- Sophie: Fake passports and bids for freedom
- Cherie: Is there any chance for us to get any rights for what we did for the British Forces in Iraq?
- Matt: For the first time in my life, I felt that… I am a Traitor
- Fred (Apr 2003): I thank Coalition forces to liberate Iraqi people and to put us agreed conditions after the war
- Jeremy: wish of my life to pay a visit to London to see its noble peoples whom I respect and love too much
- Jane: Fleeing Iraq, the reality
- Patrick: Mid July 2004 and the assassinations started
- Trevor: I am just sitting in my house waiting the militia to come and kill me
- Will: Im living a very horrible life, hiding and doing no job to feed my family
Take action
So, you've read the papers, watched the news footage, and you want to help?
Thank you! Here are some steps that you can take to make a difference.
- Contact your MP
- If you have not contacted your MP before, what better reason could there be than to help save lives?
- Don't know how to reach your MP? No problem! Visit http://www.theyworkforyou.com/, enter your postcode, et voila: you can use the site not only to send them your email, but also to track the responses given.
- "Stuck for words"? Try these possibilities:
- Ask your MP—whether s/he acknowledges the clear and present danger that current and former Iraqi translators and contractors face in the Middle East?
- Ask your MP—if s/he would support calling on the UK Government to immediately change policy and ensure the safe extraction and evacuation of those Iraqi translators or contractors identified to be at risk?
- Ask your MP—to press the Government to prove that the issue is being dealt with under a directive to employ the utmost urgency
- Ask your MP—to call for comments from among your fellow constituents
- Dan's Hardie's blog, http://danhardie.wordpress.com/ has some sample letters
- Experience suggests that when MPs receive thousands of templated letters, they are largely ignored. By all means, though, use these as a starting point
For maximum effect
- Ask direct questions
- Be brief!
- Avoid profanity or personal insults. No matter how strongly you feel, these hurt the effectiveness of your message (your communication won't have much impact after it's instantly tossed into "the round file")
- Tell them when you last voted; and promise that you will be participating in the next election
- Tell them that you will be weighing the nature and speed of their personal response at the next election
- Tell them you consider this a humanitarian issue that goes above and beyond mere Party loyalties, for them and for you
- Tell them that how we as a country respond at long last to the mess we and George Bush have made of millions of Iraqi peoples' lives is the real test of what being British should stand for