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All morning my mind was flowing with thoughts about the Westminster Interfaith Pilgrimage my parents had told me about. Thoughts such as; `What will I learn out of it? What was going to happen? Why were people doing this?' I managed to answer these questions with not too much difficulty! I learnt about different religions. We walked four miles from church to church. People did it to find out about other religions. My favourite part of the pilgrimage was the train journey back home, not only…

I have been studying the prints of Paul Peter Piech as part of my art course at Yale College this year. This is an extract from an essay I wrote for the course. I hope it inspires you to visit a Piech exhibition or find out more about his work.

Paul Peter Piech was a printmaker of international note. His work deals with powerful political and human rights issues. Piech's prints are designed to grab your attention and make you think. Piech worked mainly in linocut and wood-cut prints…

In this column we share readers' experiences of juggling the washing up, saving the world, childcare, studies, earning a living, creative expression and relationships. The rigours of activism place stresses on relationships of all kinds. It's fine to be aware that the personal really is the political, but how to act on that insight is seldom clear - to me at least.

My assessment of my own path is that I've been through a few stages (some of them running concurrently): I had a couple…

Congratulations!

After fighting their case through almost every court in the land, the B52 Two are not guilty and they richly deserve it!

In this issue, we see that in all these cases, there have been real diplomatic alternatives available, which had a genuine prospect for radically reducing conflict and violence. And in all of these cases, those with power have avoided peace. They have crushed negotiations by force (Britain in the Falklands), they have…

Twenty-five years ago the Falklands/Malvinas War was controversial in Britain for three main reasons.

One was a widespread belief that the war was fought by Margaret Thatcher's government to cover up their failure to anticipate an Argentine invasion. They were prepared to fight a war that would cost the lives of nearly a thousand soldiers, not so much to safeguard the lifestyles of less than 2,000 islanders as to prevent an electoral disaster.

Related to this was the bitter…

One wonderful thing about Jill Gough is her passion for peace. Volunteer national secretary for CND Cymru since 1991, and editor of its bilingual magazine Heddwch since 1994, Jill is an inspiring constant in the tumult of activism in Wales. She is one of the people who make things happen, and in 2006 was pivotal in Social Forum Cymru.
In 1980 Jill resigned as a deputy head teacher to start a family. The same year Britain made the baleful decision to permit deployment of US…

I have a friend who's daughter became a peace activist. She was sending emails back from Palestine, and this focused my mind on what was happening there.

When she returned she start ed selling Zaytoun products with the Olive Coop in Manchester. They were distributing Palestinian olive oil, soap, knickknacks, and organising tours to visit the producers.
I started using their olive oil as a way of positively supporting communities under threat. The sales help to sustain the…

14 May - This is not a retrial

For the sake of the jury and due process, the event we're attending is not to be referred to as a retrial.
Things do seem oddly familiar though. Are you sure we haven't been here before? Is this a groundhog I see before me?
Things got under way with the prosecuting QC, Mr Blair, treating us to a brief summary of the case against Toby and Phil. He described what they did-- from agreeing (conspiring) to go to Fairford, to cutting the fence and…

Oxford people campaigned on all fronts against a dangerous, unnecessary and horrifically expensive Trident replacement.
Hundreds of Oxfordshire people, some of them more than once, contributed to the 365 day blockade of Faslane, the nuclear base in Scotland. Oxford people joined the monthly Block the Builder blockades at Aldermaston, where they build Britain's bombs. The Oxford for Peace group leafleted on new nuclear weapons many times on the Friday leafleting sessions. Two coaches…

The Arab League Peace Plan of 2002 is what was called the “Saudi Plan” in the US. It has just been renewed.

In 2002, the US and Israel simply dismissed it, and I don't recall media commentary. It is pretty much a version of the international consensus that was articulated clearly for the first time in January 1976 at the Security Council, in a resolution brought by the major Arab states, vetoed by the US (again in 1980). International isolation With the Security Council eliminated by…

One of the most influential nonviolent actions of twentieth-century European history was carried out by men committed to violence -- the ten men of the IRA and INLA who fasted to death in British prisons in 1981, causing an earthquake in Irish politics.
5 May is the 26th anniversary of the death of the first hunger striker, Bobby Sands MP. This exchange centres on a new book by Dennis O'Hearn - Bobby Sands: nothing but an unfinished song - which has a different attitude to…

A friend of The Mole's who is even more down under than The Mole -- in Australia in fact -- has been doing some sums which could provide surprising ammunition to support the US president's current troop “surge” in Iraq.
Up to March, during a period with a monthly average of 160,000 US troops in Iraq, nearly 2900 of those troops were killed, giving a firearm death rate of around 60 per 100,000. During the same period, the firearm death rate for the inhabitants of Washington DC was…

One statement Noam Chomsky made in his interview in PN's April issue struck me forcibly: “[Iran] is independent and independence is not tolerated [by the United States]”.
It's an interesting concept, independence, and I take it for granted that independence of thought and action is common to PN readers. But enough flattery.
Chomsky's interview made me think again about self-sufficiency. The desirability of using alternative sources of energy to counter…

May Day is workers' day

The struggle for the eight-hour day which began in the 19th century (and which goes on, even now) involved strikes and demonstrations throughout the world, and a coordinated day of action on 1 May 1886. In a related demonstration three days later, in the Haymarket in Chicago, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing eight. The anarchist organisers of the demonstration and the speakers were then arrested and prosecuted for the murders, on the grounds that the bomb…

About: Shell to Sea is a grassroots campaign in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland. The local community is pitted against a powerful consortium of oil companies, led by Shell, who want to build a high pressure gas pipeline and processing terminal in the area. The Irish government is totally in support of Shell and has treated its own people with contempt. Prime Minister Bertie Aherne specifically changed the law so that private companies can acquire land without the owner's permission…

Yes, we are facing daunting threats (as Noam Chomsky points out in his interview). At the same time, on an international scale there are social movements of a size and sophistication which have never been seen before, and in Britain there is a tangible restlessness and dissatisfaction with things as they are, and enormous opportunities for education and organising towards radical social change.

One part of making a better, stronger movement (along the lines sketched out in the last…

Just after Christmas, Audrey came by the Saturday morning peace vigil (where I sell PN) in Stroud High Street. It was the last time I saw her. As usual she was pushing her walker-shopper and immaculately turned- out: eyebrow pencil, a touch of lippy and clothes of indisputable style. As usual, she was apologetic about no longer being strong enough to stand in line with us and as usual, too, she appeared indomitable. In fact she was indomitable and her death was a shock to us vigilantes and…

The Home Office's spin doctors must be feeling pleased with themselves, given the way so much of the media fell for a lot of absolute nonsense just recently.

The government announced how many fraudulent passport applications had been found last year, and went on to say how many more-allegedly 10,000-hadn't been spotted. But there's no way at all for anyone to know how many false applications got through: by definition, they are unknown.

So what's going on? Well, this “…

What is Trident for? Launching the Trident debate on 14 March, former CND member and current foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said Britain needed nuclear weapons because we cannot be sure that “no power hostile to our vital national interests and in possession of nuclear weapons would emerge” over the next 50 years.

The crucial question then is what these “vital interests” are.

In November 1993, the then defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind said that in…

Shank: With similar nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran, why has the United States pursued direct diplomacy with North Korea but refuses to do so with Iran?

Chomsky: To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. The Iranian issue I don't think has much to do with nuclear weapons frankly.

Nobody is saying Iran…