Emily Johns
Someone selling Peace News at the St Paul’s Occupy site was taken to task for our (front page) description of the camp in the last issue as an “anti-capitalist occupation”. It turns out that there has been a vigorous debate at Occupy LSX over its attitude towards capitalism, resulting in a decision to move away from the “anti-capitalist” tag.
The site newspaper, The Occupied Times, published two views from the camp. One asked: “Is the best you can wish for yourself and your loved one…
The very first version of the event was PN promotions worker Gabriel Carlyle’s suggestion that we could call together 40-50 people connected to or sympathetic with Media Lens, to try to improve how we all put pressure on the mainstream media. (Given this origin, we very much regret that Media Lens were not able to make the dates to be part of the RMC.) The scale of the event ballooned as we quickly realised that we would really like a radical media conference to do three things that we didn’…
1) Why do we need “radical” media?
Anne Beech: Most recent reasons? Phone-tapping scandals, reportage (and analysis) of the disturbances in Tottenham, Hackney et al, the ongoing misrepresentation of events, individuals and communities (Dale Farm, anyone? Palestine?), the sclerotic hardening of information arteries online and in print, in media and in book publishing, the continued conglomeration – but all at a time when new start-ups (the ones that want to retain their independence,…
John Hyatt, a member of the Peace News staff collective 1973-75 gave us the slogan “Don't Vote – it only encourages them”.
I first met him as a young man representing the Youth Section of the Peace Pledge Union at the WRI Council meeting in Vienna in August 1968.
Nearby Czechoslovakia was experiencing what turned out to be the last days of the Prague Spring. On the last day of the council meeting a WRI delegation, which I think included John, travelled to Bratislava at the…
Theodore Roszack, historian, novelist, social critic and anti-war activist, was born in Chicago and had an academic career at universities across America.
Of 1964, Roszack wrote: “For those who were part of it, the American peace scene for the years 1963-64, during that paralytic lull following the partial test-ban treaty and preceding the recent, turbulent rise of the ‘New Left’, was rapidly suffocating in pessimism and dismal introspection”. In the summer of ’64 he became editor of…
This issue we carry a report from a participant in this year’s Uncivilisation festival, inspired by the Dark Mountain project and manifesto (see p3). This is a very intriguing initiative, self-consciously metaphorical. There are two faces to the Dark Mountain manifesto, it seems to us. On the one hand, it is refreshing to hear despair honestly spoken: “our sense that civilisation as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system…
Ten years after al-Qa’eda’s 11 September attacks on New York and Washington, the global antiwar movement is preparing to mark the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Three official lies stand out.
The first lie is that the war was inevitable, that it was the only way of bringing the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.
In October 2001, not only had the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan offered in principle to extradite Osama bin Laden to a third (Muslim)…
Michael Lyons, a navy medic was jailed for seven months for refusing to be trained to use a rifle. He felt that he “wasn’t able to carry out the order on ethical and moral grounds”.
Michael joined the navy when he was 18 but later developed a moral objection to the war in Afghanistan. At his Conscientious Objector hearing he said “If you're at a patrol base or forward operating base, it's likely you'll have to use your weapon and will have to turn civilians away who are in need of…
The first-ever Peace News Summer Camp was held at Westmill Farm near Watchfield in Oxfordshire from 23-27 July. Over 120 people came to take part in discussions, trainings and debates on topics as varied as nonviolence (does it protect the state?), education (can education be libertarian?), and the fate of the anti-war movement (who’s more to blame for our limitations, the Stop The War Coalition or the anti-authoritarian wing of the movement?).
Fuelled by wonderful (vegan) food…
There were torrents to the right of them and torrents to the left of them, but Peace News Summer Camp 2010 was remarkably free of rainfall, despite the weather forecasts and the downpours in surrounding districts. The weather was warm and pleasant, and so were the 120 participants!
Among the 43 workshops, there were three whole-camp discussions this year: first “How has the world changed?” about what had happened in the world and in the UK since Summer Camp 2009 (most people…
The Peace Pledge Union was formed in 1934 in response to a letter to the national newspapers from Dick Sheppard calling on the population to “renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly... support or sanction another”. By the outbreak of war in 1939 about 86,000 men and 43,000 women had signed this peace pledge.
SOCPA ’39
In the winter of 1939 PPU women throughout Britain marched against the war calling for negotiations. Resonant of today’s SOCPA laws, the Commissioner…
A few years ago, we both took part in a “radical peace movement” gathering. Two of the main issues at the gathering were the thorny question of whether there was such a thing as a “peace movement”, and, alongside that, what it meant to be a “radical” peace activist.
It’s clear that there is a traditional strand of peace organisations and activities, which has persisted for decades. Quaker activities (the Religious Society of Friends began in the 1640s), the pacifist Peace Pledge Union…
As PN went to press, over three months into the NATO war on Libya, Libyan rebels said that they were expecting a new peace proposal from the regime, transmitted via a special committee of the African Union (AU), which met to discuss the conflict on 26 June.
The key issue is whether the rebels (and their British and French backers) will maintain their position that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (and his family) must not only leave power, but leave the country, before a ceasefire and…
