Peace News - Peace News Campaigns and Trials

Peace News Campaigns and Trials

Peace News has been associated with initiating numerous campaigns, and a number of its staffmembers have been arrested for taking part in peace actions. In November 1957 Hugh Brock was one of three founders of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, which was run from the Peace News office and involved many Peace News staff. The DAC produced the first badges with the Nuclear Disarmament/Peace symbol, and organised various actions of civil disobedience against nuclear weapons and also the first of the Aldermaston Marches in Easter 1958.

In 1971 Peace News, together with War Resisters' International, initiated a nonviolent direct action project, Operation Omega to Bangladesh, to challenge the Pakistani military blockade of then East Pakistan.

In the same year Peace News criticised the attempt to ban the sex education book The Little Red Schoolbook, and reprinted extensive extracts from the publication in the magazine.

In 1972 Peace News co-editor Howard Clark, after meeting activists from the Canadian Greenpeace boats, initiated the group that became London Greenpeace, at first campaigning against French nuclear tests.

In 1973 Peace News played a central role in launching the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign (BWNIC) and in supporting the BWNIC 14, 14 activists including a member of the Peace News collective charged with "conspiracy to incite disaffection" via a leaflet "Some Information for Discontented Soldiers". After an 11-week trial, a jury acquitted the BWNIC 14 in 1975, although two members of Peace News collective were fined for helping two AWOL soldiers go to Sweden.

In 1974, together with Nicholas Albery of BIT Information Service, Peace News began publishing the Community Levy for Alternative Projects, an invitation to supply funds for, generally, fledgling alternative projects, partly targeting shops and businesses that identified with counter-cultural ideas and aspirations.

In August 1974, Peace News published a special edition revealing and printing in full Colonel David Stirling's plans to establish a strike-breaking "private army", "Great Britain 1975". By arrangement The Guardian led with this story on the day of publication, Peace News won the 1974 "Scoop of the Year" award from Granada Television.

In 1978, Peace News, together with The Leveller magazine revealed the identity of Colonel B, a witness in the ABC Trial. Peace News fought its conviction for "contempt of court" right up to appeal in the House of Lords, where the Lord Chief Justice's "guilty" verdict was finally overturned.

In 1995, Peace News, together with Campaign Against Arms Trade, was sued for libel by the Covert & Operational Procurement Exhibition (COPEX) for repeating allegations that the exhibition was serving as a meeting place for buyers and sellers of torture implements. The High Court struck out the case when COPEX failed to show in court and the peace groups were awarded costs.