Comment

I was inspired to look at the story of Harry Potter as a one of resistance and direct action by Shami Chakrabarti. In a BBC Radio 4 programme, the director of Liberty once talked about The Order of the Phoenix as a text which has many vivid examples of acts of resistance to dark forces and the abuse of power. Taking this observation as a starting point, I have looked at the whole Harry Potter story and discovered that it teaches us a great deal about what is needed to form an effective…

Gillie Woodiwis was an odd, nervy man, usually wearing a hairy suit. I have painted him sitting in my parents’ house where he spent a lot of time in the 1950s. Peace News is on his lap. I am beside him. I was often sat on his lap which I didn’t like much. He handed out highly religious tracts (which at the time, I wondered why my parents tolerated, as religion was usually banned), and was generally strange. He volunteered for the First World War, although he had already had a nervous…

For the whole of my life so far, civil war has raged somewhere in the world and there seems no end in sight. In Spain, 75 years ago, the army led by general Franco staged a military coup against the legally-elected Republican government and the resulting civil war lasted for nearly three years. Franco’s army – boosted by the support of Hitler and Mussolini – eventually triumphed, and his dictatorship survived from 1939 until 1975. The political,social and cultural fall-out from this bitter…

[While conscription continued in the years after the Second World War, PN had regular coverage of the treatment of those refusing to join the military.]

The London local tribunal for conscientious objectors has frequently stated that it cannot exempt a man who does not object to all war, at all times, in all circumstances. But it did so last Friday.

Max Neufeld, an architect, who came to England in his childhood as a refugee, argued that the military defence strategy…

The problem was, as the head teacher explained in his letter, that I had convictions for criminal damage and therefore was not a suitable person to be working in a school. The details of the matter – that I had told the school about my criminal record months ago and that my most recent conviction was over twelve years ago – were of no interest to him. The fact that I’m a governor at another school also left him unimpressed.

He had never met me but had formed this impression of me as…

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As PN goes to press, the airwaves are filled with slightly-troubled self-congratulation at the death of Muammar Gaddafi, former ruler of Libya. As the retrospectives begin, there is one fact that is undeniable. While it is commonly said that this NATO military action was authorised by the UN, security council resolution 1973 only actually authorised military action (a) to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya (paragraph 8) and (b) “to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of…

The very first version of the event was PN promotions worker Gabriel Carlyle’s suggestion that we could call together 40-50 people connected to or sympathetic with Media Lens, to try to improve how we all put pressure on the mainstream media. (Given this origin, we very much regret that Media Lens were not able to make the dates to be part of the RMC.) The scale of the event ballooned as we quickly realised that we would really like a radical media conference to do three things that we didn’…

Being evicted from your home leaves deep scars and although there may be much support, sometimes you can get done-over by so-called supporters.

I’m not sayng that is happening at Dale Farm, but beware of being taken advantage of by people with their own agendas. People who haven’t got an investment in, and a long attachment to, the disputed territory probably don’t realise the effect on the besiged residents. It makes one wary and shaken, lose confidence.

Then there was our…

John Hyatt, a member of the Peace News staff collective 1973-75 gave us the slogan “Don't Vote – it only encourages them”.

I first met him as a young man representing the Youth Section of the Peace Pledge Union at the WRI Council meeting in Vienna in August 1968.

Nearby Czechoslovakia was experiencing what turned out to be the last days of the Prague Spring. On the last day of the council meeting a WRI delegation, which I think included John, travelled to Bratislava at the…

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In listening to ... the Chairman of the Labour Party, one gets the impression that there is no more important goal in politics today than achieving unity in the Labour Party. The answers to the questions that are dividing members of the party are really of secondary importance so long as they can agree to give the same answer...

There is a great deal more discussion around the kind of policies that must be adopted to ensure electoral victory than there is about the most suitable way…

Riots bring out a confusion of responses and a whole parade of paradoxes on the left and from the proponents of radical, but peaceful, political change. Much of what is said is thought but not felt, while much of what is felt remains unsaid...

The first undiscussed difficulty is the fact that the gut reaction of much of the left to news of a riot is one of support for the rioters. This is more than the “I understand but cannot condone their actions” stance of the after-riot opinion…

This issue we carry a report from a participant in this year’s Uncivilisation festival, inspired by the Dark Mountain project and manifesto (see p3). This is a very intriguing initiative, self-consciously metaphorical. There are two faces to the Dark Mountain manifesto, it seems to us. On the one hand, it is refreshing to hear despair honestly spoken: “our sense that civilisation as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system…

It may surprise you to learn, dear readers, that I try to avoid writing too often about books here. Trouble is, kind people keep sending me them because they think they’ll interest me. Invariably they do. Take, for example, the collection of poems by John Lucas published in 2010 by the estimable Five Leaves Publications whose books often get a mention here.

Things to Say (£7.99) is a wide-ranging substantial body of work by an established poet of reputation and clout and is divided…

I was about 24 at the time, and I was there with my small son. The diversity of the women was incredible. For some women Greenham gave them an alternative to our society, it gave a community. Many women came back to Greenham because of the benefits of women living together in co-operation. Despite the hardships that life was preferable. There was concern for each other and support. People got together on an open piece of land, not designed for living on. How they improved their lives,…

Theodore Roszack, historian, novelist, social critic and anti-war activist, was born in Chicago and had an academic career at universities across America.

Of 1964, Roszack wrote: “For those who were part of it, the American peace scene for the years 1963-64, during that paralytic lull following the partial test-ban treaty and preceding the recent, turbulent rise of the ‘New Left’, was rapidly suffocating in pessimism and dismal introspection”. In the summer of ’64 he became editor of…

The third Peace News Summer Camp in late July (not long after PN’s 75th birthday party) was the best yet. Over 120 people came together at the lovely Crabapple Community near Shrewsbury for five days of discussion, debate, tripod-climbing, singing, compost-toilet-making, marquee-erecting, collective childcare and brilliant entertainment from some of the most talented and committed performers on the circuit.

Of course, the core of the camp was the workshops. There was a joint workshop…

In November, two events re-ignited the debate on the numbers and conditions of those imprisoned in British jails and detention centres. Both - in their different ways - revealed the level of desperation and despair at impractical and immoral criminal justice and immigration policies.

Unrest at Harmondsworth detention centre on 28 November - reportedly sparked after detainees were denied access to a TV news item on a damning new report on the centre - saw desperate detainees…

On the night of Monday/Tuesday 14/15 April 1986, US aircraft bombed Libya as a response to alleged Libyan support for terrorism. The 18 April issue of (the then fortnightly) PN was already on its way to the printers when news came through; but a Stop Press supplement written on the Tuesday carried news as it came in – of the attack, and of some reactions in just the first few hours.

Peace groups respond to attack on Libya

At Upper Heyford airbase, one of the bases where the F1-…