British Tamil
Conservatives Receive messages of congratulations and support from the Party
Chairman, Ministers, MP’s and MEP’s at their celebratory Drinks Reception held
at Party Conference 2012
( October 11, 2012, London, Sri Lanka
Guardian) The British Tamil Conservatives (BTC) launched their first drinks
reception as an affiliated body of the Party on Tuesday 9th October at the ICC
Castle Fine Arts Gallery, Birmingham. BTC is the first ethnic specific group to
be granted affiliation by the Party.
The event was
attended by the Party Chairman Rt Hon Grant Shapps, Cabinet Minister, Rt. Hon.
Theresa Villiers, MP’s, MEP’s and Steve Bell, the Vice President of the
National Conservative Convention.
Speaking at the
event, Lee Scott, MP for Ilford North, Hon. Patron of the BTC and Chairman of
the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils congratulated BTC in securing the
affiliation and said he is fully aware justice for Tamils in Sri Lanka is the
central concern of British Tamils and organisations such as BTC and Global
Tamil Forum whose representatives were present amongst other Tamil community
leaders who attended.
Dr Arjuna
Sivananthan, the Vice Chairman of BTC and Chairman of Conservative Way Forward
(CWF) said "our objectives are twofold: take the Party's message to the
Tamil community ensure we, the Conservatives, have an outright majority in the
next parliament, and continue our advocacy work of bringing the plight of
Tamils in Sri Lanka to Party members and the Conservative Members of
Parliament. We will not stop until these
two objectives are accomplished. He Pointed out that two of the PPC’s, Dr
Rachel Frosh and David Gold who we had helped during the 2010 elections were
present at the event and that we will work harder next time to ensure that they
become MP’s at the next election. Arujuna went on to state how proud the Tamils
are to be British and recognised the achievements of the community in the UK.
‘We will continue our work with Global Tamils Forum, led by Fr. Emmanuel and
other Tamil groups".
We were
delighted when Theresa Villiers, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland spoke
and congratulated the BTC on affiliation. She acknowledged the hard work that
had been put in by the organisation to get affiliation status. She also spoke
on how disturbing the Channel 4 documentary on Killing Fields of Sri Lanka was,
and the need for a credible, thorough, independent investigation.
Liam Fox the
former defence secretary also attended. He stated ‘that he was very worried
about the state of affairs in Sri Lanka, and that if the Government of Sri
Lanka were not prepared to at least make the little changes already in the
constitution the situation would worsen.
The BTC would
like to thank Lee Scott, MP Ilford North, Hon. Patron of BTC and Robert Halfon,
MP, Gavin Barwell, MP, and Andrew Rosindell, MP for all the support to both the
Tamil Community and BTC in their role as Vice Presidents of the BTC.
We would also
like to thank Charles Tannock, MEP and Syed Kamal for their support. We are
grateful to the members of the Global Tamil Forum, British Tamil Forum and TGTE
for joining us in celebrating our affiliation.
With the
affiliation BTC hope to organise more high profile events on both the national
and local level using the community media to get the conservative message to
the Community and actively partake in conservative activities. We would like to
acknowledge other Tamil organisations such as the Global Tamil Forum who helped
us make this event a success.
