Jeff Cloves

When I was in my teens I feared I wouldn’t be alive for my 21st. I wasn’t alone in such dread. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was our nuclear fate and it drove many of my generation to join the Aldermaston March.
What I never anticipated was that nearly 50 years later, I’d again be on a coach going to Aldermaston and that politicians across the world would still believe in “nuclear defence” and still believe that they could only cut it as significant leaders if they brandished…

I heard the words “conscientious objector” on the news the other day and they immediately grabbed my attention.

However, the item turned out to be about doctors exercising their conscientious objection to performing abortions. I grew up with the term in a specific context, because my uncle Bert was a conchie during WWII and had two - maybe three - stretches in Wormwood Scrubs.

He was an absolutist who refused all alternatives to military service. I've been thinking about…

Here are a couple of books of interest to PN readers; seasonal gifts perhaps? Both are doorstoppers of around 500 pages and both are by blokes who are, to quote 1066 and All That, “a good thing”.

In the 1970s I wrote for Pete Frame's celebrated music mag Zigzag but Pete has since become more widely known for his series of superbly researched and drawn Rock Family Trees. These are the product of his meticulous research and obsessive interest in the minutiae of popular music in…

Over 20 years ago I came down from St Albans by hired coach to take part in a demonstration at the US bomber base at Fairford. Now we live 15 miles from the base which became the focus of concerted anti-war protests after Iraq was attacked by “the allies” in 2003. Plus ca change eh?

Stroud lay/lies under the flight path of the US bombers bound for Iraq and local protesters were quick off the mark to set up camp at Fairford and The Powers That Be equally quick to bring the full force…

One statement Noam Chomsky made in his interview in PN's April issue struck me forcibly: “[Iran] is independent and independence is not tolerated [by the United States]”.
It's an interesting concept, independence, and I take it for granted that independence of thought and action is common to PN readers. But enough flattery.
Chomsky's interview made me think again about self-sufficiency. The desirability of using alternative sources of energy to counter…

Just after Christmas, Audrey came by the Saturday morning peace vigil (where I sell PN) in Stroud High Street. It was the last time I saw her. As usual she was pushing her walker-shopper and immaculately turned- out: eyebrow pencil, a touch of lippy and clothes of indisputable style. As usual, she was apologetic about no longer being strong enough to stand in line with us and as usual, too, she appeared indomitable. In fact she was indomitable and her death was a shock to us vigilantes and…

The white poppy and red poppy debate continues here in Stroud but it's pointed me in an unexpected direction. The local Green Party (of which I'm not a member - or of any political party come to that) hosts occasional meetings/debates in a local cafe', and in January I was asked to talk about red and white poppies. This I was happy to do but was surprised to have been asked.

The subject of the evening was culture, identity, and difference and three Muslim women from Gloucester - and…

Phil Reardon (PN obit July/August) was a gem of a bloke “very much in the William Morris News From Nowhere tradition” as Howard Clark put it and his wonderfully inventive tract on re-cycling cycles is still my constant companion.

Here in Stroud, the founders of Bicycology shyly admit to having never heard of Phil or his great work but they are clearly his philosophical descendants. By osmosis, or otherwise, their excellent guide has been compiled with the same wit and flair…

Ever get that feeling that only you in the whole world cares for the things that you care about; that the rapaciousness of global capitalism knows no bounds; that every High Street looks like every other High Street; that all governments are the same government; that Tesco has more pull than the UN?You do? W ell, at the risk of sounding like Samuel Smiles, let me tell you that mutuality, self-help and a 25-quid investment in Common Ground will work wonders.

Now,…

The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (www.un.org/right) was read daily at a “War & Peace” exhibition in the Friends' Meeting House in Nailsworth, Glos, during the last week of April.

The Declaration was drafted in 1947 by John Powers Humphrey (a Canadian who later helped establish Amnesty International Canada) and was adopted by the UN in 1948. Since then, some of the world's most unpleasant and dangerous regimes have paid lip…

This occasional column is a continuation of the one I wrote for Nonviolent Action and it's timely to revisit an issue that arose at NvA.

I'm still smarting from the spiking of one of my columns because (as I recall) “it would cause offence to our American staff”. During the build-up to the invasion of Iraq I submitted a poem in place of prose. I hoped A hymn of hate to America might provoke a response. It did.

The poem was…

I've always liked Shelley's life: its passion, poetry and politics.

When he went to Oxford he and his friend Hogg immediately set about writing a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism. Shelley noted that "my mother fancies me on the High Road to Pandemonium" and she was proved right. Their pamphlet duly set the Master of their university college by his devout ears and he summarily expelled the pair of them. Thus, at age 19,Percy Bysshe Shelley's life was launched upon the…

Do you remember Mr Major's now infamous vision of British (English, surely) life? Spinsters on bicycles pedalling to evensong, warm beer and cricket matches. Claptrap of course; but if he'd gone the whole sentimental hog he'd surely have included county shows, annual carnivals and village fetes. He might even have mentioned their recruiting displays by pyramids of army dispatch riders on motorbikes or even fly-pasts by the Red Arrows. All indicators of a "nation at ease with itself".

…

The biggest bully I knew at school joined the police force. Even at age 16 I thought this entirely logical.

On the other hand, Roy, who was one of my circle of friends, joined the army as a boy entrant. I knew he was lonely and sensed he was unhappy. His mother died when he was eight and he was brought up after a fashion by a succession of “aunts” who lived with his (often absent) father. We were appalled, but the prospect of two years' National Service faced us all and his…