Anti-militarism

Last year, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne announced that any replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system would have to come out of a reduced MOD budget. CND responded with the report Trident, Jobs and the UK Economy which argued that Trident replacement would therefore lead to the loss of other defence sector jobs. Peace News praised the report (PN 2526) because it recommended the conversion of Aldermaston and Barrow to work on disarmament and production of…

Providing material not only for Remembrance Sunday but for other occasions which call for reflection on the reality of war and its cost, and the desire to work for peace and its cost too. The introduction on Henry Allingham and Harry Patch sets the tone which, in a variety of ways, honours the words of Harry Patch: “War isn’t worth one life”.

The PPU will be well-known to older readers of PN, but perhaps to others only because of the white “peace poppy”. What was once a mass movement supporting the pledge to “renounce war, and never again... [to] support or sanction another” became a small organisation, largely concerned with peace education.

Along the way the organisation faced challenges, losing members during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. The PPU opposed conscription, continuing this opposition into “…

Info-packed articles from Engelhardt’s popular anti-war blog TomDispatch.com (much better known in the US). Includes the text of a speech Obama could have given in December 2009, announcing the beginning of negotiations with the Taliban and the phased withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
 

Once again this year, Aberystwyth town council voted to lay a white peace poppy wreath at the war memorial. In truth, stalwarts on the council had a struggle getting their fellows to continue the tradition, which has a symbolic impact beyond the borders of Wales. Only two councillors, Mark Strong and Alun Williams, both of Plaid Cymru, attended the ceremony on 13 November.

Unless people lobby the council, the future of the ceremony remains uncertain. Once laid, the white poppy wreath…

On 6 November, a small but dedicated group of peace campaigners braved the rain in Glasgow’s Victoria Park for a rededication of the Peace Tree. This cherry tree was presented to Glasgow by Christian CND 21 years ago, to mark their 1989 annual conference.

Speakers Pauline McNeill MSP and Martin Bartos of the Green Party reaffirmed their own personal commitments to the anti-nuclear cause and reminded the gathering of their membership of the burgeoning worldwide movement for a…

On 30 October, Alternativa Antimilitarista-MOC activists breached security at the Bétera NATO base in Valencia. Wearing white coats and umbrellas with anti-war symbols, 15 activists took scooters and bicycles under the security fencing and rode around inside while others played football and other games.

The activists were detained for an hour and then released. The organisers said that this was the first of a series of international anti-militarist actions against the Afghanistan…

Despite its other shortcomings, it was good to see that the UK government’s Public Expenditure Review has not allocated funds to the privatised military training college at St Athan. This seems to signal that the gargantuan Public Finance Initiative (PFI) will be reviewed and scaled down. The people of Wales have been misled about this project from the beginning. When it was first announced in January 2007, there were promises of thousands of jobs. In reality, the project was a job reduction…

On 2 August, the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space learned that its upcoming annual international organising conference in Nagpur, India, had been blocked by the Indian government, the first time in 17 years that any country has banned the network from meeting. The gathering, planned for 9-11 October, has been cancelled, but all events for “Keep Space for Peace Week” (2-9 October) are going ahead.

Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon said: “It is good…

The Movement for the Abolition of War (MAW) decided to mark this year’s Unarmed Forces Day (an event inaugurated by Peace News last year) by launching a “nonviolent action doll”. This new doll is a counter to the “armed forces action figures” launched by the MoD last year (and which all looked like Action Man).
“Peacenik Patty” is “an active young woman, found all over the country at protests, demonstrations and peace camps”; “What she lacks in dress sense she makes up for in…

Fig Tree is a new initiative to engage the Christian community in Britain on peace and security issues. It aims to preach the gospel of peace in word and deed, and to build and support the Christian peace community here in the UK.

Biblically, the fig tree is a symbol of peace, security and prosperity with Micah’s vision of “everyone beneath their own vine and fig tree” perhaps being the best known example.

However, in Mark’s gospel, just before he overturns the tables,…

The eighth annual Liverpool military show was cancelled at the end of May after the local council withdrew £8,000 funding. Organisers were told the show did not “score highly enough” on the council’s diversity scale to justify funding from the arts and culture budget. Jonathan Swift, where are you?

The dugong, a coast-hugging sea cow close to extinction, is taking the US military to court over plans to relocate a military base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The legal case, Dugong et al v Robert Gates, over Henoko bay, the projected new base site, has been running since 2003, and the dugong are ahead, as the San Francisco court ruled in 2008 that the US defence department had not complied with the US national historic preservation act. The dugong is sacred in Okinawa.

During the Vietnam war, peace groups who invited Noam Chomsky to speak often tried to pair him with Howard Zinn. Chomsky’s stark analysis might paralyse some, but Zinn’s humour and optimism would lift people, and inspire them to go out and take action.

No slouch in the action department himself, Zinn was an active participant in the civil rights movement, managed anti-war priest Daniel Berrigan’s movements underground while he was on the run from the FBI, and was arrested numerous…

Challenging military recruitment practices in the UK and contributing to a wider understanding of peaceful alternatives to conflict, Forces Watch is a new network set up to: