PN Staff

The Muriel Lesters affinity group visited the corporate headquarters of Lockheed Martin in Cunard House, 15 Lower Regent St, near Piccadilly Circus, London, on 6 June. Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms manufacturer, is one of three companies running the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston (on behalf of the British government), where they are designing and building a new generation of nuclear weapons. The Trident Ploughshares affinity group will be visiting again at…

Photo: Christian CND.

On 3 June, Christian CND and ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) celebrated the royal jubilee with ‘The Queen’s Peace Alternative Jubilee Party’ outside the nuclear bomb factory, AWE Aldermaston in Berkshire. There was a short service, followed by a secular event at 2pm, with a ‘best hat or crown’ competition, fence-decorating, children’s activities and a shared party tea.

A ‘Peace Plinth’ that has been the centrepiece of Peace Strike’s round-the-clock vigil in Parliament Square for over two years has been transported to the US. It will form part of the BritWeek T4C Artists Competition in Los Angeles. Since its construction at the Kew Eco Village in November 2009, the six-foot-high plinth has been used to display work by a range of artists, including Banksy and Johan Andersson. A second plinth remains in Parliament Square, where it is…

8,000 women joined the annual “Million Women Rise” International Women’s Day march on 6 March, according to organisers. That’s 3,000 more than last year.

Women travelled from Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bradford, Cornwall, Leeds, Lincoln, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Ireland and Wales, among many other places, to demand an end to male violence against women and children. One placard read: “It’s more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier.” Hundreds of other IWD events took place…

Both Maya Evans, imprisoned in HMP Bronzefield on 29 February, and Gabriel Carlyle (PN promotions worker), sent to Lewes prison on 21 March, were sentenced to £355 in fines and court costs; both were imprisoned by Hastings magistrates court for two weeks for refusal to pay, after two years of fending off bailiffs.

The May 2009 action was a die-in for NATO’s victims in Afghanistan, held outside the gates of a base in north London.

On 9 April, Easter Monday, former SAS soldier Ben Griffin will officially launch Veterans for Peace in the UK. The group, founded in the US over 25 years ago, is committed to resisting war through nonviolent action.

Speaking at the event will be British and US veterans of the Second World War, the Malayan Emergency, Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ben Griffin said: ‘We live in a society that is constantly bombarded with one view of the wars that we…

Shamsia, 23, is a graffiti artist in Kabul, Afghanistan. She learned graffiti in December 2010 at a workshop by Combat Communications: ‘I was used to working with paints on canvasses but when I used a spray can for the first time and worked on a big wall it was exciting and cool and such an achievement. I wanted to do something about women’s rights in Afghanistan and the burqa, but in an ironic way and take the idea of the burqa away from how we are used to seeing it.

On 16 January, Chris Cole, 48, a peace activist from Oxford, appeared before Westminster magistrates’ court in Marylebone Road, London, to be tried for a protest at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEi) arms fair in September 2011. Chris was arrested for spraying “DSEi Kills” and “Stop the arms trade” at the entrance to the fair, as delegates queued to enter. 

Chris, who has pleaded “not guilty” to charges of criminal damage, was prepared to argue that he was acting…

Past issues of Peace News, stretching back over its 75 years of publication. The old masthead was used for a glossy magazine (top left), a less glossy magazine (bottom left) and the current newspaper format (bottom center). PHOTO: Erica Smith

A new design!

We’re beginning 2012 with a new look to Peace News. We hope you like it. The changes we are making (they will continue over the next couple of issues) are the product of a lot of…

17 December 2011:
Arriving in Kabul

The sun was setting as my plane approached to land in Kabul. My first sights of Afghanistan were the snow-capped hills and gigantic mountain ranges which seemed to stretch forever.

As I got off the airport bus, I immediately headed for a queue with some other women in it. My pious Islamic outfit purchased from Whitechapel market only a week beforehand was probably too authentic as all the Afghani women wore western jeans and tops with…

January is always a desperate time of year for the occupants of the Chamne Babak refugee camp in Kabul. Temperatures at night drop to well below freezing and the little work that the men in the camp can find dries up as the snow begins to fall. This year however some relief was delivered thanks to the readers of Peace News and members of the National Union of Journalists at the Financial Times.

Well over £2,000 was raised (over £1,700 through Peace News) and on 3 January it was delivered…

A number of activists refused to fill in the 2011 national census because of their objection to the involvement of military firm Lockheed Martin in processing the data.

Census resister Judith Sambrook, 47, pleaded not guilty at Wrexham magistrates court on 11 November; her case was adjourned to Mold magistrates court on 8 December.

On 8 December, Sarah Ledsom, 56, is due to appear at Liverpool magistrates court for failing to complete the 2011 census form.
Former Oxford…

Navy medic and conscientious objector Michael Lyons was released from Colchester military prison on 9 November. He had served a seven-month sentence for refusing to take part in rifle training in September 2010 because he disagreed with the war in Afghanistan, and was not prepared to shoot to kill. (PN 2537)

Supporters of Veterans for Peace, London Catholic Worker and Peace News raised over £1,000 to help Michael’s wife Lillian with the travel costs associated with visiting Michael in…

PHOTO: Serena Zanzu

As PN went to press, Occupy London were welcoming representatives from Occupy camps from across the country to their new site, "The Bank of Ideas", an office building in the City of London owned by Swiss bankers UBS.

On 20 November, representatives came to The Bank of Ideas from Occupy camps in Edinburgh, Newcastle upon Tyne, Liverpool, Norwich, Cardiff, Bristol, Bath, Brighton, Plymouth and the Isle of Wight, as well as from Ireland.

As of 21 November, as far as we could tell…