PN-related

Good luck and thanks for PN. It’s very heartening because it’s good to hear the truth re all global happenings!

Love the new design! It looks great!

January is always a desperate time of year for the occupants of the Chamne Babak refugee camp in Kabul. Temperatures at night drop to well below freezing and the little work that the men in the camp can find dries up as the snow begins to fall. This year however some relief was delivered thanks to the readers of Peace News and members of the National Union of Journalists at the Financial Times.

Well over £2,000 was raised (over £1,700 through Peace News) and on 3 January it was delivered…

Past issues of Peace News, stretching back over its 75 years of publication. The old masthead was used for a glossy magazine (top left), a less glossy magazine (bottom left) and the current newspaper format (bottom center). PHOTO: Erica Smith

A new design!

We’re beginning 2012 with a new look to Peace News. We hope you like it. The changes we are making (they will continue over the next couple of issues) are the product of a lot of…

I was extremely saddened to hear of the death of John Hyatt. We first met when John (then living in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, I think) was a teenager in the 1960s on the Coast to Coast Peace March from Hull to Liverpool. Later we got to know each other when we were both working at Housmans – where I worked from 1969-1982 – John also working down the road at the PPU and upstairs at both Peace News and WRI as well – at different times.

He was a lovely guy and the easiest person to work…

National gatherings of PN readers have taken place in many guises over the years - for much of the 1970s the regular events (sometimes every few months) were called “potlatches”. (“A potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States” – Wikipedia.) Here, Dave Cunliffe, a poet and long-time friend of Peace News from Blackburn, reports on a winter meeting:

Friday night 9pm, tomatoes…

Fasting not feasting

[Activists over a range of issues can find themselves less than welcome at famous churches.]

RI Jeffrey reports: "Pacifism is a political attitude and it is not our job to support it." Thus said the Dean of York in refusing his permission for the York Pacifist Group to hold a fasting vigil inside York Minster, from 7pm on Christmas Eve until midnight on Christmas Day, as a protest against war and the use of violence.

Not to worry - and…

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’…

I appreciated the variety and breadth of the last issue including up to the minute items on Afghanistan and the UK riots. As always PN surprises, this time with the colour photos of Guy Smallman and art of Lorna Vahey.

In listening to ... the Chairman of the Labour Party, one gets the impression that there is no more important goal in politics today than achieving unity in the Labour Party. The answers to the questions that are dividing members of the party are really of secondary importance so long as they can agree to give the same answer...

There is a great deal more discussion around the kind of policies that must be adopted to ensure electoral victory than there is about the most suitable way…

Riots bring out a confusion of responses and a whole parade of paradoxes on the left and from the proponents of radical, but peaceful, political change. Much of what is said is thought but not felt, while much of what is felt remains unsaid...

The first undiscussed difficulty is the fact that the gut reaction of much of the left to news of a riot is one of support for the rioters. This is more than the “I understand but cannot condone their actions” stance of the after-riot opinion…

In the month leading up to 6 June a major pre-occupation was preparation for International Conscientious Objectors’ Day, 15 May.

For the past ten years I have prepared a list of representative COs of as many countries as I can find a name for, to be read out at the annual COs’ ceremony in Tavistock Square, London, whilst white flowers each bearing the name of a CO are laid on the Commemorative Stone. Each year further research expands the list, and this time there were 75 names,…

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for writing in last month’s PN on Smash EDO’s outlook on strategy and movement-building. As I’d thought, Peace News and Smash EDO have a great deal in common, much more than divides us. There are differences in our thinking, but, after reading your article, I’ve come to the conclusion that you/Smash EDO aren’t so much in disagreement with “the Peace News approach”, as unaware of the position that PN represents.

There are all kinds of mixes in the…

People from across the spectrum of the British peace movement are meeting for a weekend of exploration, celebration and empowerment – learning from other movements, struggling with challenging issues, and creating greater cohesion and solidarity in a segmented peace movement.

Workshops will be reflective (learning from recent activist initiatives in Gaza, Copenhagen and Calais), strategic (for example, developing plans to counter the war in Afghanistan) and practical (planning…

On the night of Monday/Tuesday 14/15 April 1986, US aircraft bombed Libya as a response to alleged Libyan support for terrorism. The 18 April issue of (the then fortnightly) PN was already on its way to the printers when news came through; but a Stop Press supplement written on the Tuesday carried news as it came in – of the attack, and of some reactions in just the first few hours.

Peace groups respond to attack on Libya

At Upper Heyford airbase, one of the bases where the F1-…