Have you heard about the minister for peace and disarmament?
Did you know that the Labour party has promised to establish a minister for peace and disarmament (MPD) if they win the next general election? If so, do you know what policy areas this minister might focus on and how they could work with other government departments? Do you also know who the current shadow minister for peace and disarmament is and what they’ve been doing recently?
Peace & Fabianism
The MPD…
The University of Stirling hosted two events on low level radiation and health in June 2018. The first was an International Union of Radioecologists (IUR) workshop seeking answers to a range of questions about the impacts on ecosystems. Some illustrious international scientists who attended the IUR workshop kindly stayed on to present at the second event, the 23rd conference on Low Level Radiation and Health (LLR+H). Started by members of the public in 1985, LLR+H is run on a voluntary basis…
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 combined intelligence committee…
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 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 life, and have it to the full.’
This print takes the slogan ‘Enriched Bread’, and its overall design, from the wrapping around Wonder Bread, a US brand of cheap sliced white bread.
Bread has religious significance for Christians. Bread is multiplied during the feeding of the five…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 rush to the…
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 Leicester for…
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…
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…
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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One of the key debates in CND from its inception was the role of ‘direct action’ and whether breaking the law was a permissible way of campaigning against nuclear weapons.
The first Aldermaston march in April 1958, which was organised by the Direct Action Committee (DAC) and supported by CND, really launched the new movement into the public eye and onto the political agenda. CND went on after the march to pursue a range of campaigning and lobbying activities, building local groups…
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.…
