A very long time ago, in 1994, I managed to use my membership of the Royal Horticultural Society to obtain the freedom of an imprisoned peace activist!
There had been a protest in Farnborough, against the sale of Hawks to Indonesia, and my daughter had been arrested for filling British Aerospaces’ fountain with red dye and taken to the police station. I was asked to go up there and try negotiate her release since she refused to give her date of birth.
At the reception desk, I…
On 17 September, the Department of Health announced that it had identified nine personality types of heavy drinkers who are at risk of liver damage and other alcohol-related illnesses. By pure chance, on that same day, Peace News announced that it had identified nine very similar personality types of “heavy activists” who frequent meetings rather than pubs, and who are at risk of brain damage and other activism-related conditions.
The nine personality types are:
“De-…
I am from a large and close family, and while most are supportive of our peace work, there have been occasions of conflict. I hate falling out with anyone, but in particular with people I am close to. So when one family member told me I shouldn’t be taking our small children on a large anti-war demo, I was very upset. We had a painful discussion about it, I stood my ground, and later I was touched when that person came to a vigil I was organising. She still disagrees with me, but I think we…
I would like to dissent from the celebration of May ’68.
In 1968, I was an editor of Freedom, the anarchist paper, at a time when the anarchist movement was growing rapidly. Anarchists were exploring the potential of nonviolence
Both the Committee of 100 and CND had moved a lot of people towards an understanding of what the state was doing secretly such as the regional seats of government which were placed to rule over the country in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
In…
I suppose one of the things is that I don't see myself as “black”. I don't give myself a label. I'm just trying to stay alive, and do the things that can make that happen.
I am surprised and a bit disappointed that there are not more black people in the activist circles I move in. I'm mostly into permaculture and other things that grab my interest, like planting trees or getting involved in cooperatives or car- bon reduction.
I'm surprised and I don't know why there aren't…
Reading has changed for me over the years.
Much time is now spent reading a computer screen: emails, websites, blogs. Communication is much easier but there is so much of it that it is hard to choose.
There is instant access to every campaign, every injustice. The unreasonable and the inarticulate can also have their day.
And yet along with the potential to overwhelm comes the opportunity to select. Social networking sites like Facebook offer advertisers the chance to…
Throughout the court case the people of Liverpool came up trumps, a higgledy-piggledy tapestry of different characters and communities and politics: the Catholics with their rituals of remembrance, the ravers with their repetitive antimilitarist beats, the Quakers with their silence, the local pagans with their reverence and mischief, the local socialists and feminists, the Buddhist nuns and monks and punks from further afield. All were present to support four women on trial for disarming a…
The British National Party came to have their annual meeting in our patch last November.
I got stopped by the police for having a scarf round my face and was held down an alley way, shouted at and pushed and threatened until I took it off and gave my details - right by the BNP security men.
I felt the police put my life in danger by asking me to unmask in front of the BNP while the fascists took photos. And the police made me shout out my name and address.
Over the 40…
