Anti-militarism

1 December 2010Review

Peace Pledge Union, 2010; 52pp; £6.50

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 “…

1 December 2010Short Review

Haymarket, 2010; 224pp; £11.99

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.
 

1 December 2010News

White poppy ceremonies in Wales

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…

1 November 2010News

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…

1 September 2010News in Brief

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…

1 September 2010News

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…

3 July 2010Comment

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,…

1 July 2010News in Brief

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?

1 July 2010News in Brief

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.

1 July 2010Review

PM Press Audio CD, 2009; ISBN 978-1-604-860-99-3; 60 mins; £12.18

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…

3 May 2010Comment

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:

Increase public awareness of, and challenge to, unethical military recruitment practices Work to improve recruitment policy/practice so that the moral rights of potential recruits are better protected Make potential recruits and their families more aware of the risks, difficulties and legal obligations of an armed…

1 May 2010Feature

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…

1 May 2010Feature

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…

3 April 2010News

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…

1 April 2010News

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…