16 March 1991: Undercover police officer Andy Coles (calling himself ‘Andy Davey’) tries to cover his face as he is photographed next to PN editor Milan Rai in a pub in Fairford, Gloucestershire, after an anti-war protest at a nearby US base. PHOTO: NOOR ADMANI
In 1991, I was living in London and involved in a nonviolent direct action affinity group called ARROW (Active Resistance to the Roots of War). The group had started with direct action against the 1991 Gulf War, and then broadened…
The Bread and Roses Award for radical non-fiction will be announced at the London Radical Bookfair on 24 June. This is the shortlist.
The Hammer Blow
The Hammer Blow: How 10 Women Disarmed a War Plane by Andrea Needham (310pp; £10; Peace News): ‘The heroic actions of this small, but determined, group of women is told brilliantly in Andrea Needham’s fascinating account. They spent six months in jail for acting upon their consciences – but were…
When the organising collective gathered to think about this year’s Peace News Summer Camp, we were still reeling from the EU referendum result and the election of Donald Trump.
We tried to think about what we needed to help us keep going as activists, and what would help our movements to keep going in the middle of this bewildering turmoil and with the growing scale of the threats that we face.
That’s why we chose this theme together: ‘Surviving Politics – self…
Victory palms. GRAPHIC: EMILY JOHNS
On 2 February 2017, Phil Shiner, the award-winning human rights lawyer who brought the UK government to account for the 2003 killing of the Iraqi hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, was struck off by the solicitors disciplinary tribunal (SDT). In March 2017, Shiner, who was also ordered to pay interim costs of £250,000, was declared bankrupt, and was reported to be in poor health.
Shiner and his legal firm, by fighting for victims of the Iraq war, had…
'Vote for nobody’. There is a strong anarchist strain in the nonviolent direct action corner of the peace movement. Part of that anarchist strand abstains from voting, some folk even campaign against voting in elections – to break down illusions about parliamentary democracy. This graffiti used to be on a wall in Guelph, Ontario in Canada – it was painted over several years ago.
On 18 April, the ruling Conservative Party called a snap general election in Britain for 8 June. This is a survey…
50 demonstrators run into the Greek embassy, 21 April 1967. Still from a film shot by Nic Ralph on the night. PHOTO: NIC RALPH
On 21 April 1967, as forthcoming elections in Greece seemed likely to elect a centre-left government, a group of right-wing colonels staged a coup. Tanks rolled into Athens, thousands of leftists were imprisoned without trial and, with the collaboration of king Constantine, the colonels’ junta established military law, abolished the constitution and cancelled…
CEMA Canteen Concert, Isle of Dogs (1941) by Kenneth Rowntree © IWM (Art. IWM ART LD 1879). Artists hired by CEMA (the council for the encouragement of music and the arts) were meant to boost wartime morale but sometimes undermined this mission.
Getting to the (London) Imperial War Museum’s exhibition ‘People Power: Fighting for Peace’ involves crossing the huge atrium of the museum, hung with fighter aircraft and missiles. To say it feels incongruous is a bit of an understatement. It…
GOALS: To keep the owners from instituting a seven-day work week (owners were trying to add 12-hour mandatory Saturday and Sunday shifts – with no overtime pay)
On 9 June 1987, workers of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Lunafil (Lunafil Thread Factory Workers Union, or SITRALU) were given unwelcome news by management.
The Lunafil factory was located on the main highway in Amatitlan, just 15 miles from Guatemala City (capital of Guatemala). In that factory workers spun cotton…
(L-R) David Polden, ‘Andy Davey’, Pippa Gibbins, Andrea Needham. PHOTO: NOOR ADMANI
My clearest memory of ‘Andy Davey’, the undercover police officer Andy Coles, is a bizarre moment that I would now describe as a ‘police triple-decker sandwich’.
On 10 February 1991, Christian peace activist Chris Cole and I had broken into the US air force base at Fairford in Gloucestershire to protest against the B-52 raids carried out from the base. (The B-52s were bombing Iraq.)
We had…
Murad Subay is an award-winning Yemeni artist, originally from Dhamar, now living in the capital Sana’a. He usually paints in the streets – along with fellow artists, friends, passersby and anyone who wants to join in – turning the walls of the streets into an open art gallery.
Murad launched ‘Colour the walls of your street’, the first of five artistic campaigns, in 2012, right…
This is a statement carried by the pair when they were arrested inside BAE Warton on 29 January.
Today we intend to enter BAE Warton, to locate warplanes bound for Saudi Arabia, and disarm them. We take this action in order to prevent the export of weaponry that will almost certainly be used in…
An appalling humanitarian crisis mounts today in Yemen where a naval blockade, ruthlessly imposed by the Saudi government, has led to mass poverty and famine. Saudi forces, backed by the US and UK, are bombing schools, hospitals, homes, farms and markets. Fleet Street and the broadcasting companies refer to it from time to time as the ‘forgotten war’. And yet it remains ‘forgotten’ simply because the mainstream media has chosen not to highlight in any consistent way the horrors being…
In the summer of 2005, Rebecca Dale had three young children, Nik (3), Ben (2) and Katherine (six months old). She had been working as a research fellow at Warwick University, increasing co-operation between industry and the academy, especially within the automation industry.
Now she needed a new job that could fit in with her commitment to her…
Sarah Gittins writes:
Since 2013 I have been working with Jonathan Baxter on an art and horticulture project called DUO (Dundee Urban Orchard). DUO has worked alongside community groups, schools and cultural organisations to establish a network of 25 small-scale orchards that together re-imagine Dundee as an Orchard City. During this time I have also drawn an old…
Betsy Leondar-Wright. Photo: Rodgerrodger via Wikimedia
I’ve been asked a question that I can’t answer, and I wonder if you, the reader, can help answer it.
The most common forms of anti-racist consciousness-raising practised on the left today – workshops; special sessions to talk about internal race dynamics; book discussions; instantly ‘calling out’ oppressive comments; and hammering out statements of ideological commitment, all using specialised terms such as ‘white…
Has the election of Donald Trump as president of the US got you down? Are there days you just don’t believe any more that we can win, that we can change big important things?
Jane McAlevey’s Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) is the perfect antidote to Trump-era pessimism and despondency. I’m going to buy a bunch of copies for people I know, and I think you should too.
There are books out there filled with inspiring…
To be in shape for the long haul, we have to get our minds and spirits ready, as well as jump into action.
When we’re in bad shape, our power is diminished – we’re less creative, more reactive, and less able to plan strategically. If we intend to stay active and effective in the world, we have a responsibility to tend to our spirits.
Here are seven behaviours we can use right away to strengthen ourselves, so we can keep taking more and more powerful and strategic…
Americans tend to be self-obsessed. That condition goes with being in the centre of a world empire, as British people with long memories may recall. How, then, can people inside an empire get enough of a broader perspective to be able to think well?
‘This guy is fucking relentlessly on point,’ one journalist tweeted in the midst of an author event I led in…
The great advantage of home education has been to open up different kinds of education. If we are to save what is groundbreaking, trailblazing and effective about home education then we need people to wake up to their continued conformism.
Most of us think we know what education is. The room is set up with someone who ‘doesn’t know’ sitting down with pen in hand. There is someone in front of them who ‘knows’ about a…
