to take up a job offer.

(Details on inviting your MP beneath the fold.)

This is how to invite your MP:

1) Find your MP (start by typing your postcode into They work for you).

2) Copy-and-paste or better still, adapt this form invitation below (and make any changes you want, but we have to keep these letters courteous). Also; make sure that your address and postcode are on the letters.

3) You can then either email it to your MP (email addresses for MPs take the form surnameinitial@parliament.uk- thus Gordon Brown is BROWNG@parliament.uk ) or you can post it to ‘MP’s name, The House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA.’ If you have the time, printed letters are better than emails: and it’s not that hard to write a letter, is it? If you get a bounceback from an MP’s email address, get in touch with me ( danhardie.blog@gmail.com ) as I have a bunch of alternative contact details now, or -better still- write the print letter and post it. Please make sure that your address and postcode are clearly written on either emails or print letters, so that the MP realises they are dealing with one of their own constituents.

4) If you are in London on the evening of Tuesday 9th October, please come along to the meeting in person. Go to St Stephen’s entrance, facing College Green (the police tend to be helpful here) and ask for admission. There will be at least one campaigning blogger at the entrance, ready to point you in the right direction: remember the meeting starts at 7pm.

Thank you- and, hopefully, see you there.

FORM INVITATION:

Iraqi Employees of British Forces – Parliamentary Speaker Meeting, Tuesday October 9th

Dear NAME

As your constituent, I am writing on behalf of ‘We can’t turn them away’, an online campaign for resettlement for those Iraqis threatened by death squads for their work with British forces. We would like to invite you to a meeting in Committee Room 14 of the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday October 9 ^th from 7 to 9pm .

As you may well have seen in The Times, Iraqi citizens who have worked as interpreters for British forces are being tortured and murdered by death squads for having worked with the occupying forces.

Speakers will include:

Mark Brockway (a former Warrant Officer in the Territorial Royal Engineers, who ran the

British Army’s Quick Impact Reconstruction Projects in 2003, when he hired a great many

Iraqi staff in 2003. Mark has been in close contact with them since and knows of at least

one who has been recently murdered;

Richard Beeston, senior Foreign Correspondent for ‘The Times’ newspaper.

Ed Vaizey MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Lynne Featherstone MP, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for International Development.

A senior Labour MP.

A number of reporters from television, the national press and BBC Radio will attend the meeting.

This is a cross-party, moral issue, on which both opponents and supporters of the Iraq war can agree. Whilst the Government has said that it is reviewing the policy, no change has yet been made, and further delay is likely to leave Iraqi employees at the mercy of the local death squads. Attendance at this event certainly does not imply any agreement with the aims of our campaign: you are welcome to come and ask searching questions, or to send a Researcher to represent you.

If you cannot come to the meeting, I would also ask that you write to the Home Secretary, and to the Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne, asking for an explanation of why policy has not changed despite the announcement of an ‘urgent review’ of the matter on August 8th this year.

Thank you very much for your time.