Features

1 November 2005 Stephen Hancock and Per Herngren

In March of this year we attended the first trial of the Pit Stop Ploughshares in Dublin (see PN2460).Despite the eventual mistrial, it was an inspiring scene, both inside and outside court. Harnessing the momentum generated by the stand of the five defendants, we met in a pub opposite the courts to plan further nonviolent resistance. We decided to mark the 60th Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversaries by planting vines and fig trees ata British nuclear base. With another friend we drew…

16 October 2005 PN staff

Our rights and civil liberties face renewed attack.

Once again, the government has rolled out a set of proposals in a new Bill - and this time they've determined that the best way to prevent radicalisation is, as Liberty commented, to - effectively - reintroduce internment and to make "loose talk" a criminal offence.

New powers which would enable detention without charge for up to three months and a new and particularly vague offence of "glorifying terrorism" are on the…

1 October 2005 Jason Parkinson

Being an Indymedia cameraman is becoming a hectic pastime in these, the last days of freedom in the UK. The DSEi weapons convention was a damn fine example of the increasing crackdown on free speech. Independent journalists and activists alike are now on the same level as terror suspects, all rights removed.

Saturday 10 September started peacefully . A hundred pr otesters took to the str eets ar ound Beckton, surr ounded by police, informing residents of the impending weapons…

1 October 2005 Jenny Gaiawyn

Jenny Gaiawyn argues that nonviolence and veganism are part of the same ethos and that eating ethically is an integral part of creating a world that is more just for all

An important part of nonviolence is respect for the sanctity of life and the rejection of behaviour that humiliates or degrades other humans.

People all around the world make nonviolence a part of their life, work and activism, yet it is a minority who extend the practice to include animals.

Concurrently there are people who campaign for the right of animals not to be mistreated whilst seeming to ignore the same abuses when they are used against people.

I believe that…

1 October 2005 Roberta Bacic

Since the end of July, Northern Irish politics and communities have experienced change,upheavals and violence: from the IRA's declaration of an end to armed struggle, to September's extended rioting across Loyalist communities, and the use by the police of water cannon and live rounds against citizens. Peace News invited members of the Northern Irish peace movement to tell us what they are thinking.

After my time as a staff member of War Resisters' International, I moved to Northern Ireland. This is now my home and life which, for me, includes being Chilean and confronting what was going on in Chile for over 25 years, either from within Chile itself or from wherever life has taken me.

Life in peaceful Benone allows me to look at what is going on here and in other places, with both serenity and urgency at the same time. One cannot merely be a spectator, we are also part of what is…

1 October 2005 Sian Jones

Well maybe not. Plans to build a £20 million state-of-the-art laser facility at Aldermaston are beginning to unravel. Thefate of the laser, which forms part of the massive new developments at AWE Aldermaston, the UK's nuclear bomb factory, currently lies in the hands of the West Berkshire planning committee.

For the past two years, Aldermaston Women's Peace Camp (AWPC) have been attempting to undermine AWE's plans, through opposing the developments as they come up before the planning…

16 September 2005 Emily Apple

As PN went to press, activists were gearing up for a week of direct action against the largest weapons fair in the world: DSEi (Defence Systems and Equipment International). Undeterred by reports of a planned exclusion zone around the London's ExCeL centre where the heavily-policed event is to take place, thousands are traveling to the capital from around Britain and Europe in a determined effort to shut down DSEi. In a bid to get you all out of your armchairs and off to the arms fair, Emily…

16 July 2005 PN staff

On 1 July, substantial new restrictions on protest around Parliament came into force, the breaking of which becomes an arrestable offence from 1 August. Any person thinking of making a political public statement in the centre of political power in Lond

1 July 2005 Janet Kilburn

It is almost hard to know where to start with this - there are so many reasons! But here goes with the main ones...

Reinforcing power: I suppose the first is just that part of me feels as though those eight white men in suits are not wo

1 July 2005 Kat Barton

Wednesday 6 July marked the first day of the G8 summit, so on Tuesday night, while eight men in suits were preparing to sit down to a meal of Marrbury smoked salmon and roast fillet of Glenarm lamb, thousands of activists were finalising their plans f

1 July 2005 Sian Jones

As part of the week of G8 actions, more than 1000 people protested at Dungavel Detention Centre (officially Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre) on 5 July against the detention of asylum seekers, in a demonstration organised by groups including the

1 July 2005

There are a whole range of repressive and outrageous measures increasingly being used by police and companies to try and intimidate and undermine all manner of protests - including peace and anti-war, anti-capitalist, Palestinian solidarity, environmental

1 July 2005

Kicking off the G8 week in style, an estimated 2,000 people participated in a particularly “big” blockade at the Faslane naval base, home to Britain's four nuclear powered - and armed - Trident submarines.

Organised as a nonviolent, antimili

16 June 2005 Anna-Linnea Rundberg

On Friday 13 May, 12 anti-nuclear campaigners established a peace camp on Drake's Island in Plymouth Sound, declaring it a nuclear-free state.

The protest, which lasted a week, highlighted the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - currently

16 April 2005 PN staff

As Peace News went to press, a High Court hearing into the injunctions demanded by Brighton arms manufacturers to restrict anti-war protests was still continuing. Richard Purssell reports... The injunction is being sought by EDO/MBM Technologies Ltd, subsidiary of the giant US arms manufacturer EDO Corp, under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
It seeks to create an exclusion zone, which would restrict all protest activities around the claimant's factory to two-and-a-half hours…

1 March 2005 PN staff

On 19 March tens of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets around the world to protest at the continuing military occupation of Iraq, and to call for coalition troops to be withdrawn.
National and local events are due to take place in Greece, Sweden, Iceland, Brazil, Australia, Senegal, Japan and South Africa. Here in Britain the largest event will be the march in central London, taking place under the banner “bring the troops home”, with similar demonstrations and…

1 March 2005 Donnachadh McCarthy

February's climate change protest march in London brought back my memories of the huge protest march to Hyde Park after the recent third western invasion of Iraq in under a century.

As the then Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats it fell to me to address the largest war-time peace protest ever on behalf of the party in Charles Kennedy's absence. I had been urging Kennedy to tackle the issue of oil driven wars for some time but here I had an opportunity to address the issue myself…

1 March 2005 Gail Chester

I first got involved in women's liberation in 1970 and stayed very active for the next 20 years, including ten years as a member of the Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group.

I never gave up on activism or being a radical feminist, but for the following ten years I concentrated almost entirely on campaigning in my local community--fighting for childcare provision and against rampant cuts in local authority spending. Over that period (roughly the 1990s) I kept being told that the…

1 March 2005 Harry Mister

In 1936 I had the remarkable good fortune to be a youthful member of a local pacifist group which dreamt up and published the first Peace News. A modest trial printing of 2,000 copies based on #6 of funds, it was the brain child of a Quaker member of the No More War Movement, Humphrey Moore, a journalist who had worked for the National Peace Council.

Two pence a copy on the streets, my first stint was to sell 100 copies of the founding issue. Peace groups all over the country…

1 March 2005 Milan Rai

The elections in Iraq have been an unprecedented opportunity for ordinary people to influence the destiny of their country, but the National Assembly they have elected is so hedged in with US imposed restrictions that the cabinet it produces will be more like a chain-gang of prisoners than an independent government. A prominent Iraqi politician in the Shia coalition told the New Yorker in January that the US had quietly told the parties before the election that there were three…