Convention will help heal rifts

You rightly call for us all to ‘be inclusive, help heal rifts,stand up for the vulnerable, especially hardworking East European migrants who have made their home here, support local business and the economy, and drive community cohesion’.

We all now face a very divided Britain which is degenerating into political farce, as graphically illustrated by the two first post referendum front covers of the weekly, The Economist, which showed the UK flag as being rent by ‘A tragic Split’, followed by this week’s headline, ‘Anarchy in the UK’, as leading Brexiteers walked away from their responsibilities, and the main political parties became engulfed with leadership crises.

So it’s to our own communities that we must look to bring about the healing game, as Van Morrison called it in a memorable song.

Can I therefore propose that we take the experiences and lessons from communities like South Africa and Chile that have been so much more horrifically riven than our own (with the tragic exception of the murder of Jo Cox MP) and organise a ‘Respect, Reconciliation and Truth’ convention in the people’s palace of the De La Warr Pavilion, perhaps in the late Autumn when tempers and anger have hopefully cooled?

Your call for a healing time was echoed by an inter faith statement from our leading religious organisations whom we could approach for help in organising such an event.

If such a convention went well, and I have some ideas that could help achieve that, it may well be copied by other towns in the UK.

Could Bexhill be the first in the country with this initiative, as I understand it was with motor car racing, mixed bathing, and cinemas?

David Gee

Visiting Fellow

Institute of Environment

Health and Societies

Brunel University

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