Our meetings for this year are over. We will be looking to create a programme for next year at the AGM. Do contact our Secretary if you have any suggestions for speakers.
Future meetings will be in Copeland Community Centre, 38 Copeland, Bretton, PE3 6AH.
Free parking in Copeland (roadside), at Coopers pub or possibly the car park by the Baptist Church off Woolgard.
Meetings held this year
Thursday 26 October – 7.30pm
…………………. “Britain’s green future, the myths and the challenges”
Speaker: Michael Reid
Some members will know Michael from Philosophy in the Park, the series of discussions he runs in Central park. Michael built a career in renewable energy, and is a past vice chair of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers’ sustainability group.
Linkedin
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Wednesday 29 November – 7.30pm.. “Slavery and reparations”
Speaker: Richard Atkinson
Richard is a member of www.heirsofslavery.org whose other members include ex-BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan, and Charles Gladstone, descendant of the former prime minister.
Three generations of his forbears made a fortune in Jamaica from slavery. But when he was growing up Richard knew nothing about the sins of his ancestors and they were never part of the family story. But that changed when his investigations into his father’s genealogy revealed a dark and ugly history. 
He turned author and wrote a rare history of a British slave-owning family, “Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract“.
Novelist Monica Ali praised it as: “A towering achievement, founded on painstaking research, written with elegance and elan, salted with humour and shot-through with intelligent warmth and compassion”.
The Guardian review
Chauffeurs Cottage, St Peters Road, PE1 1YX
Wednesday 17 January – 7.30pm
… “The prospects for land, food and farming under a Labour government”
Speaker: Tom Lancaster
Tom worked for the RSPB where he led its policy work on food, farming and land use. He helped develop the post-Brexit Agriculture Act and the changes to agricultural subsidies that followed. His current brief is climate change, and he is at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit where he is helping create a better informed media debate.
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Monday 26 February – 7.30……“Is our tax system fair?”
Speaker: Lucy Anderson Jones
Lucy talked about what a new government could do to create a fairer tax system.
Lucy is Developement Manager at Tax Justice UK.
- Close 5 tax loopholes to raise over £7 billion a year
- Wealth taxes will cause the rich to flee’: 12 wealth tax myths debunked
- TaxJustice.UK blog
Wednesday 13 March – 7.30……“Women’s rights and equality”
Speaker: Dr Hazel Perry
Hazel is and historian and president of Peterborough Trades Union Council and a trustee of the Women’s History Network.
She talked about women’s rights as viewed through the prism of her own research into women’s participation in Peterborough trades unions, and discussed the challenges a new government is likely to face if it is to deliver on equality.
Tuesday 16 April – 7.30……“A National Care Service”
Speaker: Ben Cooper
A National Care Service has been Labour party policy for the last 15 years, but its key features have been vague. Recently, however, Wes Streeting asked the Fabian Society to draw up a plan and we’re lucky to have Ben Cooper who co-wrote the report to discuss it with us. 
SUPPORT GUARANTEED:
The Roadmap to a National Care Service
by Andrew Harrop & Ben Cooper
You might also like to listen to the “Fabian Thinking” podcast where Emma Burnell speaks to Ben and Andrew Harrop about this report..
Tuesday 18 June – 7.30pm……“The Leveson Report, Labour policy and is the right wing press the force it used to be?”
Speaker: Ted Sullivan
Following the phone-hacking scandal the revival of the Leveson Inquiry became Labour party policy, but shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire recently told The House magazine that a Starmer-led government would no longer seek to implement it and press reform is not on Labour’s agenda.
But should a policy that Ed Milliband promoted as a “question of morality” when he was party leader now be quietly buried?
Journalism lecturer Ted Sullivan and publisher of Why journalism matters, which is read internationally, will discuss the subject and ask if the right wing press is the force it used to be.
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Peterborough Fabian Society 