Featuring a tractor ploughing up the tarmac road of a terraced street, the cover gives you the impression you’re opening a book for the next ‘back to the land’ generation. Not so.
Instead we are offered something far more encompassing: a comprehensive account of the revolutionary politics of Street Farm (SF), a collective founded by three British architect friends (Graham Caine, Peter Crump and Bruce Haggart) in the 1970s.
A visionary ensemble strongly…
Activist history
I think of an issue: the state of the world, for example. I expect myself, and I am expected, as a man, to analyse rationally and objectively, to present solid arguments, to take decisive steps, and above all not to get emotional. Actually I’m totally ignorant and confused and feel like crying about the mess the world is in. I can’t admit that I don’t know; I can’t cry because I’m a man.
Because I’m a man, I cannot admit when I’m sad, hurt or humiliated. I cannot be joyful, or give…
Emily Johns (Peace News co-editor) and Gabriel Carlyle (PN promotions worker) are ready to tour the UK, speaking about PN’s mammoth project ‘The World is My Country: A Visual Celebration of the People and Movements that Opposed the First World War’.
A year in the making, the 10 posters feature stories from a history of police raids and buried documents, feminist peace initiatives and clandestine printing presses, Maori princesses and striking German munitions workers.
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For nearly 20 years (1981-2000), the women of Greenham campaigned relentlessly against land-based Cruise missiles. They put their lives at risk for peace and Helen Thomas, a young Welsh peace activist from Newcastle Emlyn, was killed at Greenham Common in an accident on 5 August 1989.
When the base closed, the women planned a garden on the site of the nuclear nightmare. To honour Greenham’s strong Welsh connections, they decided to use pPennant sandstone from Wales for the…
Bertha von Suttner 1906. Photo: Carl Pietzner
She is hardly known in this country. Faces go blank when I mention her name. Even amongst friends in the peace movement. At the same time numerous schools, streets and public squares in Austria and Germany are named after her: Bertha von Suttner, who lived from 1843 to 1914. The commemoration of the outbreak of the First World War would give a distorted picture if we did not simultaneously remember the courageous stories of those who…
Housed in the Quaker Library in London’s Euston Road, is a remarkable document. Measuring about five inches square, created from sheets of lavatory paper and bound in hessian taken from a mailbag, it consists of 100 pages of articles, jokes, poems, and even a spoof children’s page. Dated 18 December 1918, it is an edition of the Winchester Whisperer, one of the many tiny newspapers produced by imprisoned conscientious objectors, right under the noses of their prison warders.
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About 8,000 conscientious objectors were forced into the British army during the First World War, either into the non-combatant corps (NCC) or into combatant regiments. Most adopted a strategy of nonviolent resistance, refusing to put on uniforms, drill or obey any military orders. The army’s reaction varied: some commanding officers tried to reason with objectors; others reacted with verbal and physical abuse, using any means, however brutal, to try and force objectors to become soldiers.…
Most people in Britain, I suspect, know little or nothing about women’s struggle for the vote here. For those who know a little, I would guess that the suffragettes would be top of the list of recognised names, followed by Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Wilding-Davidson.
They might also recognise the name of the non-militant suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett, but that’s probably about it. Sally Heathcote Suffragette…
Peace News had recently moved its main office out of London, as part of a strategy of changing the balance between its alternativist and ‘constructivist’ coverage on the one hand, and its involvement in more mainstream politics, on the other. Nevertheless, the paper found itself sucked into the defence of a group of activists – some closely connected with PN – who were facing the possibility of years in prison.
Six anti-militarists busted
Six pacifists were arrested in…
‘How does one feel when trying, in public, to convince people, who are trying to misconstrue anything one says, that because of one’s religious convictions — no matter what the consequences — no war service is possible?’ asked printer and conscientious objector (CO) Fred Murfin.
It was a fair question. Whether religious or not, First World War COs knew they were sincere. But self-knowledge was not enough: under the terms of the Military Service Act (1916), they were required to attend…
In the UK, the centenary of the First World War has already prompted a deluge of books, events and media coverage. The BBC alone has announced 2,500 hours of programmes, which – like 99% of the mainstream response – will doubtless run the A to B of the mainstream political spectrum.
True, Thatcherite historian and apologist for imperialisms past and present, Niall Ferguson, was granted 90 mins on BBC2 to argue that Britain should have stayed out of the war, at least at the outset. In…
Every now and then, I am sent a book to review that is an absolute pleasure to read from cover to cover. This marvellous collection of interviews and essays by women activists is one such book.
I have to confess to having a personal investment – one of the essays is by my friend Zoe Broughton, and I know several of the women featured – but I suspect that might be true of many PN readers. For, between them, the interviewees have been involved in every major campaign in the UK…