Woody says, ‘the basic or primary condition of existing society is that we are all living against each other... mutual hostility’. But this hostility is often about something – like quarrels over the distribution of resources. Rather than backing the poor against the rich, for Woody, ‘a radical situation arises only when a section of the would-be stampeders holds back’. The poor must hold back!
Woody seems to be reacting... against Marxism and the…
Comment
Anyone who writes a column for any publication whatever, will naturally try to write clearly and unambiguously – and fail in one way or another. Life itself is frequently – always some will argue – not clear and unambiguous and then there’s the problem of language. Here’s an example….
When I was growing up the word ‘progressive’ belonged to the Left. Now it’s frequently used by the Right in the UK to describe policies which Lefties regard as reactionary. I’ve also heard…
1 February 2016
Photo: Time to Cycle
On the five-day Time to Cycle bike ride to Paris in December, it turned out that one of our fellow riders was James Cracknell, who we’d published in the last issue writing very pessimistically about the climate talks.
James sat at our dinner table and explained how, if he was to re-write that article, it would be different because he felt more enthused after riding for two days with 125 other climate activists. His understanding of the facts would be…
Oh wow. ‘Activism and luxury.’ Very good. No specific question for me, just whatever comes into my mind....
I feel the word raises great feelings of guilt! I suppose I feel I should never enjoy luxury. To be an activist, one rejects luxury: while so many people have so little, that you can have luxury is anathema. It undermines everything we’re trying to do.
Having said that, I do luxuriate in my sofa, and my TV, and my glass of wine.
I suppose one of the greatest…
I would like to tell you about some help Geoffrey Carnall gave to me some years ago when I was researching songs and stories to celebrate 50 years since the founding of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND).
I was volunteering at the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre at the time, where Geoffrey was on the management committee, and he was always interested in the treasure of songs and stories I was gathering. He always asked me to sing them and joined in softly but…
1 December 2015
Noam Chomsky once observed that the dirty little secret of ‘national security policy’ is that ‘security is at most a marginal concern of security planners’. He was speaking of the United States, but the lesson generalises, certainly to the UK.
We can see this in the reaction to the ‘Islamic State’ terror attacks in Paris in November, which killed 130 people.
Policymakers in Britain, France and elsewhere are knowingly increasing the power of IS recruiters and commanders…
Graphic: Bryn
Attac released this statement on 18 November, just five days after the attacks in Paris:
In the aftermath of the massacres of Paris, members and supporters of Attac, in unison with the French society, feel horror and revulsion at the indiscriminate and murderous hatred.
Attac expresses its solidarity with the victims and their relatives. The people murdered Friday night were merely exercising their right to conviviality, to…
‘Take a stone in your hand and close your fist around it until it starts to beat, live, speak and move.’ Áillohaš (also known as Nils-Aslak Valkeapääs), Sami poet
As I’m sure most people are aware, the Paris climate talks are coming up and it is more crucial than ever before that we make bigger collective commitments to limit our impact on this earth that sustains us. But what has music got to do with that? Well, in my world, quite a lot. Music has the power to reach people…
This is my final diary for Peace News, and looking back, I can see the prevailing theme of my columns has been the struggle to remain hopeful at a time when there is so much to make me despair.
Following a discussion on Facebook last night, I’ve been thinking about the power of literature to help us make sense of it all. I’ve been particularly reflecting on the poetry of WH Auden, who featured in my first column. I fell in love with his poetry when I was 17. Back then, I…
I wonder how many BBC listeners and viewers are aware of the corporation’s motto and that this venerable and vulnerable institution has a coat of arms? This is not a pedantic and pointless question but one which, I insist, is important and relevant.
As a child of the Radio Age, and coming from a Old Labourite family, I grew up with inborn belief in mutualism and co-operativism and utter disdain for the reductionist view that the only worthwhile engine of human behaviour is profit…
On 9 November, 1,000 young people marched in the streets of Washington, DC, for hours, demanding justice on race, climate, and immigration. Photo: 350.org
Like global climate change group 350.org, we all need to look beyond the Paris climate talks and whatever protests we manage to organise there to the building of mass civil disobedience for climate justice in 2016. 350.org is talking about an escalation in May 2016.
Whatever comes out of the COP21 negotiations in…
1 December 2015
We are all France. Apparently. Though we are never all Lebanon or Syria or Iraq for some reason. Or a long, long list of additional places.
We are led to believe that US wars are not tolerated and cheered because of the colour or culture of the people being bombed and occupied. But let a relatively tiny number of people be murdered in a white, Christian, Western European land, with a pro-war government, and suddenly sympathy is the order of the day.
‘This is not just an…
‘Some Information for Discontented Soldiers’, a leaflet produced by the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign, is not an incitement to disaffection; that’s official....
Someone in the Department of Public Prosecutions now has a very red face. Not only has the main attempt to stamp out communication with soldiers failed, but it has given an embarrassing amount of publicity to soldiers’ lack of rights and their ignorance of those they have, and also to the existence of…
Is it an effective form of protest? Is the effort worth the results? A lot of them seem to be online these days and I don’t have much to do with that. They might have more effect, I don’t know.
- Woman, London
Oh no, I think hopelessness and pessimism. Actually that isn’t quite true, I am torn between hopelessness and feeling that things can be changed by things like this. I sign a fair few. And the online things like Avaaz are proving to be effective becasuse of the…
Well, everyone has to get through having movement messiahs. It’s a process of inspiration followed by disillusionment.
People always say about Evo Morales [president of Bolivia since 2005], he came from the movements, and the movements kept him in check, and he understood that role.
Obviously, Julian Assange had the best comment on this when he arrived at St Paul’s [Cathedral, London] on the first day of Occupy. We were in the middle of the first general assembly, and I was…
‘How do you plead?’
‘I plead for peace in a world of war, love in a world of hate, free speech for all, and an end to politically-motivated trials in this country.’
‘I shall have to have a medical report on you if you’re not careful.’
Exchange between judge and defendant at the opening of the trial.
The trial of the 14 people charged with conspiracy to incite disaffection began on September 29, with a valiant attempt to get the conspiracy charges…
Autumn is upon us, a time of year I associate it with change and loss. The holidays are over, the days are cooling, the leaves will soon fall. I love the warmth and joy of the summer and I often find myself a little mournful when the kids go back to school.
In the past week, l’ve been feeling a little more mournful than usual. In part, that’s due to having helped pack up my mother’s house before it passed on to its new owners. After 26 years, my very happy home-from-home is no more;…
1 October 2015
Hello. My name is Penny Stone and this is the first of a new radical music column for Peace News.
So you’ll be hearing more from me in coming months. Sometimes I’ll round up bits and bobs that have been happening around the world, sometimes look at a particular radical music theme, and sometimes I’ll feature just one radical music event that has happened in the two months between issues.
About me: I am a radical musician based in Edinburgh. I write and sing topical…
1 October 2015
On Saturday 12 September, we had a wonderful ideas day in London with 18 PN workers, readers and supporters, thinking about how Peace News can develop and grow and become more useful to the cause of nonviolence and to grassroots movements struggling for radical social change.
More power than we know
One of the interesting moments came at the beginning of the day, when we considered the question ‘When have I felt powerful?’ The answers to this were meant…
1 October 2015
The British defence secretary has given up on ‘innocent until proven guilty by a jury of peers’, and introduced a new legal principle: ‘innocent until the government believes you are likely to commit a crime’.
In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme on 8 September 2015, Michael Fallon justified the killing by a British drone of two British citizens (Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin), and another unidentified man, by referring three times to the risk of a ‘likely’ terrorist…