[The views of nonviolent revolutionaries towards more “traditional” revolutionary struggles have frequently been discussed in PN. Here, Nigel Young contributes to a then current debate within War Resisters’ International (WRI).]
I hope that we can examine the assumptions that we, as war resisters, have brought to bear when we have adopted positions in relationship to ‘military modes of liberation’...
The fact that a ‘new system of oppression exists in embryo in violent…
Despite the abandonment of “Hate Training” by the military authorities, the nation is still confronted with the difficult problem - Exactly how much hate ought we to have?
There is a lamentable divergence of opinion on this matter. At one extreme we have the Archbishop advocating no hate at all and exhorting us to love the enemy while killing him. At the other extreme, the Marquis of Donegal advocates 100 per cent hatred and “German justice for 90 million German vermin”.
Both…
I’ve never been that drawn to reading histories of the peace movement but this book, with its particular perspective, has been an exception. I do like a bit of theory and this book has just enough of it, accessibly written, to provide a framework for analysing and understanding the diverse cross-national case studies offered.
The framework is a feminist one which, as Cynthia Cockburn argues, ‘has opened up a pathway for the left’, and is a necessary rather than optional tool for…
Consensus decision-making has become dominant in activist circles. Not everyone practises it, but almost everyone wants to be using it, or to lay some claim to be using it. Among some folk, consensus decision-making has become not only an essential part of social change, but a pre-condition of working in a group.
We discovered in earlier segments of this interview (PN 2544 and 2545), that US activist and trainer George Lakey was one of the people who helped spread the ‘affinity-group-…
The government’s abandonment of the nuclear waste burial programme is a fine victory for anti-nuclear campaigners generally and for Welsh groups in particular. For Madryn [Welsh anti-dumping group] it was the unexpectedly early culmination of two years’ campaigning which provides some valuable organisational lessons.
During the early public meetings it became clear that people felt it would be very wrong for any campaign to simply oppose dumping in this area alone, and so a policy of…
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…
In November 1950, 52 delegates arrived in Dover, bound for the third congress of the (Communist-inspired) World Peace Council in Sheffield. All but one were denied entry.
Whether the Foreign Office considered modern art too esoteric to have much propaganda value (across the pond the CIA took a different tack, covertly promoting Abstract Expressionism as a Cold War weapon) or it was simply too embarassing to turn back the world’s most famous living artist, Picasso was admitted.
…
The Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) is a bit of a mouthful! Having ‘for’ in the title instead of ‘against’ was important and the word ‘accountability’ was being bandied about. Add ‘American bases’ and, in 1992, CAAB was born.
CAAB is a small group of committed people. None of us are paid and we rely entirely on donations to fund our work. We evolved out of the long campaign of protest at NSA Menwith Hill near Harrogate in North Yorkshire. (NSA stands for the…
Cymdeithas y Cymod, the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales, will hold their 2012 Vigil at the Talbot hotel, Tregaron, on Friday and Saturday, 23-24 March. The theme of this year’s Vigil will be Henry Richard, the ‘Apostle of Peace’. Almost exactly 200 years since he was born on 3 April 1812, we will meet in his home town to celebrate his work for peace between the world’s nations.
The Vigil will begin with dinner at 6pm on the Friday night, which will be followed by a talk by Gwyn…
The US radical broadcaster Democracy Now! calls IF Stone “the premier investigative reporter of the twentieth century.” During his remarkable career, he exposed the reality behind the Great Depression, big business resistance to the New Deal, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Korean war, the Cold War, the McCarthy years, the civil rights movement and America’s war in Vietnam. The FBI tapped his phone, rifled through his rubbish bins and placed him under surveillance in an attempt…
People forget too quickly. This little book is a great reminder of much that has been achieved, so far, by Labour Action for Peace which began life in 1940 as the Labour Pacifist Fellowship.
Long before then, back to the days of Keir Hardie, there have been those in the Labour party with the same vision and hope.
The book is a fascinating trip down memory lane, from the introduction by Tony Benn to the cheery photo of current LAP president, Jeremy Corbyn.
The cast is…
Peter Green: We expect this dope from the capitalist press, but not from a paper which is “international” and “pacifist”. It does not help the cause of pacifism or internationalism to salute the head of a military and imperialist state.
Ethel Mannin: The king was probably... a good father and husband, and, according to his lights, what is commonly called “decent”. However, those lights and that decency are not our pacifist conception of goodness... The most astonishing assertion in…
Image by Emily Johns
From January to March 1912, women led a successful strike of 25,000 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA. The phrase ‘bread and roses’ was coined to represent the struggle for quality of life as well as wages. See more on the Bread and Roses Centennial website.
I was extremely saddened to hear of the death of John Hyatt. We first met when John (then living in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, I think) was a teenager in the 1960s on the Coast to Coast Peace March from Hull to Liverpool. Later we got to know each other when we were both working at Housmans – where I worked from 1969-1982 – John also working down the road at the PPU and upstairs at both Peace News and WRI as well – at different times.
He was a lovely guy and the easiest person to work…
National gatherings of PN readers have taken place in many guises over the years - for much of the 1970s the regular events (sometimes every few months) were called “potlatches”. (“A potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States” – Wikipedia.) Here, Dave Cunliffe, a poet and long-time friend of Peace News from Blackburn, reports on a winter meeting:
Friday night 9pm, tomatoes…
