Lewes Links has celebrated a
final milestone in its dozen or so years. The organisation began in the early 1990s
to try to build links between Lewes town and surrounding Sussex area with people in
countries which had recently broken out of Soviet hegemony. At midnight on Saturday
1 May 2004, eight of those countries, making up a substantial part of central Europe,
joined the European Union. It was the biggest enlargement of the EU in its
history. The same evening members of Lewes Links set up a celebration in St
Thomas a Becket Hall, just off Cliffe High Street, and welcomed guests from the Sussex
branch of the European Movement, and from the Sussex Russian Society. Councillor
Michael and Mrs Monica Chartier, Mayor and Mayoress of Lewes joined them for the evening.
A sequence of dance, music, and short talks, led up to a buffet supper displaying
what seemed to be an endless variety of national dishes from both the east and the west of
Europe.
Doreen Court, the first and long-time honorary Secretary of Lewes Links,
had riffled through her old files and memories of the way the organisation first started
as a response to the sudden collapse of the old regimes in central and eastern
Europe. It grew out of the different activities in several groups of the peace
movement in Sussex. One example had been when Jeremy Goring, then minister of
Westgate Chapel, had asked if a group could "adopt" a village in Transylvania,
joining in with a Europe-wide movement to try to stop the destruction of ancient cultures
during the last period of the Ceausescu regime in Romania. That initiative was
overtaken by events, but a chain of contacts eventually led to the most substantial link
established in the first five years - with the city and county of Veszprém in
Hungary. Doreen Court also mentioned examples of support given to local campaigns -
one when money was raised to re-stock a village near Dubrovnik which had been destroyed
during the Yugoslav civil wars, and a second example when practical goods were donated for
schools and hospitals, to be driven over to a remote and neglected area of northern
Albania. |
In a later short talk Stephen Quigley, a West Sussex
councillor whose work for IBM had taken him to many parts of Europe, set out to headline
what the central European countries were hoping to gain from EU membership, and what
western Europe would gain from them. It was a widely acknowledged fact that the
Soviet network had maintained very high standards of education, particularly in craft and
technical skills. Recent new investments by Volkswagen in several of the central
European countries illustrated that firm's confidence. The media reports forecasting
a rush of poverty-stricken manual workers to the west of Europe were based on a tiny
percentage of the migration of workers, most of whom were highly skilled. CBI
figures suggest that London and the south-east of England are short of about half a
million skilled workers, and there is every opportunity for using the skills from further
east. Up to now experience had shown that most migrant workers within the EU came
for a fairly short time and returned with updated skills to their home countries.
|
Between these
short talks and the food and drink came demonstrations of central and southern European
dances by a group led by Kathryn Penny. Some members of the group had indeed
experienced the dance steps at first hand. Two young musicians then played folk
music that illustrated the new spread of Europe. Violinist Matthew Gable is already
well-known for his highly skilled traditional Irish playing. He was joined by Jem
Muharrem, now leader of the Brighton Youth Orchestra, who played folk music from the
Turkish tradition. As Jem came originally from northern Cyprus it symbolised more
than a musical journey from furthest west to furthest east. It also pointed out that
there are many European issues that remain to be solved - only a few days earlier the
Turkish population of northern Cyprus had been cut out of the EU by the vote of the Greeks
in the southern part of the island. |
|
At the end of the evening presentations were made to Paul and Berta Busby, and
to Doreen Court, three of the key founder members of Lewes Links - Paul had been
the first Chairman. The current Chair, Christopher Jones, reminded everyone there
that at the Lewes Links AGM in March a decision had been made to merge the
organisation into the local branch of the European Movement, using this moment of
celebration as the first step towards that. During the summer the final version of a
book would be compiled and edited, which would aim to set out what Lewes Links
had aimed for and to give some illustrations both of some of the difficulties and some of
the successes. Finally Michael Rider, this year's Chairman of the Sussex branch of
the European Movement, looked forward to welcoming members of Lewes Links, and
using the goodwill and experience that had been gained over the years. |