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.
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Famous quotes containing the words peace, news, campaigns and/or trials:
“On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
“I wouldn’t interfere with the actual news itself, but TV is show biz, Max, and even the news has to have a little showmanship.”
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“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
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“On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)