Features

It was a warm and sunny afternoon on 9 June but the church was packed.

The speakers were Paul Davies, standing in to explain current Labour Party policy in the absence of a Labour MP or union official prepared to defend it, and Bruce Kent presenting the opposing view.

It turned out to be an ‘unbalanced’ meeting because there did not seem to be anyone in…

In July 1945, US president Harry S Truman had two powerful options his advisors believed could end the Pacific war – apart from a bloody US land invasion of Japan, or the use of nuclear weapons.

One was a Russian declaration of war. The other was to allow the Japanese emperor to keep his throne, despite his war crimes.

Truman refused to try either of these options before using the atom bomb.

Russia

On 8 July, the top-level US-UK…

The title of this print is a reference to this saying of Jesus as reported in John’s gospel in the Christian bible: ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have…

Burnout is a topic that is close to my heart. Having experienced a couple of intense periods of burnout and having recently realised that I continue to hold chronic low-level stress, tiredness and anxiety in my body, the question ‘How can we do sustainable activism?’ is one that I am constantly seeking answers to.

Doing activism…

This summer, after two years of preparation (and a postponement in 2017 partly because of family ill-health), Peace News finally brought the wonderful Betsy Leondar-Wright to the UK to lead what we think is the very first anti-classism training of activist trainers that’s ever taken place in the UK. The other facilitators were Kathryn Tulip of the Navigate training collective and Milan Rai, PN editor. This is an account from…

The Peace News commemoration of the Russian Revolution (PN 2612–2613) accurately identified the role of nonviolent direct action in creating that inspiring event but offered no explanation of why it all ended in tears. Most historians accept that the revolution degenerated into authoritarian terror but activists disagree on the causes.

Leninists blame the ensuing civil war, Trotskyists blame Stalin, anarchists blame Lenin while an old Communist Party friend of mine…

In the aftermath of the assassination of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr on 4 April 1968, Peace News published moving tributes from Devi Prasad (‘His name will be remembered with Gandhi’s’) and PN co-editor Nigel Young (‘Notes on an Assassination’) among others. Then PN decided to also publish a fierce attack on King by US anarcho-pacifist Robert…

At the end of March, I travelled to Stafford to attend the second Fossil Free UK national gathering as a representative of Divest East Sussex – one of scores of local groups campaigning to get universities and local councils to ditch their investments in the fossil fuel industries (coal, oil and gas).

I’d arrived insanely early. Rapidly exhausting the delights of the town centre, I retreated to a bench in Victoria Park, beside the river Sow, where a young man with a guitar…

Elizabeth McAlister:

Absurd Convictions, Modest Hopes is the title of one of the more than 50 books by my late brother-in-law Daniel Berrigan (RIP and Presente!). It might be fair to say that we came to Kings Bay submarine base animated by the absurd conviction that we could make some impact on slowing, if not ending, the mad…

This is an excerpt from a new book by US activist and thinker Michael Albert. RPS/2044 is an oral history of a revolution in the US, about 25 years from now. The book is made up of interviews (conducted in the future) by ‘Miguel Guevara’ (MG) with the people who helped to make the revolution. They describe how their organisation, ‘Revolutionary Participatory Society’ (RPS), began in 2020, developed over the years, and won its victory in 2044. RPS 2044 connects the movements that…

We decided to celebrate the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s 60th anniversary with a profile of one of its regional branches. The Yorkshire CND office is in Bradford, opposite the university. One of the branch’s contributions to the peace movement is its fundraising ‘Day of Dance’, which in Saltaire this April had 30 workshops at the event’s 46th outing. Benjamin Kaplan (BK) interviewed Matt Fawcett (MF) of Yorkshire CND more generally, on behalf of PN.

BK: How did Yorkshire CND…

Silkscreen image taken from Poster Workshop 1968–1971 published by Four Corners Books, review in next issue.

ForcesWatch: Hi Ambrose! Thank you for putting on such a fantastic event in Leicester at the end of last year as part of the Leicester Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, ‘This is Belonging: Challenging militarism at home and abroad’. We had a lively and informed discussion, and it was great to be able to take part. Could you tell us a bit about how…

Seven Catholic peace activists are facing up to 10 years in prison each, after breaking into a Trident submarine base at Kings Bay in Georgia, on the east coast of the USA. On 4 April, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, the seven entered Kings Bay in…

There can be few more dogged campaigners than David Polden.

When I arrived at the Jobs and Climate conference on 10 March at 10am, the start of the 45-minute registration period, the seasoned 77-year-old peace campaigner was already there, distributing flyers to the general public. Believing that the event would start at 10am, David had been there since 9.15am. Given that no one else had arrived during the intervening period, it was a miracle that he hadn’t given up.

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Daniel Ellsberg is famous as the Pentagon analyst who leaked thousands of pages of top secret…

Do you want to strengthen your workshop facilitation skills? Do you want to help social change groups and mission-driven NGOs deal more skilfully with social class and classism in their own organisations, in their members’ lives and in the wider society? If so, Exploring Class may be for you.

This intensive, three-day Training of Trainers draws on several decades of work in the US and will adapt US tools to the UK class system. This residential draws in particular from the…

A new housing co-op for low-income activists in Oxford (one of the least affordable cities in the UK) is facing huge difficulties after being asked for an additional £50,000 in stamp duty by the tax authorities, under rules brought in in 2012 and 2014. Kindling, a member of the Radical Routes network of co-operatives, is believed to be the first housing co-op to be affected by…

On 19 March, the Undercover Policing Inquiry (led until July 2017 by Christopher Pitchford) posted the previously-secret Special Demonstration Squad Tradecraft Manual on its website (see accompanying article for extracts). The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was a section of Special Branch, the British political police, devoted to undercover operations, which existed between 1968 and 2008.…

Oska Lappin: The first weekend after the inauguration of the current occupant of the White House, I was with friends and inevitably the discussion turned to politics and our fears of what could occur for the world at large. Someone said: ‘This discussion is probably akin to the talk in Germany around 1935.’ There was a group shudder and an unusual silence.

As a narrative-based self-expressionist, I begin…