Culture

INNATE, a nonviolence network in Ireland, has available a set of over 100 A4 posters on a wide variety of topics, including: children and conflict; conflict; dealing with the past; gender issues; green issues including climate change; human rights and equality; Irish historical; militarism including war and armaments; nonviolence; Northern Ireland; nuclear power; women and peace; peace; power; and religion.

Some are explicitly Irish but the majority are universal. Most require a…

Is it some kind of sign of the times, or merely a candle in the wind, that a record shop has opened in Stroud selling nothing but vinyl? Sound Records opened in March and it stocks second-hand records and maybe new vinyl too for all I know. I wasn’t at its opening gala but James and David – front man and guitarist respectively of the poetic punkish political rockanroll band, ‘The Red Propellers’, which I’ve often mentioned here – performed in the neat and compact (well tiny) shop which I’m…

In February and March, there was a strike for pension rights organised by the University and College Union (UCU). Put very simply, extortionately high wages are being paid to small numbers of people at the very top of the university tree, while it’s being proposed that pensions (delayed salary pay) for the majority of workers be significantly cut. The UCU voted for strike action to prevent this from happening.

The pickets have been extraordinarily strong in Edinburgh, and my…

In one of the last poems in this book, entitled ‘To the woman on St. Nicholas Avenue whose thigh was a wilderness blooming’, Ellen Hagan celebrates a woman she saw who had tattoos of flowers and trees all up her leg. She speaks of how uplifting the sight of this ‘garden of a woman’ was, and the poem is infused with a sense of the bravery this random stranger had – to show the world how she wanted to look, and who she wanted to be. I felt like this poem summed up everything joyous and…

At this end of the year, the conflicts of the world can be seen in our small north London back garden.

The birds are hungry and our swinging seed feeder is getting a lot of attention. But then comes the arrival of the large and powerful – the green parakeets from Hampstead. Colourful they may be, but greedy they certainly are. The small ones – robins, wrens, finches, and the like – get driven off. Or they would get so driven if I did…

In this, the third thriller in Max Hertzberg’s alternative East Germany trilogy (set in an alternate history in which East Germany’s Peaceful Revolution of 1989 resulted in the creation of a socialist state run by direct democracy), the young, self-organised democracy is testing its self-confidence and looking to the future, while threatened by ghosts from its past that just won’t lie down. It’s a year on from a crucial referendum to take down the Berlin Wall and disband the Republicschutz,…

’Biktub Ismak Ya Biladi, ‘al shams ilma bit(a)gheeb
La mali wala wlaadi, ‘Ala Hubik mafe Habib.

I will write your name oh my country, above the sun that never sets.
Not my children nor my wealth, above your love there is no love.

I first heard this song at a demonstration in Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, Palestine, in 2012. I was in the village to participate in a demonstration with my choir and, as is their tradition of…

When my choir San Ghanny (‘We Shall Sing’ in Arabic) and I were in Palestine two months ago, we took part in a demonstration to call for the return of Palestinian bodies from the Israeli government.

The campaign is led by family members, often mothers, of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces, or who have been involved in militarised resistance to the occupation resulting in their own deaths. This includes desperate actions such as suicide bombing.

For family…

At the heart of this book lies the unresolvable dilemma between economic growth and ecological sustainability. Its key contribution is to combine a global study of the Anthropocene (the ‘proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems’ – Wikipedia) with an anthropological analysis of how it is perceived locally. The result is an informative, multi-scaled account of our fast-paced times.

Over five chapters, Eriksen…

The European Language Equality Network met in Valencia in June for #ELEN2017, a get-together of interested parties from minority languages acting together to create an united voice.

On the top of the agenda was the effect of Brexit on the Celtic languages of the UK, including Welsh, which has recently lost its national newspaper as Y Cymro has ceased publication due to market forces. David Wyn of Cynghrair Cymunedau Cymraeg (the Alliance of Welsh Communities) explained how hate…

In November 1962 – by chance and good fortune –

I heard the African-American singer/actress/songwriter/ civil-rights-activist, Odetta (1930–2008), and a new up-and-coming folk singer, Bob Dylan, sing live in London.

They appeared at the Singers Club – I was a member – which met at a Kings Cross pub, The Pindar of Wakefield. Also present was their somewhat controversial manager, Albert Grossman, and the event celebrated, I think, the club’s birthday.

It was an…

Throughout a long association with Peace News I’ve known that PN readers are not necessarily pacifists – though I’d hazard most are. Maybe some are internally debating whether they are or not.

I’ve known gay men and women personally and also read their thoughts variously and they commonly assert that they knew as children that they were gay.
In my own life, there’s a parallel. I think age 7 – 8 I knew I was a pacifist and I’ve never had any doubts since.

The Bread and Roses Award for radical non-fiction will be announced at the London Radical Bookfair on 24 June. This is the shortlist.

The Hammer Blow

The Hammer Blow: How 10 Women Disarmed a War Plane by Andrea Needham (310pp; £10; Peace News): ‘The heroic actions of this small, but determined, group of women is told brilliantly in Andrea Needham’s fascinating account. They spent six months in jail for acting upon their consciences – but were…

Leon Fleming's new play concerns a brother and sister growing-up and living in Birmingham trapped in the clutches of an uncaring welfare system. The story is told with flasback scences from their childhood, mixed with the contemporary tale of two people being processed by The System TM and trying to survive. It is a grim tale, but not without moments of comedy, but those bittersweet moments come from the past rather than the relentlessly grim present of our protagonists. Their lives now…

There are a couple of vehicles regularly parked down our street which always raise my eyebrows. Firstly, because they park with their kerbside wheels wholly on the pavement and I have to walk in the road because I can’t squeeze past, and secondly, because of their names.

The Land Rover model is a ‘Defender’ and the camper-van is a ‘Trident’. There are other less offensive Land Rover model names such as ‘Discovery’ and ‘Freelander’ and even the mysterious ‘Evoque’ but these two…