Wales

On 26 June, members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales (Cymdeithas Y Cymod) held a service of repentance outside the drones centre at Parc Aberporth.

The Reverend Guto Prys ap Gwynfor, president of the Fellowship, led the meeting. He said: “The MoD is spending £899 million on developing the unmanned aircraft through contracts with private companies, including Thales and Qinetiq. The only airspace in Europe where unmanned aircraft are allowed to be tested is in Wales,…

This report is written as a letter to Pat O’Donnell and Niall Harnett who are in jail in Ireland for opposing Shell’s Corrib gas pipeline.

Dear Pat and Niall
We’re just back from the Merthyr to Mayo Solidarity Bike Ride, which connected the struggles of the people of Wales and Ireland opposing the misuse of our natural resources by multi-national corporations and complicit governments.

My partner and I joined the ride in Galway. Some of the other riders did…

In response to the murderous Israeli Defence Force attack on a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza, Bangor and Ynys Môn (Anglesey) Peace & Justice Group were quickly into action.

On 1 June, the group visited Waitrose in Menai Bridge. More than 20 activists turned out to support, a very respectable number for an area like ours.

We began at 3.30pm by handing out boycott flyers, which were well received with almost all shoppers…

It’s the time of year for festivals again, and through the weekend of 16-18 April visitors to the old farm buildings of Neuadd Hendre, near Bangor in Gwynedd, could enjoy top Welsh bands, listen to the edgy and moving stand-up comedy of Ivor Dembina and eat fantastic Palestinian food, while camping in the spring sunshine with panoramic views across the Irish Sea. But this was a festival with a difference. It had an agenda – Palestine.

The Bangor to Bethlehem international…

Aberystwyth Peace and Justice Network got the election ball rolling in March, organising a peace and justice hustings in the Morlan Centre.

Prospective parliamentary candidates Mark Williams (Lib Dem), Penri James (Plaid Cymru), Richard Boudier (Labour) and Luke Evetts (Conservative) turned up for a grilling from the audience. Typically, the Labour and Conservative candidates, who stand no chance of winning the seat, were politically-inexperienced young men.

The…

The MoD Watchkeeper drone programme is beginning trials at ParcAberporth using the Israeli-built Hermes 450 UAV (“Unmanned Arial Vehicle”). Watchkeeper is not about agricultural and environmental monitoring, oceanographic and atmospheric data collection or grassland management, it is about “intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition”.

Which, in plain English, means locating people and killing them.

So I’m not going to waste your time moaning…

A four-week inquiry into the £12 billion privatised military training establishment due to be based at St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, ended in early February 2010. The case for compulsory purchase of land in the area to enable the defence technical college to go ahead was presented by senior ministry of defence (MoD) figures and Welsh assembly government civil servants. They were backed by representatives of the Metrix consortium of private companies that successfully bid for the…

Nelly Maes, president of the Flemish Peace Institute, spoke at the David Davies Memorial Institute (DDMI) in Aberystwyth on 24 February to an audience of students and local people.

Her talk was part of a visit to Wales in support of calls for a Wales Peace Institute. On 23 February, Maes and Tomas Baum, director of the Flemish Peace Institute, gave evidence to the national assembly in support of a 1,500 name petition urging the creation of such an institute.

In…

At the 15 February Big Blockade of the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the Welsh were assigned to Construction Gate, one of the most important gates for vehicle access in the coming months.

The Welsh started arriving around 6am. Around 6.30am, vans with internationals arrived, followed quickly by more Welsh groups and Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhists.

People with metal lock-on tubes and a very effective lock-on drum of four positioned themselves in the…

In February 2009, I went to Gaza as one of a European Parliament group to see the destruction caused by Israeli attacks. A year on, together with 60 members of parliament from 12 different countries, I returned.

As I expected, depressingly little had changed since Operation Cast Lead. Houses, factories, farms and schools are still in ruins. Water, sewage and electricity systems are wrecked.

In any other country, rebuilding would be well under way. But Gaza is…

The forced eviction of the Mainshill Solidarity Camp ended on 29 January, with over 70 people resisting the eviction, 45 arrests and a huge number of defences that kept the National Eviction Team busy for five days. At the same time digger-diving shut down the nearby Ravenstruther coal terminal for the third time in a year.

Mainshill Solidarity Camp was set up in June 2009, acting with local groups against proposed open-cast mining and its detrimental effects on public health. All…

Even for those who expected nothing, COP15 was still a huge disappointment; a body-blow to a stricken planet, its environment and its politics. For this we owe a “special” thank-you, as per usual on matters of war and justice, to the USA. For people who put their faith in Barack Obama, he proved more Judas than Jesus, for thirty pieces of silver read dirty piles of petrodollars. Nevertheless, there were signs of hope: ourselves, the climate justice movement.

Here participants in last…

Once again, Aberystwyth led the way as the town council laid a white poppy wreath at the Cenotaph on 7 November. Despite the weather, the ceremony was well attended. Those present remembered the suffering caused by organised violence and “all the places where our humanity has been denied”, commented Jill Gough of CND Cymru.

Rhidian Griffiths chose the hymn “Let There be Peace on Earth” by Fred Kaan, “a lifelong pacifist, whose convictions grew out of his childhood in the…

A new report from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) details a chronic culture of neglect at nuclear decommissioning sites across the UK. This includes the Wylfa A station on the north coast of Ynys Môn (Anglesey). This culture of neglect does not inspire confidence in the new push for nuclear power.

As I write, the government’s e-auction, for the sale of land on which nuclear new-build is planned, is already under way. Included in this land grab is the site for a new Wylfa B…

Early Christmas presents from Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh Language Society, greeted Bangor shoppers when campaigners gave away free Boots “Advantage” cards in the town on 14 November. Turning Boots’ slogan on its head, the Welsh Language Society’s alternative loyalty cards read: “There are no points whatsoever for using Welsh.”

Boots was also surprised by new Welsh speaking employees, provided by Cymdeithas, who offered a bilingual service.

Chair of the…