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Have you ever been in this situation?

You’re in a grassroots, very-low budget campaigning group. You have a group website.

Then the person who set the website up – and who has been maintaining it – moves away, or they move onto another issue, or they withdraw from activism completely.

Suddenly, you find out no one knows what the passwords are, and you can’t actually use your own website. Or, if you do know what the passwords are, no one else in the group is…

About 8,000 conscientious objectors were forced into the British army during the First World War, either into the non-combatant corps (NCC) or into combatant regiments. Most adopted a strategy of nonviolent resistance, refusing to put on uniforms, drill or obey any military orders. The army’s reaction varied: some commanding officers tried to reason with objectors; others reacted with verbal and physical abuse, using any means, however brutal, to try and force objectors to become soldiers.…

I’m writing this on the very eve of what a folkie of the ’60s, Nigel Denver, used to yearn for in song. He sang about the ‘Scottish Breakaway’ and maybe it’s come about or even came aboot.

During the Thatcher years, Westminster presided over what seemed an unstoppable diminution of the power of local authorities to control their own affairs. Instead central government took over to the extent that LAs seemed doomed to become collectively a powerless rump. How odd it is now to hear…

I don’t think I cry in public that often: just cinemas and theatres, weddings and funerals. Not demos – demos are for anger, for demonstrating coherent, rational opposition, for keeping your wits about you and being prepared for action. But when I saw the orthodox Jewish anti-Zionist bloc at the Gaza demo in Leeds, my throat tightened and the tears started running down my face. A friend appeared and I held on to them for about five minutes, sobbing. An unexpected reaction.

At the time…

Roy Prockter, who died suddenly on 18 June, aged 64, from a heart attack, was a chartered accountant and an active Quaker, who made both his professional skills and his commitment to nonviolence available to a number of radical pacifist groups and organisations.

One of his main concerns was the compulsory deduction of taxes contributing towards maintaining armed forces and providing lethal weapons.

He became active in the Peace Tax Campaign (now Conscience – Taxes for…

Failure? I don’t like thinking about my failures. I don’t like thinking about when groups fail either, or movements. If I’m honest, I do enjoy thinking about failures by people I don’t like. It’s important that some people fail in what they try to do – certain people!

I’ve failed at a lot of things in activism, and some of them it was right that I didn’t succeed because I was trying to do something stupid or counter-productive. Something that was actually bad for the cause.

I…

There are in this movement many different sorts of people some of them with a capital P: philosophers, poets, preachers, politicians, playwrights and just plain people. That is why we have called this the Committee of 100 because we are all in it and all equally important.

For each and all of us whether he is a so-called starry eyed idealist or a cynic there is one outstanding fact of life that confronts us all. It is a new fact of existence that has never existed before. It is now…

‘How does one feel when trying, in public, to convince people, who are trying to misconstrue anything one says, that because of one’s religious convictions — no matter what the consequences — no war service is possible?’ asked printer and conscientious objector (CO) Fred Murfin.

It was a fair question. Whether religious or not, First World War COs knew they were sincere. But self-knowledge was not enough: under the terms of the Military Service Act (1916), they were required to attend…

The British view of the world, even today, is fundamentally shaped by a 100-year-old lie, a powerful myth that contrasts German aggressiveness with the US-UK defence of small countries and high principles. In reality, it is a documented fact that the sovereignty of ‘plucky little Belgium’ was irrelevant to Britain’s decision to enter the First World War. In reality, it is a documented fact that the military alliances that Britain entered into were born of a desperate need to shore up…

I was injured at a blockade once. My affinity group was at one of the gates of the base; I was in the support group, I wasn’t sitting on the ground. I tried to put myself between them and the police, a policeman grabbed my arm and he swung me away. I twisted my ankle, I rolled around a bit in pain. The first aid person said it was a sprain, gave me a bandage and painkillers. I hobbled off.

I was shocked, I suppose. It took quite a long time to get over, it took over a year to get…

I lick my lips and my eyes flick to the ceiling before I answer: ‘£450 a day.’ I’ve been dreading this moment, of telling ‘a client’ that my daily rate is likely more than twice their weekly income. And here is ‘the client’, a group of new co-operators in a Bradford Community Centre that’s seen better days. I backtrack almost immediately – instead we agree a total figure for helping them to reach certain goals.

This daily rate is justifiable, indeed within my consortium of advisors we…

When you read in the press, hear on the radio, see on the telly, or otherwise encounter someone banging on about ‘extremists’, you realise, don’t you, dear readers, that they are referring to the likes of you and me.

And what is my extremism? Like yours, it’s wide-ranging but at the mo my uppermost desires are: the removal of all nuclear weapons from the UK, the abolition of the monarchy, the house of lords and public schools, the disestablishment of the church of England…

To enable conscientious objectors to conscription to unite for mutual support and encouragement, a Fellowship of Conscientious Objectors was formed in London last week. Membership is confined to young men affected by the Military Training Bill.

This development recalls the formation during the early days of the Great War of the No Conscription Fellowship (NCF), which not only supported conscientious objectors in various ways but also carried on a great deal of propaganda work.

…

Ah. (Laughs.) I’ve not had very good experiences with meetings. Well, I mean, on the whole they are quite important and useful ways of spending time. But you do get meetings which drag on. People taking the opportunity to quote Marx endlessly or other things they’ve read. They’re just taking the chance to make speeches. It can be quite a frustrating experience. If they could just stop doing that, it would be fantastic!

‘Run!!’ The activist yanked on the plasti-cuffs tying him to the academic. ‘Run THIS way NOW.’

They fled. They fled the tear gas and the screaming and the thud thud thud overhead. They ran through streets littered with abandoned placards, past puddles of blood and reefs of glass. Ducking into shops, out back exits, through alleys and over fences, leaving the terrifying kettle and the mass de-arrest behind them.

***

They walked along the pavement, holding hands as if they…

The Quaker meeting at Pwllheli Community Centre on Saturday 3 May, following the sudden death of Arfon Rhys, was, in many ways, unusual. Never had the small local group of Friends seen so many people at a Welsh Quaker meeting. The silence was enriched when someone felt moved to speak quietly of Arfon: family, students, peace campaigners, Welsh language campaigners, colleagues and friends. By contrast, the buffet provided by allotment friends afterwards was far from quiet.

People had…

Arlo Tatum played significant roles in the US, British and international pacifist movements. Born into a Quaker family in Iowa, he politely wrote in 1941, aged 18, to the US attorney general announcing his refusal to register for the draft – US conscription – imposed in advance of US entry to the Second World War. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in the Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone, Minnesota, the youngest prisoner when he entered.

A natural baritone, Arlo, on…

This has been a difficult email to write’. I can only see the first line of the email, but I know what it’s going to say. I slam the desk and swear loudly. Co-workers stare. I’m in a rush, I can’t deal with this now. I leave, cycle furiously into town and try to block it from my mind for the rest of the day.

In the majority world, we live in a strange social scene, where community is a fluid thing.

Unlike many other cultures, we make individual decisions about what’s best for…

Every year on 15 May, pacifists and anti-war activists gather in London’s Tavistock Square in front of a massive slate memorial that was unveiled by composer and conscientious objector Michael Tippett in 1994. The stone commemorates ‘All those who have established and are maintaining the right to refuse to kill. Their foresight and courage give us hope.’

Those who first established that right were the conscientious objectors of the First World War. When war began in August 1914,…

On 5 March 2007, a car bomb was detonated on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. It killed more than 30 people, wounded more than 100 and destroyed many businesses in the heart of a quarter famous for its bookshops, outdoor bookstalls, literary cafés, publishing houses and free-thinking society. The street was extensively damaged but re-opened in December 2008. May it thrive and ferment again. It wasn’t…