On 13 September, a group calling itself the Diggers 2012 community won a partial victory in its struggle with the National Trust, which has been trying to evict the group from its ‘Runnymede Eco-Village’, set up in June on land near the Runnymede memorial in Surrey. The memorial commemorates the signing of the Magna Carta there in 1215, by king John.
Rather than regarding the Diggers camp as something of historical interest worth preserving, the National Trust had sought a possession…
PHOTO: Hannah Daisy
At the end of July, women restored missing hair to statues of women in central London to promote a month-long campaign of body-hair-growing. Armpits4August aims to combat ‘a physically-, socially-, and mentally-damaging image of what is “natural”’. The group said: ‘by growing our body hair we are working towards having pride in our body hair, not shame.’ The group also raised money for Verity, the charity for women with polycystic ovarian syndrome.
All the crucial and active social centres that I can think of are: ‘1 in 12’ in Bradford; ‘Blackrose’ in Sheffield; ‘Autonomous Centre Edinburgh’; ‘Cowley Club’ in Brighton; and the ‘Sumac Centre’ in Nottingham.
And how about the invaluable community centres throughout the UK too? As it really shouldn’t be a case of us and them!
There had been an ‘issue’ in our group, so I had to talk face-to-face with someone. We figured out the best chance of us meeting was when he came to Aldermaston for an action camp (against nuclear weapons).
I showed up; he’d volunteered to be a decoy, so we walked around the base, talking about who said what and who did what and why he felt the way he did.
At the main entrance, he said he was going to walk straight in –as a decoy. I joined him – we were both expecting to be…
PHOTO: Emily Johns
“This banner is one of many that I and Lorna Vahey have made for the peace movement. Our first banner was made when Hastings Against War was formed ten years ago. We have also made ones for International Women’s Day and against domestic violence. They are all used for demos, conferences and stalls in the High Street. Our speciality is making banners for individuals at times of celebration marking their lives as peace makers. There is one we gave to Connie Mager (see BBC…
I know someone who became a committed, full-on activist because of his experience of consensus decision-making. A demo was happening and he tagged along, and it wound its way into a student union or something, and everyone sat down and they had a decision-making meeting and he was completely blown away and thought: ‘This is it! This is how things should be!’
What’s attractive is the sense that everyone is being listened to, everyone’s opinion counts. After my experiences of school and…
I was interested to read the article by Milan Rai about radical philanthropy (PN 2546) though I worry slightly that readers might think you have to have a lot of money to create something useful.
This year Five Leaves Publications was involved, with Housmans in particular, in setting up the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing – a national award which received publicity in many places, including of course PN.
This cost us £1,000 and we hope to pull in other funders this…
Gabriel writes: Gabriel Carlyle. PHOTO: Purshi
The renowned Japanese scholar DT Suzuki was once asked what it was like to attain the Buddhist state of satori, or enlightenment. ‘Well, it’s like ordinary, everyday experience,’ he is supposed to have replied, ‘except about two inches off the ground.’
After a week-long Buddhist-inflected workshop on burnout earlier this year, my feet were still planted firmly on the ground – and I certainly hadn’t reached enlightenment – but I did feel…
The first thing that really struck me about the ‘International Symposium on Nonviolent Movements and the Barrier of Fear’ was that it was really international. It brought together activists and academics from Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sweden, South Korea, Palestine, Kenya, Israel, India, Hercegovina, Germany, the UK and the US – and that was just in my first small-group discussion! Apart from the World Social Forum and the War Resisters’ International Triennial, it was the most international event I…
In the weeks before the London Olympics, a sense of foreboding descended on many of the people who, like me, live and work in Newham in east London, one of the poorest and most ethnically-diverse parts of the capital.
This anxiety, shared even by those who are enthusiastic about the spectacle of the Games, was heightened by the stories about snipers in helicopters, missile-launchers on tower blocks and RAF fighters in the skies and predictions that it might become almost impossible to…
Nuclear disarmament. If not now, when?
Leonna O’Neill
Leonna O'Neill, Angus Chalmers and Julia Herzog reflect on being in the right place at the right time.
The Scottish Independence debate has created a situation in which Scotland, where most of us are categorically opposed to nuclear weapons, has the potential to refuse to continue to host the British nuclear weapons system. With a lack, south of the Border, of alternative venues anywhere near as strategically…
Some say the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) is dead but, luckily, we don’t know it! Ever dutifool and never ones to shirk responsibility, we rose from our tombs to conduct another Big Shoe training camp for new recruits in Lampeter on the weekend of 16-17 June. What a feast of foolery, flashes of brilliance, fierce determination and fearless perseverance!
Lampeter hospitality and organising skills never fail and neither does their penchant (and stamina!) for having fun…
On 21 May, a US judge in Pennsylvania asked peace activist Norman Lowry, prosecuted for blockading a local recruiting office, to ‘forswear’ blockading military recruiting offices in future. Otherwise the court would be ‘obliged’ to impose the maximum sentence of seven years.
Lowry refused to give such an undertaking and was sentenced to one-to-seven years, the implication being that if he later agreed to give such an undertaking, he could be paroled after serving a year.
Lowry…
I used to belong to an affinity group whose motto was ‘fun and effective’. Every action was supposed to be both effective in advancing our cause, and fun for those of us carrying it out.
We did do some very amusing things. The most bizarre of which was when we were campaigning about East Timor, which few people had ever heard of, and British arms sales to Indonesia, which was then occupying the tiny country. (I still find it hard to believe international pressure forced Indonesia out…
