The death of Margaret Thatcher has provoked a huge reaction. Amid all the tributes and eulogies, pop songs and death parties, one aspect of her reign has been neglected: Thatcher’s moments of vulnerability.
Almost from moment of her election as prime minister, Margaret Thatcher was one of the most divisive figures in modern British history. A YouGov poll after her death found that half of the public thought she had been a good prime minister, while exactly a third…
As we approach the hundredth anniversary of the First World War, an uncomfortable question raises its head. Why did so many millions succumb to ‘war fever’ in 1914? While there was a lot of reluctance and a fair amount of resistance to the war, the actual declaration of war spawned huge, wildly-excited crowds in the major capital cities and the fever claimed many liberals and left-wingers.
The emotions that overwhelmed these Europeans had little to do with hate…
International Women’s Day has been celebrated in different ways in Iran. Last year, it was reported that meetings were held in people’s houses, and that it was proposed as a day of ‘solidarity and self-criticism’. The year before, there were street demonstrations in Tehran – and masked, baton-waving women police. In 2010, the Iranian government marked the day by banning the country’s greatest living poet, Simin Behbahani, from travelling to France where she had been invited by the mayor of…
Heading off for our first joint peace delegation (one of us has been to Iraq, the other has been on a Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation to Iran before), we’ve been reflecting on the history and purpose of peace delegations.
In his monumental book about the anti-war movement in Britain during the First World War, Against All War, Adam Hochschild tells the story of Emily Hobhouse, who had exposed the horrors of the British concentration camps during the Boer war. In 1915, well…
In the last issue of PN, a Jewish reader wrote that she was ‘often very surprised and saddened at the extent of the anti-Jewish feeling and writing in the political Left, and in Peace News particularly’. We promised to reply this issue.
Jen asked whether there was ‘a visible and vocal place for Jews (or Arabs and Gentiles) in the peace movements in general, and in Peace News in particular, who believe in a Jewish…
It is not enough for the anti-cuts movement to be a defensive, responsive movement. It is not enough to point out the flaws in the arguments for austerity (as the False Economy website does so brilliantly).
If we are going to have a world worth living in, we are going to have to merge together the agendas of the anti-cuts movement, the green movement, the labour movement and the peace movement.
We are already arguing for…
Back in June, a former US presidential advisor and Harvard University professor, Graham Allison, described the current confrontation with Iran as 'a Cuban missile crisis in slow motion': 'Events are moving, seemingly inexorably, toward a showdown in which the US president will be forced to choose between ordering a military attack and acquiescing to a nuclear-armed Iran'.
(In fact…
We’re guessing that PN readers divide roughly 50/50 on the Olympics. Half of us are blissfully ignorant of the whole thing. Half of us know varying amounts about what happened. (At a UK level, 90% of the population watched at least 15 minutes of coverage, according to the BBC.)
If you want to take the most positive, Colin Ward-ish perspective, you can cherish the fact that ‘the British nation’ has taken a black man (an immigrant from Somaliland) and a mixed-race woman to its heart, as…
We’re still digesting the long interview we carried out with veteran US activist George Lakey earlier this year, the last part of which appears on p8. We’re bringing George to the UK for a two-week speaking tour (which culminates in a day-long whole-camp workshop at Peace News Summer Camp) and we’re very much looking forward to learning more about the multi-dimensional Movement for a New Society that he initiated, which, among other things, took a number of buildings into collective…
The police march in London on 10 May was ‘supported’ by some radical protesters, holding sardonic signs: ‘Without us, democracy would triumph’, ‘Kettling: a transitional demand’, and ‘Not all cops are bastards’. People joked that the police might be less conservative than usual in their estimates of how many marched (in the event, Scotland Yard refused to give a figure).
The protest was against plans to cut police numbers by 16,000 over four years, as part of a 20% cut to the policing…
The brutal pace of events in Syria has been hard to follow, let alone to comprehend and to critique. Large-scale nonviolent protests against the regime of president Bashar al-Assad began over a year ago, in March 2011, after 14 schoolchildren were arrested and tortured in the city of Deraa. Their crime was to have written a popular Arab Spring slogan on a wall: ‘The people want the downfall of the regime’. The shooting of demonstrators spread the protests around…
Iran is entering a dangerous period.
We know that there is a realistic way out of the crisis: transferring ownership and management of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities to an international consortium, as advocated by retired US and British diplomats, and endorsed by a variety of Iranian officials and politicians.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: if the west’s real concern is preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, the consortium is the way to go.…
Progressive circles in the US have been furiously debating violence recently, after a forceful attack on the Black Bloc by radical journalist Chris Hedges. Hedges described ‘Black Bloc anarchists’ as ‘the cancer of the Occupy movement’: ‘obstructionist’ and ‘deeply intolerant but stupid’.
This brought an equally fierce riposte from radical anthropologist David Graeber, a long-time anarchist and Black Bloc participant, a co-founder of Occupy Wall Street and coauthor of what he…
On 5 January, Peter Flanagan, 59, who killed a man who had broken into his house in Salford, Manchester, gave evidence at the trial of the other three burglars. In a witness statement, Flanagan described how the men threatened him with a machete while they ransacked his house. A member of the gang swung the machete at him, and a struggle ensued. In the course of the struggle, Flanagan jabbed John Bennell, 27, with the machete, before the four burglars ran from the house. Bennell collapsed…
Someone selling Peace News at the St Paul’s Occupy site was taken to task for our (front page) description of the camp in the last issue as an “anti-capitalist occupation”. It turns out that there has been a vigorous debate at Occupy LSX over its attitude towards capitalism, resulting in a decision to move away from the “anti-capitalist” tag.
The site newspaper, The Occupied Times, published two views from the camp. One asked: “Is the best you can wish for yourself and your loved one…
