Erica Smith
Back in 2008, the 24-year old Plane Stupid campaigner Dan Glass was invited to Downing Street to receive an award and took the opportunity to superglue himself to the then-prime minister, Gordon Brown.
But Dan’s life as a campaigner neither began or ended with eco-activism.
Dan was a queer school kid who came out after Section 28 – which prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ by local authorities – became law in 1988.
Dan writes about how he would ‘slink out on the…
When I was 14, in the winter of 1978, I travelled down to London from the north-west with my mum to see the Dada and Surrealism Reviewed exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. It remains my number one gallery experience.
45 years later, not one but two seminal feminist exhibitions in London have elbowed their way into my all-time gallery Top 10.
The last edition of PN profiled the remarkable Re/Sisters exhibition at the Barbican, which closed on 14…
Erica Smith writes: In the book which accompanies Re/Sisters, Anna Feigenbaum defines three categories of eco-feminist: web weavers, tree huggers and water defenders. Feigenbaum suggests that the term ‘tree hugger’ dates back to 1730 when villagers in Bishoi, Kherjarli in northern India sacrificed their lives to save trees being cut down to build a new palace for the maharaja of Jodhpur. 250 years later, in the early 1970s, women from villages in the Garhwal Himalayas, northern…
The blurb of this book is a short hand-written note by the artist. It ends by saying: ‘It will bring you good luck and help you do sex better.’
That’s exactly the kind of schoolboy humour – from the biro of a white, 57-year-old man who was educated at Dulwich College with Nigel Farage – that might put a Peace News reader right off.
But I recommend that you put your prejudices aside, turn the book over and have a leaf through the pages, which document over 30 years of…
Benjamin Lay is having a renaissance – thanks largely to American professor and writer Marcus Rediker. His biography The fearless Benjamin Lay was first published in 2017 and more recently he has collaborated with David Lester to produce a graphic novel, Prophet against slavery.
Now he has collaborated with playwright Naomi Wallace on the…
If these uncertain times are wearing you down and you are feeling hope-less (or someone you know is), then this small book offers an opportunity for you to face the darkness, meditate on hope and re-kindle the burnt-out activist.
David Gee is a writer with a special interest in the meaning of hope in the face of global crises. Since 2008, he has written reports and books about recruitment and employment in the armed forces, peace education and children’s rights.
Hope’s Work…
Five women give first-hand accounts of four undercover police spies who targeted them between 1987 and 2010. It is gripping and sickening to learn the extent of abuse that these women – and others – experienced. The format of the book involves short, dated sections from each of the five women, so that their stories are woven together. This can be confusing at times but it keeps the reader’s focus on the progress of their grooming, gaslighting and ghosting – and on their partial victory…
Ted Parker was a working-class boy born in bomb-blasted Folkestone in 1942. His father was an army dispatch rider in the Second World War who died of Hodgkinson’s disease when Ted was eight. His mother was left to bring up two children alone and scraped a living as a cleaner in an army base.
When Ted was 13, she remarried and her new husband bought Ted his first guitar. Folk music and rock’n’roll remained important throughout Ted’s personal and political life. He did not do well at…
‘1977 was the Queen’s 25th Jubilee, so we were subjected to doses of gush and drool in the media accompanied by her celebratory pink hat.… Labour was in power, but the new leader, James Callaghan, was more royal than the royals, and I was aware that a new right lurked among the Conservatives, deploying a rhetoric of freedom while backing the suppression of trade unions as well as gays.’
This quote is so topical I had to include it in the review, although it is one of the most…
Roma communities were first recorded in the British Isles in 1505, and Irish travellers have been here for much longer. These nomadic communities have always been the subjects of suspicion, fear and abuse – arguably that is why they have continued to travel from place to place.
This short documentary highlights the most recent threat to travelling communities from the Police Bill, which is currently going through parliament. If passed it will mean that the failure to leave an illegal…
The eighth of Four Corners’ picture-rich ‘Irregulars’ publications celebrates the powerful heritage of banners produced for and at Greenham Common Peace Camp between late summer 1981 and when the camps were finally disbanded in 2000.
Banners made by one of the Peace Camp founders, Thalia Campbell, often with the help of her husband, Ian, her children, friends and others, are well-represented in this book. Thalia was one of the women on the inaugural march from Cardiff to Greenham…
A couple of years ago, I picked up a flyer promoting this (then forthcoming) book from Unbound. During lockdown, I finally tracked down a copy. You may wonder whether a book about wrestling deserves space in Peace News. I hope I will persuade you that it does.
The author was an awkward schoolgirl with no more than a passing interest in wrestling, who discovered the underground punk movement, Riot Grrrl and feminism.
Wrestling seems an unlikely saviour, but at 21, as…
I’ve reviewed two other Greenham-related memoirs for PN: Juley Howard’s Righteous Anger (PN 2616 – 2617) and Charlie Kiss’s A New Man (PN 2636 – 2637). Both of those authors literally ‘grew up’ at Greenham Common – arriving there aged 16, soon after the camp formed in September 1981.
By contrast, Stephanie Davies grew up in an idyllic Hampshire village, and was in her early twenties before she decided to end a conventional heterosexual life and join…
This chunky 320-page graphic memoir is an absolute treasure trove of LGBTQ+ history.
Kate Charlesworth was born in 1950 and her autobiography reminds us how much has changed over the last seven decades. If anyone is looking for an introduction to queer history, this is the perfect place to start.
The artwork throughout the book is totally engaging. Charlesworth varies her drawing style to suit each ‘chapter’ of her life story and the different graphic techniques convey both the…
