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‘So will you now be organising a cycle ride to Ende Gelände, the mass action in Germany in May?’

Filled with emotions and exhaustion, 125 of us had just reached Paris for the climate negotiations in December after a five-day ride from London, and all I wanted to do was crash in a corner, and not think of any new project that involved ‘logistics’ or ‘meetings’.

After catching a little sleep and recovering some energy, we rethought that suggestion. We saw the need to…

Every three months, I take direct action against nuclear power. It doesn't involve sitting in the road, cutting fences or trespassing. I simply withhold 11 percent of my electricity bill, like hundreds of others involved in the Consumer Campaign.

The campaign is based on the fact that, quite apart from all the other arguments against nuclear power, the nuclear generation of electricity is more costly than other methods. Most other Peace News readers, like myself, will…

I think activism for me means acting in accordance with my own values and trying to live my own values.

For some years of my life I was vegan, and I’m not now, and eggs is still something I’m not sure around the ethics of.

I try to buy organic free range eggs or preferable from a local farm that I know.

Eggs also makes me think of Easter, a time of fertility and spring and hope.

- Woman, Colchester

Erm.... Well, I suppose eggs and Easter is about…

It was quite easy to decide to do the action. We knew that the Davis commission was due to make an announcement that would recommend a new runway somewhere in the South East, we just didn't know whether it would be Heathrow or Gatwick. The Davis commission was flawed from the beginning, asking where we need airport expansion, not if we need it – and clearly we don't need it.

Airport expansion is being driven by 15 percent of the population taking 70 percent of flights; this isn't…

It was a South African musician, whose name I can’t remember, years ago, said that ‘a group of people cannot all speak at once, but they can sing together’. And I’ve always kept a strong hold of this. It is important to remember.

When we have activist meetings, I always try to encourage folks to sing at the beginning and end of them so we can start from this place of everyone’s voice being heard, encouraging those who don’t want to sing to drum along on their knees or on the table…

Let’s put two things next to each other. On the one hand, Peace News is committed to nonviolent revolution, to the nonviolent transformation of society including the replacement of capitalism by participatory democracy in the workplace and the reorganisation of the…

When I was at grammar school in the 1950s, our High Tory economic history teacher poured scorn on the Chartists, the suffragettes, the co-operative movement, trade unionism, conscientious objection and, of course, nationalisation.

When some of us asked about the freedom to protest and freedom of speech, he offered Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park as proof positive that we lived in a free country and anybody could say what they liked about anything.

Some of us had heard of Speakers…

On the five-day Time to Cycle bike ride to Paris in December, it turned out that one of our fellow riders was James Cracknell, who we’d published in the last issue writing very pessimistically about the climate talks.

James sat at our dinner table and explained how, if he was to re-write that article, it would be different because he felt more enthused after riding for two days with 125 other climate activists. His understanding of the facts would be…

Anyone who writes a column for any publication whatever, will naturally try to write clearly and unambiguously – and fail in one way or another. Life itself is frequently – always some will argue – not clear and unambiguous and then there’s the problem of language. Here’s an example….

When I was growing up the word ‘progressive’ belonged to the Left. Now it’s frequently used by the Right in the UK to describe policies which Lefties regard as reactionary. I’ve also heard…

I would like to tell you about some help Geoffrey Carnall gave to me some years ago when I was researching songs and stories to celebrate 50 years since the founding of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND).

I was volunteering at the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre at the time, where Geoffrey was on the management committee, and he was always interested in the treasure of songs and stories I was gathering. He always asked me to sing them and joined in softly but…

Woody says, ‘the basic or primary condition of existing society is that we are all living against each other... mutual hostility’. But this hostility is often about something – like quarrels over the distribution of resources. Rather than backing the poor against the rich, for Woody, ‘a radical situation arises only when a section of the would-be stampeders holds back’. The poor must hold back!

Woody seems to be reacting... against Marxism and the…

Oh wow. ‘Activism and luxury.’ Very good. No specific question for me, just whatever comes into my mind....

I feel the word raises great feelings of guilt! I suppose I feel I should never enjoy luxury. To be an activist, one rejects luxury: while so many people have so little, that you can have luxury is anathema. It undermines everything we’re trying to do.

Having said that, I do luxuriate in my sofa, and my TV, and my glass of wine.

I suppose one of the greatest…

Like global climate change group 350.org, we all need to look beyond the Paris climate talks and whatever protests we manage to organise there to the building of mass civil disobedience for climate justice in 2016. 350.org is talking about an escalation in May 2016.

Whatever comes out of the COP21 negotiations in December,…

Noam Chomsky once observed that the dirty little secret of ‘national security policy’ is that ‘security is at most a marginal concern of security planners’. He was speaking of the United States, but the lesson generalises, certainly to the UK.

We can see this in the reaction to the ‘Islamic State’ terror attacks in Paris in November, which killed 130 people.

Policymakers in Britain, France and elsewhere are knowingly increasing the power of IS recruiters and commanders…

Graphic: Bryn

Attac released this statement on 18 November, just five days after the attacks in Paris:

In the aftermath of the massacres of Paris, members and supporters of Attac, in unison with the French society, feel horror and revulsion at the indiscriminate and murderous hatred.

Attac expresses its solidarity with the victims and their relatives. The people murdered Friday night were merely exercising their right to conviviality, to civility,…

We are all France. Apparently. Though we are never all Lebanon or Syria or Iraq for some reason. Or a long, long list of additional places.

We are led to believe that US wars are not tolerated and cheered because of the colour or culture of the people being bombed and occupied. But let a relatively tiny number of people be murdered in a white, Christian, Western European land, with a pro-war government, and suddenly sympathy is the order of the day.

‘This is not just an…

I wonder how many BBC listeners and viewers are aware of the corporation’s motto and that this venerable and vulnerable institution has a coat of arms? This is not a pedantic and pointless question but one which, I insist, is important and relevant.

As a child of the Radio Age, and coming from a Old Labourite family, I grew up with inborn belief in mutualism and co-operativism and utter disdain for the reductionist view that the only worthwhile engine of human behaviour is profit…

‘Take a stone in your hand and close your fist around it until it starts to beat, live, speak and move.’ Áillohaš (also known as Nils-Aslak Valkeapääs), Sami poet

As I’m sure most people are aware, the Paris climate talks are coming up and it is more crucial than ever before that we make bigger collective commitments to limit our impact on this earth that sustains us. But what has music got to do with that? Well, in my world, quite a lot. Music has the power to reach people…

This is my final diary for Peace News, and looking back, I can see the prevailing theme of my columns has been the struggle to remain hopeful at a time when there is so much to make me despair.

Following a discussion on Facebook last night, I’ve been thinking about the power of literature to help us make sense of it all. I’ve been particularly reflecting on the poetry of WH Auden, who featured in my first column. I fell in love with his poetry when I was 17. Back then, I…

Is it an effective form of protest? Is the effort worth the results? A lot of them seem to be online these days and I don’t have much to do with that. They might have more effect, I don’t know.
- Woman, London

Oh no, I think hopelessness and pessimism. Actually that isn’t quite true, I am torn between hopelessness and feeling that things can be changed by things like this. I sign a fair few. And the online things like Avaaz are proving to be effective becasuse of the…