Features

In the weeks before the London Olympics, a sense of foreboding descended on many of the people who, like me, live and work in Newham in east London, one of the poorest and most ethnically-diverse parts of the capital.

This anxiety, shared even by those who are enthusiastic about the spectacle of the Games, was heightened by the stories about snipers in helicopters, missile-launchers on tower blocks and RAF fighters in the skies and predictions that it might become almost impossible to…

The Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) is a bit of a mouthful! Having ‘for’ in the title instead of ‘against’ was important and the word ‘accountability’ was being bandied about. Add ‘American bases’ and, in 1992, CAAB was born.

CAAB is a small group of committed people. None of us are paid and we rely entirely on donations to fund our work. We evolved out of the long campaign of protest at NSA Menwith Hill near Harrogate in North Yorkshire. (NSA stands for the…

With the Olympics almost upon us, a small but increasing number of individuals and groups are openly dissenting from the official line despite the mighty power of the games and the interests around it.

With numerous concerns around corporate ethics, repression, environmental degradation, social justice, militarisation, local democracy, and elitism, there is something for everyone to be active on.

Many of the big corporate sponsors come with a package of controversy attached.…

One hundred years ago, a group of miners from South Wales published a radical economic and political pamphlet which ‘received a blaze of publication’ in The Times and other national newspapers. It was the topic of a special house of commons debate and ‘became a household word’ in the coalfields of Britain, according to miners’ historian R Page Arnot.

As the pre-First World War…

Born in Buenos Aires in 1931, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel played a key role in the nonviolent resistance to the South American military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1977, he was imprisoned and tortured by the Argentinian military junta. Three years later he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Ian Sinclair interviewed him, with Beverly Keene interpreting, when he visited London in April.

PN: During the 1970s and early 1980s, up to 30,000 Argentinians died in the so-called ‘…

In late May, I was invited to a meeting of the Edge Fund, which is attempting to create an activist-led or -advised grant-making body in the UK, breaking down some of the inequalities that exist even in radical-minded philanthropy. The discussion was lively, and the openness of the Edge Fund to activist input was dizzying in its latitude.

Much of current UK activism depends on grants from bodies like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (the major donor behind the PN-initiated…

When we look around the world, when we look around this island that we live on, it’s clear there is an urgent need for a total transformation of society and the economy: a radical democratisation, a drastic carbon cut-back, justice for the oppressed, and thorough-going demilitarisation in every area. Peace News has been committed to ‘nonviolent revolution’ for 40 years. How are we going to make progress towards this goal?

What do we mean by ‘nonviolent revolution’ and is it feasible…

The diplomatic signs before Baghdad had been positive, as Iran indicated its willingness to give way on two major stumbling blocks: allowing inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to check a suspect base, and freezing the enrichment of uranium to 20%, widely regarded as dangerously close to weapons-grade (90%).

In Baghdad, Iran learned that in return for these major concessions, it was being offered very little. ‘Giving spare parts for civilian aircraft is…

A US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone waits out a sandstorm at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, 8 September 2008. Photo: Jason Epley © US Defense Department

Introduction

The present document must be read immediately by its named recipient. The reasons for such urgency will become obvious before the reading is completed.

In accordance with the Seventy-Third Amendment of the Constitution of the…

George Lakey photo: john Meyer

Nearly 200 years ago, revolutionary English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley argued that poets were the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’. The poet ‘not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered’, Shelley argued, she also ‘beholds the future in the present’, and her thoughts are ‘the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time’.

While documenting Budget Day protests in central London on 21 March, I wandered across Parliament Square and was accosted by two ‘Heritage Wardens’ warning me that the grass was out of bounds. As Boris’s fences have finally been removed so that the public can once more enjoy this historic space, I refused to leave, and the police were summoned.

Bora, 31 years old, had her arms severely bruised when police battered her plastic arm-lock with hammers; Dr Song, 54 years old, had three teeth broken by police; 75-year-old Father Mun was pushed off a large concrete tetra-pod by a coastal guard resulting in four broken vertebrae.

These are just three recent examples of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the South Korean authorities who are brutally enforcing the…

The White Book, which can be signed by anyone, contains a simple declaration: ‘Yr wyf i, drwy dorry fy enw yn y Llyfr Gwyn, yn ymrwymo i weithio dros heddwch yn y byd.’

‘By signing my name in the Llyfr Gwyn, I commit myself to work for peace in the world.’

PN spoke to renowned poet Mererid Hopwood, the first woman ever to win the bardic Chair at the National Eisteddfod of Wales (in…

8,000 women joined the annual “Million Women Rise” International Women’s Day march on 6 March, according to organisers. That’s 3,000 more than last year.

Women travelled from Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bradford, Cornwall, Leeds, Lincoln, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Ireland and Wales, among many other places, to demand an end to male violence against women and children. One placard read: “It’s more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier.” Hundreds of other IWD events took place…

We began with laughter, as George Lakey expressed his disbelief at the technology we were using. It was his first-ever internet video call: Skype had been installed on his computer only the day before, specifically for our interview.

Two hours later, with many questions still unasked, we were both on the verge of tears, as George haltingly recalled a transformational moment in his political and personal development, a process that stretches unbroken from the 1960s to his continuing…

The ‘Arab Spring’ has revived and broadened interest in the power of nonviolent popular action to challenge tyranny. However, the positive outcome promised by events in Tunisia has not been replicated elsewhere, and the slide of nonviolence into unequal violence in the face of violent repression, or civil war backed by foreign military intervention, has led to disillusionment and soul-searching.

Here in the UK at least, I believe we should stop insisting on ‘nonviolent revolution…

While researching strategies of engagement ‘designed to generate individual and social change’, I came across the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). A ‘bigshoe camp’ (recruitment workshop) was on the horizon. What a great opportunity for a researcher to ‘go native’!

It was an exciting morning at the Buddhist Centre in Bethnal Green. There were 25 officers-to-be, all with the ‘aura of gusto’.

Corporeal Calon, Trwper Twp and Capten Cyboli, our clown masters,…

Since restrictions on ‘demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament’ were first mooted in response to Brian Haw’s anti-war protest in Parliament Square, individuals have been standing up and creating a collective challenge in defence of the freedom to protest.

The restrictions received wider public attention when PN’s own Milan Rai and Maya Evans were convicted for reading out the names of Iraqi and British dead opposite Downing Street. Mark Thomas’s lone mass demos made fun of…

Why do we accept the domination of private motor cars when we know they make no sense in the long term? How has our society become so entwined and dependent on car culture? What steps can we take to free ourselves from this deadly embrace?

The negative side of car culture is huge yet largely out of mind: obesity, lung disease, climate change, strip mining, three million lives…

Gene Sharp. PHOTO: Conor Doherty

Arguably the best-known advocate of nonviolence working today, through books such as 1993’s 'From Dictatorship to Democracy', Gene Sharp has influenced popular revolutions and revolts across the globe. He was interviewed by Ian Sinclair for PN.

Peace News: When and why did you first get interested in the serious study of nonviolent struggle?

Gene Sharp: Well, the world was in a bit of a mess [after the Second World War], and I began to learn…