Acts –
Singer-songwriter Aidan Cross
More TBC soon!

Raffle and prizes.

Tickets: £5 regular waged, £3 low-waged, £10 solidarity ticket
(Watch this space for how to buy a ticket.)

This is event is open to all members of the public, not just NUJ members.

Manchester and Salford NUJ are the hub for the NUJ’s Exiled Journalists Network. Exiled journalists have sought refuge in the UK because their lives have been imperilled while working in their home countries. Some of the union’s exiled members have been tortured and imprisoned. Some have been granted refugee status, while the union is supporting those who are still navigating the difficult legal process that all asylum seekers have to go through.

This benefit will raise essential funds to help our exiled journalists so they can start to work again, or if going through the legal process, simply to survive.

To find out more about the NUJ’s Exiled Journalist Network, go to http://nejonline.net/index.html

MCFly says;  telling the truth about government here in Manchester is easy and safe.  You submit a Freedom of Information Act request, they have to tell you what you want to know (most of the time). You then “print” it in your blog and maybe if you can be bothered fire off a letter to the Manchester Evading News.  Sure, everyone so often some moronic councillor will threaten to sue you for libel (no names), or your unpaid ‘read-the-newspapers’ gig gets cancelled,   but that’s about it.

This has NOTHING to do with the decency of our elites, and it has everything to do with a history of working class people, with intermittent support from middle-class people, fighting very long hard battles to secure things that reformist liberals mostly don’t even think about.  (It also has to do with a knowledge economy being a tricky thing to run with death-squads, so  the elites are – for now – force to tolerate dissent, but that’s another story).

My point is this.  Good brave journalists are crucial ‘truth tellers’.  Elites know this, and in large parts of the world they find it necessary to intimidate/jail/murder journos.  The ones who have to get out and somehow make it to the UK need our support. And therefore, if you give a shit, you will be at this gig.