I did meet my partner while we were organising a demonstration and we became close during that process. That was very important because we identified something that was very important to know about your partner: that we shared a vision of right and wrong and a willingness to do something about it – though probably more in his case.
They’re both similar things, activism and romance: they excite passion and commitment and you have to keep going at it even when you don’t feel like it!…
Comment
3 February 2010
3 February 2010
Arms dealers from all over the world have been invited back to the biggest arms fair in the world at the ExCeL centre in Newham, east London for 13-16 September 2011. This vile event has been held at this venue every two years since 2001. They call it the “Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEi)” Exhibition though the only accurate bit of that title is “international”.
When East London Against Arms Fairs started over a decade ago we knew that previous arms fairs had…
3 February 2010
A PN editor from 1976-1982, Chris Jones continued helping with PN as a volunteer until June 1983. Chris died suddenly in his sleep on 6 December of heart failure. He had felt ill the previous day playing in a marching band in Oswestry where he lived, and returned home early.
Howard Clark writes: Chris began helping Peace News just as I was leaving. He had come to pacifism by a strange route – having joined the RAF after school, and first became a vegetarian and only later a pacifist.…
3 December 2009
Other people go to Glastonbury; I go to Raise Your Banners. Instead of going to Glastonbury, and spending lots of money and seeing a CND stall on the side, I go to support a festival of political song.
There are sort of two parts to the festival. There are a number of political choirs, so in one part of the festival there’s a showcase for them, and so there was the London Socialist Choir, and Red & Green, and then all the northern choirs.
This year the festival was in…
3 December 2009
The climate conference in Copenhagen is a turning point in world history. The protests in Denmark and around the world before and during the conference are therefore of enormous importance.
As a species, we are now fully conscious of the effects of our actions on the world’s climate and therefore on all the interlocking ecosystems on which human and other forms of life depend. At Copenhagen, the world’s governments could give their informed consent either to a scientifically-…
3 December 2009
I read, with uneasy and strongly personal interest, the discussions in September’s issue. For the whole of my conscious life – or so it seems – I have been confronted by this question: “What would you, a pacifist, have done in the Second World War?” For years, my feeble cop-out was to say: I wasn’t even two when it started so I’m concerned with now, not then.
However, the question is a valid and proper one and, if it is posed by someone whose father fought and died in the Second…
3 December 2009
Readers who have attended recent national events such as Stop the War’s march against the war in Afghanistan, the Great Climate Swoop in Nottingham, or the Raise Your Banners music festival in Bradford, may have spotted something slightly unusual: namely, large numbers of Peace News being given away – to thousands of activists.
Have we lost the plot, you may be asking yourself? Why should anyone pay for PN when it’s been given away it for free? Don’t give-aways like this de-…
3 December 2009
Rich countries and corporations have grown wealthy through a model of development that has pushed the planet to the brink of climate catastrophe. They have over-used the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
Drastic measures now have to be taken to prevent runaway climate change, making it impossible for poor countries to grow their economies in the same way. Put another way, the rich world has “colonised” the earth’s atmosphere. This process has mirrored and perpetuated…
3 December 2009
On 25 July 2009, Henry John “Harry” Patch died. Aged 111, he was the last British survivor of the First World War trenches still living in the UK. Following the funeral held in Wells Cathedral he was buried near Combe Down where he was born.
For more than 80 years Harry refused to talk about his wartime experiences, refused to attend regimental reunions and avoided war films on the television. It wasn’t until he was over 100 that he broke his silence. In 1998 with the…
3 December 2009
Climate Justice Action is a new global network of people and groups committed to take the urgent actions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. The network is open to individuals and groups that agree with our Networks Goals, Principles for Working Together and Call To Action.
Among the many groups that are part of the network are: Climate Watch Alliance (Nepal); Focus on the Global South; Friends of the Earth (Engand, Wales and Northern Ireland); Human Rights Defenders…
3 November 2009
Do you support the troops? Are you proud of them? It would be a brave – or perhaps foolhardy – person in public life who said no.
Indeed, in a recent speech to mark the end of military operations in Iraq, archbishop Rowan Williams – the dangerous radical who once got himself arrested at an CND protest – declared the need for all of us to “speak our thanks for those who have taught us through their sacrifice the sheer worth of justice and peace.” He was talking about British…
3 November 2009
There was a letter in October’s PN headlined: “Research on Reading”. I missed the capital letter and found I was reading about Reading and the impact of the cold war on this town. In the way of things, everything seemed to connect with one of September’s Peace Week events in Stroud.
Bruce Kent and Kate Hudson were to speak at a public meeting, and Dennis Gould and myself had been rowed in as “peace poets”. An odd thing to be; a “peace poet”.
I’m no more a peace poet…
3 November 2009
Dear friends, Peace News is growing and expanding! We’re making ambitious plans for the future development of PN; we’re starting new regular activities to support the peace movement, such as the Peace News Summer Camp and the Peace News Winter Gathering (15-17 January in Nottingham); and we hope to do more to help support uplifting nonviolent initiatives with events such as the Peace News training for participants in the March on Gaza.
We hope to carry out more activities outside…
3 November 2009
When I go, I feel revitalised, and reawoken, and really stimulated. I used to think maybe it was a bit lifestylist, and fetishist, but actually the level of debate and discourse I reconnect with when I go is really inspiring.
It’s actually more inspiring than any other forum I go into. I learn a lot. It could be more focused, but ultimately I feel I’m back with “my gang” and my mates. It helps keep things real and radical.
It reminds me to not make compromises, to keep…
3 September 2009
The funeral of the last British survivor of the trenches of the First World War was held in Wells Cathedral on Hiroshima Day (6 August) attended with pomp and circumstance, and solemn honours from politicians and the mainstream media. While they proclaimed their respect for Harry Patch, who died at the age of 111, political leaders and media commentators almost entirely ignored the core message to which Harry Patch devoted his last years.
The man who saw some of his best friends…
3 September 2009
During the Second World War, BSA Cycles made folding bicycles for paratroopers. Thus, the machines descended into occupied Europe attached to the backs of terrified soldiers suspended beneath graceful silk canopies.
It’s hard to imagine a more surreal conjunction of mechanical ingenuity, inspired sewing and blind trust in morality. Mortality, though, would be a better word and ironies abound. BSA stood for Birmingham Small Arms, which manufactured Lee-Enfield rifles for the “poor…