“At last a book on conscientious objection to military service from the point of view of contemporary objectors. It expresses the critique objection poses to patriarchy and social militarization and firmly places objection in the context of struggle for social transformation” – that’s my enthusiastic and heartfelt endorsement on the back cover of this book.
It is absolutely genuine – and not just because I’m friendly with one of the editors and some of the contributors, or because I…
Britain doesn’t need an Armed Forces Day, recently invented by Gordon Brown. We already have Remembrance Day. What Britain needs is an Unarmed Forces Day - when we can remember those people, like Tom Hurndall, Rachel Corrie, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, who dedicated their lives to nonviolent social change.
Unarmed Forces Day is a Peace News initiative. It is a celebration of the power of nonviolence, a call for real support for our damaged veterans,…
Once you get past the introduction – which is poorly written and unfocused, with most of the important information repeated in the main body of the book – Long Time Passing is just what it says on the cover: a country by country breakdown of the effects of war and terror on mothers, families and society.
Each chapter – covering Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and the US – starts with a well-referenced history of recent events that have briefly appeared in the…
I’m at a loss finding the right idiom for this story: Throwing good money after bad? A fool and his money are easily parted? A leopard can’t change his spots…? You decide.
A joint report by the National Audit Office and the Wales Audit Office concluded that the Red Dragon project to build a super-hangar at RAF St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan cost the public £113m and created only 45 jobs instead of a forecast 4,500. It now stands virtually empty.
The problem arose…
Peace News invites local and national peace groups in Wales, Scotland and England to join us in celebrating “Unarmed Forces Day” on 27 June, when the Ministry of Defence intends to celebrate “Armed Forces Day” (with a service and a fly-past at Chatham Docks, and parades in other towns and cities). “Unarmed Forces Day” will have two main messages.
Celebrate nonviolence!
Our first message is that we want to celebrate people who have used and are using nonviolent means to seek…
Following the inaugaral gathering last November , a second, smaller, Anti-Militarist gathering was hosted in Edinburgh on 1 March. By and large, we wanted to make sure that anti-militarist activists in Scotland were doing all they could to build up to NATO Parliamentary Assembly taking place in Edinburgh in November and the Brighton Anti-Militarist Gathering in May.
The main decision was that the network would issue a call-out for a UK “Day of Action” against the NATO summit in…
In an interview with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Lord Bingham compared drones with cluster bombs and landmines.
Yet here in Wales the taxpayer is supporting research into the use of drones for military purposes. An “unmanned aerial vehicle” (UAV) consultation has been carried out by the Welsh Assembly government (WAG) in preparation for setting up a testing zone above 500 square miles of west Wales. Although the emphasis is laid on future civilian…
On 29-30 November 2008, Edinburgh Anti-Militarists hosted a gathering to build momentum against the NATO Parliamentary Assembly taking place in 2009.
What came out of this was a UK-wide network of anti-militarists, committed to mutual aid and a joint effort to shut down the NATO assembly with direct action.
Bringing together
When we started putting together an agenda for a gathering for opposing NATO in the coming year, a larger purpose became obvious.
We…
After months of silence, during which it seemed the idea had died quietly (like the much-derided “British Day”), the British government announced on 21 January that Armed Forces Day will after all be taking place – 27 June.
It now falls to the British peace movement to respond appropriately.
The central event of the first Armed Forces Day is to take place in the historic dockyard in Chatham, Kent. The five unsuccessful bidders – Cardiff, Blackpool, Plymouth, Southend and…
Once again this year Aberystwyth Town Council will lay a white poppy wreath at the war memorial. The ceremony takes place on Saturday 8 November at 11am. In taking this action Aberystwyth Town Council is unique in Britain. But the decision to maintain the tradition was not made easily. It took the casting vote of the Mayor, Sue Jones-Davies.
The white poppy not only commemorates all those who suffer in wars; it also sends out the message that “there are better ways to resolve…
In history, women who failed to adopt traditional gendered roles have been characterised as “the bad, the mad and the good”. Similarly, narratives of mothers, monsters and whores are used to deny the agency of women who confound the stereotypes of passive victims of war or non-violent peace women, and who act with violence in the context of war or armed conflict.
These narratives have their roots in western myths: Medea, the vengeful mother, who killed all of her children; the…
We don’t usually mark Memorial Day in Britain. Previously known as Decoration Day, the last Monday in May is a US holiday which originally remembered American men and women who have died in military service in the American Civil War. Following World War I, the memorial was expanded to include military casualties of any war. More recently, US peace and anti-war groups have reclaimed Memorial Day, holding ceremonies to remember all victims of war, military and civilian, and to call for an end…
Informed Choice? - which created a considerable stir in the media when it was released earlier this year - is essential reading for anyone with an interest in any aspect of the armed forces recruitment practice and how they treat their personnel.
Clear and comprehensive, Gee documents how recruitment literature emphasises the attractive aspects of military life, while glossing over the restrictions, risks and possible psychological pitfalls - with the word “kill” being notable by its…
17 January was the anniversary of the announcement that the Metrix consortium had successfully bid to build a privately-run military academy in South Wales.
The announcement was celebrated by First Minister Rhodri Morgan with a champagne-popping photo-opportunity outside the Senedd in Cardiff.
A year on, the Grim Reaper scattered replica cluster bombs outside the Senned to highlight the core role of arms company Raytheon in the Metrix Consortium.
The people of…
Thanks to concerted efforts on a number of fronts, promoters of the St Athan Defence Training Academy have been on the back foot in recent weeks. At the end of October, the MoD announced it had decided not to hand over half of the proposed military training to the Metrix Con sortium - the group of arms and construction companies hoping to secure lucrative contracts as military training is centralised and privatised. This means that thousands of the proclaimed jobs will not now be moving to…
