Activism and... Electioneering

IssueMay 2010
Comment by PN

“This era saw PN publishing an anti-election manifesto in September 1974. ‘Don’t vote, it only encourages them,’ was the paper’s advice at the time of the earlier, February, election that year. PN’s disenchantment with electoral politics wasn’t new however.

“Back in the 1970 General Election, for instance, PNer Roger Moody has stood against Labour Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart in Fulham, as a protest against the government’s support for the Federal Nigerian government’s genocide in Biafra.

“Roger’s slogan was ‘Don’t vote for Moody - or anyone else’.

“This brought him into very sharp conflict with Pat Arrowsmith – who had once worked for PN herself – who was standing in the same constituency to oppose British complicity in the US military intervention in Southeast Asia: she wanted people’s votes.”

Excerpt from Against All War: Fifty Years of Peace News 1936-1986 by Albert Beale, pp46-47.
 

Topics: Activism
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