Polden, David

Co-ordinated protests against nuclear weapons stretched around the world at the end of April, including a global ‘wave’ of demonstrations.

On 28 April, the second day of the UN-sponsored Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in New York, 22 protesters were arrested after nonviolently blockading the two main entrances to the US mission to the UN in the city.

The blockaders, from a variety of US peace organisations, called on the US to abolish its…

Anti-Trident activists occupied a ruined church in Plymouth for the day on 28 April. The Tamarians affinity group put up banners (including ‘Vote Out Trident’) in Charles church, which was bombed in the Second World War and is now a war memorial.

The local Conservative candidate said: ‘People gave so much for the freedom of this country…. Charles Church is symbolic of those sacrifices and I object to it being politicised in this way.’

At the end of January, the prosecution dropped criminal charges against against nine London Palestine Action (LPA) activists who shut down a drones factory for two days last summer (see PN 2574–2575).

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (‘drone’) engine factory in Shenstone near Birmingham is owned by Israeli military technology firm Elbit Systems.

Lawyers for the defendants told Electronic Intifada that either Elbit or the UK government decided to withdraw…

Jean Oliver, Janet Fenton and David MacKenzie from the ‘Peaton Peace Pirate’ (PPP) wing of Trident Ploughshares were arrested on 2 February after committing the dastardly deed of pinning a set of ‘Pirate Peace Articles’ to the fence around the Faslane naval base where Britain’s Trident nuclear missile submarines are housed.

The articles stated that the PPPs were committed to disarming the UK nuclear fleet by nonviolent methods, and cited international law in support.

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Four peace activists, Chris Cole, Penny Walker, Gary Eagling and Katharina Karcher, were arrested inside RAF Waddington, in Lincolnshire, on 5 January, while protesting against the use of armed drones.

The four cut a ‘New Year Gateway for Peace’ into the base and walked towards the Reaper ground control station from which RAF ‘pilots’ operate armed drones. The activists carried banners and reports of civilian casualties from recent UK, NATO and coalition airstrikes in Afghanistan and…

On 23 January, US peace activist Kathy Kelly handed herself in to authorities in Kentucky to start a three-month prison sentence (see p8), one part of the US movement against drone warfare.

On 26 November, on the west coast of the US, Chris Nelson and Shirley Osgood deliberately ‘crossed the line’ outside Beale air force base in California. They handed in a letter asking the base commander to end his role in ‘the kill chain which uses the Global Hawk drone to identify human…

On 17 December, 100 Palestinian political prisoners ended a solidarity hunger strike after the Israeli prison authorities agreed to stop holding Nahar al-Saadi in solitary confinement and to allow him contact with his family (he had been held in solitary for over 570 days).

The authorities also agreed to end the use of solitary confinement ‘without cause’ – a promise they made previously after the mass hunger strike of mid-2012 (PN 2547-2548).

In other news, after…

In October, there were several victories in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Kuwait announced it will not deal with 50 European companies because of their involvement in illegal settlements in occupied Palestine. Israeli-owned soft drink company SodaStream moved one of its factories out of the Occupied Territories.

Israeli shipping line Zim apparently cancelled all future shipments to the port of Oakland, after nonviolent blockades.…

An African-American US Iraq veteran may be able to claim asylum in the EU after arguing that the Iraq war was illegal. On 11 November, a German judge ruled that military deserters may be able to claim asylum in the European Union if they have a reasonable fear that they would have been ordered to commit war crimes if they hadn’t deserted, and if they face punishment on returning to their home country.

Eleanor Sharpston, the advocate general of the Munich administrative court, was…

At the 2014 Tory party conference, home secretary Theresa May announced that the Conservative election manifesto for the 2015 election will pledge the introduction of banning orders for extremist groups and ‘extremism disruption orders’ for extremists who ‘who stay just within the law but still spread poisonous hatred’.

But what is an ‘extremist’? David Cameron said Conservatives want to look at the ‘full spectrum of extremism’ and not just the ‘hard end’. Thus the policy says…

On 9 August, during an overwhelming Israeli attack on Gaza, an estimated 150,000 people marched from the BBC’s Broadcasting House HQ in central London to a Hyde Park rally in Britain’s biggest-ever demonstration for Gaza. This followed a demonstration on 15 July, when 5,000 protested at the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the Israeli assault, bringing the roads around the Broadcasting House to a standstill.

Some 2,100 inhabitants of Gaza, including over 400 children, were killed by…

UAV factory, Shenstone, 5 August. Photo: London Palestine Action

On 5 September, on the second day of the NATO summit in Newport, Wales, about 40 people entered Barclays High Street branch in the town shouting ‘Stop arming Israel’ and ‘Barclays divest from the arms trade’. Barclays have almost 60,000 shares in Elbit. Four people were arrested and charged with aggravated trespass after glueing-on inside the office.

On 9 June, the Trident Ploughshares direct action network blocked all vehicle entrances at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (awe) Burghfield for five hours. The factory cancelled all deliveries for the day.

The action, which was part of the Action AWE campaign, began at 6.45am with blockades of all three vehicle entrances. At the Construction Gate, a trailer was steered across the entrance and four protesters locked-on. A ministry of defence (MoD) road leading to the Main Gate was…

Inside Israel-Palestine, nonviolent campaigning is increasingly repressed, even as the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign wins victories abroad.

The recent mass hunger-strike of Palestinian detainees ended on 24 June, when 80 of the prisoners reached a deal with prison authorities, winning only minor concessions. The main demand of the strike, an end to detention without trial, was not met.

The strike had lasted 63 days and it had been reported that as…

A 90-by-60-foot poster of a Pakistani child who has lost both her parents and two young siblings in a US drone attack, displayed in a field in the Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan, where a drone strike in November 2013 killed five people and led to  a road blockade by thousands of people. This image was created by a collective of artists in Pakistan and the US, who gave it the title #NotABugSplat. US Predator drone operators often refer to kills as ‘bug splats’, as viewing the body…