Prof Warsi to Deliver Lecture on Terrorising Britain at St Mary's

Visiting professor in the Centre for Initiatives in Spirituality and Reconciliation (InSpiRe) Baroness Warsi is to deliver her Inaugural Lecture at St Mary’s University, Twickenham on the 10th December. Prof Warsi’s lecture entitled Terrorising Britain will question whether the responses from successive governments to terrorism following the 7/7 bombings ten years ago has left Britain feeling any safer. It will also question whether Britain is terrorised by what groups like Daesh (ISIS) may be planning, or if the fear between communities is also terrorising Britain. Drawing on her experiences of sitting at the table during policy discussions, Prof Warsi will explore the answers to these questions and the effects of these policies on communities across Britain. The lecture will be held on the 10^th December at 6pm in the Waldegrave Drawing Room on St Mary’s Strawberry Hill Campus. The event is free and open to the public, to book your seat please click here. Baroness Warsi was Britain’s first Muslim Cabinet minister and at the time of her appointment in 2007 became the youngest member of the House of Lords. In Government, Warsi combined a role in the foreign office and a domestic department as Senior Minister of State in the Foreign Office and Minister for Faith and Communities before resigning from the Government in August 2014 over the Governments policy on Gaza. Prior to politics, Warsi ran her own legal practice specialising in criminal defence, mental health and human rights law. She served as a special adviser to Michael Howard and Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party before she was created a Life Peer as Baroness Warsi, of Dewsbury in the County of West Yorkshire and appointed Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action. David Cameron then appointed Warsi as Minister without Portfolio in Cabinet in 2010 and she succeeded Eric Pickles as Chairman of the Conservative Party. Baroness Warsi has a keen interest in the field of inter-faith relations and was the Government representative who welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to the inter-faith gathering at St Mary’s University in 2010. In Government she made the case for Faith in the Public Sphere in a series of high profile speeches and interventions. In February 2012 Warsi led the UK’s largest ministerial delegation on an official visit to Rome to mark the 30th anniversary of the re-establishment of full diplomatic ties between the UK and the Vatican.