Rai, Milan

Rai, Milan

Milan Rai

1 May 2015Feature

Ed Miliband didn’t lose because he was 'too left-wing’

The debate about why the Labour party lost the Westminster election matters to everyone struggling for social change in Britain. How this fiasco is understood affects our confidence and our strategies (more on this below) – whatever our attitudes to the Labour party.

If it was true that Ed Miliband’s pale blue austerity-lite Labourism was too radical…

24 April 2015Blog

I just read the transcript of the evidence given by John Chilcot, head of the Iraq Inquiry, to parliament's foreign affairs committee on 4 February. I was staggered to read in a footnote that they are going to publish 1,500 British government documents alongside the Chilcot Report itself…

23 April 2015Blog

A sceptical look at the evidence given to the British government's Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war by Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 at the time. Dearlove sticks to his WMD story but it has a big hole in it....

In the run-up to the publication of the Chilcot Report into the Iraq war, I've been thinking I might try to read all the evidence given during the inquiry. There's quite a lot of it up on the inquiry website. For no particular reason, I started with the evidence given in a private session by Richard Dearlove, who was head of the secret intelligence service (better known as MI6) at the time.

The…

15 April 2015Blog

Musing on the manifesto....

Natalie Bennett, Green Party leader, said yesterday: 'Austerity has failed and we need a peaceful political revolution to get rid of it.' Pippa Bartolotti, the leader of the Wales Green Party, said: 'We can have a peaceful revolution in the UK and still reduce…

31 March 2015Feature

PN's editor reflects on the choices facing activists before and after the May 2015 election.

Time to Act on Climate Change marchers sit down in The Strand, London,
21 March 2015. Photo: Milan Rai.

Two of the most important things the next British government will do are: take part in the Paris climate negotiations in December, and decide on the replacement (or not) of the Trident nuclear weapon system next year.

On both issues, smaller, more progressive parties like the Scottish National Party, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru are likely to have a bigger impact than…

31 March 2015News

A brief report-back from the Nuclear Information Service's 'Trident Strategy Day'

The best bit of the Nuclear Information Service ‘Trident Strategy Day’ in London on 5 February (above), writes Milan Rai, was probably hearing Janet Fenton (Scotland for Peace) and Brian Larkin (Trident Ploughshares/Scrap Trident Coalition) on what’s happening in Scotland and how it might stop Trident being replaced. There were over 40 activists, analysts and lobbyists sharing ideas and activities. Photo: PN

31 March 2015Comment

24 December 1924 – 15 March 2015

Narayan Desai Photo: Yann Forget

Milan Rai writes:

I met Narayan Desai, the Indian pacifist regarded by many as the last living link to Mohandas K Gandhi, at the War Resisters’ International Triennial in India in 2010 (PN 2518). That gathering was held at Gujarat University (Gujarat Vidyapith) in Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat in India; Narayan was chancellor of the university from 2007 until late last year. Narayan led us all in a huge swirling dance to close…

1 February 2015Feature

A report on the Peace News online campaigning conference in January which introduced the PN digital toolset Zylum to the movement

Over 80 people crowded into Peace News’s successful ‘Weaving Our Own Web’ dayschool in Islington, London, on 10 January, to learn how we can use the internet more effectively in our campaigning for peace and justice. We had really great feedback from people (see box).

We achieved our main goal of drawing in people across the spectrum – people at the early stages of learning about digital tools, as well as folk with moderate abilities and the technically-advanced. We had quite an…

1 February 2015Review

OR Books, 2014, 192pp, £10. Available to purchase online here: http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/horn-collected-reviews/

This is probably the most political page in this book – the reviews are mostly of modern literature rather than biography, history or politics. Squeezing an entire book down to nine tiny boxes and a handful of words is an amazing visual haiku trick and Kevin Thomas does a beautiful job of it. Perfect for folk who love modern literature; mesmerising even if you don’t know the books involved.

25 November 2014Comment

To halt the rise of UKIP, white anti-racists need to reach out to their white neighbours and communities – to break racist myths about immigration and Islam, and to organise white people against the real problems in society.

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…

25 November 2014Feature

Can we stop the replacement of the Trident nuclear weapon system?

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…

25 November 2014Review

Zed Books, 2012; 256pp; £14.99 (Ricketts) and Beacon Press, 2011; 232pp; £13.99 (Mann)

Here are two books by two longtime campaigners (both men, both white), trying to pass on lessons to younger generations, to folk newer to political engagement. As I was reading them, I was inevitably comparing them to two related, brilliant books that I think everyone involved in social change should read, that I’ve reviewed here before: Strategy & Soul, by Daniel Hunter; and Towards Collective Liberation by Chris Crass.

(So this is a review about being…

25 November 2014Feature

What happens when the founders of a radical organisation move on, new people come in, and the strict entry standards that were put in place originally are set aside? How does it affect who joins the organisation, and how does it affect the politics of the organisation?

'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…

25 November 2014Feature

The long story behind current debates about principles in a radical co-op network

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…

28 September 2014Comment

The editors explain PN's upcoming internet tool

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…