Around 30 people plus a red dragon, with musical accompaniment by Côr Cochion, Côr Gobaith and a trombone, demonstrated outside Merthyr Tydfil magistrates court on 3 February. What was it all about?
A group of Knighton residents are aiming to initiate a private prosecution against the UK secretary of state for defence for conspiring to commit a war crime. They are alleging that the deployment of Trident, the UK’s nuclear weapon system, is a crime.…
Three of us pensioners set off from Aberbanc at 5.15 in the morning of 27 March to meet up with a coach full of fellow protesters in Swansea for the Anti-Trident demo in London.
We made new contacts and shared networks on the journey up and back from London, always an important part of the overall occasion.
Luckily, the rain held off and, even though a cold wind blew, the people, old and young together,…
Thousands of sci-fi fans queuing around the block at the Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, to get into the Film and Comic Convention on 5 March met with a musical protest against the arms trade. The prestigious venue was due to host an arms fair, including exhibitions from BAE Systems, the company that provides logistical support to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, sells arms to Turkey’s military to bomb the Kurdish people, and profits from death around the world.
Côr Cochion sang…
After the consortium Miller Argent had their proposal for a six-million-tonne open-cast coal mine, Nant Llesg near Rhymney, rejected by Caerphilly council last summer you would have been forgiven for assuming that, after years of the scheme being hotly contested, that was the end of the matter. Not a bit of it.
Despite the strength of resistance to the proposal locally as well as across Wales and…
Not surprisingly for many of us in Wales, two ‘Machtivists’ are among the ‘Heathrow 13’ climate activists who are on trial as we go to press.
The Machynlleth area in mid-Wales has a proud environmental and climate activist record. Machtivists organised the first Camp against Climate Change in Merthyr in 2009, in support of the residents struggling against Ffos-y-Fran opencast coalmine, and they are involved in the ongoing battle against further mining described elsewhere on this…
In September last year, Anna Jane Evans, Awel Irene, Angharad Tomos and Sian ap Gwynfor were convicted of criminal damage for painting ‘DIM ADAR ANGAU – NO DEATH DRONES’ on Llanbedr Airfield runway and ordered to pay £565 for cleaning the runway.
By the time of the deadline for the payment, contributions had poured in, as explained by Evans: ‘It is with great reluctance I am paying my share of what it cost to clean the runway. I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who…
In South Wales, the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was marked with two vigils. A large crowd including members of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and CND Cymru gathered by Tredegar Park lake in Newport Gwent. They heard Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West, a message of solidarity from Hiroshima, readings, and songs from Frankie Armstrong and Côr Cochion.
Cardiff’s annual remembrance at Roath…
Back in October 2007, George Monbiot published The New Coal Age. Expressing his absolute incomprehension and dismay, Monbiot wrote: ‘If this is allowed to happen, we might as well give up now.’ He was, of course, talking about Ffos y Fran opencast coalmine.
Well, our authorities in Wales, from the Labour-controlled government to Merthyr Tydfil council, did allow…
More than 6,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the Welsh government call in a planning application for a new opencast coal mine, Nant Llesg, in the Rhymney Valley. If the government called in the application they would take over the decision-making power from the local authority, Caerphilly council.
The petition followed an historic vote in the Welsh assembly on 22 April in favour of a moratorium on opencast…
Austerity, exploitation and inequality go hand in hand and there is a rising anti-austerity movement throughout Wales, with numerous grassroots groups springing up across the country.
On 20 June, as more than 250,000 people protested in London, hundreds marched in Aberystwyth, led by the inimitable, battle-scarred red dragon Y Ddraig Goch of Faslane fame. Marching to singing and drumming, marchers demanded…
Borras and Holt community protection camp. Photo: Kelvin Mason
The newly-elected Conservative government is set to follow through on David Cameron’s infamous 2014 pledge to go ‘all out for fracking’. They will also cancel subsidies for new onshore wind turbines. Allowing free-market dogma to dictate ecocide rather than plan a sustainable energy future, this government is contemptuous of the greatest moral challenge of our age, climate change.
So dire is the impact of human…
Elements of a campaign by Frack Free Wales came together in January when Ceredigion council voted to become the first ‘frack-free’ local authority in Wales.
Fracking is shorthand for ‘hydraulic fracturing’ for oil or gas, underground coal gasification, and coal-bed methane, all of which threaten Wales.
None of these fuels exist in Ceredigion, however. The council’s decision reflected its commitment to moving away from all fossil fuels, which drive climate change.…
On 24 January, as part of a UK-wide protest at the cost of Trident, CND Cymru and radical choir Côr Cochion were joined at the Royal Gwent Hospital by activists from across Wales. Patients and visitors joined in, and choir singing was accompanied by toots of support from passing motorists.
As part of a month of action against Trident in the lead up to the election, Côr Cochion were in action again at Burghfield in March.
The choir blockaded the South gate of the nuclear bomb…
Generally, prime ministers and presidents are the last to admit they got something wrong. The sound of Tony Blair saying sorry is the sound of silence. So credit to Naoto Kan, Japanese PM at the time of the (ongoing) Fukushima disaster.
Formerly pro-nuclear, Kan makes no bones about getting it wrong. He came to Wales to warn that Wylfa B, Horizon Nuclear’s proposed plant in Anglesey, would be a terrible mistake.
During the last few years members of anti-nuclear group PAWB (…
Eviction of Borras and Holt Community Protection Camp. Photo: Dave Ellison
In January 2014, Westminster prime minister David Cameron announced that his government was ‘going all out for fracking’. (Fracking is the high-pressure hydraulic fracturing of shale rock deep underground to extract natural gas or other fossil fuels.) As an inducement to local authorities, councils were allowed to keep 100% of business rates from shale gas sites.
Defying public opinion, the government also…
