Peace Seminar

Greenham Common protester addresses Rotary in Kendal

Power and Peace come to the fore as Prof Fiona Macaulay addresses a Kendal Rotary Peace Seminar with an upfront description of Peace Studies at Bradford University. Prior to Fiona our keynote speaker we had input from Insp Patel (Cumbria constabulary), Steve Robson (Women’s Community Matters) and Dan Hinton (Sandgate School). 

How far has Rotary come? Well, it’s been there for a long time, working with Peace Centres to create Peace Scholars.

Fiona had travelled from Bradford to be with us and managed to squeeze in a visit to Queen Katherine School to speak with sixth form students. Her message to them was to join PeaceJam in Manchester on 21 March, a gathering for young people who support Peace.

In here younger days Fiona was a protester at Greenham spending plenty of time at the perimeter objecting to foreign owned nuclear weapons on UK soil. After University she went on to study a variety of issues related to Peace and has expertise in Brazil, criminal justice systems, prisons, human rights, feminicide, police and politics, gender based violence, police reform, police training, women in politics and Brazilian politics.

We were so lucky to have such an eminent advocate for peace speaking to us.  Her talk was filled with facts, too many to mention here but the true highlight was that people come from around the world to study at Bradford and then return to their communities. 

We welcome three other speakers at the same event each with their different perspective on Peace and its importance to our society. We heard about diversity from the Police, about domestic violence and coercion from a Barrow charity and about memories of playground bullies. For those on the margins acceptance and the phrase ‘people that look like me’ is hugely important.

Kendal Rotary welcomed a range of people from the town including our Mayor, Cllr Richard Hutton and with so many positive comments we will be looking to have similar events. There was plenty of time for conversation and meeting of minds. Angela from St John’s Hospice gave a short presentation and we were joined Joan from Trybooking.com as a business partner. Two other businesses were present, Craig Travel and Ujoma tea both having an opportunity to promote their business.

Closing the event was a group (age 16 to 18) from StageCoach performing arts with a rendition of ‘Imagine’ which was truly moving.