Greek Community (2)

I note with interest the comments I received on what I wrote recently regarding organising politically in the London region.

We are a 300,000 strong community of 1st 2nd and 3rd generation British citizens of Greek origin. We live and work in the Greater London region and have contributed to the success of this great city of ours together with other established and new communities. Yet we do not appear to be as well organised as others and that needs to be changing. I have found that whatever meeting I attend of Greek activists everyone agrees with that.

What we seem to be disagreeing with is what our priorities should be and I am clearly saying that we need to shift the priority away from our purely Hellenic centric notion to a more pragmatic one. In other words we must continue organising and support the battles back home (Greece and Cyprus) but we must also move some of our attention away from that and concentrate on how we win power, or have access to a mechanism, through which our voices and that of our 'very' British orientated children can be heard and our aspirations and demands are met.

We need to be thinking about organising to ensure that we are treated with the respect every other community is treated with and that our children and parents have equal access to services and opportunities.

I am meeting with Peter Drousiotis who is the current President of the Adelfotita and will be hoping to discuss a number of ideas in support of this wider aim. I am hoping that a large gathering will then follow to allow us all to have an honest debate. I know that we organise quite effectively socially and know of many social events but we need to do more to start the process that will allow us to develop our aims in a more coherent way.

I will be giving out information about where the event will be held. I also note comments re having a separate forum to have these discussions and not mix the Greek thing with my Union life but I started this blog for personal reasons and it is now developing into something I did not predict. I will consider having a separate space!

Enomeni Me Dinami

Nikos