Wales

Anyone heard of the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC)? No, neither had we until recently. It’s a Whitehall quango created to fast-track planning applications for projects “of national importance”. So what? Well, incinerators – dirty, environmentally unfriendly monstrosities that risk the health of surrounding communities – are not deemed “of national importance”. But airports, ports, and “energy from waste” (EfW) power plants are.

An EfW is essentially an incinerator –…

On 8 March, Aberystwyth Students Against Cuts celebrated a fortnight of occupying university premises. Moving into two of the main university lecture halls, we have been living, sleeping and operating a campaign of resistance against devastating changes to funding in our higher education institutions.

The challenges associated with living in lecture halls have formed strong bonds and nurtured an ever-growing community of student and staff activists. From this platform we are…

The first bombing raid of the Gulf War was launched on Iraq 20 years ago. On 15 January members of Wrexham Peace & Justice Forum and supporters organised a stall in the town centre with a display of information about the effects of war and sanctions on Iraqi children.

Children’s shoes were displayed alongside the information to remind us of all the lost children of Iraq. Well over a million Iraqi children have died either as a direct result of warfare or indirectly,…

Within four days of a campaign launch, over a hundred people have signed up to withhold their television licence fee in protest over threats to the Welsh language channel S4C. Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) are campaigning for the UK government to guarantee independence and sufficient funding for the channel.

Amongst those who have said they won’t be paying the tax that funds the BBC are the singers Dafydd Iwan, Gai Toms and Bryn Fôn and the academic Dr…

An All-Wales Palestine Network has been set up following a meeting with Jill Evans, MEP. It is thought that an all-Wales group can provide more “clout” than local groups. The purpose of this Network is action. No meetings, no chat, no structure. Concerted action only. Contact Pippa Bartolotti pippa@pippa-bartolotti.co.uk

CND Cymru is working flat out on making the links between public spending cuts and the atrocity of a Trident replacement that is going ahead…

So far, this winter of discontent has seen some really positive actions in Aberystwyth. On 24 November last year, students from Aberystwyth University “took education into their own hands”, setting up a Free University in the town square. Joining with lecturers and people from schools and the wider community, the Free University action organised by Aber Students Against The Cuts (a Facebook group) opposed spending cuts in education, increases in tuition fees, and the restructuring of higher…

Once again this year, Aberystwyth town council voted to lay a white peace poppy wreath at the war memorial. In truth, stalwarts on the council had a struggle getting their fellows to continue the tradition, which has a symbolic impact beyond the borders of Wales. Only two councillors, Mark Strong and Alun Williams, both of Plaid Cymru, attended the ceremony on 13 November.

Unless people lobby the council, the future of the ceremony remains uncertain. Once laid, the white poppy wreath…

Despite its other shortcomings, it was good to see that the UK government’s Public Expenditure Review has not allocated funds to the privatised military training college at St Athan. This seems to signal that the gargantuan Public Finance Initiative (PFI) will be reviewed and scaled down. The people of Wales have been misled about this project from the beginning. When it was first announced in January 2007, there were promises of thousands of jobs. In reality, the project was a job reduction…

On 28 September the Petitions Committee of the Welsh Assembly Government posted its official decision on the ambition for a Peace Institute (Academi Heddwch) in Wales. “The committee agreed to: undertake further work on a rapporteur/informal group basis to consider how a peace institute in Wales could be established; how they would be funded and the work which they could undertake.” On behalf of the project’s instigators, the civil society forum Cynefin Y Werin, Dr John Cox of CND Cymru is…

Fifteen members of the Welsh Youth Forum on Sustainable Development (WYFSD), Gwerin y Coed (the Woodcraft Folk in Wales) and representatives of other youth organisations spent five days in the saddle, cycling from Machynlleth to Cardiff Bay to hand deliver a petition to Jane Davidson, Minister for the Environment, Sustainability and Housing. Delivered at the Welsh Assembly Government building on Wednesday 22 September, the petition called for better cycling provision in Wales.

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Regular readers of this page will know that the Cynefin Y Werin network is pursuing a major project to establish a Peace Institute (Academi Heddwch), working with academics and others in Wales. The Peace Institute is likely to be based on the model of the Flemish Peace Institute. Delegates from Cynefin Y Werin have visited Brussels and speakers from the institute undertook a speaking tour of Wales. The Wales project has the rhetorical support of the Welsh Assembly government but the…

At the last general election, the only parties opposing nuclear new build on Anglesey were the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru. We all know what happened to Chris Huhne and the Lib Dems, but anti-nuclear campaigners have been keen to see how Plaid’s policy would shape up, as Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones (assembly member for the island) had long been ambivalent on the nuclear issue in contravention of his own party’s policy.

At Plaid’s annual conference in Aberystwyth in September, a…

On 18 September, an aid convoy left to take much-needed medical equipment to the people of Gaza and draw attention to the inhuman blockade of this tiny strip of land.

UN officials have described the situation as a “medieval siege”. 70% of Gazan families live on less than a dollar a day per person. On 2 August, a Palestinian man was arrested for stealing a bucket of Israeli water.

Wales participants in the convoy left Newport for the long hard overland drive to Gaza, taking…

On 14 August, South Wales Police prevented a national disaster by the skin of their teeth. Against all odds, a force of just a few hundred officers, supported only by riot vans, helicopters, horses and dogs, broke up a camp of some 25 hardened environmentalists, many (one) sporting dreadlocks.

A spokesman for South Wales Police, chief constable “Nick-Nick” Crafty, said: “It is unbelievable what these enviro-MENTALISTS were up to. They had driven tent-pegs into the ground on the site…

Henry Morton Stanley’s popular fame is based on the words which he claims to have uttered on finding the long-lost explorer: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume”. As with much of what Stanley wrote, the veracity of this claim is questionable.

For five years Stanley was king Leopold II of Belgium’s main man in the Congo. The colonisation, pillaging of ivory and rubber, atrocities and genocide under Leopold amount to Africa’s “hidden holocaust” (see King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild…