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When you read in the press, hear on the radio, see on the telly, or otherwise encounter someone banging on about ‘extremists’, you realise, don’t you, dear readers, that they are referring to the likes of you and me.

And what is my extremism? Like yours, it’s wide-ranging but at the mo my uppermost desires are: the removal of all nuclear weapons from the UK, the abolition of the monarchy, the house of lords and public schools, the disestablishment of the church of England…

‘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…

I lick my lips and my eyes flick to the ceiling before I answer: ‘£450 a day.’ I’ve been dreading this moment, of telling ‘a client’ that my daily rate is likely more than twice their weekly income. And here is ‘the client’, a group of new co-operators in a Bradford Community Centre that’s seen better days. I backtrack almost immediately – instead we agree a total figure for helping them to reach certain goals.

This daily rate is justifiable, indeed within my consortium of advisors we…

I was injured at a blockade once. My affinity group was at one of the gates of the base; I was in the support group, I wasn’t sitting on the ground. I tried to put myself between them and the police, a policeman grabbed my arm and he swung me away. I twisted my ankle, I rolled around a bit in pain. The first aid person said it was a sprain, gave me a bandage and painkillers. I hobbled off.

I was shocked, I suppose. It took quite a long time to get over, it took over a year to get…

There are in this movement many different sorts of people some of them with a capital P: philosophers, poets, preachers, politicians, playwrights and just plain people. That is why we have called this the Committee of 100 because we are all in it and all equally important.

For each and all of us whether he is a so-called starry eyed idealist or a cynic there is one outstanding fact of life that confronts us all. It is a new fact of existence that has never existed before. It is now…

To enable conscientious objectors to conscription to unite for mutual support and encouragement, a Fellowship of Conscientious Objectors was formed in London last week. Membership is confined to young men affected by the Military Training Bill.

This development recalls the formation during the early days of the Great War of the No Conscription Fellowship (NCF), which not only supported conscientious objectors in various ways but also carried on a great deal of propaganda work.

…

Ah. (Laughs.) I’ve not had very good experiences with meetings. Well, I mean, on the whole they are quite important and useful ways of spending time. But you do get meetings which drag on. People taking the opportunity to quote Marx endlessly or other things they’ve read. They’re just taking the chance to make speeches. It can be quite a frustrating experience. If they could just stop doing that, it would be fantastic!

‘Run!!’ The activist yanked on the plasti-cuffs tying him to the academic. ‘Run THIS way NOW.’

They fled. They fled the tear gas and the screaming and the thud thud thud overhead. They ran through streets littered with abandoned placards, past puddles of blood and reefs of glass. Ducking into shops, out back exits, through alleys and over fences, leaving the terrifying kettle and the mass de-arrest behind them.

***

They walked along the pavement, holding hands as if they…

The Quaker meeting at Pwllheli Community Centre on Saturday 3 May, following the sudden death of Arfon Rhys, was, in many ways, unusual. Never had the small local group of Friends seen so many people at a Welsh Quaker meeting. The silence was enriched when someone felt moved to speak quietly of Arfon: family, students, peace campaigners, Welsh language campaigners, colleagues and friends. By contrast, the buffet provided by allotment friends afterwards was far from quiet.

People had…

Arlo Tatum played significant roles in the US, British and international pacifist movements. Born into a Quaker family in Iowa, he politely wrote in 1941, aged 18, to the US attorney general announcing his refusal to register for the draft – US conscription – imposed in advance of US entry to the Second World War. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in the Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone, Minnesota, the youngest prisoner when he entered.

A natural baritone, Arlo, on…

This has been a difficult email to write’. I can only see the first line of the email, but I know what it’s going to say. I slam the desk and swear loudly. Co-workers stare. I’m in a rush, I can’t deal with this now. I leave, cycle furiously into town and try to block it from my mind for the rest of the day.

In the majority world, we live in a strange social scene, where community is a fluid thing.

Unlike many other cultures, we make individual decisions about what’s best for…

Every year on 15 May, pacifists and anti-war activists gather in London’s Tavistock Square in front of a massive slate memorial that was unveiled by composer and conscientious objector Michael Tippett in 1994. The stone commemorates ‘All those who have established and are maintaining the right to refuse to kill. Their foresight and courage give us hope.’

Those who first established that right were the conscientious objectors of the First World War. When war began in August 1914,…

On 5 March 2007, a car bomb was detonated on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. It killed more than 30 people, wounded more than 100 and destroyed many businesses in the heart of a quarter famous for its bookshops, outdoor bookstalls, literary cafés, publishing houses and free-thinking society. The street was extensively damaged but re-opened in December 2008. May it thrive and ferment again. It wasn’t…

In Marge Piercy’s wonderful visionary work, Woman on the Edge of Time (1985), a young visitor from a future North American utopia wants to see a car. Dawn says: ‘I studied about them. I saw them on holi. How the whole society was built around them, they paved over the earth for them to run on and sit on right in the middle of where they lived! Everyone had to have one. And they all set out in their private autocar to go someplace at the same time and got stuck in jams and breathed…

Nuclear promises

It is difficult to see the Crimea crisis clearly through the choking fog of western hypocrisy that surrounds it. Before trying to do so, there is one factor that we should deal with straightforwardly. When Ukraine became independent (after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991), it inherited 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads, more nuclear weapons than China, France and Britain held…

Last week, Israel and Egypt signed a ‘peace treaty’. But the treaty isn’t between those who are actually fighting, and in fact intensifies the causes of the conflict.

Looking at it superficially, but with a nonviolent and anti-statist perspective, it has all the limitations of being merely a resolution of conflict over national territories.... The agreement is a further development of the Middle East wars, a continuation of Israel’s attempts to make Palestine a Jewish country and the…

For a lot of people I know, spring is about planting seeds, growing, nurturing, green stuff. It’s very hopeful, there are lots of metaphors there for making a better world, starting the revolution, taking control of your own food, give us bread but give us roses, etc etc.

For me, spring means spring cleaning – the spring cleaning I ought to do, but don’t. The tottering piles of things-not-done and things-not-tidied-away shine more brightly in the sunshine.

Spring means getting…

The absurdly handsome activist bit his lip. The Peace News crew were threatening military action if the final extended deadline for a 2,000 word essay on ‘Activism and Fiction’ was missed. The clock was most definitely two minutes to midnight.

He sighed, ran a hand through his thick shoulder-length blond hair, and thought quickly. His hands flew with perfect acuracy across the keyboard. ‘The four books under review, all by women, are useful and...’

Two days after Protag’s funeral, Ben says: ‘Did you hear Callum Millard’s died?’ I’m knocked sideways. Another one? But different this time. I struggle to dredge up ancient memories – was he there when we occupied the Lloyds bank in Leeds? Did he come on the Garforth anti-opencast occupation? I haven’t seen him properly in years, memories are elusive – I don’t know him any more.

But then the funeral – many old friends, many memories shared. Yes, he was the lock-picker and lock-…

Some of the best-known images of women during the First World War show them engaged in work previously done mainly by men: driving buses, delivering post, toiling on the land and working long hours in the munitions factories and shipyards. The images reflect the reality, namely that thousands of women, despite not having the vote, felt it was their duty to help a nation at war.

However, these images do not tell the whole story. Not so well recorded is the fact that considerable…