Rai, Milan

Rai, Milan

Milan Rai

1 April 2018Feature

An internal manual for infiltrating activist groups, written by disgraced undercover police officer Andy Coles, has been made public by the Undercover Policing Inquiry

Andy Coles

On 19 March, the Undercover Policing Inquiry (led until July 2017 by Christopher Pitchford) posted the previously-secret Special Demonstration Squad Tradecraft Manual on its website (see accompanying article for extracts). The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was a section of Special Branch, the British political police, devoted to undercover operations, which existed between 1968 and 2008.…

1 February 2018Feature

Peace News interviews a working-class woman about the difference CAAT’s paid internship made to her life

This is the second in our series of interviews with working-class activists. These are Holly’s words:

“Growing up working-class erodes your confidence, almost by design. I just didn’t feel confident in any life stage, that I’d be able to excel or do well, or that anyone would actually want me as part of what they’re doing. People talk about ‘impostor syndrome’* all the time now. I do believe everyone has it, but if you’re from a disadvantaged background, it’s... it’s…

1 February 2018Comment

The history of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) holds valuable lessons and inspiration for those fighting for a Just Transition, rather than an 'arms-traders Brexit', argues Milan Rai


People's Climate March 2017 in Washington DC. Marchers with sign, "There are no jobs on a dead planet." Author: Dcpeopleandeventsof2017 c/o Wikimedia Commons.

There has rightly been a huge celebration of the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 and the first parliamentary election votes for some women in Britain (not counting landowners pre-1832).

This has stirred up again the valuable debate about how much this victory owed to…

1 February 2018News

Despite the fragile Olympic truce between the US and North Korea, war may be edging closer – with support from the self-censoring liberal media

Ice-skaters Ryom Tae-ok and Kim Ju-sik competing in 2017; they are representing North Korea in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. Photo: Garrett Wollman CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

There is one simple first step that can help the world to avoid a war between the United States and North Korea: extend the Olympic peace pause in US military exercises and North Korean nuclear/missile testing.

Possibly the most urgent task of the global peace movement is to…

1 December 2017Comment

Activists need to find better ways to struggle with each other and to fight with each other, argues Milan Rai

'People ask me how we would defend the bookfair from a fascist attack, but I’m not worried about them out there. I worry about what we might do to each other in here.’ – one of the organisers of the London Anarchist Bookfair, on 28 October.

A few hours later, a group of trans rights activists stopped some feminists handing out leaflets that they found oppressive to trans women. A nontrans woman, Helen Steel, objected to this censorship. About 30 trans rights activists then surrounded…

1 December 2017Review

PM Press 2017; 192pp; £14.99

‘When our enemies expect us to respond to provocation with violence, we must react calmly and peacefully; just as they anticipate our passivity, we must throw a grenade.’ This is pretty much the only ‘reflection on the role of armed struggle in North America’ that you will find in Ward Churchill’s 1986 essay, ‘Pacifism as Pathology’. These words, quoted approvingly, are from Black Nationalist activist Kwame Ture (formerly nonviolent civil rights Freedom Rider Stokely Carmichael).

27 October 2017Blog

The full references for the Peace News double-pamphlet 1917: The Nonviolent Russian Revolution / 1917: The Grassroots Working-Class Revolution that Lenin Crushed

These are the footnotes for the double pamphlet written by PN editor Milan Rai in October 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Many of these references can be verified online - sometimes whole texts have been scanned and placed online. In other cases, a search for the quoted text will bring up the page in the book referred to.

 

Footnotes for 1917: The Nonviolent Russian Revolution 

1 SA Smith, Russia in Revolution:…

1 October 2017Comment

Violence and a lack of principle helped undermine the movements against German fascism in the 1930s - today's social movements should take heed, argues Milan Rai

Roter Frontkaempfer Bund Logo.
Image: Kille via Wikimedia Commons.

 

US radical Noam Chomsky recently warned against ‘self-destructive’ anti-fascist tactics such as disrupting right-wing meetings, something that is ‘wrong in principle’, he told the Washington Examiner.

Chomsky added: ‘When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it’s the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is. That’s quite apart from the opportunity…

1 October 2017News

Muslim human rights activist convicted for not surrendering passwords

On 25 September, a Muslim human rights activist was found guilty by Westminster magistrates of the crime of not handing over the passwords to his phone and laptop.

Muhammad Rabbani, international director of Muslim anti-repression group CAGE, ‘wilfully obstructed’ an examination under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at Heathrow airport last November (see PN 2606–2607). He was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £620 in costs.

Rabbani…

1 October 2017Feature

Nonviolent action was a crucial - and oft-negelected - part of the Russian Revolution, argues Milan Rai

Women begin the revolution on International Women’s Day, 1917. PHOTO: Petrograd State museum of political history of Russia

The Russian Revolution of 1917 would not have succeeded without fearless nonviolent action by hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers. Even the ‘storming’ of the Winter Palace on 25 October was largely nonviolent. Yes, there was plenty of revolutionary armed action in Russia in the course of 1917, but there were also many extraordinary, inspiring,…

1 October 2017Feature

North Korea has been offering a sensible way out of the nuclear crisis

August 2017 Korean peace delegation in London. PHOTO: Peace Delegation of the PDP

This may be hard to believe, but it is North Korea that has been offering a diplomatic solution to its confrontation with the United States. Long before Donald Trump became president, it was the US that was refusing to take the olive branch.

As PN goes to press, the world is still reacting to Trump’s speech at the United Nations on 20 September. The president said that US would ‘…

1 October 2017Feature

An interview with a leading campaigner for fossil fuel divestment

Ellen Gibson. PHOTO: Fossil Free UK

Ellen Gibson: It’s been a slogan for a long time: ‘Think global, act local’. I think divestment is one of the campaigns that really tangibly offers people an opportunity to do that. It taps into the institutions and things that they have control over locally, but make a statement at a global level.

I think that’s a really, really powerful thing for people because it’s really getting to the heart of the climate change problem. It isn’t…

1 October 2017Feature

Lessons from PN's digital tools project

Someone once said to me that you know when you’ve lost on an issue when Socialist Worker has an article on ‘the lessons of...’. Okay, this is an article about some of the lessons that came out of our activists’ digital tools project, Zylum. Zylum was a really good idea that responded to real problems still facing many grassroots, very-low budget campaigning groups.

For example, you have a group website. Then the person who set the website up – and who has been maintaining…

1 October 2017Review

Pluto Press/Left Book Club, 2017; 272pp; £12.99

Reviewers agree that Neil Faulkner’s A People’s History of the Russian Revolution is a lively and readable account of the revolutionary events of 1917. It is also a distorted, dishonest disservice to the millions of Russian workers and peasants whose achievements Faulkner claims to celebrate.

Why should this matter to activists today? In particular, why should it matter to people committed to nonviolent revolution?

One reason is that when times get tough, and…

1 August 2017Comment

The most effective actions exert power and engage conscience, argues Milan Rai

The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, a group against AIDS, protests in New York City against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda. PHOTO: riekhavoc via Wikimedia Commons

Someone rang up the other day and asked what PN thought about ‘peace education’. I said that there was a range of things going on, from super-fluffy let’s-just-be-nice-to-each-other talk which does more harm than good, through activist history and analysis, to training that helps people to gain skills and to…