Emily Johns
This is a picture of my great-grandmother swimming across the river Drava carrying my Naganyja Ilona and my greatuncle Zoltan on her back. Behind her is my great-grandfather Shaffer. I have drawn him naked because he didn’t cross the river with his family and escape the pogrom, and all my great-grandmother had left was a photograph of him with no clothes on.
I…
On 10 November 2015, it will be 20 years since the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni colleagues were hanged by the military government for campaigning nonviolently against the oil company Shell.
It will be nearly 60 years since Shell started drilling in the Niger Delta. Home to 20 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, the Niger…
A passionate feminist, the Irish pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington viewed war and anti-feminism as ‘branches of the same tree – disregard of true life-values’. It is therefore unsurprising that, less than a fortnight after Britain’s declaration of war in 1914, the paper he edited, the Irish Citizen, produced a poster bearing the immortal slogan: ‘Votes for…
The pink house, Walden Pond Housing Co-op in St Leonards-on-Sea. photo: Milan Rai
Radical Routes has been an amazing radical success story, proving that democratic radical institutions can survive and thrive, operating by a modified form of consensus decision-making, and turning private property into collectively-owned, activist-controlled spaces. For some, the success of Radical Routes (RR) has proven that ‘anarchists can deal with money’.
Today, Radical Routes is changing some…
There is something hopeful about the rise of UKIP (UK Independence Party). Yes, it is a racist far-right party; yes, the mainstream parties have responded to its increasing strength by becoming more repressive and racist; and yes, it may win several seats in the general election in May 2015 – all frightening developments.
On the other hand, UKIP is part of a global anti-establishment phenomenon which in Europe is represented not only by far-right parties like Golden Dawn in Greece…
Trident submarine. Photo: Paul O’Shau/MOD
Different groups are using different strategies to try to make an election issue out of Trident replacement. The British decision on whether/how to replace the Trident nuclear weapon system is scheduled to be made in 2016, which means the 7 May 2015 election will elect the government that takes this £100bn decision. This has been described as ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to scrap Trident and ban all nuclear weapons’.
Lobbying
The…
Te Puea Herangi, the Maori princess who led the Waikaito tribal confederation’s successful campaign of nonviolent resistance to conscription during the First World War, articulated one of their reasons for not fighting as follows: ‘They tell us to fight for king and country. Well, that’s all right. We’ve got a king.…
William Morris by Frederick Hollyer, 1884. Photo: National Portriat Gallery, London
William Morris is woven into our lives, sung upon our soul, written into our minds.
When I was a very small child, maybe four years old, I remember laughing at the slapstick of Albert Meltzer being stuck in our armchair. It was low, black wood with green upholstery. Albert, the enormous anarchist, had his plump hands on the velvet arms and was straining to extricate his bulk from between the turned…
'Flickr - Laenulfean - crossroads' by Carsten Tolkmit from Kiel, Germany. Photo: Carsten Tolkmit CC-by-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
After 26 years supporting its activist membership in taking over £4m-worth of housing out of the private property market, the Radical Routes network of radical housing and worker co-ops deleted a fundamental membership condition in the summer of 2014 and may well abolish another before the end of 2015.
Shortly after being formed in 1988, Radical Routes…
Have you ever been in this situation?
You’re in a grassroots, very-low budget campaigning group. You have a group website.
Then the person who set the website up – and who has been maintaining it – moves away, or they move onto another issue, or they withdraw from activism completely.
Suddenly, you find out no one knows what the passwords are, and you can’t actually use your own website. Or, if you do know what the passwords are, no one else in the group is…
The British view of the world, even today, is fundamentally shaped by a 100-year-old lie, a powerful myth that contrasts German aggressiveness with the US-UK defence of small countries and high principles. In reality, it is a documented fact that the sovereignty of ‘plucky little Belgium’ was irrelevant to Britain’s decision to enter the First World War. In reality, it is a documented fact that the military alliances that Britain entered into were born of a desperate need to shore up…
