Johns, Emily

A few years ago, we both took part in a “radical peace movement” gathering. Two of the main issues at the gathering were the thorny question of whether there was such a thing as a “peace movement”, and, alongside that, what it meant to be a “radical” peace activist.

It’s clear that there is a traditional strand of peace organisations and activities, which has persisted for decades. Quaker activities (the Religious Society of Friends began in the 1640s), the pacifist Peace Pledge Union…

As PN went to press, over three months into the NATO war on Libya, Libyan rebels said that they were expecting a new peace proposal from the regime, transmitted via a special committee of the African Union (AU), which met to discuss the conflict on 26 June.

The key issue is whether the rebels (and their British and French backers) will maintain their position that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (and his family) must not only leave power, but leave the country, before a ceasefire and…

Just before PN went to press, the United Nations and the African Union (AU) issued an urgent demand for an immediate ceasefire in the war in Libya, a demand that was being resisted by the NATO military alliance that is carrying out air strikes on behalf of the Libyan rebels.

While the AU was calling for an open-ended ceasefire to allow a negotiated solution to the conflict, the priority for the UN was a short-term, one- to three-day, humanitarian “pause”.

On 12 May, the head…

The deaths of Western war photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Misrata in Libya on 20 April sparked considerable reflection in the British press. Many voices were raised saluting the courage – and recognising the social importance – of front-line photo-journalists, who take extraordinary risks in order to connect the global public with the reality of war.

Few have done more in this regard than Tim Hetherington, the videographer and co-director of Restrepo (2010) a worm’…

“The RAF’s over-budget Typhoon fighter jets are being deployed in Libya on missions for which they are ill-equipped, because military chiefs are anxious to justify their high cost,” military sources revealed to The Times on 23 April.

The first combat attack by the Eurofighter Typhoon was carried out on 12 April, the day before a highly critical report on the £37bn* Typhoon programme by the public accounts committee (PAC) of the house of commons was due to be published. The…

As Peace News goes to press, Britain is once again bombing a Middle Eastern dictatorship that it previously helped to arm.

On the day that the UN security council passed a no-fly zone resolution, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi threatened rebels: “We will come house by house, room by room.... We will have no mercy and no pity.”

In the areas under his control, Gaddafi’s programme of hunting down his political opponents house by house has been aided by £4.1m worth of military…

How quickly wars happen. One month, we see grassroots nonviolence toppling dictators. The next month, we see a civil war. The month after that, we see cruise missiles and war planes in the air. Former Respect MP George Galloway pointed out on 4 March that no one proposed a no-fly zone over Gaza during Israel’s assault in 2009, when 1,400 Palestinians were killed.

If British, French and US governments genuinely based their foreign policy on humanitarian need, these countries might have…

As we go to press, the British government’s systematic, sustained and deep-rooted support for repressive Arab regimes is being exposed by the wave of grassroots pro-democracy movements in the Middle East, and by anti-arms trade campaigners at home. Late on 18 February, the British government was forced to cancel more than 40 arms export licences to Bahrain, after the Gulf state’s security forces fired on peaceful pro-democracy activists, killing four people, and the Campaign Against Arms…

The “jasmine revolution” in Tunisia was sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, on 17 December in the seaside town of Sidi Bouzid. Mohamed set himself on fire in protest at harassment and corruption by council officers, and the confiscation of goods and scales from his unlicensed vegetable street stall. By the time of his death on 4 January, the uprising he triggered had spread across Tunisia, with fearless mass demonstrations confronting the dictatorship of president Zine El…

This is a set of pictures that I drew in 1991 in the nights leading up to the first Gulf War. They are not very hopeful, but maybe in themselves they were an attempt to avert the very apparent horrors that war would bring. Partly they were an attempt at magic and partly they were like willing the aeroplane’s wings not to fall off when you are 50,000 feet up in the air. It would take an awful lot of poppies now to mark the dead of the last twenty years.

The late John Rety was once taken for tea by a special branch officer, after the London anarchists had addressed Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London. Sergeant Roy Cremer offered the group advice on developing the anarchist movement, as well as tea. “Why is a police officer trying to enlarge the anarchist movement?” they asked. Because, he explained, the section of special branch spying on the communists had a large office, whereas his section, dealing with anarchists, was small and well……

This was my first encounter with Simone Weil, the French philosopher, teacher and political activist, and I found her mesmerising – a huge intellect and a huge conscience. She dealt with the challenge that knowing and understanding the world creates an obligation to be involved in it, to affect it, by hurling herself into the stream of life to an extent verging on madness.

Although frail and clumsy, Weil sought out gruelling work in factories and farms; she was a union organiser; she…

There have been strong reactions to the student protests at Millbank on 10 November (see p8). Overwhelmingly, mainstream figures have condemned the “despicable” behaviour of the protesters – the word used by Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students.

From the left, in contrast, came a statement signed by Hilary Wainwright, Billy Bragg, Naomi Klein and a number of student activists saying: “We reject any attempt to characterise the Millbank protest as small, “…