News

1 October 2018 Paul Allen

New report showcases projects from across the globe

In the largest survey to date of the potential of rising renewable energy supplies, a new report from the Centre for Alternative Technology shows that clean energy can meet our electricity needs all year round at all times of the day.

Launched in the run up to the COP24 climate summit in Poland in December, the report, Raising Ambition: Zero Carbon Scenarios from Across the Globe, maps over 130 scenarios designed to meet the targets of the Paris climate accord at global, regional…

1 October 2018 Milan Rai

Famine risk from British-backed attack on Yemeni port

This summer, Abdullah, 13, Abdulaziz, 12, and Maria, 5, fled from Saudi airstrikes on their neighbourhood in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah. Their mother and father, who didn’t wish to publish their own names, are destitute and searching for work in Sana’a, 90 miles from the coast. Photo: Becky Bakr Abdulla/Norwegian Relief Council.

‘This war risks killing an entire generation of Yemen’s children’, said Carolyn Miles, the president of Save the Children, on 18 September. As she spoke,…

1 October 2018 David MacKenzie

Blockade celebrates global campaign against nuclear weapons

More than 600 demonstrators took part in the ‘Nae Nukes, Anywhere’ demo at the Faslane Trident submarine base, 22 September. Photo: ivon bartholomew

For a few hours on 22 September, the gate to Faslane, the Clyde estuary home of the UK’s Trident submarines, became a ‘hostile environment’ for nuclear weapons.

In putting together the ‘Nae Nukes, Anywhere’ event, Scottish CND planned something more than a demo or a protest. The vision was for a celebration of transnational…

1 October 2018 Rachel Mann

Aberystwyth anti-torture fundraiser packed

Aberystwyth tells HSBC to Stop Arming Israel, 15 September. Photo: Janice de Haaff

The Friendship Inn in Borth, near Aberystwyth, was packed to the rafters on 8 September as people gathered for the potentially solemn purpose of raising funds in support of ‘Freedom from Torture’. This organisation dreams of a world free from torture but, until such time, it supports survivors of torture in rebuilding their lives and it works to bring perpetrators to account.

The vision for the…

1 August 2018 PN staff

London and Glasgow conferences mark 50 years since the formation of Britain's undercover political police squad

Dave Morris, one of the organisers of the ‘1968-2018: A Celebration of 50 years of Resistance, despite 50 years of police opposition, spying and repression’ conference at Conway Hall.photo: PN

The issue of undercover policing gained more attention in June because of a brave stand by Lush, the vegetarian/vegan cosmetics company. Then the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS) and COPS Scotland held conferences in London and Glasgow on 7 July and 23 June, marking 50…

1 August 2018 Neil Taylor and Leslie Barson

Draconian new guidelines could affect all parents

Hastings Home Education, Development, Growth and Empowerment (HEDGE) day trip. Photo: Milan Rai

In 2009, home educators won a great battle for democracy, for privacy and for the open practice of learning. Through internet organising, lobbying and a bit of luck, we got two clauses removed from the Education Bill. These clauses would have turned home education (HE) into a narrow school model monitored and regulated by local authorities.

Since then, many local authorities have…

1 August 2018 PN staff

How you can get involved

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https://peacenews.info/node/9413/ten-ways-join-climate-strikeEurope’s largest single-issue peace group, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is joining Ethical Consumer magazine, Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham, 10:10 Climate Action and Freedom Bookshop in London, Peace News and many others in the Global Climate Strike.

Here…

1 August 2018 Bruce Gagnon

Bruce Gagnon reports on the 26th annual conference of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Group photo, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space conference, 23 June, Friends Meeting House in Oxford. Bruce Gagnon in the centre with purple checked shirt. photo: PN

The 26th annual conference of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (GN) was held from 22–24 June at the Friends Meeting House in Oxford.

Will Griffin, Mary Beth Sullivan and I went a week early to Leeds and GN board convener Dave Webb organised talks…

1 August 2018 PN staff

New Poor People’s Campaign says: ‘Another America is possible’

Led by Ana Ilarraza Blackburn (right), Poor People’s Campaign protesters

Over 2,500 arrests were made this summer during a massive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience across the United States in a new ‘Poor People’s Campaign’, 50 years after the original campaign led by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The original Poor People’s Campaign ended with 3,000 activists camping for six weeks in May–June 1968 on the National Mall in the centre of Washington DC.

In…

1 August 2018 David Polden

Glasgow arms fair was directly linked to Trident nuke system, online news service reveals

Earlier this summer, Glasgow city council announced that it would not host any more arms fairs and three anti-arms trade protesters in Cardiff were acquitted of trespass outside an arms fair.

In Glasgow, there were protests against the Undersea Defence Technology (UDT) exhibition in Glasgow, sponsored by arms manufacturers BAE Systems and Babcock. Despite the criticism, the Scottish National Party-controlled council defended the UDT arms fair in mid-May, only withdrawing its ‘…

1 August 2018 Kim Bryan

Adults join the global climate strike on 20 September

Climate strike Manila, Philippines, 24 May. Photo: Leo sabangan II /350.org cc by-nc-sa2.0

Candidates will step off the campaign trail; sports stars off the pitch; celebrities will scrub off makeup and teachers will lay down chalk; cooks will close restaurants and bring meals to protests; pensioners too will break daily routines and join together in an unprecedented historical moment.

As we deal with devastating climate impacts and hurtle towards dangerous climate tipping…

1 August 2018 Lotte Reimer

Welsh anti-nuke campaigners bring direct action to Westminster

Ben Lake, MP for Ceredigion supports locked-on protesters in Westminster. Photo: Zoe Broughton

On 20 June, peace campaigners from Wales locked on to the railings outside the Westminster parliament in London together with about 50 Scottish and English activists as part of a Trident Ploughshares action.

Supported by nearly 50 more activists, they highlighted the UK’s refusal to engage with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted by the UN in 2017. Several MPs,…

1 August 2018 Andrew Smith

British government acted 'irrationally and unlawfully' in allowing arms exports for use in Yemen

CAAT supporters celebrate, Court of Appeal, London, 20 June. Photo: Darren Johnson

The public and press benches were absolutely full on the morning of 20 June, when the court of appeal in London ruled that the British government had acted ‘irrationally and unlawfully’ in allowing UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen.

The ruling means that the government must not allow future sales to the Saudi-led forces that are at war in Yemen, and that it must review existing…

1 August 2018 Phil Steele

Welsh campaigners travel to Japan to meet Fukushima evacuee

In May–June, a delegation from Welsh anti-nuclear group PAWB (People Against Wylfa B) visited Japan (under pro-nuclear PM Shinzo Abe) at the invitation of Friends of the Earth Japan. PAWB has been fighting a 30-year battle against the building of new nuclear reactors on the beautiful coast of Anglesey, North Wales.

After the Fukushima disaster, German owners pulled out of Horizon Nuclear (formed to build nuclear power in the UK) in 2012, and sold it on to Hitachi – so PAWB decided…

1 August 2018 PN staff

Hundreds join mass action at Lancashire fracking site

Protesters blockade Preston New Road fracking site, 28 June. Photo: Reclaim the Power

At the end of June, hundreds of people joined a mass action camp blockading energy company Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road (PNR) fracking site in Lancashire, three years after Lancashire county council rejected the company’s application to drill for shale gas.

Anti-fracking network Reclaim the Power organised ‘Block Around the Clock’ as a 48-hour non-stop non-arrestable festival of resistance…

1 August 2018 David Polden

20,000 Palestinian women march for end to illegal siege

On 7 July, the Palestine Chronicle reported that the Palestinian ‘Great March of Return’ had taken place near the Gaza-Israel border for the 15th consecutive Friday. A Palestinian man was shot dead by an Israeli soldier, bringing the overall Great March death toll to 135.

Nearly 400 Palestinians were injured on 7 July, according to the Palestinian ministry of health. Overall, some 5,000 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli live fire and tear gas during the largely…

1 August 2018 Becky Knight

Processions in Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff and London commemorate 100th anniversary of suffrage victory

Everywoman goes to Cardiff. Photo: Lynne Dickens

On 10 June, there were processions of women and girls in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London to commemorate the centenary of the Representation of the People Act that gave the first British women the right to vote.

Carried on these processions were 100 centenary banners, made by 100 women artists who had been invited to create them by working with communities across the UK.

As a textile artist, I make my own work for…

1 June 2018 PN staff

Swedish ships begin two-month journey

On 15 May, boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla set out from Gothenburg, Sweden on a two-month journey to the besieged Palestinian territory. Three Swedish ships, the Mairead, the Falestine/Palestine and Freedom to Gaza, were joined by a converted Norwegian fishing boat, Al Awda/The Return. The Mairead is named after Mairead Maguire, the Peace People activist from Belfast, northern Ireland, who was joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.…

1 June 2018 Milan Rai

Trump's Korea summit is heading for disaster, argues Milan Rai

US national security advisor John Bolton, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, US president Donald Trump and US vice-president Mike Pence (left to right) on 2 May 2018. Photo: US State Department

We can expect a lot of twists and turns over the next month, before the unexpected 12 June summit in Singapore between US president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. There is a reasonable way forward that experts agree gives a solid chance for building towards some kind of…

1 June 2018 PN staff

Hamas offers ceasefire as Israel shoots 3,000 unarmed Gazans

East of the town of Khuza’ah, southern Gaza Strip , 6 April, part of a photo essay by researchers for Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Photo: Muhammad Sabah via B’Tselem

The death toll continued to rise as PN went to press. Israeli snipers killed over 100 unarmed Palestinians in six weeks of demonstrations at the fence separating Gaza from Israel.

During the ‘Great March of Return’, Israeli forces injured more than 5,000 protesters, over 3,000 of them with live…