Extracts from Andy Coles’ SDS Tradecraft Manual. See accompanying article for background.
3.8.4. Once you have been armed with an easy to remember personal history you may never use it. It is highly unlikely that within a very short time as a field officer you will face hostile questioning in such depth. Nevertheless, an intensely secretive individual who never gives…
Features
Andy Coles
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…
‘Without you (Hugh Brock), Michael Randel (sic) and Pat (Arrowsmith) there would have been no symbol.’
So wrote the artist and designer of the nuclear disarmament symbol, Gerald Holtom, in a letter dated 29 September 1973 to Hugh Brock, PN editor 1955–1964, and the chair of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) which organised the first Aldermaston March at Easter 1958.
Gerald was referring to a meeting at the committee’s office in…
Welsh women with peace petition in 1924. Photo: GWYNedd Archives
At the National Eisteddfod main literature awards, two Druids partly unsheathe a sword above the winning author’s head and ask the audience: ‘A oes Heddwch?’ (‘Is there peace?’) ‘Heddwch!’ (‘Peace!’) the audience shouts in return. Only when this ritual has been performed three times can the author sit in the bardic chair. So is Wales a peace-loving nation? What does our history and heritage tell us, and how are people…
Gene Sharp. Photo: Conor Doherty
Once again, I rang the bell at the brick row house in East Boston where Gene Sharp lived. When he opened the door I said proudly: ‘Today I drove here instead of taking the T [public transport].’
‘You drove?’ he said in mock horror. ‘Man, are you trying to get yourself killed? Haven’t you heard about Boston drivers? They show no mercy, especially toward Philadelphians!’ That was the Gene Sharp I knew, always loving to find a joke in the…
Plaque in Linnet Lane, Liverpool Photo: Rodhullandemu via Wikimedia Commons
Over a series of meetings last year, Britain’s Quaker community discussed its experience of welcoming newcomers to these shores. Over 51 Quaker Meetings have pledged to become ‘Sanctuary Meetings’, based on a threefold commitment to build a culture of welcome, to challenge racism in all its forms and to change the law.
Quakers are taking action both locally and nationally. They are working in…
Pride march, Dublin, Ireland, 2013. Photo: Infomatique via WikimediaCommons
While the events at the London Anarchist Bookfair were deplorable (see PN 2612–2613), I was disappointed to see that Peace News decided to become by default the distributor of the anti-trans leaflets handed out at the Bookfair, and surprised that there was not any space provided to look at the actual issues at hand by trans people – as presented by the leaflets.
The issue of…
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…
Even the lunch break at Weaving Our Own Web spawned an additional workshop discussing ‘feminism and technology’, based on an ongoing project from The Feminist Library. Workshops were crowded with enthusiastic campaigners for Peace News’s successful digital campaigning dayschool in London on 13 January. Activists had come to build their skills in using online tools to strengthen their groups and campaign more effectively.
A range of workshops catered for a broad spectrum of…
Collage images by Mazen AlDarrab [CC BY-SA 3.0] and courtesy of Graham Berry, Chief Secretary’s Office (State Library of New South Wales) both via Wikimedia Commons
Protests are being prepared for a visit to the UK by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman between 7 – 9 March. Human rights campaigners are pressing for him to be arrested for war crimes.
‘The crown prince is a figurehead for a regime with one of the worst human rights records in the world. He has overseen…
PHOTO: Devin Allen
In April 2015, the US city of Baltimore erupted in mass protests after the brutal murder by police of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man. African-American photographer Devin Allen, born and raised in Baltimore, documented the uprising without judgement. In the book of his photographs, A Beautiful Ghetto (Haymarket Books, 2017),…
This is the second in our series of interviews with working-class activists. These are Holly’s words:
“Growing up working-class erodes your confidence, almost by design. I just didn’t feel confident in any life stage, that I’d be able to excel or do well, or that anyone would actually want me as part of what they’re doing. People talk about ‘impostor syndrome’* all the time now. I do believe everyone has it, but if you’re from a disadvantaged background, it’s... it’s…
Giant poster by Joe Caslin, part of ‘Yes Equality’ in favor of marriage equality, Dame St, Dublin, Ireland, 2015. Photo: Rob Hurson [CC BY-SA 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons
The latest film from John Pilger, the seasoned and world-famous director and journalist, weaves together stories across time and geographic spaces in East Asia, focused on the predominant superpower, from atomic bomb testing to US military base expansion.
It might initially seem puzzling that The Coming War on China focuses not so much on how likely a coming war on China might be, as on the historical advance of US militarism in the Pacific.
This history…
Dan Woodhouse and Sam Walton (centre) with supporters outside Burnley magistrates court after the verdict on 26 October. Photo: Andrea Needham
On 26 October, Burnley magistrates court acquitted Ploughshares activists Sam Walton and Dan Woodhouse of criminal damage after they admitted breaking into a BAE Systems plant to use household hammers on military jets.
Poor old British Aerospace. Not only were the first group of people to break in to their Warton site in…
1 December 2017
Evan Sleeping at Camp 18, Juneau Icefield Research Program, Alaska. Photograph courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery, London.
Lucas Foglia, Human Nature
Nazraeli Press, 2017; 92pp; £50
In one of his most famous rants, the comedian George Carlin claimed that: ‘there is nothing wrong with the planet .… The planet is fine. The people are fucked.… The…