Reviews

This book is about a campaign against an arms fair in Australia that included a two-week-long attempt – with a large measure of success – to blockade all three entrances to the site – not only during the arms fair but the week before, when exhibitors were arriving to set up. I would recommend it to anyone concerned about the problems of large demonstrations and meetings involving individuals and groups with a range of attitudes to nonviolence.

There are day-by-day accounts of what happened – a bit like a diary but not from one person…

Though some of us may not fully appreciate it, media and communication systems (and the policies and subsidies that helped create them) should be a central concern for all activists. For example, without docile and generally compliant media it is difficult to see how the British government could have taken part in the disastrous and illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq – or survived the aftermath of having done so – or how it could continue to drive us at full pelt towards the cliff-edge of catastrophic climate change.

Nonetheless, though…

It is now over seven years since US and British forces invaded Afghanistan. For much of this time there has been little news about the country, with the attention of the US and anti-war activists focused on Iraq. This is now changing however, and Obama has followed up his campaign pledges by committing an extra 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan. Britain enthusiastically supported this move, and is likely to increase the 9,000 UK troops already there.

In this context then, increasing our understanding of Afghanistan – and the role of US…

Set at the time of the first atomic bomb test in 1945 and the days leading up to it, this opera looks at these events through the focal characters of J Robert Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty, fellow physicist Edward Teller, and general Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhattan Project. The libretto created by Peter Sellars is based on original source material including interviews, memoirs and declassified documents, as well as other works such as the Bhagavad Gita and the poetry of Baudelaire and John Donne.

As the opera opens we…

At the beginning of 2008, Coventry Peace House launched a campaign to highlight the plight of stateless people. This book – launched in Refugee Week 2008 – is the result of collaboration by workers on the campaign. Both campaign and book raise the issue of statelessness in Britain and globally, providing a valuable contribution to the wider issue of the sufferings of asylum seekers and the various ways in which this is addressed in Britain today.

The book begins by giving an overview of global statelessness and international law. A…

Combining American historian Howard Zinn’s bestselling A People’s History of the United States and his autobiography You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train, A People’s History of American Empire is an inspirational “history from below” in comic form.

Starting with 9/11, the book takes the form of an extended lecture from Zinn, focusing on lesser-known episodes from American history, including the invasion of the Philippines in 1898 (where an early form of waterboarding was used during interrogations), the 1913 Ludlow massacre of…

On 18 January 2009, as Israeli bombs – many of them containing British-made components – rained down on the people of Gaza, six people entered the EDO arms factory in Brighton, and proceeded to carry out a people’s decommissioning. Equipment used to make weapons’ components was smashed, and computers and filing cabinets were thrown out of windows. EDO claimed they had suffered £300,000 of damage – no mention, of course, of the damage being caused by their weapons in Gaza. All six were arrested and are to be put on trial in Brighton,…

This upbeat documentary begins with the observation that, despite contrary perceptions, there is actually less armed conflict in the world today than ever before. The film contends that there is a wave of co-operative, nonviolent responses emerging throughout the world to the growing challenges posed by climate change, resource depletion, population growth and economic inequality.

The film surveys some of these initiatives, flitting across the globe from Kenya to Colombia, from the UK to Nigeria, and covering the whole scale of…

Late in 2007, someone forwarded me an excoriating critique of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) - the largest of Britain’s Trotskyist groups, and the driving force behind the Stop the War Coalition. Noting that the party had “shrunk to a shadow of the size it was even a few years ago” and that “anyone who has raised the issue has been derided”, the piece – written by a long-term SWP member for the Party’s internal bulletin - concluded that “[u]nless we radically address the decline we’ve fallen into, and transform the culture that has up…

Now More Than Ever, Here More Than Anywhere is the title of the last song in this well-researched and epic anti-nuclear song encyclopaedia. The song was written by singer songwriter Geordie McIntyre especially for the book and sent with a note saying, “a song in print is dead-in-the-water – to make it sail, it has to be sung.”

The spirit of this note flows through the book, which tells the story of the last 50 years of Scottish CND through song, ear-witness accounts and narrative by some of the song writers.

The book includes…

What Kind of Liberation? is a detailed critique of the US authorities’ promise of an occupation which would liberate Iraqi women. It stands out from other writings on post-war Iraq, not only because Iraqi women are its subject, but because of the transparency of the authors in setting out how their own identities, gender, politics and activism have constructed their analysis.

The book is based on interviews with diaspora and refugee women or those able to travel outside, together with images from photo-essays by Iraqi women.

…

This isn’t a book about humanitarian relief, or really about the aid delivered by aid agencies at all. Instead its about the much bigger sums which rich countries’s governments contribute to African infrastructure, governance and welfare systems on a regular basis.

Most African countries receive more than 10% of their GDP in aid, and a few, like Sierra Leone and Burundi, receive more than 30 per cent. Aid received on this scale has an enormous impact, but not necessarily a good one, Glennie argues. For a start, governments who are…

This timely British Library exhibition and accompanying book reflect the civil liberties debate moving into the mainstream and allow an important opportunity to reflect on the history of the struggle and to value what has been achieved so far.

On the one hand it emphasises the importance of codifying rights on paper (laws, manifestos etc…) and the power of this in sustaining ideas over time. It starts with the Magna Carta, the most significant provision of which was brought into mainstream law with the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.…

The Israel-Palestine conflict is often presented in the British media as a highly controversial subject of near-labyrinthine complexity – with its “road maps”, “final status agreements”, and endless “peace processes”. The tacit implication is clear: unless you’ve spent ten years getting a PhD in Israel-Palestine studies, and can argue fluently about the minutiae of the Wye River Memorandum and the Yom Kippur war, don’t even dream of trying to form an independent opinion. In truth, as Norman Finkelstein documents with forensic scholarship in…

This vast history spans the late 19th and early 20th centuries, charting not only the life of Edward Carpenter, but also the early development of today’s political and social movements. But at its heart is Carpenter’s struggle with legitimising homosexuality, both in his own life and as an integral part of a new way of living.

While Carpenter’s commitments to the labour movement, democracy and social transformation led to his involvement in adult education, the trade union movement and women’s suffrage, his desire for change involved…