On 27 March, I was arrested, handcuffed and placed in a police cell for over 12 hours. My crime? Nonviolently protesting at an event glorifying violence: the Cardiff Arms Fair (officially ‘Defence Procurement, Research, Technology and Exportability 2018’).
The Welsh government has built links between Wales and arms industries – selling it as job creation. The arms fair, in the Motorpoint Arena…
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…
On 7 April, the organisers of the Liverpool Anarchist Bookfair excluded two people from the gathering, which was taking place in the huge Black-E community arts centre near the city centre.
Brian Bamford, a member of the Northern Anarchist Network, was told in advance that he would not be allowed in, and was stopped at the door. Another man (whose name is not known) was taken from a workshop by…
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) occupied the central lobby of the Westminster parliament in London just before midday on 18 April. DPAC taped out a ‘crime scene’ with the outline of a ‘murder victim’ laid on the floor. They demanded the scrapping of Universal Credit, a working-age benefit. DPAC claim it produces ‘crimes against claimants’, including 160,000 children losing free school meals and the increased use of foodbanks in areas where it’s been introduced.
After the…
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.…
People from across Ceredigion and beyond gathered in Aberystwyth on 16 April to protest against the UK government’s decision to bomb Syria. Organised by Stop the War Ceredigion and Aberystwyth Peace and Justice Network, the protest attracted more than 70 people.
It was part of a UK-wide series of protests organised by the Stop the War Coalition against the UK government, referring to the…
From an obscure technology originally used for target practice, drones have become almost central to the way in which armed forces fight wars and project power in the early 21st century.
The US and Israel played a leading role in the development and use of remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called drones. Both countries have manufactured and operated unarmed and armed systems since the early 2000s. While these two nations monopolised the field for more than a…
Vigils were held across Wales after Palestinian authorities declared 31 March a national day of mourning. 17 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza as the Israeli Defence Forces cracked down on ‘The Great Return March’ starting on Land Day, 30 March.
On 31 March, Aberystwyth’s street choir Côr Gobaith fundraised for Medical Aid for Palestinians. In Llanidloes, about 20 protesters pinned…
On 21 March, an Israeli military juvenile court in Ofer in the Occupied Territories sentenced Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi to eight months in prison (with a further eight months suspended) and fined her 5,000 shekels ($1,440). She had agreed to a deal where she pleaded guilty to four of the 12 charges she faced, according to her lawyer.
Ahed, then 16, had been filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the…
A Dangerous Woman is a compelling new play by Alex Gifford that has re-fashioned the well-known story of Alice Wheeldon (1866–1919) so that this piece of radical history speaks clearly to our times. Performed in Stroud by the outstanding Gloucester Theatre Company in February, the fluid and fluent production got off to a blinding start and held our attention to its moving solitary end, with Alice singing a capella to a white dove we imagine but never see.
The story is a…
On 13 March, two anti-fracking campaigners were found guilty of highway obstruction at a site near Kirby Misperton village, North Yorkshire. Dr Julia Collings and Ronnie Hollarand were each given six months’ conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs of £220. In October 2017, the pair had occupyied a three-sided tower in the middle of the road, blocking access to the proposed fracking site, as part of a long-running campaign of nonviolent direct action.
This verdict followed a…
With my husband and six members of Machynlleth’s Mid Wales Refugee Action, I was one of many who joined the 24-hour ‘Freedom fast’ on International Women’s Day called in support of women on hunger strike in Yarl’s Wood detention centre. There, asylum-seeking women and children are locked up indefinitely until the home office decides to deport them. Some have been held for years with no idea what awaits them.
In 2010, the then children’s commissioner for England, Albert Aynsley-…
Dramatic developments in the #spycops scandal unfolded on 21 March, when people targeted by undercover police, their lawyer and their supporters walked out of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) being held at the high court in London.
Baroness Doreen Lawrence backed the walk-out, saying that the chair of the inquiry, sir John Mitting, was…
Peacebuilding ‘is about a longstanding partnership, not a series of one-off projects’, said Charlotte Morris, senior conflict adviser at the department for international development, on 21 March, at the launch of Building Peace Together, a new Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) resource book.
‘At its most effective, peacebuilding is a combination of historical knowledge, local expertise, and international experience,’ Morris added.
The launch, at…
Young farmer and Aberystwyth student Elfed Wyn Jones ended his seven-day hunger strike for the devolution of broadcasting powers to Wales outside the Senedd in Cardiff on 27 February.
He presented a letter to the Welsh government ahead of a debate on the matter.
Elfed commented: ‘I genuinely think that this is a crucial question. If people don’t get the right facts about who is making decisions in their name, if they don’t understand how they’re governed, our young…
The crown prosecution service (CPS) broke off proceedings against 13 activists awaiting trial for obstructing the highway while protesting against the DSEI arms fair in London last September. Five protesters, from Faslane Peace Camp, are still scheduled to go on trial on 11–12 April.
The dropping of the cases followed the acquittals, on 7 February, of four Christian peace activists, and the dismissal of charges the next day against four Quaker abseilers, by a different district…
80 LGBT+ rights defenders protested outside Westminster Abbey as the queen and the prime minister celebrated Commonwealth Day on 12 March, ahead of a Commonwealth summit in April. The Commonwealth Equality Network and 14 other groups demanded gay rights including the decriminalisation of same-sex relations in 37 of the 53 Commonwealth nations. Photo: Peter Tatchell Foundation
The ‘Collateral Damage’ project is inviting everyone to commemorate non-military victims of war by making unique textile white poppies. The military often refer to non-military deaths or destruction as ‘collateral damage’. These days, over 90 percent of people killed in war are civilians. Others suffer loss of family, home, community and even their country.
In November 2018, it will be 100 years since the end of the First World War. This centenary year is a golden opportunity to…
In February, we lost our dear friend and comrade Beaty Smith after a prolonged period of failing health. Beaty was born in 1937 to a large working-class family in Garston, Liverpool, and her experience of growing up in 1940s Britain among intelligent, self-educated people informed her profound sense of social justice and lifelong adherence to the socialist cause.
Beaty worked in National Health hospitals all her life, first as a nurse and later as a ward sister. In Paris in 1968,…
Awel Irene writes: As the sun set on Caernarfon castle, a symbol of centuries of militarism and oppression, eight of us unpacked a van that arrived from faraway London to launch the CND Symbol tour. We put together the jigsawed symbol to celebrate 60 years of protest against nuclear weapons. We remembered the hundreds of people who have gathered in that square rallying and wearing CND badges, including Dilys O’Brien Owen who died in February shortly before her 103rd birthday after a life of…
