On 22 October, Aberystwyth Arts Centre hosted an event by Ceredigion Stop the War to explore the meaning of imperialism 15 years after the attack on the World Trade Centre. The title ‘War is Peace’ was picked from George Orwell’s novel 1984.
Over 50 participants heard professor Ken Booth, senior academic researcher and author on…
In Australia, five Christian peace pilgrims had charges against them dismissed after entering one of the country’s most sensitive locations.
On 29 September, Jim Dowling, Margaret Pestorius, Andy Paine, Tim Webb and Franz Dowling walked onto the Pine Gap US spy base at Alice Springs, in Arrernte country, ‘to lament the death caused by the base and to resist the violence that is perpetrated there’.
The Pine Gap Five, aged 19 – 72, were charged with trespass under the…
In October, two women presented anti-nuclear arguments to Reading magistrates’ court, but were convicted for their actions during the June month of direct action at Atomic Weapons Establishment Burghfield.
On 14 October, Mary Millington pleaded not guilty to painting ‘No more deadly convoys’ on the road without permission, and ‘going equipped’ to cause criminal damage. When she was arrested on 28 June, police took two cans of spray paint and bolt croppers from her.
Mary…
On 22 October, around 60 British climate campaigners assembled in the autumn sunshine at the vast cooling towers of Drax power station in North Yorkshire. We were there to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first Climate Camp, held at Drax, and to once more call for Drax’s closure, and an end to both coal and large-scale biomass burning in the UK.
Climate protesters were at Drax 10 years ago because, in burning 13m tonnes of coal and emitting over 20m tonnes of CO2 every year…
‘No one questions that these people are terrorists, but their presence in that city cannot justify an assault on 275,000 innocent people, still less the imposition of a siege, which is, by its very nature, a wholly indiscriminate tactic.’
These were the words of British foreign secretary Boris Johnson during a speech in which he…
27 October was a truly historic day. We voted in the European parliament calling on all UN member states to support the UN general assembly resolution on nuclear security and non-proliferation. This landmark resolution, which would trigger a new treaty banning all nuclear weapons, was adopted with a large majority by the UN general assembly that same day.
International negotiations are set to start in March 2017 with a conference to discuss a ‘legally binding instrument to…
In 2015, there was one death for every 269 arrivals. This year, the UN reports, the rate for migrants crossing the Mediterranean has risen to one death for 88 arrivals.
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Aberystwyth and the city of Hiroshima were symbolically linked when a local peace activist visited the Japanese city on 26 October. Wishing for peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons, Ian Bell brought paper cranes from the peace tree in Aberystwyth to The Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when the world’s first atom bomb was dropped over the city of…
On 10 September, the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth hosted the EF Schumacher-inspired ‘Small is Beautiful’ festival with an exciting mix of debates, workshops, arts and talks (spanning hydroelectricity, pee power, zero-carbon Britain, aquaponics, campaign-building, thatching, tiny homes, improvising…) with debates captured in visual minutes by Creative Connection.
Practical Action’s Paul Smith…
On 1 October, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is organising a major protest simultaneously at RAF/USAF Fylingdales on the North Yorkshire Moors and at USAF Croughton in Northamptonshire.
Fylingdales is a US ballistic missile early warning radar base and could initiate a nuclear response to a missile attack. As part of the US missile defence system, it is also a component of the US nuclear strike force. At Croughton, the US will be spending £200m to turn the base into…
This summer, postgraduate students at the Centre for Alternative Technology explored the construction of emergency shelters as part of their MSc degree in ‘Sustainability and Adaptation’.
Led by Jamie Richardson of Shelter and Construction, the students used the examples of Gaza and Nepal to learn about sustainable construction in the context of war and natural disaster.
Though they seem simple structures, considerable thought…
The climate crisis is a racist crisis. That was the message of a Black Lives Matter UK protest at London City Airport on 6 September, when nine activists used a tripod and chains to close down a runway for over six hours, grounding over 130 flights.
The action sparked two debates. One was about the relevance of climate change, aviation and pollution to the anti-racist struggle.
Black Lives Matter UK (BLM) said: ‘Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly,…
On 16 September, 77-year old retired teacher, Brian Quail stopped his second nuclear warhead convoy, this time at Raploch, near Stirling in Scotland. Brian and fellow activist Alasdair Ibbotson flagged the lead truck down, slowing it down. Alasdair lay in front of the second truck, which had stopped, and Brian crawled underneath it. They held the convoy up for 15 minutes…
On 27 September, the Women’s Boat to Gaza (WBG) set sail in the boat Zaytouna-Oliva from its final port in Messina, Italy, to denounce and break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza. A second boat, the Amal-Hope II, was making final preparations and was scheduled to depart from Messina soon after. Both boats were expected to arrive…
In mid-September, Pat Gaffney of Pax Christi was invited to Scotland to share her experience of a conference in Rome in April which called the Christian church to recommit to the centrality of gospel nonviolence. Pat’s visit to Glasgow and Edinburgh was organised by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Scottish Christians against Nuclear Arms and the Scottish Justice and Peace Commission.
The Rome conference looked at all the ways in which Jesus proclaimed nonviolence. In words, he…
France led the charge against Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 not out of a concern for Libyan civilians, but out of national self-interest. That is the claim put forward in a house of commons foreign affairs committee report on Britain’s participation in the war against Libya, published on 14 September (see box below). This article…
On 9 August, there was a large waterborne protest, involving 33 activists in two yachts and 13 kayaks, at the only Trident submarine base for the US Pacific fleet, the Kitsap-Bangor naval base near Seattle, Washington state. The activists marked Nagasaki day by sailing and paddling the entire length of the Bangor waterfront where nuclear warheads and Trident missiles are loaded onto submarines, and where submarines are resupplied for ballistic missile patrols in the Pacific Ocean.
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‘We’ve put up with noise and dust from the pits – we’re used to it. We shouldn’t grumble about a few turbines singing in the wind’. These words were spoken in 2000 and, 16 years later, the community wind farm turbines in Mynydd y Gwrhyd, 20 miles north of Swansea, are due to be commissioned by December.
Community benefit society Awel (Welsh for ‘wind’) is funding the scheme through shares (raising £1.27 million to date) and Welsh government loans of £4.…
On 23 September, Index on Censorship and English PEN, another freedom of expression group, held a vigil outside the Turkish embassy in London in support of art teacher Ayse Çelik and others currently persecuted for speaking out in Turkey.
As we went to press, Çelik was awaiting a new trial date, accused of ‘promoting terrorist organisation propaganda’ after she called in…
