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Friday December 8, 2017
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No. 819
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Drug video polarises opinion p3
IT’S A MINEFIELD Union campaigners get Tory dinner cancelled – because it’s at mining museum By David Bentley Editor david@thepressnews.co.uk
CONSERVATIVES in Dewsbury have had their annual dinner plans cancelled after a political backlash. The Dewsbury County Conservative Association had booked the National Coal Mining Museum as the venue for their get-together next March, but vocal opposition and threats to protest the event saw the museum
cancel the booking yesterday (Thurs). The Tories were due to hold the dinner at the former Caphouse Colliery on March 10, 2018, two days after the anniversary of the return to work at the end of the Miners’ Strike in 1985. Critics labelled the choice of venue as politically insensitive, with many exmineworkers and their families blaming the Conservative Party for the destruction of the coal industry and the economic decline of former mining areas.
MP needs to grow up - Ed Lines, p6
The association was warned they faced protests outside the museum, which is situated just yards outside the Dewsbury constituency boundary in Overton. Campaign groups and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) urged trustees at the museum to think again, but initially officials said they must be politically independent and were unable to refuse the booking. However, yesterday afternoon (Thurs) the museum cancelled the event, citing public safety concerns in a
statement. An independent catering firm runs the conference and events space at the museum, which opened in 1988. The NCM statement said: “Over the past 24 hours the trustees and managers of the museum have closely monitored and assessed the ongoing, developing situation and today, the board of trustees has agreed to accept the recommendation from Asparagus Green, the catering company contracted to manage the museum’s conference and functions business,
that the event booking in question should be cancelled. “The over-riding responsibility of the museum at this time is its duty to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its staff and visitors as well as that of the museum site; proposed actions by protestors to organise pickets at the site either at the time of the event or at any point in the intervening period have put this at risk.” NUM secretary Chris Kitchen wrote to the museum to object, but the Dewsbury Conservative Association
rejected suggestions that they were trying to upset former miners by using the venue. The dinner was due to feature deputy chief whip Esther McVey as guest speaker. Before the event was cancelled Tory association chairman Mark Eastwood said: “We drew up a list of approximately 12 venues across the constituency and shortlisted to three based on availability, menu and prices. “We then selected the
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