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The Peace News log
The Peace News log is a space for reflection, reportage and analysis, by activists from the UK and beyond. It is the blog of Peace News, the grassroots peace movement newspaper. If you have an article that you would like to contribute to the Peace News log, please contact us.
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New York, 7 July 2017: Negotiations of a new international treaty that bans nuclear weapons concluded at the United Nations today as the treaty was formally adopted by states. The United Kingdom, alongside other nuclear-armed states, has boycotted the negotiations despite government claims to support multilateral disarmament and a world without nuclear weapons.
'States that are serious about eliminating nuclear weapons have joined the United Nations treaty negotiations to ban nuclear weapons and they represent the majority of states in the world,' said Richard Moyes of Article 36.
'The UK along with other states that possess nuclear weapons have chosen to boycott these talks, but the process has shown that any group of committed and concerned states can and should take collective responsibility to reject these horrific weapons,' said Moyes.
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At an April, 2017 Symposium on Peace in Nashville, TN, Martha Hennessy spoke about central tenets of Maryhouse, a home of hospitality in New York City, where Martha often lives and works. Every day, the community there tries to abide by the counsels of Dorothy Day, Martha’s grandmother, who co-founded houses of hospitality and a vibrant movement in the 1930s. During her talk, she held up a postcard-sized copy of one of the movement’s defining images, Rita Corbin's celebrated woodcut listing "The Works of Mercy" and "The Works of War."
She read to us. "The Works of Mercy: Feed the hungry; Give drink to the thirsty; Clothe the naked; Visit the imprisoned; Care for the sick; Bury the dead." And then she read: "The Works of War: Destroy crops and land; Seize food supplies; Destroy homes; Scatter families; Contaminate water; Imprison dissenters; Inflict wounds, burns; Kill the living."
The following week, US general James Mattis was asked to estimate the death toll from the U.S. first use in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, of the MOAB, or Massive Ordinance Air Burst bomb, the largest non-nuclear weapon in U.S. arsenals.
"We stay away from BDA, (bomb damage assessment), in terms of the number of enemy killed," he told reporters traveling with him in Israel. "It is continuing our same philosophy that we don't get into that, plus, frankly, digging into tunnels to count dead bodies is probably not a good use of our troops' time."
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The Movement for the Abolition of War (MAW), organiser of the series of Peace History Conferences, has a strong and creative relationship with the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London. This works because, on MAW’s side, there is an attitude not of dogmatic pacifism but of reasoned opposition to the legitimacy of war; and on the Museum’s side, war is not glamorised but commemorated in all its aspects. This makes it a fitting venue for a conference like the one on 10 June, especially as the IWM in London is also currently running a major exhibition on the history of the peace movement.
The previous evening, actor and writer Michael Mears presented his one-man play This evil thing at the nearby Oasis Hub. The story of conscientious objectors in the First World War, and especially of CO Bert Brocklesby, was brought to life by Mr Mears as he rearranged the wooden crates which served as props to suggest platforms, trenches or rooms. He also played every role, putting on a jacket to indicate a new character, and switching accents and mannerisms with ease. The play, which first won praise at the Edinburgh Fringe, is accessible to all, a riveting story for those with no prior knowledge of the subject, and one that will probably shed new light on this topic even for seasoned peace campaigners.
The day which followed illustrated both the diversity and the consistency to be found in those working for peace.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce, writer and screenwriter famed for his opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, read extracts from a work written in 1517 by Desiderius Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace, in which Peace, personified, wonders why humanity persists in the use of violence. Both the issues and the wit with which they are described are surprisingly relevant for a modern audience.
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made an extraordinary speech just days after a suicide bomber killed 22 people, nine of them teenagers, one an eight-year-old, at the end of a pop concert in Manchester on 22 May.
In his speech on 25 May, Jeremy Corbyn linked the Manchester attack to British foreign policy, breaking a deeply-held taboo in British politics. (The taboo was also broken in the aftermath of the 7/7 attacks in 2005 by a number of Conservatives, including current foreign secretary Boris Johnson.) Despite a torrent of abuse from the media, Corbyn emerged unscathed politically, and went on to run the Conservatives a close second in the general election on 8 June.
Here are some key passages from Corbyn's speech:
'Our approach will involve change at home and change abroad.... At home, we will reverse the cuts to our emergency services and police....
'We will also change what we do abroad. Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home.
'That assessment in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children. Those terrorists will forever be reviled and implacably held to account for their actions. But an informed understanding of the causes of terrorism is an essential part of an effective response that will protect the security of our people, that fights rather than fuels terrorism.
'Protecting this country requires us to be both strong against terrorism and strong against the causes of terrorism. The blame is with the terrorists, but if we are to protect our people we must be honest about what threatens our security.
'Those causes certainly cannot be reduced to foreign policy decisions alone. Over the past fifteen years or so, a sub-culture of often suicidal violence has developed amongst a tiny minority of, mainly young, men, falsely drawing authority from Islamic beliefs and often nurtured in a prison system in urgent need of resources and reform. And no rationale based on the actions of any government can remotely excuse, or even adequately explain, outrages like this week’s massacre. But we must be brave enough to admit the war on terror is simply not working. We need a smarter way to reduce the threat from countries that nurture terrorists and generate terrorism.'
Without justifying what had just happened, or previous terrorist attacks, the leader of the Labour party connected 'foreign policy decisions' by the British government with the increased risk of terrorism.
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After dozens of civilians are killed by suicide bombing in a large British city, a major opposition politician speaks up linking the atrocity to British foreign policy. There is a short-lived storm of controversy.
This sequence describes not only the aftermath of the Manchester Arena atrocity on 22 May 2017, but also events after the four suicide bombings that killed 52 people in London on 7 July 2005 (an attack also referred to as '7/7').
The major opposition figure who spoke up in 2005 was not Jeremy Corbyn, now leader of the Labour party, but former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer and former home secretary Ken Clarke, as he began his bid to become leader of the Conservative party. In a bold move, Clarke devoted his leadership campaign launch speech on 1 September 2005 to a long and thoughtful consideration of terrorism and what could be done about it. He began by making the connection between the threat of al-Qa'eda-style terrorism in the UK and British foreign policy:
'The disastrous decision to invade Iraq has made Britain a more dangerous place. The war did not create the danger of Islamic terrorism in this country, which had been growing internationally even before the tragedy of the attacks on 9/11. However the decision by the UK government to become the leading ally of president Bush in the Iraq debacle has made Britain one of the foremost targets for Islamic extremists.'
This insight, that aggressive British foreign policy has increased the risk of terror attacks in the UK, could be called 'foreign policy realism'. Realism in this sense does not justify or excuse the use of violence, or the targeting of civilians. It's about understanding, not condoning. Realism is a recognition of a risk factor that affects how vulnerable some young Muslims are to jihadist propaganda and recruitment.
Realism has been expressed, as we shall see below, by top British counter-terror police and intelligence experts, by the home office and foreign office in a joint secret report on the subject, and by official government advisers. Foreign policy realism is also the view of most British people, as polls have repeatedly shown - seven are given below, from 2005, 2006 and 2017. The link with foreign policy has also been stated clearly by two of the suicide attackers who have killed civilians in Britain.
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In the month since the attack on the Manchester Arena on 22 May, commentators have offered a number of different motivations that could have led a Manchester-born-and-raised 22-year-old to massacre dozens of teenage girls and parents as they left a pop concert.
While there has been a lot of confident speculation by people who never met Salman Abedi, there is one person who has spoken up who definitely knew Abedi well, and who suggested quite a different kind of motivation for his appalling actions:
'Abedi’s sister, Jomana Abedi, said her brother was kind and loving and that she was surprised by what he did this week. She said she thought he was driven by what he saw as injustices. "I think he saw children - Muslim children - dying everywhere, and wanted revenge. He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and he wanted revenge,” she said. “Whether he got that is between him and God."'
This quote was given to the Wall St Journal and published on 25 May: 'Manchester Bomber Believed Muslims Were Mistreated, Sought Revenge'.
It's possible that Jomana Abedi is wrong about what motivated her brother. What is not in doubt is that her testimony is the single best piece of publicly-available evidence about Salman Abedi's state of mind prior to his act of mass murder at the Manchester Arena.
We'll consider exactly what her comment might mean in a later article. Right now, let's examine the way that the British mainstream media handled this important piece of information about the Manchester attack.
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Today, Peace News is publishing the first full-face photographs of 'Andy Davey', the identity taken by undercover police officer Andy Coles in 1991 when he infiltrated the nonviolent direct action group ARROW.
Coles was publicly exposed as a police infiltrator on 12 May, after investigation by the Undercover Research Group. On the same day, details emerged of an abusive sexual relationship that Coles had had with a 19-year-old animal rights activist, 'Jessica', in 1992, while he was undercover. Coles concealed his age (he was 32, but pretended to be 24) and the fact that he was married, as well as his role as an undercover police officer. As a result of these revelations, Coles was forced to resign as deputy police and crime commissioner for Cambridgeshire on 15 May.
Jessica told Police Spies Out Of Lives: 'This has been one of the most stressful times I have ever known: my life as I knew it was a lie. One of the people that I trusted most never existed. I can’t look back at those times in the same way now. I can’t trust my judgement, because I got things so wrong. I am now beginning to look at people I know differently. I can’t even feel that I’m being paranoid, because it’s justified.'
It's clear from the work of the Undercover Research Group that Coles focused his attention on the animal rights movement over the years 1991-1995.
What is only being revealed today is that, early in his tour of duty if not at the very beginning of his work, 'Andy Davey' infiltrated the peace movement.
These photographs document the participation of 'Andy Davey' also known as 'Andy Van' or 'Andy the Van' in an anti-war protest on 16 March 1991 at the US air force base at Fairford, Gloucestershire. The protest was organised by a nonviolent direct action group called 'Gulf War Resisters' - it changed its name a week after the demo to ARROW ('Active Resistance to the Roots Of War').
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Chelsea Manning is a whistleblower who was working for the US military as a data analyst during the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan. She was sentences to serving 35 years in military prison for leaking classified US government documents to the Wikileaks website, and revealing to the public that the US army, the CIA and Iraqi and Afghan forces committed human rights violations. The crimes she exposed have never been investigated.
In one of his final acts before leaving office, US President Barack Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence; the 29-year-old transgender US Army private, born Bradley Manning, was freed on the morning of 17th May 2017, instead of her scheduled 2045 release.
Ben Griffen spoke from Veterans for Peace UK and showed a short extract of the Collateral Murder footage as a reminder of the shocking war crimes, and the everyday acts of atrocity, sanctioned by warfare, that Chelsea's actions revealed when she became a whistleblower.
...Read MoreLeon Fleming's new play concerns a brother and sister growing-up and living in Birmingham trapped in the clutches of an uncaring welfare system. The story is told with flasback scences from their childhood, mixed with the contemporary tale of two people being processed by The System TM and trying to survive. It is a grim tale, but not without moments of comedy, but those bittersweet moments come from the past rather than the relentlessly grim present of our protagonists. Their lives now trapped within the uncaring bureaucracy.
The play was staged at The Hope Teatre, a 50 seat studio theatre above the Hope and Anchor pub, and it was heartening to see a full house. These smaller venues are the breeding grounds of talent. This play was a brave choice. I don't want to be too critical because these stories need to be told. I really wanted to like it; the performances of the two actors, Helen Budge as "Her" and James Clay as "Him", and the production overall are excellent, but it left a sour note. If you are actually living in the hellhole of the dull grind of poverty, then turning the misery into a dramatic work that will sell tickets for a nights entertainment is a bittersweet experience.
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