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Elements of a campaign by Frack Free Wales came together in January when Ceredigion council voted to become the first ‘frack-free’ local authority in Wales.

Fracking is shorthand for ‘hydraulic fracturing’ for oil or gas, underground coal gasification, and coal-bed methane, all of which threaten Wales.

None of these fuels exist in Ceredigion, however. The council’s decision reflected its commitment to moving away from all fossil fuels, which drive climate change.…

3,000 peace activists hold a giant ‘peace scarf’ in Whitehall.
Photo: Dan Viesnik

On 24 January, activists from across the UK gathered in London to protest against the renewal of Britain’s nuclear weapons system. Protesters encircled the ministry of defence and other government buildings with a colourful ‘peace scarf’, knitted in 2014 by thousands of activists from across the globe for the ‘Wool Against Weapons’ campaign. The scarf will now be turned into blankets and sent to areas of…

Nuclear weapons should be banned. That was the view expressed by 44 of the 158 states attending the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in December.

The host nation, Austria, took this one stage further at the end of the conference by publicly pledging to seek a treaty to ban the Bomb. Austria called on all parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to ‘identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination…

In December, the three women leaders of Plaid Cymru – the Party of Wales, the Scottish National Party and the Green Party of England and Wales (Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon and Natalie Bennett) agreed to join forces to oppose billions being wasted on the replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapon system, calling instead for investment in communities, creating jobs and rebuilding the economy.

In the event of a hung parliament in May, with these three parties together…

Eviction of Borras and Holt Community Protection Camp. Photo: Dave Ellison

In January 2014, Westminster prime minister David Cameron announced that his government was ‘going all out for fracking’. (Fracking is the high-pressure hydraulic fracturing of shale rock deep underground to extract natural gas or other fossil fuels.) As an inducement to local authorities, councils were allowed to keep 100% of business rates from shale gas sites.

Defying public opinion, the government also…

On 17 December, five Trident Ploughshares activists painted ‘Scrap Trident, Ban Nukes’ onto the fence around the Faslane nuclear base north of Glasgow. Mary Millington, Gillian Lawrence, Janet Fenton, Barbara Maver and Brian Quail (left to right) were the campaigners taking on Britain’s only nuclear weapons base, home to the UK’s four Trident nuclear submarines. The Scrap Trident coalition is planning a demonstration in Glasgow on 4 April, and a ‘Big Blockade’ of Faslane on 13 April. Photo:…

On 17 December, 100 Palestinian political prisoners ended a solidarity hunger strike after the Israeli prison authorities agreed to stop holding Nahar al-Saadi in solitary confinement and to allow him contact with his family (he had been held in solitary for over 570 days).

The authorities also agreed to end the use of solitary confinement ‘without cause’ – a promise they made previously after the mass hunger strike of mid-2012 (PN 2547-2548).

In other news, after…

Four peace activists, Chris Cole, Penny Walker, Gary Eagling and Katharina Karcher, were arrested inside RAF Waddington, in Lincolnshire, on 5 January, while protesting against the use of armed drones.

The four cut a ‘New Year Gateway for Peace’ into the base and walked towards the Reaper ground control station from which RAF ‘pilots’ operate armed drones. The activists carried banners and reports of civilian casualties from recent UK, NATO and coalition airstrikes in Afghanistan and…

On 23 January, US peace activist Kathy Kelly handed herself in to authorities in Kentucky to start a three-month prison sentence (see p8), one part of the US movement against drone warfare.

On 26 November, on the west coast of the US, Chris Nelson and Shirley Osgood deliberately ‘crossed the line’ outside Beale air force base in California. They handed in a letter asking the base commander to end his role in ‘the kill chain which uses the Global Hawk drone to identify human…

On 12 January, the secretary of state for defence, Michael Fallon, told the house of commons that there had been 99 UK airstrikes in Iraq since the beginning of the air campaign on 22 October. The following day, the ministry of defence (MoD) reported a further strike bringing the total to 100. By our calculations, using reports published by the MoD on their website, approximately one-third of the airstrikes have been carried out by the UK’s armed Reaper drones.

However, it appears…

PAINTING: Jon Lockwood

Around 150 Occupy protesters held the area outside the supreme court near Parliament Square, London, over the weekend of 21-23 November. In mid-October, Occupy Democracy were a presence in the square for nine days, during which police arrested 40 people. Both events saw lectures, discussions and readings. Next event 20-21 December. 

For nearly 20 years (1981-2000), the women of Greenham campaigned relentlessly against land-based Cruise missiles. They put their lives at risk for peace and Helen Thomas, a young Welsh peace activist from Newcastle Emlyn, was killed at Greenham Common in an accident on 5 August 1989.

When the base closed, the women planned a garden on the site of the nuclear nightmare. To honour Greenham’s strong Welsh connections, they decided to use pPennant sandstone from Wales for the…

Aberystwyth Town councillor Jeff Smith lays the white poppy wreath for the second time. Photo: Kelvin Mason

As you read, imagine the contrast between the sea of red poppies gushing from the Tower of London and four fragile white poppy wreaths laid on a storm-lashed memorial in a small seaside town. On Remembrance Sunday, Aberystwyth town council, Aberystwyth Peace and Justice Network (AP&JN), Women in Black and Côr Gobaith laid white poppy wreaths at the war memorial in…

In October, there were several victories in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Kuwait announced it will not deal with 50 European companies because of their involvement in illegal settlements in occupied Palestine. Israeli-owned soft drink company SodaStream moved one of its factories out of the Occupied Territories.

Israeli shipping line Zim apparently cancelled all future shipments to the port of Oakland, after nonviolent blockades.…

On 24 November, a new human rights group, ‘We Stand With Shaker’, launched itself opposite parliament in London, calling for the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, and his return to his family in the UK. Despite being approved for release twice by the US authorities – under president George W Bush in 2007 and under president Barack Obama in 2009, Shaker is still in Guantánamo. The launch was attended by Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve; John McDonnell…

At the 2014 Tory party conference, home secretary Theresa May announced that the Conservative election manifesto for the 2015 election will pledge the introduction of banning orders for extremist groups and ‘extremism disruption orders’ for extremists who ‘who stay just within the law but still spread poisonous hatred’.

But what is an ‘extremist’? David Cameron said Conservatives want to look at the ‘full spectrum of extremism’ and not just the ‘hard end’. Thus the policy says…

Kites not drones at Poppit Sands. Photo: Jill Gough

International Peace Day, 21 September, was celebrated by a ‘Drape the Drones’ event at Parc Aberporth. Protesters sealed off the roundabout and site entrance with colourful scarves – ably assisted by a friendly policeman who not only stopped the traffic but also ordered drivers to switch off their engines to ‘hear the singing’.

The action was a precursor to the first Global Action Day Against the Use of Drones for Surveillance and…

An African-American US Iraq veteran may be able to claim asylum in the EU after arguing that the Iraq war was illegal. On 11 November, a German judge ruled that military deserters may be able to claim asylum in the European Union if they have a reasonable fear that they would have been ordered to commit war crimes if they hadn’t deserted, and if they face punishment on returning to their home country.

Eleanor Sharpston, the advocate general of the Munich administrative court, was…

On 9 August, during an overwhelming Israeli attack on Gaza, an estimated 150,000 people marched from the BBC’s Broadcasting House HQ in central London to a Hyde Park rally in Britain’s biggest-ever demonstration for Gaza. This followed a demonstration on 15 July, when 5,000 protested at the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the Israeli assault, bringing the roads around the Broadcasting House to a standstill.

Some 2,100 inhabitants of Gaza, including over 400 children, were killed by…

CND Cymru commemorated the 69th anniversary of Hiroshima’s tragedy, when the US dropped the first atomic bomb on the city in 1945, with a slow peace walk around the Eisteddfod Maes in Llanelli, accompanied by Côr Cochion’s songs of peace, and the unrolling of a portion of the 11-mile-long ‘Wool against Weapons’ knitting. The second bomb, dropped on 9 August 1945, devastated Nagasaki.

In memory of its victims, Côr Cochion sang the poetic ‘Lullaby of Oleander’ by a Japanese A-bomb…