PN staff
Over 2,500 arrests were made this summer during a massive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience across the United States in a new ‘Poor People’s Campaign’, 50 years after the original campaign led by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The original Poor People’s Campaign ended with 3,000 activists camping for six weeks in May–June 1968 on the National Mall in the centre of Washington DC.
In…
At 1.30pm on 20 June, while Britain's Westminster parliament was sitting inside, 60 activists from across the UK chained themselves to the railings outside the houses of parliament in central London. They are calling for the UK to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and disarm the Trident nuclear weapon system.
This action echoes similar actions by women’s suffrage campaigners 100 years ago.
The activists from the campaign group Trident Ploughshares…
‘June 11’ is the name of a US-based anarchist support group for long-term political prisoners around the world. Most of them have been imprisoned for violent crimes. While PN readers are likely to strongly disagree with their methods, this is an opportunity to offer comfort and solidarity to people in very difficult conditions.
If you do write, it’s suggested that you write about your day-to-day life, and what you are passionate about, and put your address on both the envelope and…
On 15 May, boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla set out from Gothenburg, Sweden on a two-month journey to the besieged Palestinian territory. Three Swedish ships, the Mairead, the Falestine/Palestine and Freedom to Gaza, were joined by a converted Norwegian fishing boat, Al Awda/The Return. The Mairead is named after Mairead Maguire, the Peace People activist from Belfast, northern Ireland, who was joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.…
On 16 April, hundreds protested in Parliament Square, London, after 100 missiles were fired at targets inside Syria two days earlier by Britain, France and the US. The three governments claimed to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for chemical weapons attacks the previous week in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons collected samples from Douma…
As PN went to press, the French government was expected to try again to evict la ZAD (‘the zone to be defended’), a huge occupied site near Nantes in western France.
As reported previously, the French government officially abandoned plans to build an airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes in January, but confirmed that it wanted to clear the ZAD. (PN 2616–2617)
A massive eviction operation failed in April (as it did in 2012), though more than 300 zadistes…
Thousands of flasks of radioactive uranium hexafluoride (‘hex’) are transported down country lanes every year from the Springfields nuclear fuel plant near Preston, Lancs. Fuel rods and other nuclear materials are taken to nuclear power plants in the UK and around the world, including Russia.
A new report from the Close Capenhurst Campaign, Kick Nuclear and Radiation Free Lakeland shines a ‘Spotlight on Springfields’:
www.tinyurl…
The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) took a different approach to the EU’s ‘General Data Protection Regulation’ (GDPR) from most anti-war/peace organisations.
By 25 May, as one part of GDPR, organisations in the UK (commercial and non-commercial) were meant to make sure they had explicit, positive permission from everyone on their email lists to keep their data and to keep sending them emails. (If someone has joined your group as a member, that counts, for example.)
Some…
The ‘vast majority’ of the civilians who’ve been killed and injured in the Yemen war since March 2015, ‘were as a result of airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition’, according to Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, speaking in Geneva on 11 May. That’s 10,185 Saudi-caused casualties out of 16,432.
Since the Saudi war on Yemen began, Britain has licensed £4.6bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, according to the Campaign Against…
In May, a Moroccan state mining company, OCP, bought back phosphate that it had illegally mined in, and shipped from, Western Sahara. Western Sahara has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975.
The 50,000 tonnes of phosphate rock was seized in South Africa by court order a year ago (PN 2606 – 2607). It was put up for auction back in March, with a starting price of $1 million. The proceeds were due to go to Western Sahara’s national liberation movement, the Polisario Front.…
The death toll continued to rise as PN went to press. Israeli snipers killed over 100 unarmed Palestinians in six weeks of demonstrations at the fence separating Gaza from Israel.
During the ‘Great March of Return’, Israeli forces injured more than 5,000 protesters, over 3,000 of them with live…
Seven Catholic peace activists are facing up to 10 years in prison each, after breaking into a Trident submarine base at Kings Bay in Georgia, on the east coast of the USA. On 4 April, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, the seven entered Kings Bay in…
On 9 April, the People's Weapons Inspectors visited a Roxel factory which builds propulsion systems for missiles. Their aim was to carry out a 'people's weapons inspection', to find out whether parts built at this factory (near Kidderminster in Worcestershire) might be used by the Saudi military in the war in Yemen.
The inspectors believed that the factory was manufacturing components for Brimstone missiles that are due to be exported to Saudi…
‘Without you (Hugh Brock), Michael Randel (sic) and Pat (Arrowsmith) there would have been no symbol.’
So wrote the artist and designer of the nuclear disarmament symbol, Gerald Holtom, in a letter dated 29 September 1973 to Hugh Brock, PN editor 1955–1964, and the chair of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) which organised the first Aldermaston March at Easter 1958.
Gerald was referring to a meeting at the committee’s office in Blackstock…
Peace News held the second of our Weaving Our Own Web dayschools, in January 2018, for campaigners who want to learn more about online tools that can help them with their groups, and help them win their campaigns. Here are some resources from the day:
Wordpress for campaigns by Kirk Jackson
Social media presentations are available at …
