Activist history

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 10 months, there’s a strong chance you’re aware that this year marks the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre.

On 16 August 1819, an estimated 40–50,000 people assembled peacefully on St Peter’s Field in Manchester to hear the well-known reformer Henry Hunt speak on ‘the most LEGAL and EFFECTUAL means of obtaining a reform in the Common House of Parliament’.

The crowd was attacked, first by the Manchester and…

This book was first published 25 years ago as Gay Pride to commemorate what was then the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. This edition has lost the word ‘Gay’ (embracing the wider range of contemporary ‘Pride’) and has gained some additional photographs.

Introductory texts by Peter Tatchell and Hilton Als have been added to essays by Allen Ginsberg and Jill Johnston.

In Tatchell’s foreword, he reminds us of the massive strides made in the last 50 years. ‘Back…

In this book, Cambridge university academic Priyamvada Gopal confronts the now infamous 2014 YouGov poll which found 59 percent of Britons thought the British empire was ‘something to be proud of’.

Resistance to empire was frequent, she notes, with connections formed between critics of imperialism based in the UK and rebels in the colonies.

Furthermore, Gopal argues that a form of ‘reverse tutelage’ took place, as insurgents and the movements they led helped to shape…

GOALS: ‘No Pride in BP’ demanded that National Student Pride l immediately drop BP as a sponsor of National Student Pride 2015 events, l commit to not enter into future sponsorship or partnership agreements with fossil fuel companies, and l develop a set of ethical sponsorship guidelines that take into account the environmental and human rights record of companies.

SUCCESS IN ACHIEVING SPECIFIC GOALS: 5 points / 6
SURVIVAL: 1 / 1
GROWTH: 0 / 3
TOTAL: 6 / 10

‘…

On 10 November 2019, it will be 24 years since the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni colleagues were hanged by the military government for campaigning nonviolently against the oil company Shell. It is over 60 years since Shell started drilling oil in the Niger Delta.

Home to 20 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, the Niger Delta is the largest wetland in Africa, and the recipient of frequent oil spills from pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms…

This page is a tribute to our very wonderful cartoonist, the life-long anarchist Donald Rooum, who sadly died as this issue was being prepared.

We will publish an obituary in the next issue.

Donald has been drawing cartoons for PN since 1962. We asked him to produce this graphic retelling for the 50th anniversary of the Challenor case in 2013 (PN2558).…

On 29 June, there was a ceremony organised by the Molesworth Peace Garden Group and Christian CND to rededicate the peace garden and to remember peace activism at USAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire.

Bridie Wallis and Ian Hartley shared memories of living at Molesworth Peace Camp in the 1980s, to oppose the siting of US cruise missiles at the base.
www.tinyurl.com/peacenews3293

Molesworth is now home to a US military…

This beautifully-illustrated book documents the lives of 44 artists who were conscientious objectors (COs) and pacifists in the two world wars.

In a series of monographs, Gill Clarke gives us a valuable insight into lives lived and shaped by political and spiritual objections to killing and the war machine.

She gives us a very particular record of the development of creative lives: how artists made a living; the political and social communities of artists; and the impact of war…

 ‘Never have so many people decided so much in Portugal as between 1974 and 1975’. The peaceful revolution which kicked off this period, on April 25th 1974, is extraordinary. Not a single shot was fired by the revolutionaries, who risked everything to oust the country’s fascist regime and push the backwards state into the future. Raquel Varela is right to celebrate what followed, not just the day of the revolution. Workers took control of the factories, strikers won long sought-after rights…

GOALS:

1) To end mandatory administration of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test at Garfield High School.
2) To prevent Seattle public school district administrators from disciplining teachers who refused to administer the MAP test.

SUCCESS IN ACHIEVING SPECIFIC DEMANDS / GOALS: 6 points out of 6
SURVIVAL: 1 point out of 1
GROWTH: 3 points out of 3
TOTAL: 10 / 10

In the 1970s, public (state) school students in the US began taking ‘high…

I was a pupil at Manchester High School for Girls which, when I started at 11, was a selective, girls’ ‘direct grant’ school. About half the pupils were funded either by central government or by their local education authority (LEA).

In my family, it was considered a great achievement to have passed the exam and to have been awarded a means-tested grant from the LEA to cover fees.

There were great expectations of me, but I was not a model pupil. I did not engage with my studies…

Some years after the Second World War, articles appeared in national newspapers in the UK headed ‘Volunteers Sought to Risk Death’ and ‘Human Guinea Pigs Plea’. They were advocating the setting up of a national centre where scientists could ‘infect people with diseases and try out drugs – even if the risk is death’, and were based on a research project during the war.

In 1940, professor Kenneth Mellanby was…

Think of Adolf Hitler and invariably an image is conjured up of an all-powerful leader, the most evil individual in modern history, using extreme barbarity to crush his opponents at home and abroad.

The latest study from Nathan Stoltzfus, professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University in the US, challenges this simplistic representation, raising profound questions for historians, citizens and activists alike.

Citing a huge range of German- and English-language…

In August 1976, women employed at the Grunwick photo processing plant in north west London walked out on strike. 30 years later, in 2006, women employees at Gate Gourmet, a factory that prepared in-flight meals for British Airways, also walked out.

This book describes how these two groups of women were led to take industrial action – and their subsequent betrayal by the trade unions. Their stories are set against an academic account of migrant settlement, work and family life in the…

GOALS: (from Wall Street leaflet, 1987):
1) Immediate release by the Federal Food & Drug Administration of drugs that might help save our lives.
2) Immediate abolishment of cruel double-blind studies wherein some get the new drugs and some don’t.
3) Immediate release of these drugs to everyone with AIDS or ARC [‘AIDS-related complex’ – ed].
4) Immediate availability of these drugs at affordable prices. Curb your greed!
5) Immediate massive public education…