This may be a little difficult to believe. In the latest terror trial in the UK, the defendant put forward the kind of legal argument that we often see in peace movement nonviolent direct action cases: he was trying to prevent a greater crime... with his crime.
Since the 7/7 atrocities in London on 7 July 2005, there has been a string of terror attacks in the UK inspired by al-Qa’eda and/or Islamic State.
These attacks tend to have three features in common that aren’t often…
I got to know Bunny during Kick Nuclear’s ‘Remember Fukushima: No to Nuclear Power in the UK’ weekly Friday vigils outside the Japanese embassy which began in August 2012. (They are now twice-monthly.)
Bunny was a regular participant in this vigil from 2013 to 2021. He sat on a chair by the embassy entrance in all weathers giving leaflets to embassy visitors and passers-by. Towards the end of 2021, he decided the winter weather was getting too much for him, but said he would return in…
‘You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.’
These are the words Tony Blair – not known for self-flagellation – uses in his memoir, A Journey, to describe his decision in 2005 to finally allow the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act to come into force.
When Blair was leader of the opposition, he pledged that if Labour came to power, he would…
Many of us met in person this year for our first May Day together since 2019. And let me tell you, it was pretty darn exciting!
There were singers, CND marchers, Extinction Rebellion campaigners, pipe bands, young socialists, abortion rights campaigners, Living Rent campaigners, Ukraine Solidarity, young communists, samba drummers, the Radical Independence Campaign, anarchists, and even a gaggle of mummers.
And, of course, there were folk from lots of different unions, with a…
When I was growing up,’ says poet and storyteller, Sandra A Agard, ‘there was hardly any Black Literature. I mean, one of the first diverse books I ever read was Little Black Sambo. It was a horrible book. But it was the only book available in my school and public library with a Black main character. I hated the story. I hated the images. I even hated the paper it was written on, it had this awful smell; but it was the only book around at that time’
Agard herself started…
The long wait to see if Croydon would elect its first Green councillors was nerve-wracking. After all the leaflets had been delivered and hundreds of residents had been spoken to, all the campaigning that we could do was done.
At the count, the mayoral ballots were counted first, so I was expecting to have to wait a while before ballot papers for the council elections were counted.
As the delays continued, I thought it might be daylight before the results were announced on…
On 11 May, thousands of veterans of the First Gulf War of 1991, those affected with Gulf War Syndrome, were vindicated.
After over 30 years of official denial and gaslighting, the cause of the veterans’ suffering has finally been identified: sarin gas.
Odourless, tasteless and wildly fatal (a few drops on bare skin can kill), sarin is one of the most toxic chemical weapons known to humankind. Unknown amounts of sarin (and other chemical weapons) were released into Iraqi air…
I’ve been a member of the International Conscientious Objectors’ Day organising group for a few years now.
The idea of having a stone dedicated to conscientious objectors to war (COs) began in 1976. After considerable efforts by Edna Mathieson, eventually the stone was unveiled at 2pm on 15 May 1994 in Tavistock Square, Central London. It was unveiled by the composer sir Michael Tippett, the president of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), who had been imprisoned during the Second World War…
29 March: Over the last month, the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine has cost tens of thousands of lives, forced millions of Ukrainians to become refugees – and created a world crisis. As we go to press, there are reports that there may be a ceasefire soon.
That seems unlikely until after Russia has captured Mariupol. The besieged and much-battered coastal city is the key to the land corridor linking Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and parts of eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian…
In 2015, I went with Peace News’ Emily Johns to the Hastings home of John Shaw, director of SeaChange, the ‘not for profit economic development company’ for East Sussex.
SeaChange – a private company – has been given millions of pounds of public money to ‘regenerate’ Hastings.
This ‘regeneration’ has included building the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road in the teeth of fierce local opposition (see PN 2658).
Emily and I had come from the site of SeaChange’s latest…
I have a postcard above my desk of a photo Lee Miller captured of the opera singer Irmgard Seefried. She is singing an aria from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in the bombed-out remains of the Vienna opera house in 1945. The image embodies the words of the cellist of Sarajevo, Vedran Smailović, when asked how he could continue to play music when bombs are being dropped all around: ‘No, the question is how can people drop bombs when there is such beautiful music?’
In 1899, the…
‘There’s a segregation that’s happening at the borders,’ Tokunbo Koiki* told ITV News on 27 February. The Nigerian Londoner added: ‘White Ukrainians have been allowed in[to neighbouring countries] with open arms, and blankets. This is the anti-blackness that is global. So even within a war, even within being under siege, we still have racism.’
Among the millions who have been fleeing Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on 24 February have been international students from Africa,…
I seem to have fallen into a never-ending recruitment drive – not satisfied with the ongoing search for commune members, or the renewed need to fill vacancies in my housing co-op, nor even the unusual situation of shortlisting and interviewing for a Radical Routes contract, I’ve found myself accepting a job recruiting people into a new housing co-op. For many hours a week.
Just in case the craziness of that sentence didn’t sink in – I am being paid (paid!) to help set up a housing co-…
I am a sixth-generation Londoner, on my father’s side. It is home, in every sense of the word. Yet London can be a lonely place; try and strike up a conversation on the bus or in most cafes and chances are, you’ll be rewarded with a funny look or a raised eyebrow
(I personally favour the latter, for the record).
There are few places where this rule doesn’t hold true, and they are beyond precious.
Since last December, London has had another one of these welcoming, strike…
Yeah, so: ‘whataboutery’; where people argue that we shouldn’t campaign on a certain issue by asking ‘What about the men?’ or ‘What about poor white people?’ and so on.
‘When’s it International Men’s Day?’ used to be a common complaint on 8 March. I hope by now most people know that’s on 19 November. And every other day of the year, of course.
It’s only certain issues of course. Nobody whines ‘What about those with heart disease?’ when people are fundraising for charities…
It is not an exaggeration to say that there is a ‘before Jean-Marie Muller’ and an ‘after Jean-Marie Muller’ in the study and practice of nonviolence in France. Jean-Marie was also a committed internationalist who worked with thinkers on and practitioners of nonviolence in a wide range of countries, from Lebanon to the United States.
Jean-Marie Muller was working as a philosophy teacher when he staged his first major (and much-publicised) protest in 1967. Defying the authorities, he…
On 6 February, Elizabeth Windsor marks 70 years of ruling the UK as queen. The major celebrations of her ‘platinum jubilee’ will come in June, as will the peak of the ‘Not Another 70 Years’ campaign by the British anti-monarchy group, Republic.
The abolition of the monarchy is important for the peace movement. It’s important at a fundamental level – to do with what militarism is.
At a more surface level, the queen is officially the head of the armed forces and the royals are…
Some 23 million people in extreme hunger. A million children under five in immediate danger of starvation.
This is not a natural disaster. It is a horrifying case of the United States taking an entire nation hostage and torturing an entire people.
Dominik Stillhart, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Agence France-Presse last November that the economic sanctions ‘meant to punish those in power in Kabul are instead freezing millions of…
Nine years ago, I was part of a big campaign to stop the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road, a monstrosity of a road that threatened fragile habitats in the service of ‘opening up’ land for development. We were also promised, of course, that it would reduce congestion on the coast road between the two towns – a promise that would be greeted with a hollow laugh by anyone with the slightest knowledge of road-building and ‘induced demand’ (more roads create more traffic).
It was a hard-fought…
Desmond Tutu planned his own funeral, including the music.
It was a simple affair, with a choir singing some of his favourite hymns, some in his home tongue, Setswana.
One of his favourite hymns, ‘Thato ya hao’ includes the line: ‘Give us the joy of all the things you love’.
Joy in the struggle, and the struggle to truly live freely, whoever we are, is a big part of the legacy he leaves us.
What point is there in the struggle if not to experience joy…
