Bove, Genny

Lib at the Brawdy blockade, 1982.

Elisabeth (Lib) Rowlands-Hughes of Llangollen, who died aged 96 in November 2014, was remembered by friends, including representatives of peace groups from Wales and beyond, at a celebration of her life held in April.

Born at the end of the First World War into a family that included influential preachers and pacifists, Lib recalled spending time with her older cousins, the Davies sisters of Gregynog, and conscientious objector George M Ll Davies.…

In late September, more than 300 children from 10 schools in and around Wrexham took part in locally-organised 'World Peace Days' focused on peace, conflict resolution and nonviolent resistance.

The three-day event (20-22 September) took place in a school on one day and then on the library green. Grassroots activists, musicians, poets, artists, cooks, holistic therapists, photographers and film-makers…

WISE Up for Bradley Manning is a grassroots network in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England (WISE) taking action for the young US military intelligence analyst who has been held by the US government for two years without trial.

Accused of blowing the whistle on US war crimes and revealing other truths the US would have preferred to keep buried, Bradley Manning has been tortured and denied his constitutional rights.

When US president Barack Obama, commander-in-chief of the…

WISE Up for Bradley Manning is a loose network of groups and individuals in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England (WISE) taking action for Bradley Manning, the young US military intel. analyst with Welsh roots who has been held for almost two years without trial accused of blowing the whistle on war crimes and revealing other truths the US would have preferred to keep buried. Bradley Manning has been tortured and denied his…

Peace News is 75. Happy birthday! Today is another anniversary; it’s two years  since my Mum’s death so I’m feeling somber, remembering the failings in the hospital care she received and our struggle to get her home so she could die as well as she had lived: in peace, with her family, in familiar surroundings. Time was short, and when some of the things that should have happened to facilitate this did not and our questions met with poor excuses, we blew the whistle to get things moving.…

The first bombing raid of the Gulf War was launched on Iraq 20 years ago. On 15 January members of Wrexham Peace & Justice Forum and supporters organised a stall in the town centre with a display of information about the effects of war and sanctions on Iraqi children.

Children’s shoes were displayed alongside the information to remind us of all the lost children of Iraq. Well over a million Iraqi children have died either as a direct result of warfare or indirectly,…

The facts are fairly straightforward, although whenever I recount the tale, my listener’s jaw drops. “They did what?” But the authorities are deadly serious. This is what happened:

2 May. While doing my recycling at my local household “recycling” centre, I spot four good plastic garden chairs in the skip destined for landfill and remove them so that they can be re-used.
When challenged by Waste Recycling Group (WRG) skip worker and his supervisor, I refuse to put them back…

We don’t usually mark Memorial Day in Britain. Previously known as Decoration Day, the last Monday in May is a US holiday which originally remembered American men and women who have died in military service in the American Civil War. Following World War I, the memorial was expanded to include military casualties of any war. More recently, US peace and anti-war groups have reclaimed Memorial Day, holding ceremonies to remember all victims of war, military and civilian, and to call for an end…

Since Wrexham Against War(now Wrexham Peace & Justice Forum) came into being in 2002, we've made a conscious effort to document what we do - through photographs, saved press releases, a website and our newsletter. Wrexham Peace and Justice News has now been going for four years, and the next issue will be our 21st.

We haven't always succeeded in our documentation project; for instance, keeping the photos up to date on the website in the days before photo-sharing…

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…

In October 2005, Maya Evans was arrested for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq during a remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall. She was charged with taking part in an “unauthorised demonstration” in a “designated area” under section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) and on 7 December 2005 she became the first person to be convicted under this Act.

The case attracted huge attention in the mainstream media as well as being…

I couldn't quite believe it. Here I was at the army recruitment fair, having a discussion with one of the organisers about the punitive measures in the Armed Forces Bill currently going through parliament, measures which could mean conscientious objectors in the forces being sent to prison for life, and he was trying to sell it to me on the grounds that it's “better than the death penalty”.

What sort of an argument is that? It's like defending the maiming of children in Iraq on the…