I don’t think I would label any of the emotions I have in relation to activism as “hatred”. But there are things that come close.
When I think of Tony Blair, it makes my blood boil, and I feel sick, but is “hate’ the right word? Maybe “hate” is too bland a word to capture my emotions towards people like that! Ah. There are people I really, really hate!
Bono. And Bob Geldof.
I don’t feel disgust towards them, like I do towards Blair, I actually hate them! Because of their…
The greatest pleasure in writing for PN has always been that its editors let me write about whatever catches my fancy. And my fancy is to write about anything I fancy will interest PN readers.
However, my piece on cowardice and bravery is currently on PN’s website and exemplifies how the net has changed my notion of “PN readers”. I used to regard them as comrades-in-(harmless)-arms; now they could just be serendipitous surfers.
It’s too late to change my writing…
John Rety, former editor of the anarchist newspaper Freedom and good friend of Peace News, has died at the age of 79.
John had several passions apart from politics, including chess (“the most Bohemian player we are ever likely to meet”, said the late Bob Wade, former British chess champion) and poetry (“He ran the only truly democratic poetry reading venue, where anyone was allowed to get up and read one poem before a guest reader,” said poet Jehane Markham).
…
Colin Ward was the leading anarchist thinker and writer of post-war Britain. His was an anarchism that was at once constructive, creative and immensely practical. It drew critical, but sympathetic attention from many outside the anarchist movement. It still holds many lessons for the left.
Born in 1924 in London, Colin gravitated to the anarchist movement while serving in the army during the Second World War. Towards the end of the war, the anarchist newspaper Freedom (or War…
You may not believe this, but Peace News is now counting down to our 75th anniversary. Yes, Peace News began life on 6 June 1936! During 2011, our 75th year of existence, we will be springing a number of surprises.
Most of our “Remaking Peace News” projects are designed to get PN out to a wider readership, and to make PN more useful to a wider array of groups and movements. Some initiatives we will be keeping under wraps for now, some we can reveal. We will definitely be re-…
I did meet my partner while we were organising a demonstration and we became close during that process. That was very important because we identified something that was very important to know about your partner: that we shared a vision of right and wrong and a willingness to do something about it – though probably more in his case.
They’re both similar things, activism and romance: they excite passion and commitment and you have to keep going at it even when you don’t feel like it!…
The Radical Routes network of housing and worker co-ops (and social centres) recently considered (and rejected) the idea of committing itself to 10:10, the anti-climate change project initiated by Franny Armstrong, director of The Age of Stupid, and sponsored by the Guardian.
10:10, which Peace News has signed up to, commits individuals and businesses in Britain to cutting their carbon emissions by 10% during 2010 (the real year, or the financial year – PN’s aim), something that…
Arms dealers from all over the world have been invited back to the biggest arms fair in the world at the ExCeL centre in Newham, east London for 13-16 September 2011. This vile event has been held at this venue every two years since 2001. They call it the “Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEi)” Exhibition though the only accurate bit of that title is “international”.
When East London Against Arms Fairs started over a decade ago we knew that previous arms fairs had…
A PN editor from 1976-1982, Chris Jones continued helping with PN as a volunteer until June 1983. Chris died suddenly in his sleep on 6 December of heart failure. He had felt ill the previous day playing in a marching band in Oswestry where he lived, and returned home early.
Howard Clark writes: Chris began helping Peace News just as I was leaving. He had come to pacifism by a strange route – having joined the RAF after school, and first became a vegetarian and only later a pacifist.…
Other people go to Glastonbury; I go to Raise Your Banners. Instead of going to Glastonbury, and spending lots of money and seeing a CND stall on the side, I go to support a festival of political song.
There are sort of two parts to the festival. There are a number of political choirs, so in one part of the festival there’s a showcase for them, and so there was the London Socialist Choir, and Red & Green, and then all the northern choirs.
This year the festival was in…
The climate conference in Copenhagen is a turning point in world history. The protests in Denmark and around the world before and during the conference are therefore of enormous importance.
As a species, we are now fully conscious of the effects of our actions on the world’s climate and therefore on all the interlocking ecosystems on which human and other forms of life depend. At Copenhagen, the world’s governments could give their informed consent either to a scientifically-…
I read, with uneasy and strongly personal interest, the discussions in September’s issue. For the whole of my conscious life – or so it seems – I have been confronted by this question: “What would you, a pacifist, have done in the Second World War?” For years, my feeble cop-out was to say: I wasn’t even two when it started so I’m concerned with now, not then.
However, the question is a valid and proper one and, if it is posed by someone whose father fought and died in the Second…
Readers who have attended recent national events such as Stop the War’s march against the war in Afghanistan, the Great Climate Swoop in Nottingham, or the Raise Your Banners music festival in Bradford, may have spotted something slightly unusual: namely, large numbers of Peace News being given away – to thousands of activists.
Have we lost the plot, you may be asking yourself? Why should anyone pay for PN when it’s been given away it for free? Don’t give-aways like this de-…
Rich countries and corporations have grown wealthy through a model of development that has pushed the planet to the brink of climate catastrophe. They have over-used the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
Drastic measures now have to be taken to prevent runaway climate change, making it impossible for poor countries to grow their economies in the same way. Put another way, the rich world has “colonised” the earth’s atmosphere. This process has mirrored and perpetuated…
On 25 July 2009, Henry John “Harry” Patch died. Aged 111, he was the last British survivor of the First World War trenches still living in the UK. Following the funeral held in Wells Cathedral he was buried near Combe Down where he was born.
For more than 80 years Harry refused to talk about his wartime experiences, refused to attend regimental reunions and avoided war films on the television. It wasn’t until he was over 100 that he broke his silence. In 1998 with the…
Climate Justice Action is a new global network of people and groups committed to take the urgent actions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. The network is open to individuals and groups that agree with our Networks Goals, Principles for Working Together and Call To Action.
Among the many groups that are part of the network are: Climate Watch Alliance (Nepal); Focus on the Global South; Friends of the Earth (Engand, Wales and Northern Ireland); Human Rights Defenders…
Dear friends, Peace News is growing and expanding! We’re making ambitious plans for the future development of PN; we’re starting new regular activities to support the peace movement, such as the Peace News Summer Camp and the Peace News Winter Gathering (15-17 January in Nottingham); and we hope to do more to help support uplifting nonviolent initiatives with events such as the Peace News training for participants in the March on Gaza.
We hope to carry out more activities outside…
