As we head towards the second anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the question of peace negotiations is becoming more pressing, especially with the possibility that Donald Trump may be re-elected president in November. Trump opposes US aid to Ukraine.
If it looks likely that Trump is going to win, Ukraine may be tempted to go for a high-risk, high-speed military push while it still has US backing – or it may finally open the door for a negotiated solution before…
I got political after I suffered my first racist attack at the age of seven. I didn’t understand any political theory, I just knew that I had been wronged, and I knew there was another way.
A few years later, when I was 15, a marked police car pulled up to me as I walked in Birmingham in the early hours of the morning, three cops got out of the car, they pushed me into a shop doorway, then they beat me up. They got back into their car, and drove off as if nothing had happened.
…
Late on 2 December, the UK ministry of defence (MoD) issued a short online statement saying that the UK ‘will conduct surveillance flights over the eastern Mediterranean, including operating in air space over Israel and Gaza.’
The following day, health secretary Victoria Atkins, appearing as a government spokesperson on Sky News, was asked about the flights and said: ‘The ministry of defence has announced that it has sent some unmanned, and unarmed, surveillance drones into the region…
Rishi Sunak’s government has supported Israel’s criminal war on Gaza, both diplomatically and in practical terms: weapons including spare parts, surveillance missions and intelligence gathering through US spy bases hosted by the UK on Cyprus.
A War on Want report in December called for a ‘two-way arms embargo on Israel without delay to end [the government’s] complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.’
Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch,…
‘This was inspired by the double-standard around violence, not just in Israel’s occupation and destruction of Palestine, but also in the “monopoly of violence” that is held by states, police, militaries, and intelligence agencies, which allows politicians and commentators to claim that “violence is never the answer” when referring to a regular person defending themselves against a police attack, punching a Nazi in the street, or pushing a cream pie into a politician or CEO’s face; but which…
Erica Smith writes: In the book which accompanies Re/Sisters, Anna Feigenbaum defines three categories of eco-feminist: web weavers, tree huggers and water defenders. Feigenbaum suggests that the term ‘tree hugger’ dates back to 1730 when villagers in Bishoi, Kherjarli in northern India sacrificed their lives to save trees being cut down to build a new palace for the maharaja of Jodhpur. 250 years later, in the early 1970s, women from villages in the Garhwal Himalayas, northern…
On 10 November, former Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman expressed her concerns about the ‘Ceasefire Now’ marchers due to demonstrate in London the following day. Freeman told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: ‘First of all, I would ask them, you know, what they think is going to happen if there’s a ceasefire?
‘Hamas has said that they will not stop until Israel is annihilated. And the fact is there are still 200…
On 31 October, Keir Starmer explained why he opposed calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, in the same terms as the US and British governments. The Labour leader said: ‘that would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capability to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October the 7th.... Hamas would be emboldened and start preparing for future violence immediately.’
Therefore, Starmer argued, the right position was to ‘stand by the right to self-defence of any nation…
In the run-up to the ‘Ceasefire Now’ demonstration in London on 11 November, prime minister Rishi Sunak condemned it as ‘provocative and disrespectful’ and warned that the march could ‘desecrate’ the Cenotaph, the national war memorial near Downing Street. The then home secretary Suella Braverman joined in, saying: ‘It is entirely unacceptable to desecrate Armistice Day with a hate march through London.’
The main organisers of the protest, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which had…
When United Nations general secretary António Guterres said the Hamas murders of Israelis in October 2023 did not happen in a vacuum, he was immediately accused by Israel’s ambassador to the UN of a ‘blood libel’ against Jews for which he must apologise or resign.
He, like us, deplores the killings but he also challenged the Israeli assertion that history started on 7 October. According to the Israeli narrative nothing, apart from bestial hate, explains 7 October and 7 October…
The Villages Group is a small but totally dedicated Israeli-Palestinian peace group who have worked year in and year out to show friendship and support to people under occupation in Palestine. I visited many times, to sing and do music with children in the villages, including in the very places right now being destroyed.
Things are desperate as never before. I am receiving their letters every day. Here are some things they are telling me. They want the world to know.
From their…
Eleven CODEPINK anti-war activists were arrested on 4 October after a 50-strong sit-in in Bernie Sanders’ senate office in Washington DC, USA.
Sanders, a left-winger, has voted for more weapons to Ukraine and has criticised Democrats who’ve called for peace talks. ‘I am appalled that no Democrats are saying what the majority of American people are saying: We need peace talks, not more war,’ said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, and author of…
Greetings from Kyiv. Yesterday [14 November] my city was disturbed again by air raid sirens, so I ran from Vernadsky scientific library to hide in the closest shelter, a subway station.
Ruthless Russian aggression against Ukraine continues, as well as the Ukrainian defensive war effort. Civilians are dying, cities are being bombarded on both sides of the frontline, and that is the essence of any war – aggressive or defensive – the pure evil of war, which is barbaric mass killing by…
This list of children 16 and younger killed in the latest Israel-Palestine conflict, has been created to be read out slowly during hour-long ‘Ceasefire Now’ vigils – to remember those who have died and to call for an immediate end to the violence.
This list of 261 names has been compiled from two sources: a spreadsheet of 2,523 names of children killed in Gaza (7 – 26 October 2023), circulated by Iraq Body Count, based on Gaza health ministry information and a 14 November report on…
This photo is from the exhibition, Regime Change Begins at Home – Nottingham Opposition to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, which ran from 21 – 24 September at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham, to mark the 20th anniversary of the disastrous invasion of Iraq and the movement which opposed it. Along with images of protests in Nottingham taken by local photographer Alan Lodge, the exhibition also featured leaflets, newsletters and other materials from the period, mostly from the Sparrows’ Nest…
Tom Willis was a curate in Hull in 1958 when he inherited £10,000 (worth over £180,000 today), the money that would buy 5 Caledonian Road for Peace News and Housmans Bookshop. PN production worker Emily Johns interviewed reverend Willis at a 50th birthday event for Number 5 in 2009, five years before he passed away.
I was 28 when I inherited the money and I thought: ‘What am I going to do with this money because Jesus…
A new book, Peace! Books! Freedom!, brings together generations of campaigners and activists to share memories of 5 Caledonian Road in Central London, the base for Peace News and its sister project, Housmans Bookshop. It is a little-known history of sedition, resistance, solidarity, and the ongoing struggle for justice and liberation.
When 5 Cally Road opened in 1959 as a home for Peace News and Housmans Bookshop, Peace News was already two decades…
Exactly what Britons commemorate when they wear a red poppy has evolved ever since the emergence of that symbol in the aftermath of the First World War.
One of the reasons the poppy has been such an enduring symbol is that it has always had a capacity to mean slightly different things to different people. For some, it has conveyed the memory of personal and collective suffering (best illustrated perhaps with the saying: ‘lest we forget’).
For others, it is a sign of respect and…
Every so often, any organisation or group will look at what it’s doing and see if it can be done better. Peace News is about to do this! Here are some thoughts on the subject from someone the PN staff respect very much (who wanted to remain anonymous) who has been involved in strategy reviews in different British peace organisations with paid staff. (The word ‘strategy’ can sound complicated but it just means ‘the plan we are following to try to achieve our goals’!)
Why now?
…
‘Before reading this book, I knew and greatly admired Dave Dellinger. Or so I thought. After reading his remarkable story, my admiration changed to something more like awe. There can be few people in the world who have crafted their lives into something truly inspiring. This autobiography introduces us to one of them, with the simplicity and integrity that characterizes everything Dave has done.’ –Noam Chomsky, praising Dellinger’s autobiography, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a…
