Anti-militarism

It’s difficult to avoid the feeling that the military are becoming increasingly embedded into civil society. With high-profile initiatives such as “Armed Forces Day”, lengthy media coverage of soldiers in Afghanistan and targeted recruitment campaigns online, on TV, on billboards and in our schools and communities, there is a growing urgency to resist the militarisation of our everyday lives.

A new campaigning network has been created to resource and empower groups and…

As politicians warn of post-election cuts in public spending, the question arises: how much could be saved by reducing Britain’s military presence worldwide?

This is what many Britons think the government should be doing. In a 2007 Daily Telegraph poll, 55% of respondents felt Britain should stop trying to “punch above our weight”, and reduce the country’s foreign military involvement.

In real terms, military spending – like public spending in general – has increased…

A four-week inquiry into the £12 billion privatised military training establishment due to be based at St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, ended in early February 2010. The case for compulsory purchase of land in the area to enable the defence technical college to go ahead was presented by senior ministry of defence (MoD) figures and Welsh assembly government civil servants. They were backed by representatives of the Metrix consortium of private companies that successfully bid for the…

Official statistics of British forces fatalities in Afghanistan obscure the fact that it is younger people from poorer backgrounds who are suffering most from the increasing intensity of the fighting there.

Those facing the greatest risks in Afghanistan are in the infantry. In 2009, there were 107 British forces deaths, of which 71 (66%) were infantry personnel, despite the fact that the infantry account for only 13.3% of the armed forces as a whole. Infantry recruits tend to be…

65% of people in Britain think that diplomacy should be used to solve the current Falklands oil dispute, according to an Angus Reid Public Opinion poll published on 5 March. Only 20% of Britons approved of the use of “any means necessary, including military force” to continue with the planned oil exploration.
Meanwhile, a similar proportion of people want the removal of British armed forces from Afghanistan by end the of 2010, according to a ComRes poll for the BBC’s Newsnight…

19 Turkish anti-militarist activists have been charged with “alienating people from military service” and “praising a crime and criminals” as the result of a 6 January solidarity demo held for Enver Aydemir, a conscientious objector who has been in prison since 24 December. Amnesty is asking for (polite) appeals on behalf of Enver and the 19, to the Turkish minister of national defence, by 8 March.
Please write to: Vecdi Gonul, minister of national defence, Milli Savunma Bakanligi,…

Based on over 200 personal testimonies from the Imperial War Museum’s oral history collection, Voices Against War is a fascinating and lively survey of anti-war protest in the UK from 1914 to the present day.

A university lecturer and author of the bestselling Young Voices, Lyn Smith is keen to stress the complexity and range of anti-war positions held by those who have resisted their Government’s call to go to war. For example, in the first world war conscientious objectors (COs)…

Once again, Aberystwyth led the way as the town council laid a white poppy wreath at the Cenotaph on 7 November. Despite the weather, the ceremony was well attended. Those present remembered the suffering caused by organised violence and “all the places where our humanity has been denied”, commented Jill Gough of CND Cymru.

Rhidian Griffiths chose the hymn “Let There be Peace on Earth” by Fred Kaan, “a lifelong pacifist, whose convictions grew out of his childhood in the…

I read, with uneasy and strongly personal interest, the discussions in September’s issue. For the whole of my conscious life – or so it seems – I have been confronted by this question: “What would you, a pacifist, have done in the Second World War?” For years, my feeble cop-out was to say: I wasn’t even two when it started so I’m concerned with now, not then.

However, the question is a valid and proper one and, if it is posed by someone whose father fought and died in the Second…

On 25 July 2009, Henry John “Harry” Patch died. Aged 111, he was the last British survivor of the First World War trenches still living in the UK. Following the funeral held in Wells Cathedral he was buried near Combe Down where he was born.

For more than 80 years Harry refused to talk about his wartime experiences, refused to attend regimental reunions and avoided war films on the television. It wasn’t until he was over 100 that he broke his silence. In 1998 with the…

87% of Britons agree with the statement: “Remembrance Sunday should be about marking the dead on all sides of war, not just the British”, according to a ComRes poll carried out for the Christian think tank Ekklesia at the beginning of November.

93% say they believe that, contrary to existing remembrance traditions, civilians who died in war should also be remembered.

95% say they think the main message of Remembrance Sunday should be one of peace.

When…

In early November, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children’s Fund published the first in-depth investigation of the effect of war on forces children, The Overlooked Casualties of Conflict. 60% of spouses say their children had increased levels of fear and anxiety when husbands or wives went to war, and 57% reported increased behavioural problems.
The report includes the story of an eight-year-old boy who found the images of body bags on the news so overwhelming that he hanged himself…

Do you support the troops? Are you proud of them? It would be a brave – or perhaps foolhardy – person in public life who said no.

Indeed, in a recent speech to mark the end of military operations in Iraq, archbishop Rowan Williams – the dangerous radical who once got himself arrested at an CND protest – declared the need for all of us to “speak our thanks for those who have taught us through their sacrifice the sheer worth of justice and peace.” He was talking about British…

The funeral of the last British survivor of the trenches of the First World War was held in Wells Cathedral on Hiroshima Day (6 August) attended with pomp and circumstance, and solemn honours from politicians and the mainstream media. While they proclaimed their respect for Harry Patch, who died at the age of 111, political leaders and media commentators almost entirely ignored the core message to which Harry Patch devoted his last years.

The man who saw some of his best friends…

Peace News asked participants in the Trident Ploughshares Summer Camp in Coulport to reflect on the Second World War, and to give their suggestions for what they would have done in 1939. Here is a collection of answers that they gave (over the phone) after a long discussion of the topic:

After the First World War, we would have started campaigning against future wars and concentrated on arms companies. We would have lobbied churches, other groups and individuals to disinvest from…