Johns, Emily

Johns, Emily

Emily Johns

3 September 2010Comment

A peaceful society can only be based on a peaceful economy. In this light, the recent deaths of Ken Coates and Jimmy Reid brought back memories of the 1960s and 1970s, and the high tide of workers’ control.

The first thing that sceptics say when they hear the phrase “workers’ control” is that most workers aren’t capable of managing their workplaces. They need specially-trained and educated people – more intelligent people, to put it bluntly – to direct them, regulate them.…

16 July 2010Feature

Australia, Britain, Ireland, the US

In this bumper summer issue of Peace News, we bring you good news from all around the world – from Australia where Ploughshares activists (pictured above) who pleaded guilty to breaking into a top secret spy base were nevertheless found not guilty by their judge, to Serbia, where charges were dismissed against six anarchists initially charged with international terrorism for protesting at the Greek embassy.

In Washington DC, in the US, there were acquittals for 24 human rights…

3 July 2010Comment

Peace News pays tribute to the Gaza flotilla martyrs: Cengiz Akyüz (42), Ali Heyder Bengi (39), Ibrahim Bilgen (60), Furkan Dogan (19), Cevdet Kiliçlar (38), Cengiz Songür (47), Çetin Topçuoglu (54), Fahri Yaldiz (43), and Necdet Yildirim (32), killed by the Israeli Defence Forces on 31 May. Let us not mince words. The Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla was an act of terrorism, of state terrorism. The killings of these Turkish solidarity activists was merely the latest chapter in the…

3 June 2010Comment

The formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government as the result of the UK general election signals changes on several fronts, but no change on the war and peace agenda.

Afghanistan was barely mentioned by the major political parties during the election campaign because, despite overwhelming public opposition to current policies, the war is a consensus position. While Trident replacement was mentioned in the election campaign, it was as a financial and not…

3 May 2010Comment

Two issues ago, in the run-up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference taking place this month in New York, we ran an article called: “The very, very least we should demand of the NPT”.

That article raised the issue of “negative security assurances” (NSAs), guarantees that nuclear weapons will not be used on non-nuclear-weapon states: “It is an absolute scandal that this is not part of the NPT. It is an absolute scandal that the nuclear disarmament…

3 April 2010Comment

Kate Hudson’s generous tribute and Pat Arrowsmith’s more critical remarks in this issue, capture different parts of Michael Foot’s legacy, a legacy which is entangled with the history of a broad section of the British peace movement.

On the question of war, Michael Foot distinguished himself in his middle years with his resolute opposition to “Suez” – the Anglo-French assault on Egypt in 1956. 26 years later, having become leader of the Labour party, Foot took a less…

3 March 2010Comment

You may not believe this, but Peace News is now counting down to our 75th anniversary. Yes, Peace News began life on 6 June 1936! During 2011, our 75th year of existence, we will be springing a number of surprises.

Most of our “Remaking Peace News” projects are designed to get PN out to a wider readership, and to make PN more useful to a wider array of groups and movements. Some initiatives we will be keeping under wraps for now, some we can reveal. We will definitely be re-…

1 February 2010News

About 50 people braved the melting snows in mid-January to come to the first-ever Peace News Winter Gathering, at the Sumac Centre in Nottingham. The gathering was followed by street theatre focussed on Nottingham arms traders Heckler & Koch.

Gathering participants heard the legendary Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs; the equally legendary George Farebrother of NETLAP and World Court Project UK; as well as workshops on “Killer Drones” (by Chris Cole of FoR and Jim…

3 December 2009Comment

The climate conference in Copenhagen is a turning point in world history. The protests in Denmark and around the world before and during the conference are therefore of enormous importance.

As a species, we are now fully conscious of the effects of our actions on the world’s climate and therefore on all the interlocking ecosystems on which human and other forms of life depend. At Copenhagen, the world’s governments could give their informed consent either to a scientifically-…

1 December 2009News

Tom Willis was a curate in Hull in 1958 when he inherited £10,000, the money that would buy 5 Caledonian Road for Peace News and Housmans Bookshop. Co-editor Emily Johns interviewed him at the 50th birthday event for Number 5.

I was 28 when I inherited the money and I thought: “What am I going to do with this money because Jesus said you can’t serve God and wealth?” I thought: “I’ve got to get rid of it because wealth always destroys you. If you have a lot of money it cuts you off…

1 December 2009Review

Whitechapel Art Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Tuesday-Sunday until 18 April 2010. Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth–Century Icon, Bloomsbury, 2005, ISBN 0 7475 6873 1, 374pp, £8.99

Pablo Picasso’s painting, Guernica, was shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1939 as a consciousness- and fund-raiser for the Spanish Republican cause.

Today it is back again, in tapestry form, as the seed for Goshka Macuga’s exploration of a web of connections: from a 1939 viewing “fee” of a pair of worker’s boots to the image, now hung in the UN building, being covered up during Colin Powell’s pre-war on Iraq speech. Goshka intervenes in history to give us Colin Powell – a bronze…

3 November 2009Comment

Do you support the troops? Are you proud of them? It would be a brave – or perhaps foolhardy – person in public life who said no.

Indeed, in a recent speech to mark the end of military operations in Iraq, archbishop Rowan Williams – the dangerous radical who once got himself arrested at an CND protest – declared the need for all of us to “speak our thanks for those who have taught us through their sacrifice the sheer worth of justice and peace.” He was talking about British…

16 October 2009Feature

The British people are tired of the lies and evasions. We are sick of the futile deaths of British soldiers and the shocking airstrikes on defenceless Afghan civilians.

We have had enough of the war in Afghanistan. The anger we felt over the invasion of Iraq has not gone away. Now we are increasingly angry at the mounting waste of life in Afghanistan.

Eight for eight
7 October marks the eighth shameful anniversary of the US-UK invasion of Afghanistan. Coincidentally,…

3 September 2009Comment

The funeral of the last British survivor of the trenches of the First World War was held in Wells Cathedral on Hiroshima Day (6 August) attended with pomp and circumstance, and solemn honours from politicians and the mainstream media. While they proclaimed their respect for Harry Patch, who died at the age of 111, political leaders and media commentators almost entirely ignored the core message to which Harry Patch devoted his last years.

The man who saw some of his best friends…

16 July 2009Feature

After the storm, we can make peace

After the turmoil of the post-election protests and repression in Iran, we believe that the most important thing that outsiders can do to help the people of Iran is to push for a new relationship between the west and the Islamic republic. Massive protests flared up after the 12 June Iranian presidential election because of the strong indications of fraud.

While it is possible that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election, millions of Iranians do not believe he won 63% of the votes,…