Two figures towered over Black America in the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr called for racial integration, for nonviolence, for love of the enemy. Malcolm X advocated racial separation, armed self-defence and self-love – black pride. Martin Luther King came out of the Black middle classes, the American South, the traditional Christian churches. Malcolm X came out of the Black underclass, the North, some new form of Islam. King spoke for reconciliation; Malcolm X for rage.
And yet, in…
“Peace News ... [is] always being accused of anarchism”, observed Nicolas Walter in 1963, and even today the charge retains much of its force.
Indeed, as Walter notes in this posthumously-collected book of his essays, the First World War - and the resistance to it “brought a permanent pacifist element into anarchism”, and whilst “[t]he campaigns for nuclear disarmament, racial integration and workers control do not belong to the territory of classical anarchism ... there is no doubt…
I refuse to be conscripted because it is a denial of human liberty.
I claim, as an individual, the right to act towards my fellow individuals, and no less to all creation, in the manner that my intelligence and my convictions guide me through the medium of my conscience.
Whatever may be the reason for the Universe, I see it as a whole - composed of subsidiary parts and each part is again made of smaller units.
The perfection of the whole is dependent on the…
One of the most influential nonviolent actions of twentieth-century European history was carried out by men committed to violence -- the ten men of the IRA and INLA who fasted to death in British prisons in 1981, causing an earthquake in Irish politics.
5 May is the 26th anniversary of the death of the first hunger striker, Bobby Sands MP. This exchange centres on a new book by Dennis O'Hearn - Bobby Sands: nothing but an unfinished song - which has a different attitude to…
Just after Christmas, Audrey came by the Saturday morning peace vigil (where I sell PN) in Stroud High Street. It was the last time I saw her. As usual she was pushing her walker-shopper and immaculately turned- out: eyebrow pencil, a touch of lippy and clothes of indisputable style. As usual, she was apologetic about no longer being strong enough to stand in line with us and as usual, too, she appeared indomitable. In fact she was indomitable and her death was a shock to us vigilantes and…
Many older readers will remember Len from his work from 1962 through to 1988 running the Film Van, a vehicle he drove around the UK during the summer months, appearing at showgrounds, market squares and many other locations around the country, where he would show anti-war films from the back of the van in the open air, campaigning for peace against war and violence. While showing the films, he would make peace books, leaflets and other material available, such as Peace News,…
During my years of work in the international and local anti-apartheid movements and my pursuit of poetry that speaks to political reality, I discovered Brutus's poetry and heard of his activism. But I knew few details of his life and work. This book of memoirs, speeches, interviews and poetry is an excellent account of Dennis Brutus, and informed my admiration of his courage, commitment and perseverance.
Classified as “coloured” by the South African government, Brutus's…
Adam Curle, founding Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, was born on 4 July 1916, into a family of thinkers. His mother, who had lost three brothers in World War I, instilled in him a loathing for all war. Nonetheless, he was a soldier in World War II, rising to the rank of Major, and after the war was over he worked, at the Tavistock Institute, for the rehabilitation of British Servicemen.
No doubt this experience, and his early study and university teaching as a…
Reverend Michael Scott, once an iconic figure in the campaigns for racial justice, colonial freedom and nuclear disarmament, is now largely forgotten. Anne Yates and Lewis Chester's The Troublemaker: Michael Scott and his Lonely Struggle Against Injustice, should go some way to ending the neglect of this quiet, introspective yet determined pioneer of nonviolent direct action.
Born into a clerical family in Sussex in 1907, Scott was ordained in Britain as an Anglican priest in 1930…
This column feels honoured that Harry Mister - whose death (and life) are, rightly, marked at greater length elsewhere in this PN - was provoked into making his final contribution to the paper by something here to which he took exception. What was published was sent as part of a chatty, personal, longer letter, full of his usual mixture of warmth, exasperation, and bits of 5 Cally Road business.
He would have been amused that the issue he addressed - religiously-based and…
Jerry Hartigan, peace activist extraordinaire, died on 9 January after months of treatment for Hodgkin's disease. Buddhists from the Milton Keynes Nipponzan Myohoji Peace Pagoda and people from many walks of life spoke at the funeral mass at his church, St Gregory's in Northampton.
Jerry was valued as a most hard-working, supportive member of Milton Keynes Peace Campaign, Milton Keynes Peace and Justice Centre and Milton Keynes Interfaith. He was unfailingly cheerful and generous…
I first met my dear friend Stuart “Mitch” Mitchel in 1965 when he was teaching at St Albans College of Further Education. Now, 40 years later, Mitch has died in his sleep (I'd guess he was in his early 80s but he regarded age as an irrelevance) and Beryl and their four children and seven grandchildren have lost a strikingly original, handsome and intelligent companion.
Mitch taught at the College until he retired and never ceased to be a polite, determined, constant irritant to the…
One Voice is a compilation of two pieces by the renowned pacifist Vera Brittain, written during World War II. The first, Humiliation with Honour, is a reproduction of a series of letters from mother to son. The second, Seeds of Chaos, provides detailed and gruelling evidence of the human and cultural destruction stemming from the “obliteration bombing” policy adopted by the RAF in the 1940s. A foreword by her daughter, Shirley Williams, and introduction by Y Aleksandra…
I've always liked Shelley's life: its passion, poetry and politics.
When he went to Oxford he and his friend Hogg immediately set about writing a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism. Shelley noted that "my mother fancies me on the High Road to Pandemonium" and she was proved right. Their pamphlet duly set the Master of their university college by his devout ears and he summarily expelled the pair of them. Thus, at age 19,Percy Bysshe Shelley's life was launched upon the…
