Judge Crabtree warned us that while judgements in magistrates’ courts usually take between 45 minutes and two hours, this one was likely to take considerably longer. He was right; his judgement took three-and-a-half hours. But it was a judgement worth waiting for.
Six activists were being prosecuted for ‘aggravated trespass’ for occupying trees along the route of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road in January 2013 (see PN 2554, 2566).
The first two hours or so of the hearing in…
At the beginning of March, over 50 people, representing 18 organisations from over a dozen European countries, met by a frozen river, in the snow-bound Norwegian town of Evenstad, to develop plans for the European arm of La Via Campesina (LVC), the international peasants’ movement.
LVC, possibly the world’s largest union, with over 200 million members in its constituent organisations, defends the rights of small, peasant, family farmers against the depredations of capitalist…
As the European parliament votes overwhelmingly to ban ‘targeted killings’ and fully autonomous drones, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and countering terrorism has called on the US, UK and Israel – the three states currently known to be using armed drones – ‘to disclose the results of any fact-finding inquiries into [30 specific drone strikes in which civilians appear either to have been killed or had their lives put at immediate risk] or to explain why no such inquiries have been…
Contrary to popular report (even among some peace activists), Faslane Peace Camp is still here and still opposing weapons of mass destruction, war and militarism. Things have been a little quiet over the winter but now spring is here and we’re ready for action.
Early on 19 March, I was arrested on board HMS Ambush inside Faslane naval base (which houses Britain’s Trident nucler missile submarines) along with fellow peace camper Jamie Watson.
We’d set off a couple of hours…
A demonstration in Oxford in February by COIN (Climate Outreach and Information Network), who are fundraising to deliver community climate training sessions in the wake of the recent flooding in England and Wales. www.climateoutreach.org.uk PHOTO: COIN
Reading Police Station, 8 February.
Photo: Wendy Lewis
If Cameron thinks the campaign against nuclear weapons is over, he can think again. We set off in our minibus, full to bursting with singers eager to take part in the latest action against Trident: a mass crime reporting at Reading police station, near the sites at Burghfield and Aldermaston where nuclear warheads are developed and tested.
The sight of flooded fields and swollen…
2013 Street Choirs festival: Sheffield’s Outaloud in Aberystwyth.
Photo: Val Regan
A radical initiative with great potential, the Campaign Choirs network, was formed during the July 2013 Street Choirs Festival in Aberystwyth. Participants agreed that ‘the political urgency of our times means we want to alert each other to events, demonstrations, etc, and share our songs more often and more widely’.
Since then, Campaign Choirs network’s shared actions have included local and…
On 31 January, about 300 Palestinian activists re-occupied Ein Hijleh, a village in the Jordan Valley that was forcibly depopulated when Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.
The Palestinian popular struggle coordination committee, which organised the occupation, said the aim was to ‘refuse the political status quo, especially given futile negotiations destroying the rights of our people for liberation and claim to their land.’
During the occupation, activists began to make…
On 1 February, over 300 people squeezed into an auditorium in southern Madrid designed for half that number, to remember and celebrate the life of Howard Clark, a key figure in Peace News and War Resisters’ International (WRI) for several decades.
The evening event, organised by WRI, was attended by peace activists from across Europe, as well as many folk from Madrid, where Howard has lived with his partner Yolanda Juarros Barcenilla since 1996. (Yolanda organised a weekend programme…
On 18 February, US peace activists Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli were each sentenced to five years and two months in prison, followed by three years’ ‘supervised release’. Sister Megan Rice, a nun and the oldest of the three at 84, was sentenced to two years and 11 months (plus three years’ probation) for her part in their action at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the US’s primary storehouse for weapons-grade uranium.
During the July 2012 action ‘Transform Now Plowshares’ action, the…
On 15 May, descendants of more than 30 First World War conscientious objectors will take part in this year’s International Conscientious Objectors’ Day commemoration in Tavistock Square, London.
One of the speakers on 15 May, Mary Dobbing, took part last year in the women’s peace delegation which visited the Afghan Peace Volunteers in Kabul. She also campaigns for justice for Palestinians in the footsteps of her CO grandfather, a Quaker teacher in the Middle East at the time of the…
On 23 January, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that ‘Across Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the Obama administration has launched more than 390 drone strikes in five years – five times as many as were launched in the entire George W Bush presidency [ie 51 strikes in four years]’. According to the Bureau these strikes have killed more than 2,400 people, at least 273 of whom were reportedly civilians. On 5 February, Pakistani drone investigator Karim Khan was abducted from his home…
According to figures obtained from the ministry of defence (MoD) by Drone Wars UK in January and February 2014 under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), unmanned British Reaper drones launched 457 weapons over Afghanistan up to the end of 2013. A further 39 launches (during 250 missions) were made using US drones up to the end of December 2012.
In what appears to have been a deliberate attempt to mislead parliament, the MoD neglected to mention the latter strikes when asked ‘how…
On 31 January, four intrepid individuals from Oxford CND braved continuous rain to hold up banners outside the main gate of RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, calling for an end to drone warfare.
Inside the base, British prime minister David Cameron and French president François Hollande held an Anglo-French summit at which they agreed to jointly invest £200 million in a two-year study into a future military drone – the study to be carried out by French company Dassault and Britain’s…
For many of us, reading Peace News or attending Peace News events has sometimes had a significant impact in some way. We would be very grateful if you could send us your stories and views on what Peace News has done for you.
In 500 words or less, please tell us what Peace News means to you.
Has reading Peace News raised your awareness of new issues or changed your mind about something important? Has attending a PN event led to an important connection or initiative? Has the…
On 9 January, a three-day trial in Brighton resulted in acquittals for 10 people arrested for blockading the drilling site near Balcombe on 26 July. This was the first of over 20 trials arising out of protests against energy giant Cuadrilla’s attempts to drill for oil and gas near the West Sussex village.
All 10 were acquitted of ‘obstruction of the highway’. Defence lawyers argued that as the B2036 London Road at Balcombe was closed to…
On 15 January, 79-year old Margaretta D’Arcy, writer, member of Aosdána which honours outstanding contributors to the arts in Ireland, and widow of the late playwright John Arden, was arrested at her home and ferried by squad car to Limerick prison to serve a three-month sentence. Her crime: failure to sign a bond pledging to no longer trespass onto unauthorised areas of Shannon airport.
Margaretta D’Arcy has been arrested twice for sitting on the runway at Shannon…
Over 120 people squeezed into the Bloomsbury Suite at Friends House in London on 17 January to hear renowned US author Adam Hochschild talk about his book To End All Wars – the only recent account of the First World War to foreground the war’s opponents.
According to Hochschild: ‘The First World War changed the world for the worse in every conceivable way, but despite its folly and devastation people in Britain have one thing they should feel proud of. From 1914 to…
On 10 and 13 January, Reading magistrates court dismissed charges of ‘obstruction of the highway’ against two groups of Trident Ploughshares (TP) activists because of procedural errors by the crown prosecution service (CPS).
On 10 January, Leonna O’Neill, Jamie Watson and Julia Mercer were on trial for their participation in the international Action AWE blockades outside the atomic weapons establishment (AWE) Burghfield on 2 September last year (see PN 2562). Julia Mercer had…
On 10 December, 15 soldiers from 1st Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment were sentenced to jail at Bulford Military Court for a concerted act of disobedience. (A 16th is yet to be sentenced.)
This courageous action was carried out during a parade in front of 1,000 other soldiers at Archers Post British army barracks in Kenya. The 16 soldiers were ordered to stand to attention, but instead their corporal, Anthony Brown, shouted ‘sit down’ and the dissenters dropped to…
