- Category:
- Common Interest - Current Events
- Description:
- A group for everyone who supports Dave Walker, following the recent threat of libel from the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSG), owners of SPCK bookshops. Dave has been faithfully following the SPCK story over the last 2 years, and keeping us all informed.
- Privacy Type:
- Open: All content is public.
Katharine
Sammy
We Support Dave Walker
Join- Name:
- We Support Dave Walker
- Category:
- Common Interest - Current Events
- Description:
- A group for everyone who supports Dave Walker, following the recent threat of libel from the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSG), owners of SPCK bookshops. Dave has been faithfully following the SPCK story over the last 2 years, and keeping us all informed.
- Privacy Type:
- Open: All content is public.
- News:
- News: Aug 2009 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8210573.stm for news of USDAW compensation settlement
Update July 2009: the Charity Commissioners have taken possession of all the remaining shops apart from Durham and Chicheste, and changed the locks. They appear to have joined the dots despite the Brewers trying to remove the shops from SSG's books to avoid paying their debts. Nothing has been heard from Mark or Phil Brewer for months, wonder if they've ceased and desisted?
Update May 13th - Dave Walker is now blogging on the SPCK story again, via his Church Times blog.http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/blog_post.asp?id=74937 is the latest. This follows the Charity Commissioners actions last week, and the offer of an out-of-court settlement to all 32 staff seeking compensation for unfair dismissal by SSG.
UPDATE 11th May: Events are moving now that the Charity Commission have appointed a Manager for SSG - see Wall posts below.
UPDATE 2nd May. Durham Cathedral have just served notice on the Brewers to evict them from the bookshop. More details at http://davidkeen.blogspot.com/2009/05/breaking-news-brfewers-to-be-evicted.html and response by campaigners at http://davidkeen.blogspot.com/2009/05/press-statement-in-response-to-durham.html (normally this would be on the spck/ssg site but I think the owner is away!)
NOTE [26 April 2009]: The impact of this issue now even extends to 'censorship' via Google being pressured not to index related webpages: see David Keen's wall post re http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/23/libel-google-and-a-cause-worth-supporting/
UPDATE 27th October: I have re-sent our letter to Mark Brewer of 2 weeks ago, in the absence of any reply or acknowledgement in the last 2 weeks. All 498 members at that time were sent a copy, and if you're new and want to see the full text see http://davidkeen.blogspot.com/2008/10/letter-to-mark-brewer.html
Background
On 22nd July cartoonist Dave Walker was issued with a 'cease and desist' notice from SSG, giving him just a few hours to remove all posts about SPCK/SSG from his Cartoon Church blog, or face libel action. Dave complied with the request, though the posts contained nothing libellous.
2 other bloggers were issued with 'Cease and Desist' notices: one on the same day as Dave (Phil Grooms SSG/SPCK blog), another the day after for republishing some of Dave's posts (Sam Norton). Both have disputed the claims in the letters, and have not taken down any blog posts.
So far, the threatened response from SSG has not materialised. In the meantime, the attempt to censor blogging has resulted in even more scrutiny upon SSG, and Mark and Phil Brewer, who run it.
This Facebook group will remain up until the Cease and Desist letter to Dave Walker has been retracted by Mark Brewer, and all the SPCK posts restored to his blog.
Daily updates and links posted at http://spckssg.wordpress.com/ and http://friendfeed.com/rooms/dave-walker-spck , and weekly roundups at Matt Wardman (http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/) , and David Keen (http://davidkeen.blogspot.com/) will continue.
For those interested in the wider issues around the former SPCK bookshops, the ongoing industrial action against the Society of St. Stephen the Great by former SPCK employees, work to salvage individual shops, non-payment of suppliers etc. please visit/join the SPCK Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6124687292 . There will probably be some overlap between that group and this one for the time being.
Most recent news (October) is that SSG's attempt to be declared bankrupt in the USA has been dismissed. The judge found that the application was made 'in bad faith' - which means 'for a wrong or improper purpose'. In fact, Mark Brewer is now the subject of court action in the US for attempting to use the court system to evade his responsibilities, and bringing the courts into disrepute. This is one of the episodes they didn't want Dave W and others blogging about - not surprising!! For more details see http://spckssg.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/spck-weekly-update-5th-september-2008/ and the links there.
The initial employment tribunal hearing for 30 former SPCK bookshop staff was on 18th September, and this process will continue into 2009. Again, Dave is prevented by his 'Cease and Desist' from blogging about this. This also means that Dave's Church Times blog can't cover it either, which some of us think amounts to press censorship.
