Buzzy bees at Aberporth drone testing site Photo: Lotte Reimer
Initiated by Anonymous activists, who pulled out at the last minute because they forgot to ask their mums if they could have a party, the protest went ahead with local people, singers, Rebel Clowns and other busy bees, who buzzed in solidarity with drones trying to clear their name.
Said one local drone: ‘It’s tough enough that there are so few of us these days, with pesticides and whatnot, but tarnishing our…
The ‘By the Waters’ performance in Chapter Gallery, Cardiff was conceived by Cardiff-based British-Iraqi artist Rabab Ghazoul to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the second Gulf War. Unsure how to mark the day, Ghazoul decided to create an event that would offer a contemplative space that addressed mourning and remembrance while allowing people to consider and experience in a different way.
Written specifically for the event, the text of Ghazoul’s six-part…
Wales in Scotland Photo: twitter user @ScrapTrident
At the Wales Peace Institute conference in Aberystwyth on 23 March, she said: ‘Wales has a close affinity with Flanders where so many young Welsh men were killed. The Flemish government has made the spreading of peace one of the most important aims of the 1914 remembrance project. The overwhelming majority considered it a government duty to inform people of the horrors and madness of the First World War,…
Day of action outside Houses of Parliament Photo: Edurne Aginaga
The campaigners dramatised the idea of wasting money on the military while making cuts to welfare in a ‘Play the Budget Right’ game show: a student needing tuition fees instead received military hardware; and an injured man received an aircraft carrier instead of medical treatment.
The protest was followed by a lively meeting inside parliament, where Green MP Caroline Lucas articulated the consensus that ‘the…
At the beginning of March, 500 activists from 70 countries gathered in Oslo for a Civil Society Forum organised by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This preceded the Norwegian government’s conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and reflected ICAN’s intention to redirect the debate towards the catastrophic impact of nuclear weapons and to push for a treaty banning them.
The first day focussed on the…
Instead of holding a ‘death party’ (there were many around the country, including one in Trafalgar Square initiated by Class War, and several in former coal-mining villages), Alex Higgins and Tasha Harrison focused attention on those who lost out during the Thatcher era and invited people to donate to important causes. These included: Stonewall (the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity), Shelter (the housing and homelessness charity), the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation and the Child…
Easter Monday at Aldermaston Photo:Sue Longbottom
This year, appropriately or not, Easter Monday fell on 1 April, and CND staged a demo there entitled, ‘Stop Fooling with Nuclear Weapons’.
People from different parts of the country were assigned to various of the eight gates to the factory complex. Those of us from London were assigned to the ‘Home Office Gate’, so, before noon, the start time for the demo, I got out of one of three nearly-full 50-seat coaches from London.…
On 10 April, eight activists from Oxford CND, Reading, Croughton and Hampshire closed Tadley gate at Aldermaston AWE (atomic weapons establishment) as part of a year-long action known as ActionAWE (‘Action Atomic Weapons Eradication to stop Trident replacement’).
The team, dressed in white suits held a 40-minute die-in in front of a large banner (in front of the gate) during the evening end of work shift.
There were no arrests. Police re-directed traffic…
In April, Britain’s Law Society intervened in the case of Mandira Sharma, a Nepalese human rights lawyer facing persecution as an ‘anti-Maoist dollar mongerer’. Sharma, founder and chair of the human rights group Advocacy Forum, is one of a number of human rights defenders in Nepal who have faced threats because of their campaigns against immunity for politicians, paramilitaries and other individuals suspected of war crimes during the Nepali civil war (1996-2006).…
Almost half the British public think that drones ‘make it too easy for Western governments to conduct military strikes in foreign countries’, but are split on the question of whether such strikes have made the west more or less safe overall, recent polls have revealed.
On the other hand, almost a third (32%) of Britons — and 40% of Conservatives — would support the UK government assisting a drone strike ‘to kill a known terrorist overseas’ even if it were ‘likely that 10-15 innocent…
A vigil on The Mound, Edinburgh Photo: Stop Trident
The event has been called by a wide coalition of groups active against nuclear weapons and NATO, and pro-independence campaigns, including Scottish CND, Trident Ploughshares, Stop the War Coalition, Faslane Peace Camp, the Scottish Green Party and the Radical Independence Campaign. In recent weeks, many more have added their names to the list of supporters, with both the Scottish Trade Unions Council and the…
Street choirs Photo: Ieuan Ellis
The Institute
On 23 March in the Morlan Centre, Aberystwyth, there will be a conference of the ongoing campaign for setting up a Wales Peace Institute, ‘Academi Heddwch Cymru’. Speakers will include Jill Evans MEP, Dr Robin Gwyndaf (vice-president of the Fellowship of Reconciliation) and professor Jenny Pearce of the department of peace studies in Bradford University.
In October 2009, a…
Five of the 182 cyclists arrested at last July’s Critical Mass bike ride in east London (PN 2549) were convicted at Westminster magistrates’ court on 14 March. Only nine out of the 182 had been prosecuted; charges were dropped against three and one was found not guilty by district judge Elizabeth Roscoe.
The five who were convicted were found guilty of disobeying a section 12 order (conditions on public processions) under the public order act (1986).
The…
PN carried a photograph of Ernest Rodker, pensioner and G20 protester, flat on his back in the road. (PN 2509)
Ernest had just been knocked to the ground for a second time by police violently clearing demonstrators from Bishopsgate, who were supporting the Climate Camp close by.
Earlier in the day, newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson had died after being pushed to the ground by a policeman (PN 2509, 2550).
The independent police complaints commission (IPCC) reported receiving…
The tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on 19 March was marked by peace group Justice Not Vengeance with a 32-pint vegan jelly (topped by a more modest dessert), as a reminder of ‘Wobbly Tuesday’, when the ministry of defence scrambled to draw up contingency plans for not invading Iraq.
Jellies opposite Downing St photo: JNV
On 8 March, a police and council swoop removed the peace camps in Parliament Square that have been a symbol of war resistance in central London since 2001, when a vigil was begun by the late Brian Haw.
The camps, which have long been seen as a form of resistance to British imperialism, were cleared just days before the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
Westminster council claimed the tents had been left unoccupied for 48 hours, according to a…
While Palestinian prisoners continue hunger strikes against their detention without trial, Israeli and Egyptian forces are using sewage against Palestinians.
Ayman Sharawna (PN 2552-53), hospitalised after a seven-month hunger strike, has agreed to confinement in Gaza for 10 years in return for his release. However, Samer Issawi, 240 days into his hunger strike, announced on 18 March that he had refused a similar deal.
Middle East News reported that, on 6…
After a huge backlash, including 64,000 people signing a critical petition, EDF Energy, the transnational power company, announced on 13 March that it would stop pursuing 21 climate activists for £5m. EDF had claimed that it lost this amount as a result of No Dash for Gas’s week-long occupation of two chimneys at the West Burton gas-fired power station last October (see PN 2552-53 and 2555).
No Dash for Gas activist Danielle Paffard said: ‘A domineering company…
On 12 March, demonstrators protested at Menwith Hill US spy base in Yorkshire in support of US military whistle-blower Bradley Manning, currently on trial, and against the treatment of Guantánamo Bay detainees, many of whom are hunger-striking against deteriorating prison conditions.
At Menwith Hill, they attached a banner saying ‘The Shame of Guantánamo Bay’ to the fence while one demonstrator, dressed in a hooded orange jumpsuit resembling those that…
As peace activists prepare for the first national demonstration at the UK’s new drone base in Lincolnshire on 27 April, new information has emerged regarding British complicity in US drone strikes in Africa, and the UN has condemned the CIA’s deadly drone warfare in Pakistan.
In mid-March, Ben Emmerson QC, the UN special rapporteur for counter-terrorism and human rights, made a three-day trip to Pakistan.
On 15 March, Emmerson issued a statement…
