Hello All! I hope you are thinking about your plans for Holocaust Memorial Day at your university and college unions. The Holocaust Educational Trust packs will bein your unions shortly with activity ideas. In the midst of preparing for that, we are preparing for Anti-Racism/Anti-FAscism Conference which will be held in London on 30 November. Apologies for those who find it difficult to travel there. I did fight for it to be held in the midlands so that our special regions would find it easier to get to, but I was outvoted. Regional conferences have begun and today I was at Conventry University. The day went really well and I met a lot of students who were thankful that they were given the time and attention of the NEC to debate the future of our union and the MORI report. I am still in the midst of gaining contacts for unions who would like to embark on an adventure, and support their faith societies in establishing some interfaith fora or activities. I have been phoning around unions trying to guage opinion and see what has been successful in the past. I am now looking forward to Interfaith Conference.

Much emphasis was placed today on rejecting the Glees report at Regional conferences and although many of the recommendations seem illogical and offensive to many people as I for one am completely against the dissolution of faith societies on campus, we must not forget that we still have a problem with extremism on campus. History does not only prove that, but at my own campus HUT as remobilised themselves under the Culture and Civilisation Society. It is unfortuante that members of the NEC and student officers do not take HUT as seriously as the BNP when they are under the same No Platform Policy.

Tomorrow I am in Liverpool and on Tuesday I am at an NEC meeting in London.

In other news the UN has declared Holocaust Memorial Day an International Day. For more information you can go to this link www.haaretz.com

This step has been lauded by the international community and I hope will emphasise the importance of this day for our membership. In times such as these, when a genocide is going on in the Darfur region of the Sudan I hope HMD will help remind people that discussion surrounding genocide must still take place.

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