Reviews

Now More Than Ever, Here More Than Anywhere is the title of the last song in this well-researched and epic anti-nuclear song encyclopaedia. The song was written by singer songwriter Geordie McIntyre especially for the book and sent with a note saying, “a song in print is dead-in-the-water – to make it sail, it has to be sung.”

The spirit of this note flows through the book, which tells the story of the last 50 years of Scottish CND through song, ear-witness accounts and narrative by some of the song writers.

The book includes…

Combining American historian Howard Zinn’s bestselling A People’s History of the United States and his autobiography You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train, A People’s History of American Empire is an inspirational “history from below” in comic form.

Starting with 9/11, the book takes the form of an extended lecture from Zinn, focusing on lesser-known episodes from American history, including the invasion of the Philippines in 1898 (where an early form of waterboarding was used during interrogations), the 1913 Ludlow massacre of…

At the beginning of 2008, Coventry Peace House launched a campaign to highlight the plight of stateless people. This book – launched in Refugee Week 2008 – is the result of collaboration by workers on the campaign. Both campaign and book raise the issue of statelessness in Britain and globally, providing a valuable contribution to the wider issue of the sufferings of asylum seekers and the various ways in which this is addressed in Britain today.

The book begins by giving an overview of global statelessness and international law. A…

Late in 2007, someone forwarded me an excoriating critique of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) - the largest of Britain’s Trotskyist groups, and the driving force behind the Stop the War Coalition. Noting that the party had “shrunk to a shadow of the size it was even a few years ago” and that “anyone who has raised the issue has been derided”, the piece – written by a long-term SWP member for the Party’s internal bulletin - concluded that “[u]nless we radically address the decline we’ve fallen into, and transform the culture that has up…

On 18 January 2009, as Israeli bombs – many of them containing British-made components – rained down on the people of Gaza, six people entered the EDO arms factory in Brighton, and proceeded to carry out a people’s decommissioning. Equipment used to make weapons’ components was smashed, and computers and filing cabinets were thrown out of windows. EDO claimed they had suffered £300,000 of damage – no mention, of course, of the damage being caused by their weapons in Gaza. All six were arrested and are to be put on trial in Brighton,…

This isn’t a book about humanitarian relief, or really about the aid delivered by aid agencies at all. Instead its about the much bigger sums which rich countries’s governments contribute to African infrastructure, governance and welfare systems on a regular basis.

Most African countries receive more than 10% of their GDP in aid, and a few, like Sierra Leone and Burundi, receive more than 30 per cent. Aid received on this scale has an enormous impact, but not necessarily a good one, Glennie argues. For a start, governments who are…

This upbeat documentary begins with the observation that, despite contrary perceptions, there is actually less armed conflict in the world today than ever before. The film contends that there is a wave of co-operative, nonviolent responses emerging throughout the world to the growing challenges posed by climate change, resource depletion, population growth and economic inequality.

The film surveys some of these initiatives, flitting across the globe from Kenya to Colombia, from the UK to Nigeria, and covering the whole scale of…

This timely British Library exhibition and accompanying book reflect the civil liberties debate moving into the mainstream and allow an important opportunity to reflect on the history of the struggle and to value what has been achieved so far.

On the one hand it emphasises the importance of codifying rights on paper (laws, manifestos etc…) and the power of this in sustaining ideas over time. It starts with the Magna Carta, the most significant provision of which was brought into mainstream law with the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.…

The Israel-Palestine conflict is often presented in the British media as a highly controversial subject of near-labyrinthine complexity – with its “road maps”, “final status agreements”, and endless “peace processes”. The tacit implication is clear: unless you’ve spent ten years getting a PhD in Israel-Palestine studies, and can argue fluently about the minutiae of the Wye River Memorandum and the Yom Kippur war, don’t even dream of trying to form an independent opinion. In truth, as Norman Finkelstein documents with forensic scholarship in…

This vast history spans the late 19th and early 20th centuries, charting not only the life of Edward Carpenter, but also the early development of today’s political and social movements. But at its heart is Carpenter’s struggle with legitimising homosexuality, both in his own life and as an integral part of a new way of living.

While Carpenter’s commitments to the labour movement, democracy and social transformation led to his involvement in adult education, the trade union movement and women’s suffrage, his desire for change involved…

To mark his eightieth birthday The New Press have published a new selection of Noam Chomsky’s political and linguistic writings (The Essential Chomsky).

While some of the selections (which span almost five decades) would have to be included in any essential collection - the famous demolition of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour, or his reflections on the 1967 march on the Pentagon, where he was arrested for civil disobedience – there are also some surprising omissions, eg. his brilliant, epic essay on the Spanish Civil War, as…

Between May and December of 1961 nearly 60 Freedom Rides took place across the southern states of America. The Riders came from a variety of backgrounds and crossed age, gender, race, geographical, professional, religious and political boundaries.

Their aim was to challenge in a nonviolent way the state laws which segregated blacks and whites in the transport systems of the southern states. Riders travelled side by side on interstate buses, defied segregation laws in the public facilities in the bus stations they travelled through,…

Last year, an intelligent and committed activist confessed to me that they did not really understand what “capitalism” meant. More recently, another friend bemoaned to me the high level of coverage given over to the current financial crisis in the papers – not for lack of appreciation of the subject’s importance, but because most of the coverage was either unintelligible or uninformative.

Fortunately, help is now on hand for both of them. Well-structured, straightforwardly written, and leavened with apposite quotes, shocking…

On 31 January 2003, Katharine Gun, a 28-year old translator of Mandarin at Government Communication Headquarters in Cheltenham, arrived at work to find she had been copied in to an email from Frank Koza at the American National Security Agency.

With the US and UK facing stiff opposition at the United Nations to its aggressive stance on Iraq, the email explained how the American and British intelligence agencies were mounting a “dirty tricks” operation at the Security Council in an attempt to gain support for an invasion.

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The title of this book, and the reputation of its author, suggests it could be a welcome addition to a peace activist’s bookshelf. However for anyone interested specifically in pacifism, rather than just peace, it is a profoundly annoying and disappointing book. Perhaps the stark use of a nuclear disarmament symbol on the cover, when much of the book is nothing to do with nuclear weapons specifically, should have been a warning of the muddle inside.

Another clue – for people who approach a book like this by starting with a brief…