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There were many acts of remembrance around the country when the hundredth British soldier was killed in Afghanistan, names of the dead were read out. The occasion highlighted the enormous importance of Iraq Body Count’s work in collecting the names of non combatants killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. There are in contrast so few names of Afghans killed, there is no one doing an Afghan body count. Uncounted Afghan’s have lost their lives, and without their names who knows if they ever…

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It was good to read, in the Broken Rifle insert in last month’s Peace News, the informative article by Andreas Speck about the present and possible future changes to the situation of conscientious objectors in Europe.

I was reminded of the outraged response I have often encountered in War Resisters’ International (WRI) gatherings by suggesting that the UK system is more oppressive than conscription in Western Europe.

Throughout the 1990s the UK sent MOD officials all over…

Published four years ago, Mark Kurlansky’s 1968: the year that rocked the world is an engrossing and stimulating general history of a time “when significant segments of population all over the globe refused to be silent about the many things that were wrong with the world.”
Kurlansky, 20 years old in 1968 and heavily involved in the anti-Vietnam war protests in the US, uses an impressive range of primary and secondary sources, including interviews with key participants and illuminating…

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When I was in my teens I feared I wouldn’t be alive for my 21st. I wasn’t alone in such dread. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was our nuclear fate and it drove many of my generation to join the Aldermaston March.
What I never anticipated was that nearly 50 years later, I’d again be on a coach going to Aldermaston and that politicians across the world would still believe in “nuclear defence” and still believe that they could only cut it as significant leaders if they brandished…

A Fairtrade Town is a community that makes a collective commitment to Fairtrade and achieves Five Goals developed by the Fairtrade Foundation. The movement began in April 2000 when Garstang in Lancashire - uniting local shops, businesses, schools, campaigners, councillors and faith groups - declared itself “the world’s first Fairtrade Town”. Since then over 350 towns, cities, counties, villages, boroughs and islands from Glasgow to Guildford have achieved Fairtrade status and added their…

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…

Elsewhere in this issue we report the significant progress made by government propaganda in relation to the war in Afghanistan. Public support for the war is growing, despite - or because of? - the intensity of the conflict.

More people still oppose the war than support it, but the trend is worrying if the “Harry effect” is a lasting one.
Over the past two years there has been a conscious, systematic and well-resourced attempt to re-legitimise Britain's armed forces (and…

For many years I have been concerned about the human rights, or rather the lack of rights, of people in the armed forces. That may seem a very strange preoccupation for a pacifist.

In 1972, I thought I was very brave giving out leaflets to soldiers in Belfast. The leaflets called for the withdrawal of troops from Northern Ireland. One day a soldier took a leaflet and asked for more so he could give them out. I thought it was probably a trick and that he would just destroy them, but I…

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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…

ACTSA was formed in 1994 as the successor organisation to the Anti Apartheid Movement. Since then ACTSA has been campaigning tirelessly for justice, rights and democracy for the people of southern Africa.

This year ACTSA continues its high-profile campaigns for rights in Zimbabwe, against HIV/AIDS and for universal access to critical drugs, on Nelson Mandela at 90, for corporate accountability, and around trade and gender.

In 2002, British company Cape Asbestos was forced to…

I heard the words “conscientious objector” on the news the other day and they immediately grabbed my attention.

However, the item turned out to be about doctors exercising their conscientious objection to performing abortions. I grew up with the term in a specific context, because my uncle Bert was a conchie during WWII and had two - maybe three - stretches in Wormwood Scrubs.

He was an absolutist who refused all alternatives to military service. I've been thinking about…

Most journeys require a return, unless they are fugues or escapes into exiles. We've been on the road for 130 days now, we've passed through eight utopian communities and although we still have another 3 months ahead of us, the thought of coming home is already making us feel quite ill. We thought we might feel homesick, but in fact we have caught another kind of bug, a wonderful infection that has made us lose our immunity to the impossible. We can't go back to our life as a working couple…

I had a sort of New Year resolution not to write about the “Defence Systems & Equipment International Exhibition” (DSEI) arms fair for a while and focus on other issues.

I have changed my mind for two reasons.

Firstly, there is a rumour going round that 2007 was the last DSEI arms fair. Would that it were so, but it is too early to rejoice.

Bill, who runs the Café which is the regular meeting place of East London Against the Arms Fair (ELAAF), is…

The theme of this issue - and of Peace News in general - is “the power of nonviolence”.

As this issue goes to press, Peter Gelderloos, the author of How Nonviolence Protects The State (partially reviewed in PN2487-8), begins a UK speaking tour devoted to denigrating the power of nonviolence (tour details on p16).

Peace News welcomes debate, and therefore we welcome Peter Gelderloos to the UK, despite our profound disagreements with him on strategy and principle.…

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…

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