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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…

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.…

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…

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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…

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…

Throughout the court case the people of Liverpool came up trumps, a higgledy-piggledy tapestry of different characters and communities and politics: the Catholics with their rituals of remembrance, the ravers with their repetitive antimilitarist beats, the Quakers with their silence, the local pagans with their reverence and mischief, the local socialists and feminists, the Buddhist nuns and monks and punks from further afield. All were present to support four women on trial for disarming a…

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Chapter 7 is the planning arm of The Land Is Ours, which campaigns to provide access to land and its resources for all citizens.

We take our name from Chapter 7 of Agenda 21 (the 1992 Earth Summit Declaration) which states that countries should strive for “access to land for all households... through environmentally sound planning”.

The English planning system is structured (probably deliberately) so as to create scarcities of farmhouses and building land, which mean that…

You may or may not have noticed that since 10 June - for over five months - the people of Belgium have struggled on without a government.

Well, we say “struggled on”. The political deadlock in the country has been a factor in declining “consumer confidence” apparently (does this mean people are spending less on things they don't need, and borrowing less money that they can't pay back?), but otherwise the people of Belgium have managed to keep breathing, eating, feeding themselves…

Here are a couple of books of interest to PN readers; seasonal gifts perhaps? Both are doorstoppers of around 500 pages and both are by blokes who are, to quote 1066 and All That, “a good thing”.

In the 1970s I wrote for Pete Frame's celebrated music mag Zigzag but Pete has since become more widely known for his series of superbly researched and drawn Rock Family Trees. These are the product of his meticulous research and obsessive interest in the minutiae of popular music in…

Peter Cadogan was once called “the England”. He campaigned most expelled socialist in effectively on many fronts for peace, justice and human rights. His most important mentors were William Blake, Gandhi and John MacMurray.

Peter Cadogan was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1921 where he witnessed the poverty and humiliation of workers during the Depression - something that drove him all his life.

After working as an insurance clerk, he served in the Air Sea Rescue Service from…

The tireless campaigner for peace and justice, Peggie Preston, died suddenly just after her 84th birthday. Peggie will be fondly remembered across the many campaigns and communities of which she was a part; she committed her life to finding political and personal solutions to poverty and oppression.

Born in India, Peggie grew up in Scotland, and travelled south to work in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, but, horrified by the merciless bombing, she later joined the Quakers. By the…

In 1795... there were treason trials and transportations, while the threat of execution was stayed only by juries who refused to condemn their countrymen for their opinions. ...the actual London populace - faced with unemployment and shortages of bread as the French war continued - were far less amenable to the usual state slogans. “On the day the King went to open the parliament... the crowd which was immense, Hissed and groaned and called out No Pitt - No War - Peace Peace, Bread Bread.”…

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In November we are all reminded of past wars. I think that, in the midst of this remembrance, we also need to think of those who suffer now for opposing present and future wars.

Many years ago, I was acquitted, along with 13 other people, after a trial under a silly law called the Incitement to Disaffection Act.

The acquittal came on 10 December, and ever since then I've celebrated with a party on or near Human Rights Day (10 December).

One year a couple came to the…

A great deal of ink is being spilled across Britain over “gun and knife crime”. As Kate MacIntosh, vice-chair of Scientists for Global Responsibility and former chair of Architects for Peace, points out in her lucid essay in this issue, anti-social behaviour is in part a response to the built environment, and the degree to which communities are permitted self-government and participatory democracy in the formation and use of the built environment.

This is about sensitive…

The British National Party came to have their annual meeting in our patch last November.

I got stopped by the police for having a scarf round my face and was held down an alley way, shouted at and pushed and threatened until I took it off and gave my details - right by the BNP security men.

I felt the police put my life in danger by asking me to unmask in front of the BNP while the fascists took photos. And the police made me shout out my name and address.

Over the 40…

I have been asked to write this column alternating with Jeff Cloves who lives in the lovely town of Stroud. I live in the London Borough of Newham. Anyone who knows both areas will be aware of the contrast.

Newham - home of DSEi

One distinction of Newham is that every two years we are the unwilling hosts of the DSEi Arms Fair at the ExCel Exhibition Centre, at Custom House E16. Despite unceasing opposition all year round, it is due to come back again this year starting on 11…