‘There are specific ways in which people are silenced,’ Rebecca Solnit writes in her latest collection of essays, ‘but there is also a culture that withers away the space in which women speak and makes it clear that men’s voices count for more than women’s.’
Solnit is the author of the widely shared essay ‘Men Explain Things to Me’, included in a 2014 collection of the same name (see PN 2574), and is often credited with inspiring the word ‘mansplaining’. In both collections, the silencing of women is an ongoing theme.…
Reviews
‘By the age of fourteen months,’ George Monbiot writes ‘children begin to help each other, attempting to hand over objects another child cannot reach. By the time they are two, they start sharing some of the things they value. By the age of three, they start to protest against other people’s violations of moral norms.’
We are supremely social mammals, ‘blessed with an amazing capacity for kindness and care towards others’, and yet today ‘an epidemic of loneliness is sweeping the world’. Moreover, this loneliness is ‘just one…
The concept of meritocracy – ‘a system structured around advancement of people who are selected on the basis of individual achievement’ – has been a powerful idea in post-war industrialised societies, especially in the more economically-unequal US and UK.
As with its close cousin ‘equality of opportunity’, meritocracy has ‘become the key means of cultural legitimation for contemporary capitalist culture’, endorsed by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Theresa May. So argues Jo Littler, a sociologist at City, University of…
Kate Evans has created beautiful, radical comic strips since the 1990s. She has drawn and written about her experience as a tree protester at the Newbury Bypass, climate change, pregnancy and breastfeeding and the life of Rosa Luxemburg.
Threads came about as the result of a trip to volunteer at the Jungle refugee camp in Calais in October 2015, followed by two further trips in January and February 2016. The graphic novel documents Evans’ experiences in the camp, and the friendships that she made with the people living…
‘When our enemies expect us to respond to provocation with violence, we must react calmly and peacefully; just as they anticipate our passivity, we must throw a grenade.’ This is pretty much the only ‘reflection on the role of armed struggle in North America’ that you will find in Ward Churchill’s 1986 essay, ‘Pacifism as Pathology’. These words, quoted approvingly, are from Black Nationalist activist Kwame Ture (formerly nonviolent civil rights Freedom Rider Stokely Carmichael).
Quite apart from any moral issues, this ‘grenade-…
‘Suddenly, being a woman doesn’t look like such a minefield after all,’ Sara Pascoe says in the blurb for this book. She is referring to all the amazing things she has found out while researching evolution, science and the the history of patriarchy, and seeing how they relate to the way society works – or doesn’t – today. Except that makes Animal sound dry: it isn’t.
Although Sara Pascoe talks about evolutionary science a lot, she never dumbs it down – after all, she isn’t a scientist, she’s a comedian (or, as she is…
Stephen Armstrong shows how consecutive governments have abandoned Britain’s most vulnerable citizens and overseen the gradual dismantling of a welfare state that once protected them. Importantly, Armstrong also tells the stories of those most affected.
Beginning with the 1942 Beveridge Report – the founding document of Britain’s welfare state – Armstrong outlines how, by adopting its recommendations, postwar governments were largely successful in eradicating what the report called the five ‘giants’ blocking the road of…
In this, the third thriller in Max Hertzberg’s alternative East Germany trilogy (set in an alternate history in which East Germany’s Peaceful Revolution of 1989 resulted in the creation of a socialist state run by direct democracy), the young, self-organised democracy is testing its self-confidence and looking to the future, while threatened by ghosts from its past that just won’t lie down. It’s a year on from a crucial referendum to take down the Berlin Wall and disband the Republicschutz, a temporary counter-espionage service formed to…
In October, I travelled to Burnley for the trial of Sam Walton and reverend Dan Woodhouse (see p1). Walking to the court past derelict industrial buildings and rows of empty shops and pubs, I couldn’t help think of the Women’s Peace Crusade meetings held here exactly 100 years ago.
According to this short book, Burnley was once called ‘the largest producer of woven cotton in the world’ but, by the First World War, its economy had slumped. Over 4,000 young men from Burnley were killed at the front, with over 100 dying in a single…
Meticulously sourced and based on extensive primary research, this book recounts a neglected thread of queer history.
Scott-Presland states that he kept in mind the encyclopedic regimental histories which line the walls of the Imperial War Museum. Notwithstanding this militaristic metaphor, there is a great deal in these pages from which peace campaigners might learn. The Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) was founded in 1964. At its height, it had 5,000 members and over 100 local groups. Nevertheless, it has been largely…
The scope of Covering Conflict cannot be overstated. Drawing from a dizzying array of sources throughout – interviews with journalists, theoretical approaches, autobiographies, biographies, histories, academic journals, newspapers, magazines and mainstream and alternative websites – it is well-written, well-argued and meticulously referenced. For PN readers it is an extremely valuable resource, and should be a compulsory read for all journalists.
In this book, Richard Keeble draws on over 25 years of research to…
‘The Jungle’ was the name given to a refugee and migrant encampment near Calais. It is an emotional and cathartic experience to hear at last what it was like for the residents in their own words and pictures, rather than from journalists and volunteers, however sensitive.
Just before its demolition by the French authorities in October 2016, when riot police were closing down businesses and residents were being dispersed to ‘welcome centres’ across France, I was lucky enough to meet Babak Inaloo, a writer and resident of the camp…
Reviewers agree that Neil Faulkner’s A People’s History of the Russian Revolution is a lively and readable account of the revolutionary events of 1917. It is also a distorted, dishonest disservice to the millions of Russian workers and peasants whose achievements Faulkner claims to celebrate.
Why should this matter to activists today? In particular, why should it matter to people committed to nonviolent revolution?
One reason is that when times get tough, and social conflicts get hotter, and people really…
John Perceval, son of the only British prime minister to have been assassinated, was committed to a lunatic asylum in 1830. Perceval’s Quest is an exploration of the circumstances and consequences of that incarceration, using as a basis Perceval’s own fascinating account of his experiences.
At the core of Perceval’s writings are modern concerns about mental health, and how a family and society interacts compassionately with an individual having very different perceptions of reality. Robin Holtom, with his background as…
If there was ever a book that should be reviewed in Peace News this is it. Not only is 83-year old Margaretta D’Arcy a lifelong campaigner for peace but it was Peace News that drove her, at 79, to climb the fence at Shannon airport and protest on the runway – not once, but twice:
‘On the whole in the anti-war movement there was no real support for non-violent direct action. But then Peace News carried an article about an international week of protest against drones to coincide with World Peace Day on 21…