MacKenzie, David

In another life I was a teacher, and I recall that in the early nineties we used the tag Design Model to explain how injustice was embedded in formal educational institutions.

In the Scottish case the well-intentioned move to universal public education in the nineteenth century was underpinned by assumptions which gave us an institution (and buildings) designed for the a favoured group, which had the obvious characteristics of being white, male, middle class, able-bodied, straight,…

On 5 December, ten anti-Trident activists were each fined a total of £300 by a Scottish Sheriff who takes a dim view of people not doing exactly what the police tell them on every occasion. The activists were in bother for being the crew of a large model nuclear weapons submarine which blocked the street outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on 10 March.

The ten were accused under the Roads (Scotland) Act with placing an obstruction in the roadway without reasonable…

There was no way I wanted to miss Robert Fisk's lecture in Stirling, so I was not critically put off by the irritating call notice which referred to him as the “revered foreign correspondent”.

“Sound”, “respected”, “influential” would have been fine but “revered” does rather take us into that stratosphere of adulation in which we kneel down and cast aside, like Pilgrim's bundle of sin, all our unworthy critical thoughts. The worry of course was not about Fisk himself, who I imagine…

Education for peace is being talked about in Scotland again. There has been a debate in the parliament on the topic and there is now a cross-party group on a Culture of Peace.

Shortly a study done by Arthur Romano of Bradford University will map what is being done around the country . In respect of mediation and conflict resolution there has been a lot of activity for some years now, both in schools and communities. Among many examples there is an established project in Inver-clyde…

I must love the questions themselves, as Rilke said, like locked rooms full of treasure, to which my blind, and groping key, does not yet fit. (Alice Walker from "Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful")

Some years ago former UK government minister Chris Smith wrote in the New Statesman about the joys of hill-walking in Scotland as an escape from politics. My first reaction to the article was to share in his pleasure -- but soon enough the question hit me: How in the…

Possibly the best thing that can be said for travel as an educational experience is that it can give you added clarity about the state of your own corner when you return to it. Due to surface strangeness and increased alertness, things that go relatively u

It has been a month full of sharp reminders of how the military dominates our lives.

During the last week of April a group of activists peacefully blockaded the Defence Munitions Depot at Beith in Scotland (see PN2461). This huge depot has a workforce of 500, and its main work is to store, produce, test and issue a range of missiles (including Tomahawks) and torpedoes.

In an arcane twist, HMG contracts big arms companies like BAE Systems to do the manufacturing and these…

As an antidote to election nausea I have turned again to Lewis Carrol's Alice. Since both Tweedles have now decided that “playing by the rules” is the thing, the obvious passage is from Alice's trial:

At this moment the King,who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book,called out “Silence!” and read out from his book, “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”

Everybody looked at Alice.

”I'm not a mile high,” said Alice.…

The dismantling of the model Trident submarine in Edinburgh on 10 March (see news item on p2) was a dramatic performance in which different elements, with varying degrees of willingness, played essential parts. The activists inside and around the sub had an ideal plot in mind but realised that it might have to be adjusted as circumstances changed. In the end it went almost entirely to script.

The late evening denouement put the police centre stage. They increased the dramatic…

Early on 11 March officers from Lothian and Borders Police dismantled a large model Trident nuclear weapon submarine which had blocked the street outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh for 14 hours in a challenge to the Parliament to take a stand against Britain's weapons of mass destruction.

At 10am on 10 March the submarine had approached the Parliament building and, as it crossed the Canongate, peace activists on the inside, from Trident Ploughshares and the Theatre of War…

Ever since I got into some warm water for including in a press release a quote which compared Trident to Auschwitz I have been alert to the potential danger of such comparisons. The Dresden commemorations have raised the issue again, with much use of the term “moral equivalence”.

The phrase itself has an interesting history. William James used it in 1906 in an essay proposing a civil substitute for military service which would retain some of the “moral” benefits of war…