On 15 February, British anarchists will mark their first ‘Aggravated Activist Day’, after the event was called by participants in a workshop at the Anarchist Bookfair in London last September.
The workshop was run by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, which pointed out in March 2021 that the police had stopped using the label ‘domestic extremist’, and replaced it with ‘aggravated activist’.
Anarchists are classified by the police as taking part in ‘high-level aggravated…
This book shakes things up!
It also opens a space for dialogue, welcoming Muslims, anarchists and anyone engaged with creating a just, peaceful world.
It attempts to offer a vision for building a community of mutual partnership, as an alternative to nation-state structures, capitalist or otherwise. Such a community is inclusive of diverse faiths and spiritualities and grounded in shared, lived, ethico-political values. It also engages with justice in relation to indigenous land…
While preparing this issue, and asking permission to use the graphic on the front page (which is not in the public domain, contrary to what the internet believes), we learned that the revered British anarchist illustrator Clifford Harper was not well (but on the mend).
Clifford is the author of Anarchy: A Graphic Guide and The Education of Desire and has been illustrating radical, alternative and mainstream publications since the 1970s! (You may know him from the…
There have been four Anarchist Studies Network conferences, one every two years since 2010. The theme for this year's fifth conference, 'decolonise', was chosen for two reasons: to confront and tackle the…
Donald Rooum has been drawing cartoons for PN since (at least) 1962, and PM’s new selection of his work – many of them featuring his most famous creation, the anarchist moggie Wildcat – takes on a wide variety of familiar targets: religion, the military, police surveillance, the monarchy and capitalism. But we’re also treated to Rooum’s delightfully offbeat takes on Rumplestiltskin and the Garden of Eden (‘When you’re not blackmailing, you quite turn me on’, the miller’s daughter…
As usual, we rang people up to talk anonymously about a topic. This time, something came up for one person that needed more space.
Can I caveat this right before I agree to do this? I feel I am poor on my feet. I don’t do social media partly because I can’t get my head round how people do that. I have a bit of anxiety around this.
The other context is, depending on your topic, really good for your piece or really bad.
I have just been through the most enraging experience…
The letters pages in Peace News have long been a forum for debate on pacifist ideas: the August 1955 issues were no exception. Sid Parker, individualist anarchist, contributed to and edited political publications over many decades; pacifist Denis Barritt lived in Northern Ireland - including during “the troubles” - opposing all armies, ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’.
Anarchist position
There is one paragraph [of a Peace Pledge Union document in a previous PN] with which…
30 April: ‘Came across these 4 young punks in charge of clearing out debris in their
own neighborhood today. This is an all ages show everyone.’ photo: Yuva Ekta
Nepal was hit by a long-predicted earthquake (7.8 on the Richter scale) on 25 April. Over 8,000 people were killed. There were over 100 aftershocks, including a 7.3 quake on 12 May.…
‘If we want to weaken the state we must strengthen society.’ Colin Ward reminds me of the fundamental principles that drive my actions, and gives me hope with which I can go forward and get involved in dealing with activist topics. His revitalising principles, encapsulated in this short quote, remind us that thinking about social change need not be an armchair activity, or a bottomless slog, but can be an essential part of ultimately getting stuff done.
Ward wrote about all…
In 1978, in a satricial swipe at the burger giant, British sci-fi comic 2000 AD had its fascist anti-hero Judge Dredd visit the nightmarish ‘MacDonald City’ – a dystopia within a dystopia. However, they soon became nervous about libel lawsuits, and the axe finally fell – albeit from a different quarter – when a later episode pitted Dredd against a crazy version of the Jolly Green Giant. Threats of legal action from food giant General Mills forced the comic into publishing a half-…
The Freedom Collective, publishers of Freedom, the anarchist periodical founded in 1886, decided at a meeting on 3 March 2014 to discontinue printing and concentrate on online publication. After the second printed edition of 2014, the intention is to publish a special edition for the anarchist bookfair in October, and after that to print only occasional free sheets.
Peace News and Freedom have much in common. Donald Rooum, who has contributed cartoons to Peace News since 1962, has…
Like the author of this book, I’ve had the experience of working for a large NGO (non-governmental organisation) and, in the process, becoming de-skilled, de-motivated, uncreative and disempowered.
After a couple of years of struggling with hierarchy and unimaginative bureaucracy, I left to do more activism, study for an art degree, and work part-time for a small start-up charity where my skills have been appreciated and nurtured. So naturally I was keen to crack open my copy of…
Yes, this review is a bit late, for a book published in 2009, but this is a book we really didn’t want you to miss out on.
If you’re interested in Israel, then finding out that the foundation stones of the new society, the co-operatives known as kibbutzim, were explicitly as well as implicitly inspired by anarchism is pretty extraordinary.
If you’re interested in anarchism, then learning how these super-egalitarian…
As an anarchist it wasn't easy for me to be among Jihadists, but for some reason, it wasn't the same treating them as a doctor.
From the first moment I entered the hospital where I was working I was clear that I would treat anyone who needed my help, be they civilians, or fighters from any group, religion or sect. I was determined that no one would be mistreated inside that hospital, even if they were from Assad's army.
It is true that not all the free army militants are…
In recent years, English-language histories of anarchism have been paying more attention to anarchist thinkers and activists outside the West. These two books are part of that trend.
I don't really think many PN readers are going to fork out for Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870-1940; it's a very expensive academic hardback, but it is a valuable contribution.
The authors document influential anarchist movements in Argentina…
