Over the last few years, and especially in the past six months, something special's been happening, is happening. It's happening in zines, on blogs, and across the web; via conferences, demonstrations, and workshops; in squatted buildings, on store–fronted streets, and around the bronzed military men on their Trafalgar Square plinths.
It's a feminist resurgence, and a radical one at that. This is grassroots, DIY, self–organising, non–institutionalised women's activism, and it's deeply…
In the month of the 97 International Women's Day, PN celebrates another year of women around the world rising up and resisting all forms of oppression and injustice:
Palestinian women have been protesting the devastatingly debilitating Israeli siege on Gaza. On 25 February, in a peaceful action called by the Popular Committee Against the Siege, thousands of Gazan women and children joined hands to form a human chain, risking a violent response from the world's fourth strongest army…
This series of academic papers focuses on how gender relations - masculinities and femininities - have been represented in the “war on terror”, exploring how gendered narratives were used in the US to justify both the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and domestic measures taken to control those perceived as a threat to security.
Perhaps the most accessible example is the assertion - used by the Bush administration following 9/11 to sell “the war on terror” - that the (initial)…
By the time parliament voted in March 2007 to replace the Trident nuclear submarine fleet, AWE was busy building new facilities to test, design and build new warheads -- while the government continued to tell us that a decision on the new warheads would not be needed “until the next parliament”.
Britain has designed, tested and built nuclear warheads at Aldermaston for 50 years, including the warheads for the current Trident missiles. In 2002 AWE published their Site Development…
These two books are moving and compelling explorations of the lives of Iraqi women. One is a work of fiction; the other an oral history. While the narrative forms allow an intimate and detailed view of individual lives, both books are suffused with an understanding of how the political situation of Iraq has always gone to the core of how life is experienced.
Haifa Zangana weaves together the stories of five women exiled in London during the late 1990s. Despite differences of politics…
On 8 June two women from mid- Wales were arrested at a cocktail party. Drunk and disorderly? How very dare you!
The party was to celebrate 22 years of the Women's Peace Camp at the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment.
The MoD are, however, evidently not happy about the attention the peace camp and its sister campaign Block the Builders have focused on the nuclear weapons factory. Recent actions called for an end to expansion of the base in preparation for Trident…
Members of a new group “Wrexham Women for Peace” and their supporters held a “funeral procession”, carrying coffins and a peace flag through the town centre on 19 May in memory of those whose lives have been lost in conflict worldwide.
The women, accompanied by several children and babies, began by holding a silent 15-minute vigil at the war memorial, and then laying a wreath on the steps of the army recruitment offices where they observed a further minute's silence.
As the…
On 29 December 2006 a Reclaim The Night march was held in Ipswich: 250-300 people attended from around the country. It was sad, moving, joyful and amazing all at the same time.
It was held in response to the tragic murders of five women in our town. A collective of concerned people, including Ipswich Anarchists, formed shortly after to organise the march and vigil. The deaths opened debate and discussion on many other issues such as the decriminalisation of prostitution, street…
In the controversy over the veil sparked by Jack Straw, there is one thing that is ignored both by his supporters and his detractors: “The veil” (singular) is not a dress code rooted in culture or religion. The form of veiling that we now see spreading all over European and North American countries comes from nowhere: it is a recent syncretic outfit, picking up from various traditions, that has been invented by fundamentalists as their political uniform, as their very visible flag.
…
A quiet revolution took place at the Avery Hill campus of Greenwich University from 7 to 12 September, as the UK section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) hosted their International Meetings and seminars. There were more than one hundred women from 25 countries, covering all five continents.
Go Y-Wilpfers!One vital part of the gathering was the Gertrud Baer Seminar: “Peace, Power and Participation”, organised by the new dynamic, international network…
In solidarity with Iraqi women's organisations - who were meeting in Irbil, Northern Iraq - vigillers gathered on the steps of St Martin in-the-Fields in central London on 21 September - the UN International Day of Peace. Iraqi women were expressing their commitment to peace and national unity, and to demand an end to the violence and bloodshed in the country.
Perhaps for most women who had a close involvement with Greenham, a new book on the subject will be approached with a certain trepidation. Over the years there have been a few - some written by academics, others by women who lived at the camp - and for reasons including remoteness and subjectivity, none has been fantastically well-received. One reason for this is that not one of us has the “whole story”. We each have our own - and we know it.
In this book however, Ann Pettit has…
Twenty-five years after the Greenham march, David Fairhall has contributed an enjoyable and informative history of Greenham Common.
It doesn't plod chronologically through the decades, but mixes the more interesting vignettes of the women's peace camp into the wider political and military context. As a history of a place it also includes quite detailed accounts of the complex legal manoeuvres which led to the partial restoration of the common. The women's peace camp is treated…
Once it was very clear that weapons of mass destruction did not exist in the country we had bombed, invaded and allowed to be systematically looted, and whose infrastructure we wrecked and whose social fabric we had drastically weakened over the previous decade of sanctions - the British government's excuse then was “to bring freedom and democracy”.
Women in Iraq, especially urban and working women, have become less “free” than at any time since the 1930s, and their role in this new…
Act Together: Women's Action for Iraq, together with several other Iraqi and British women's organisations, artists and activists, organised a vigil on International Widows Day - 23 June - to draw attention to the plight of Iraqi widows. More than 60 women and men, representing 13 organisations, gathered the steps of St Martin-inthe-Fields in central London.
Leaflets, banner's and placards drew attention to the fact that, according to official and NGO sources, more than 90 Iraqi…
