“United Nations or United States?”

The Rt. Hon. Lord Elis-Thomas AM is to deliver a public lecture: “United Nations or United States?” at Bangor University on Friday October 7^th at 6.30. The Lecture, which is open to all, takes place in lecture Room 4 in the Main University Building and is organised by Bangor University in conjunction with the United Nations Association (Menai Branch). The Lecture will be in Welsh with simultaneous translation facilities available.

As Lord Elis-Thomas explains, the Lecture discusses the confusion in meaning between ‘nation’ and ‘state’ or ‘national’ in the language of international institutions. The title is purposefully ambiguous; 'United Nations or United States' referring to the greater influence that larger states have within the United Nations and in particular, the ‘Security Council’.

The analysis of the role of the international agencies under the auspices of the  United Nations will be more constructive in its conclusion.  Lord Ellis Thomas will propose that the EU should represent Europe as a permanent member of the Security Council in place of the UK and French states.

Within the European Union he proposes working towards a Europe of the regions rather than a European Union of member states.  The lecture will end by outlining Wales’ role as, In Lord Elis-Thomas’s words: ‘a nation that can leap across the devilish phase of nation states in the history of continental Europe and the world, to becoming one of the original partners in an Europe of the regions in a planet that is truly international in the true sense of the world’

Lord Elis-Thomas was a member of parliament from 1974 to 1992, when he became a Life Peer. He is a Welsh Assembly member, and was Presiding Officer of the Welsh Assembly from 1997 until 2011. He is also President of Bangor University.

Publication date: 29 September 2011