Campaign arrives in Nottingham

Tim Bell, 69 from Sherwood, who was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2013, is encouraging local people to join a new group in support of a campaign to allow terminally ill people to die with dignity. The group meets for the first time on Thursday 2nd March at Friends Meeting House on Clarendon Street and anyone is welcome to attend.

Tim, along with a group of people across Nottingham, is supporting Dignity in Dying in calling for assisted dying to be legalised so that terminally ill people are given choice and control over their death. The group’s first meeting will involve hearing from a representative of Dignity in Dying and brainstorming ideas for campaigning in the local area.

The issue is a personal one for Tim, who has undergone several rounds of surgery and treatment for cancer and now faces the prospect that it will eventually become terminal. Tim explained:

“Living with cancer has caused me to value and to enjoy my life more than I did before. It has also strengthened my conviction that when I move from curative to palliative treatment, I want to retain responsibility for my life. I do not want a lingering death in a morphine haze under a regime that ‘doctor knows best’. It’s surely my right to choose to have the final step pre-planned and under my own control, so I can say a decent and meaningful goodbye to my loved ones. This seems to me a fundamental right to choose and not one that either church teaching or medical opinion should be able to veto.”

Now retired, Tim was formerly the director of a national charity housing the homeless in Nottingham and beyond, and is proud of the area’s “great campaigning history”.

“I want to see many more Nottingham people mobilised in support of the Dignity in Dying campaign. The overwhelming public support for the legalisation of assisted dying won’t change the law by itself – we must campaign and press our politicians. At a crucial point in our lives this issue will arise for every one of us – the right to choose how we die. The law needs to be updated.”

When: Thursday 2ND March at 6.45pm
Where: Friends Meeting House, 25 Clarendon Street, Nottingham NG1 5JD
RSVP: For more information or to RSVP please contact activism@dignityindying.org.uk

***ENDS***

For more information please contact Ellie Ball, Media and Campaigns Officer at Dignity in Dying at ellie.ball@dignityindying.org.uk or 0207 479 7732.

Notes to Editor
Dignity in Dying campaigns for greater choice, control and access to services at the end of life. It advocates providing terminally ill adults with the option of an assisted death, within strict legal safeguards, and for universal access to high quality end-of-life care.