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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…

The idea began at the Friends Meeting House in Taunton in 1981. 11-year-old Jonathan Stocks felt that the room where they held the children’s meeting needed cheering up. He discussed it with their teacher, Anne Wynn-Wilson. They needed pictures. Why not a history of Quakerism in collage or mosaic? Or embroidery?

Anne was a professional embroiderer. She had recently completed a study of the Bayeux Tapestry, which is not really a tapestry but a 70-metre-long strip of linen embroidered…

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The massive election protests in Iran are an inspiring example of human courage and the power of ordinary people to affect powerful institutions. At the time of going to press, we do not know what the outcome of this clash is going to be.

One possibility is that there will be a replay of the 4 June 1989 massacre in China. One of the most thoughtful reflections on Tienanmen Square came in the Financial Times, where James Kynge (who reported the demonstrations first-hand) argued that…

The British Tamils Forum (BTF) organised peaceful protests in central London (including the demonstration of over 200,000 Tamils on 11 April 2009) to show solidarity with their brethren in Sri Lanka and to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Sri Lanka.

BTF is an umbrella organisation bringing together individuals and Tamil community organisations for three main aims: To highlight the humanitarian crises and human rights violations perpetrated by the government of Sri…

Not many people know this: the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) is 75 this year. I only know because a woman stopped me in Stroud High Street and told me. Her name turned out to be the same as a poet whose work I know and he turned out to be her father: Ian Serraillier (1912-1994).

Then it turned out he’d written an acclaimed novel for children, The Silver Sword, which has never been out of print in over 50 years. He was a Quaker, a conscientious objector in the Second World War…

It was a long time ago that I read The Women’s Room, nearly 30 years ago now. Another time in my life, almost like another life. Sometimes life can be like that, the feeling of having lived a number of lives in one life, like a snake shedding its skin and starting renewed.
I was given a copy of The Women’s Room by a woman who lived in a flat downstairs, I read this book that proclaimed to “change lives” when I went into hospital to give birth to my first child. At the time I had been…

Anti-virals

Two years ago, we helped to initiate a letter to the Guardian signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Caroline Lucas, John Pilger, Mairead Corrigan Maguire (Nobel Peace Prize Winner) and Hans von Sponeck (former UN Assistant Secretary-General).

The letter said that humanity faced a massive global threat from pandemic influenza, which might kill over 60 million people – 96% of them in the global South, and called for an end to corporate patents that…

All the fuss about MPs’ expenses made me wonder about what work MPs actually do that requires a second home in London. I was reminded of the “debates” I observed that preceded the Armed Forces Acts. This legislation occurs every five years. In theory, it is an opportunity to update military law and regulations and bring in necessary reforms. In practice, it provides an opportunity for the MoD to get legislation it wants passed and prevent any reform. The military top brass can rely on cross-…

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They say that families live prison sentences just as much as the prisoner and that was certainly true for us. On January 22, my husband Chris Cole was sentenced to 28 days imprisonment for non-payment of a fine incurred at an anti-war protest in 2005.

This event was not a surprise to us, we had been planning for it in one way or another ever since we first met. However, recognising something is inevitable and dealing with the actual experience are two separate things.

The…

Sadly, the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London on 1 April was not an isolated case. Over 1000 people have died in police custody in the last 40 years - yet no one has been found responsible. Many families who have lost loved ones in police custody are still campaigning for justice after many years, including the families of Sean Rigg, Brian Douglas, Harry Stanley, Roger Sylvester and Christopher Alder.

The United Campaign Against Police Violence (UCAPV) has been…

“I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2nd Corinthians, 12:10

As a devout Catholic and political activist, that quotation has always stuck out in my memory. There’s a great tradition in my faith of finding strength in times of struggle. And it’s no great secret that those of us in the activist community have a multitude of obstacles in front of us: police barricades, political manoeuvres that…

In 1996, three vegans, David Stringer and Jane and David Graham, veterans of the peace, anti-nuclear movements, and sometime guests at HM Prisons, decided to start the Vegan Organic Network, an organisation specifically directed to changing the current situation in agriculture, where most food that is available has been grown either using animal by-products (applying blood and bone after animals have been processed in the slaughter house) or using synthetic fertilisers.

This…

The tragic death of Ian Tomlinson has cast a pall over the public reputation of British policing. As the eyewitness accounts (and photograph) in this issue indicate, and as the legal report compiled by the Climate Camp demonstrates, there was, on 1 April, a systematic pattern of brutal action by the police forces dealing with nonviolent protesters in the City of London.
It is shocking, but nevertheless true, that the mainstream media would not have scrutinised this criminal police…

When the Ministry of Defence decided that the only way of defending the UK from annexation by the Communist Hordes was to threaten to blast them to Kingdom Come with an atomic bomb it knew just what to do. It practised a bit of annexation itself and reactivated the RAF base at Greenham Common (enclosed for military purposes during World War II) and handed it over to US Strategic Air Command. Here in Stroud, our wonderful Rodborough Common has not been so annexed and rightly remains a Stroud…

What amazes me, looking back, is how little I knew about Elnora Ferguson’s life in the post-Cold War years when I encountered her as Chair of the National Peace Council.

We were too busy taking advantage of the positive effect she would have on people when she entered the room with her calm but keen-witted sense of enquiry and interest in what was going on and how you all were. People would try a little harder and acquit themselves a little better, and this had more to do with…

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My last column was in praise of our dear departed peace poet and friend, Adrian Mitchell. Happily, this time, I’m celebrating the lasting creativity and indefatigable spirit of the American poet, novelist, publisher, and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferl was – unbelievably because he seems to me forever young – 90 on 24 March and his continuing presence is a blessing on us all.

Back in 1952, Peter Martin opened a paperback bookstore in San Francisco and named it after a Charlie…