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Cookham and Maidenhead Amnesty Group Celebrate their 30 Year Anniversary
14 September 2003
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It was an opportunity for members of The Maidenhead and Cookham Amnesty Group to get together and celebrate their 30 Year Anniversary. The group was founded by Morris Brodie who lives in High Road in Cookham and he was asked to cut the Anniversary Cake.
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Morris Brodie cuts the cake |
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The anniversary party took place in the Mike Copland's garden. Mike also lived in High Road but has now moved to Pinkneys Green, but continues to support Amnesty. |
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Mary Ashworth an ex-chairman of the group |
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The party was attended by around sixty people and a marquee had been erected in the garden. The guests included Theresa May MP, the mayor and Nicholas Winton. Both Theresa May and Nicholas Winton said a few words. |
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Janet Dawson the current Chairman introduces the event |
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Lunch had been organised by Liz Copland, who was seen carrying plates of food around. Everyone was most appreciative of the cold spread followed by a delicious mixture of puddings. |
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Theresa May helps herself to Coronation Chicken while Jonathon Miall looks on |
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| After lunch there were some speeches. Morris Brodie talked about how the group had been set up. Theresa May gave her support to the group and said that she had a lot of e-mails and letters regarding Human Rights situations from the group. She said she had not received any text messages yet though. She was followed by Anna Chaplin from the Slough Refugee Support Group, who told the story of one refugee from Sri Lanka. She also explained the difficulty facing refugees coming to this country and what they had to go through, which was not realised by many of us. | ||
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Anna Chaplin from the Slough Refugee Support Group |
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| The final person to talk was Sir Nicholas Winton who saved the lives of many Jewish people during Word War II and has led the most extraordinary life. He has been honoured many times for his humanitarian efforts. He said that he found it sad that we are losing words such as gay and also holocaust. He felt that a holocaust was much greater than happenings in the second world war alone. He also pointed out that people's attitude to refugees was nonsensical as most of the American nation were refugees and probably most of Great Britain too at one time or another. | ||
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Sir Nicholas Winton |
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There was also an exhibition showing the work of the group over the last thirty years. There were many reminiscences of activities in the past. At the end one a representative from Amnesty International UK presented the group with a plaque with the names of those that had been helped by the group. |
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