Social justice

On 7 December, indigenous activists from across the world kayaked down the river Seine to protest against the removal of the protection of indigenous rights as a crucial aspect of the climate treaty being negotiated in Paris. The push back against indigenous rights was led by the US, EU, Australia – all states with a rich past and present of colonial exploitation of people and land – who feared that the protection of indigenous rights might create legal…

Every now and then, Peace News sends me a book which I absolutely love from start to finish. Despite the clunky title, this is one of those books. It’s a terrific read that tells you everything you need to know about why austerity is prevalent, what it does and some pointers on how to resist it.

The book is in two parts: the first, ‘Demolition’, deals with the causes of austerity and its impact on all areas of society. The second, ‘Austerity and Democracy’, charts its…

Austerity, exploitation and inequality go hand in hand and there is a rising anti-austerity movement throughout Wales, with numerous grassroots groups springing up across the country.

On 20 June, as more than 250,000 people protested in London, hundreds marched in Aberystwyth, led by the inimitable, battle-scarred red dragon Y Ddraig Goch of Faslane fame. Marching to singing and drumming, marchers demanded…

In the first four years of the coalition government, there was a 16 percent cut in real terms in children’s services in Britain (in terms of spending per child), as local government spending has been squeezed by national government.

Over 150,000 older people have lost access to care at home since 2010 because of government ‘austerity’ measures, amounting to a 28 percent cut.…

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…

Apart from being Haitian Independence day whereby former slaves successfully removed the cruel grasp of colonial slavery 210 years ago in 1804, today is also supposed to see a much needed increase in the minimum wage in Haiti but has sparked controversy.

Protests have broken out in Haiti demanding a greater increase than has been proposed whilst a somewhat inevitable a race down to the bottom backlash from industry and the international community has argued against even the modest…

This issue of PN has been commissioned and edited by a black person (co-editor Milan Rai); all the writing and the images are by people with a global majority heritage. 

This global majority issue is to accompany and be useful to Peace News Summer Camp (25-29 July, see p7) which is this year being organised by a group of global majority folk.

In late May, I was invited to a meeting of the Edge Fund, which is attempting to create an activist-led or -advised grant-making body in the UK, breaking down some of the inequalities that exist even in radical-minded philanthropy. The discussion was lively, and the openness of the Edge Fund to activist input was dizzying in its latitude.

Much of current UK activism depends on grants from bodies like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (the major donor behind the PN-initiated…

Edinburgh Campaign Against Poverty blockade Tesco on 3 March, a national day of action against workfare. They also met with the manager of a British Heart Foundation shop to complain about the treatment of unemployed people on so-called work experience placements organised by A4E.  photo: Mike, ECAP

As the BBC Newsnight economics editor, Paul Mason has become a familiar face on television over the last few years, reporting on the protest movements, revolutions and revolts that have been “kicking off” across the globe since 2009.

Mason is also a keen blogger, and it is these (albeit now cleaned up) postings that form the backbone of this electrifying new book.

The essence of his argument is that “we’re in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market…

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP), a claimants group based at the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, is claiming ìa potentially crucial victoryî in the struggle of unemployed people to defend their rights.

"Peter", an unemployed ex-miner, has been attempting since 2009 to bring an ECAP representative to interviews with the Edinburgh office of A4E, a private contractor implementing compulsory "workfare" for the department of work and pensions.

A4E falsely accused Peter of…

As I write, we are on the eve of a last-ditch high court judgement on the long road to eviction at Dale Farm. At a time of great tension, outside activists like myself are deeply committed to resisting the eviction, yet in the media and in parts of the wider Gypsy and Traveller community, divisions have opened between direct activists and those pursuing legal approaches to preventing the eviction.

When I first visited Dale Farm, I asked myself whether activist visitors’ efforts to…

I was in Hackney when I got the text, on my way to an organising meeting on local responses to the riots/uprisings. Police vans were cruising up and down Dalston High Street, nervous shopkeepers were standing in doorways and hipster NGO/graphic designer types were sinking pints outside a trendy pub. “Deptford Community defence meeting outside Ladbrokes on the high street @ 8.30 – to put out fires should they occur.”

I made a U-turn and got there early. I used to live in Hackney but…

On 13 August, 3,000 people of all ages and backgrounds, mainly from Hackney and Haringey, but with additional support from all around London, marched from Gillet Square, Dalston in Hackney, to Tottenham Green in Haringey. The march was organised and publicised just two days before by the hastily-formed North London Unity Assembly initiated mainly by Turkish organisations and the Haringey and Hackney Anti-cuts Alliances.

The aim was to provide a united community response to the recent…

As the last “male principal speaker” for the Green Party for England and Wales, the author of numerous books on environmentalism and a lecturer in political economy, Derek Wall is well placed to write on Green politics.

Due to the quickening climate crisis, it is a politics he describes, in the No-nonsense Guide, as one “of survival”. Wall manages to pack a lot of interesting information and ideas into a short book, including summaries of what he sees as the four pillars of Green…