GreaterManchester Police have searched a group of teenagers and threatened them with arrest because one of them was carrying an anti-monarchy placard. This happened on Friday (20th January) when Charles Windsor was visiting Bolton.

This latest example of the suppression of peaceful protest is a reminder of just how quick British police are to prevent any expression of anti-monarchy opinion.

Nate Norris, aged 16, was holding a sign reading “Abolish the monarchy”. He was joined by some friends, aged 16 and 17, none of whom had placards or banners. They were approached by police before Charles Windsor had even arrived.

Despite no evidence whatsoever of any physical threat to anyone, the police searched four 16- and 17-year-olds. They issued them with a dispersal notice, telling them to leave and threatening them with arrest if they returned within three hours – so they would not be there when Charles Windsor turned up.

Nate tells me that when he asked why this was being done, the police pointed to wording in the dispersal notice that claimed that “there are reasonable grounds to suspect your behaviour has contributed to or is likely to contribute to members of the public in the specified locality being harassed”.

Nate asked them to explain why they thought this. There is some footage of this part of the incident: Nate can be heard asking what behaviour the police are referring to, and a police officer can be heard repeatedly avoiding the question. At one point, the policeman said, “If you don’t know what ‘bevhaviour’ means, feel free to Google it”. This should make him a strong contender for Patronising Copper of the Year. But then again, there’s likely to be a lot of comepeition for that title.

In short, Bolton police searched and dispersed a small group of peaceful teenagers because one of them objected to the monarchy. Did they think that Charles should not have to cope with seeing a critical placard? This is in no way compatible with democracy and the right to free expression.

The low standards of the police have been increasingly obvious in recent months and years, not least through the latest revelations about the number of officers accused of sexual or domestic abuse. The general police contempt for the right to peaceful protest seems to have become more visible just as the Home Secretary is offering them more and more powers to shut down dissent.

There are few issues on which the police seem as keen to deny the right to free expression as the monarchy. While I know this from my own experience of being arrested in Oxford last September, I am aware that my case is one among many – as the incident in Bolton shows.

Three cheers for Nate and his friends for standing up to monarchy and for challenging the police about the legal basis of their actions. Too often the police seem to think that the law is what they say it is, and that everyone should do what a police officer tells them without question. It is entirely understandable that some people do not feel confident about challenging the police, given the imbalance of power involved.

As the government tries to further criminalise peaceful protests, and to effectively ban strikes in some industries, our right to resist must be constantly reasserted. The coronation in May is likely to be a big test for this.

Ahead of William Windsor and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 2011, people planning to protest were pre-emptively arrested before the event, while others were arrested on the day on very dubious grounds. That must not happen again. Between now and May we must speak up loudly for the right to dissent – and make our voices heard on the day itself.

The following article appeared in inews on 13th January 2023.

It’s been a strange week to be a British republican. Militant monarchists have achieved something I would barely have thought possible. They have made me feel some sense of solidarity with members of the royal family – by attacking them.

From the way some people talk, you would think Harry and Meghan were left-wing radicals. But they have not called for any substantial change in society. They are wealthy people at the heart of the establishment. They have triggered the irrational wrath of royalists for daring to show something other than unquestioning and silent loyalty to the institution.

As the media exploded with extracts from Harry’s book, I was distracted by my own run-ins with monarchical power. I was arrested in Oxford last September when I objected to a proclamation declaring Charles Windsor to be our “rightful liege lord”.

After three months of faffing about, the police told me just before Christmas that I was being charged under the Public Order Act with using “threatening or abusive words or behaviour”. In the same week, police decided not to investigate Jeremy Clarkson over a column in which he celebrated the idea of pelting Meghan Markle with excrement.

But a week ago, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges against me on grounds of insufficient evidence (or to put it another way, I had not committed a crime).

I have been moved and humbled by the hundreds of supportive messages I have received. Abusive messages ranged from single-word expletives to calls for me to be hanged for treason. Andrew Schraeder, a Conservative councillor in Basildon, tweeted that I should be sent to the Tower of London (well, it is a nice day out).

It’s a reminder of just how much hatred and vitriol can be spewed by people whose identity is bound up with subservience to supposed superiors. The thinly veiled racism and misogyny that further fuel the assaults on Meghan Markle say a great deal about the attitudes of people who want us to bow down to a hereditary head of state.

I have very little in common with Meghan and Harry. At first I was inclined to dismiss the gossip and rumours of the book as a distraction from real issues. But over the past week, I have realised that the controversy reveals a lot about the Windsor family’s remoteness from reality – and why to me the monarchy is so dangerous.

The statement that keeps coming back to me is Harry’s claim that when he used the P-word at the age of 21, he did not realise that it was racist because he had “heard many people use the word” as a child.

How can anyone reach the age of 21 in the UK without knowing that the P-word is deeply racist and insulting? I knew this when I was eight or nine, despite going to a primary school at which nearly everyone was white. Yet someone brought up surrounded by advisers and press secretaries was apparently unaware of it. What do they teach people at Eton?

It should be no surprise that the Windsor family seem to be unfamiliar with basic notions of equality and respect. Monarchy promotes inequality. To me, an inclusive or egalitarian monarchy is no more possible than warm ice cream or vegetarian lions.

You and I are expected to address someone as “your majesty” – someone human like us, fallible like us, with good and bad points like us – because his ancestor William the Conqueror invaded England. This assault on human dignity is not only demeaning, it is bafflingly nonsensical.

That’s why we need to move the debate beyond Harry’s book and onto the nature of monarchy. In a week that has seen news of the life-threatening underfunding of ambulance services, headlines have focused on people who are unlikely ever to need an NHS ambulance or to struggle to pay the heating bills. Monarchy distorts society, with the squabbles of the super-rich treated as more important than the crises facing the rest of us.

We can build a better society only on the basis of the equal value of all people. We cannot do that while tugging our forelocks to millionaires or accepting arbitrary arrests resulting from police power and prejudice. We need to trust ourselves, respect each other as equals, and get off our knees

I wrote this article for the ‘i’ newpaper, who published it today.

The death of a monarch who had been in the job for 70 years is surely the right time to ask major questions about whether to continue with monarchy. Such discussions are being squashed at the time when they are most needed.

Voices critical of the monarchy are rarely heard on air. Parliament has not debated the future of the monarchy or the acceptance of Charles as head of state. Anti-monarchy protestors have been arrested on spurious grounds. 

The Windsor family’s advisers may hope that public sadness about Elizabeth’s death can simply be turned into enthusiasm for Charles. Perhaps they hope that they can rush ahead to the coronation without us really noticing that a new head of state has been declared with no public debate. This would insult our intelligence.

Now is a crucial moment, in the run-up to Charles’ coronation, to raise and debate vital questions about power, wealth and equality. The cost-of-living crisis is a reminder of how far the very wealthy are removed from the realities that the rest of us face. While seven percent of the population who attend fee-paying schools are vastly over-represented among MPs, judges and newspaper editors, the need to tackle such a clearly unfair situation is not even a major debate in British politics. Protests at Charles’ coronation must be about championing the equal value of all people.

Since my arrest in Oxford for objecting to the proclamation of Charles as king, I have been even more determined to join the protests when he is crowned. There are rumours the coronation will take place in the spring. I suspect the organisers will not want to wait too long, hoping that grief for the previous monarch will lead people to suppress doubts about her successor.

Groups such as Republic are planning to demonstrate at the coronation. We can expect demonstrations in local communities around the UK at the same time.

We are likely to face many attempts to stop us protesting. New laws such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act are restricting our freedom to speak out, but police have always been draconian when it comes to resistance to royalty. During the royal wedding in 2011, peaceful protesters arrested by the police included five people who were ordering coffee in Starbuck’s after leaving a small-scale demonstration.

For royalists, British history is about kings and battles. Supporters of the status quo have accused me of “ignoring British history”. They are missing the point. The inspiring struggles of Levellers, Chartists and Suffragists – ordinary people standing up for justice – are as much part of British history as the monarchs and militaries who tried to suppress them. 

We have our rights not because the rich and powerful handed them down to us, but because our ancestors campaigned and struggled for them. If we are to speak out against monarchy, militarism and inequality, we need to champion not the history of British rulers, but of British resistance.

Preparations for the coronation have got off to a shaky start. The organiser – Edward Fitzalan-Howard, Duke of Norfolk – has just been banned from driving. He cut across a police car to drive through a red light while speaking on his mobile phone. Magistrates rejected his argument that he should be allowed to drive at a “crucial point in the history of this nation”.

But there is no chance of Fitzalan-Howard being sacked from his role as coronation-organiser. He has inherited the job of Earl Marshal, which involves overseeing royal events. Just as Charles Windsor is an hereditary head of state, Edward Fitzalan-Howard is an hereditary events manager.

This won’t be the last time in the run-up to the coronation that the sheer strangeness of hereditary privilege is on embarrassing display.

Monarchy means having the next person in line regardless of who they are or what they have done. In the days after her death, many people praised Elizabeth’s dedication and sense of service. But her possession of such qualities is not an argument for monarchy. It is exactly the opposite. If we have a monarch who is good at the job and has values that we share, this is simply down to luck. If the militant Welsh nationalists who tried to assassinate Charles in 1969 had been successful, we would now likely be preparing for the coronation of King Andrew.

Of course, monarchs have considerably less power than they did 400 years ago. My main problem with monarchy is that it sets the tone for other aspects of life. In a healthy society we would find it demeaning to be expected to bow down to someone and call him “your majesty” because of who his ancestors were. Such behaviour can only appear normal in a society that upholds and celebrates inequality.

Democracy can only be partial when the top role in society is hereditary. Here’s to the day when we have democratically run local communities and democratic control of workplaces. This can never happen if we remain as forelock-tugging subjects of a king, but only if we live as equal citizens, respecting each other as equals and confident of our place in the world.

I had not planned to protest today. To be honest, I’m tired and lacking in energy after not being well lately. And I am not some sort of heroic campaigner who rushes round resisting without rest. I am a lot less energetic and dedicated than some people seem to imagine!

I knew that Charles Windsor would be declared “King Charles III” in official ceremonies around the UK today. I had assumed they would be fairly small-scale. Yesterday, a good friend discouraged me from protesting because she was concerned about my health. I reluctantly agreed that she had a point.

It was only when I went to church this morning that I learnt that there was not only a proclamation in Oxford but a procession that would start just outside our church. I was feeling sad and angry as I left church and walked past the cordoned off streets and saw the dignitaries and military leaders standing on the steps of Carfax Tower in clothing more suited to the sixteenth century. This, apparently, is how we proclaim a new head of state in twenty-first century Britain.

After making slow progress along the pavement, I asked the police how I could get across to the other side as the road was closed off. When I expressed a mild criticism of the royal procession during my question about the road closures, they became defensive and refused to talk with me further. Someone who had heard me came over and challenged my views, but the police told us not to talk to each other. I have no idea on what basis the police stop people with different views having a discussion.

I paused briefly to look at a couple of things on my phone, before realising they were about to read out the proclamation. I had previously doubted whether I wanted to stay and hear it, but I was there now. I remained quiet in the first part of the proclamation, concerning the death of Elizabeth. Any death is sad and I would not object to people mourning.

It was only when they declared Charles to be “King Charles III” that I called out “Who elected him?” I doubt most of the people in the crowd even heard me. Two or three people near me told me to shut up. I didn’t insult them or attack them personally, but responded by saying that a head of state was being imposed on us without our consent.

A security guard appeared, stood right in front of me and told me to be quiet. Two more security guards came along and they tried to push me backwards. As I asked them to give the legal basis for what they were doing, the police came over, more or less moved the security guards out of the way and took hold of me. I was outraged that they were leading me away, but was taken aback when they told me they were arresting me. I have no illusions about the police’s questionable relationship with the law, but I seemed to have been arrested for nothing more than expressing an opinion in public. They gave me confused answers when I asked on what grounds I had been arrested.

As the police led me away, I heard people asking them why I was being arrested. Eventually I realised that two men were walking along beside them demanding answers about it. I heard one of them say, “I don’t agree with him but surely he’s got a right to his views? Isn’t this a free country?” (or similar words). These two people – not activists, not anti-monarchy – were giving a fine example of excellent citizenship by speaking up when they saw the police abusing their powers. I have no idea who they were, but their actions really cheered me.

Eventually I was handcuffed – I don’t know what sort of threat they thought I posed – and put in the back of a police van. A police officer got in the van and took my details. After lots of conversations on his radio he said I would be de-arrested but that they would want to interview me. I said I would do so only with a lawyer present. After some more radio conversations he told me I would be de-arrested and then contacted to be interviewed at a later date, and possibly charged.

I was then driven home in the police van. At this point, I had still not been given a clear answer as to why I had been arrested.

At first I was told that the sergeant who had arrested me would know the reason. This was an appalling answer. Eventually, on the way home, I was told that I had been arrested under the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act 2022 (the outrageous act passed earlier this year) for actions likely to lead to “harassment or distress”.

I would be surprised if anyone among the few people who had heard me felt harassed or distressed by encountering an opinion that they may have disagreed with.

It took me a while – and a cup of tea, and conversations with people I live with – before I posted on Twitter about what had happened. Most responses were sympathetic and outraged. Some of the more hostile ones accused me of doing all this for the sake of self-promotion. This is impossible: the actions I had taken were unlikely to lead to my arrest and I was very surprised to be arrested.

While I am determined to speak out about this unjust arrest, and about the unfairness of monarchy, I would much rather be doing other things today. I would rather not have spent much of the afternoon trying to calm down and stop shaking as I answered media calls, supportive messages and abusive tweets. I would rather not spend tomorrow morning phoning a lawyer. I would much rather get on with all the things I needed to do anyway. This did not happen because of some cunning plan on my part, but because the police abused their powers to arrest someone who voiced some mild opposition to a head of state being appointed undemocratically.

What other freedoms can be suppressed in the name of monarchy? Who else will be arrested under the vile Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act? I am relatively lucky: I will not be sacked from my job as a result of being arrested, or experience some of the consequences that others may face. If fear of arrest deters people from expressing their views, then these vile laws and draconian atmosphere will have significantly reduced free expression and harmed democracy, whether or not people are charged.

This isn’t about me. It’s about our freedom to choose our own system of government, to elect our own leaders and to express our own views. I’m not asking you to support me. I’m asking you to support democracy.

The above article was originally published by Bright Green, who got in touch with me after my arrest and kindly asked me to write about it.

I wrote this article for Left Foot Forward, who published it on their website this morning.

Throughout her leadership campaign, Liz Truss said she didn’t believe in handouts. She also promised to throw billions of pounds into raising military spending.

Truss has pledged to increase “defence” spending – as it’s euphemistically known – to 3% of national income by 2030. This represents a 60% increase on current levels. It will cost £157bn – and Truss won’t say where the money will come from.

These figures are are provided by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a thoroughly pro-military thinktank. RUSI’s report last week suggested that the cost of £157bn is equivalent to an extra five pence on Income Tax. RUSI’s Malcolm Chalmers encouraged Truss to prepare the public for either tax rises or cuts to other areas of public spending to fund “defence”.

This is despite the reality that the UK already has the fourth highest military spending in the world.

Truss’ massive handout for generals and arms dealers contrasts with her vague words about tackling the cost-of-living crisis.

At the heart of the issue is the meaning of words such as “security” and “defence”.

Speaking as someone who grew up under Thatcher with my father on the dole, I know how poverty and safety are incompatible. There is no security if you are never sure how you will pay the next bill. Poverty, inequality, unemployment, homelessness and all the horrors they bring in their wake – these are what we need to defend ourselves from. We also need defence against global threats such as pandemics and climate disaster. For many people in the world, military aggression is a very real threat. It is an insult to these people to pretend that invasion is a likely threat faced by people in Britain.

Differences over security are more than a philosophical debate. They are a matter of life and death.

There are three very down-to-earth reasons for resisting Truss’ military spending plans.

Firstly, as RUSI’s reports makes clear, the enormous sums of money involved will mean cuts elsewhere, especially if Truss sticks to her policy of not raising taxes. This would be disastrous given the challenges that we face, with poverty spiralling and the NHS struggling to cope.

Secondly, higher military spending makes war more likely. Militarist politicians and commentators speak constantly about Ukraine because the British public rightly sympathise with the Ukrainian people in the horrendous suffering they face. The militarist lobby seem less keen to speak, for example, about the military training that British armed forces provide to the Saudi forces who are attacking civilians in Yemen in much the same way that Putin’s forces attack civilians in Ukraine.

I doubt the war in Ukraine will end other than through international negotiations and grassroots peacebuilding. However, only a relatively small percentage of UK military spending has anything to do with Ukraine. Far from “deterring” Russia or China, higher military spending only fuels arms races, with Russia and the West repeatedly using each other’s militarism to justify their own.

Thirdly, Truss’ policy represents a dangerous victory for the militarist lobby. In the 2010s, there was a steady stream of media stories about the UK’s supposedly low levels of “defence” spending. In reality, the UK had the seventh or eighth highest military spending in the world at the time. In 2020, as Covid brought a deadly reminder that weapons cannot make us safe, Boris Johnson announced the biggest increase in UK military spending since the Cold War. This was not enough for militarists, whose appetite grows by what it feeds on. Stories about supposedly inadequate “defence” spending soon reappeared, and Truss – who has a record of enthusiastic militarism – was ready to pay for the militarist lobby’s support.

The last two months have seen a string of revelations about military abuse. They include the shocking statistic that more than one in ten young women who joined the British army last year had reported being sexually assaulted within a year. This was followed by the accusation that former Chief of the General Staff Mark Carleton-Smith helped to cover up the murder of civilians in Afghanistan. None of this has deterred Truss from offering her £157bn handout to the organisations responsible.

Sadly, Keir Starmer seems terrified of appearing hostile to militarism. He welcomed Johnson’s increase in military spending in 2020, criticising only a part of the plan that involved a slight reduction in army personnel.

We need to be much bolder. Military spending is integral to Truss’ plans and we cannot resist her government without challenging militarism. We need to say clearly that Truss’ policies will make the world more dangerous and will offer no security to people struggling to make ends meet. The only thing that high military spending will make safe is the profits of arms dealers.

I am delighted to report that my new book has just been published by Pen & Sword. It’s called The Peace Protestors: A history of modern-day war resistance.

I owe many thanks to everyone who helped, contributed and supported me in writing the book. This includes people who were interviewed, who shared information with me or who provided feedback on early drafts of the chapters, as well as everyone who encouraged me – and, of course, to people at Pen & Sword.

My book explores peace activism in the UK, particularly direct action, since 1980. This may sound like a short time period, but there was so much that I could have covered that I struggled with deciding what to leave out!

In writing the book, I sought to tell stories based on personal accounts of people who were part of them, while also drawing on media coverage from the time and later analysis. It is not primarily an academic book, but it does offer reflection and discussion of the events covered, as well as at times including newly discovered information and overlooked facts. I therefore hope it will be useful to academics and students, as well as to peace activists and other readers.

You can buy the book – with £5 off! – directly from my publisher’s website or order it from your local bookshop. (You can order it form the corporate tax dodgers at Amazon, but I hope you won’t!)

I’ll be speaking about the book as part of a panel with other peace historians at an online event on 21st June. Details of book talks in London and Birmingham will be available very soon.

If you have questions – or you’re reading the book and have comments, thoughts, disagreements or observations – it will be good to hear from you! Please feel free to email me or to comment below.

While writing my new book on the history of peace activism, I was privileged to spend time researching peace campaigns that have often been overlooked or downplayed. For me, one of the most interesting topics for research has been the campaigns against the Falklands War in 1982. I wrote the following article for the Morning Star, who published it on 2nd May 2022.

On May Day 40 years ago, anti-war campaigners were arrested in cities around Britain.

Argentinian troops had invaded the Falklands Islands a month earlier. The British naval task force had been dispatched to the South Atlantic and the Thatcher government avoided a negotiated settlement. All-out war looked likely to break out very soon.

On May 1, 1982, the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) called a Countrywide Day of Protest and Resistance. Demonstrations and vigils took place in at least 30 towns and cities. Some involved small-scale marches, others were more dramatic. Women in Sheffield occupied a Royal Navy recruitment office. Another recruitment office was paint-bombed in Holborn. Protesters in Glasgow were arrested while handing out leaflets and selling newspapers.

The day coincided with the RAF’s bombing of Port Stanley airstrip, the first British military action on the Falkland Islands themselves. When peace activists in Britain heard the news, some were keen to respond with direct action.

At about 3pm, they heard that there were press and television cameras clustered around the Ministry of Defence (MoD). “It seemed too good a chance to pass over,” explained Charles Davey of London Peace Action. Plans were made speedily for a vigil at the MoD, followed by pouring artificial blood on the steps.

“We knew we were likely to be arrested,” said Davey. “We discussed who would — who could — take part; who would be in the support group talking to the press, police, observing.”

Five of the blood-pourers were arrested and charged with criminal damage. The ministers, generals and admirals, meanwhile, were never arrested for spilling real blood.

I cannot claim to have taken part in any of these actions myself. Forty years ago, I was only five years old, so I had other things on my mind.

If you’re older than me, you may well have first-hand memories of the protests against the Falklands War. If you’re much younger than me, then it may feel like a historical event only.

I am in between — I grew up knowing about the Falklands War as a recent event. As a teenager during the Gulf War of 1991, I heard frequent comparisons with the Falklands. It took me a while to realise that much of what I had heard about the Falklands was wrong, or at least selective.

Like most working-class people who grew up under Thatcher, I have no illusions about the depths she would sink to, so I was unsurprised to discover that her rhetoric about the rights of Falkland Islanders was not matched by her behaviour in the preceding years. The British government had for some years been negotiating with Argentina for a compromise over the Falklands. When the Nationality Act was passed in 1980, Falklanders were denied British nationality. The British government had happily authorised arms sales to the Galtieri regime in Argentina.

None of this justifies Galtieri’s military aggression. It serves instead as a reminder that both the British and Argentinian governments had their own ends in mind. There were better ways to resolve the dispute than for two right-wing rulers to send working-class teenagers to kill each other.

In recent years, I have realised that another common claim about the Falklands War is also inaccurate. I have often been told that it was almost universally supported by the British public. But as I researched my new book on the history of peace activism, it became ever clearer to me that the opposition was both more widespread and more active than is often assumed.

While there is no doubt that the majority of the British population supported the war, a significant minority were opposed. Shortly after the war had finished, as Thatcher and her allies whipped up jingoistic hysteria, a poll for The Economist found that 22% of the population considered that the war had been wrong.

Given the jingoistic atmosphere, it is not surprising that some who had doubts kept their heads down. Older peace activists have told me it was “the hardest war to campaign against.”

Ann Feltham, a PPU member who leafleted regularly against the war, recalls that “while some people were hostile, many took leaflets or confided that they too had doubts.”

On the day of resistance on 1st May, Nottingham pacifists were surprised by how many passers-by agreed with them when they handed out leaflets with the local CND group. In the naval city of Plymouth, activists found far less support. Robert Harris, a peace activist in Bangor, found a more sympathetic response from Welsh-language media than their English-language counterparts.

At times, there was vicious hostility. “It was a very difficult time to be an anti-militarist,” remembers PPU member Albert Beale. “It was very lonely in a sense.” When anti-war campaigners marched through London on 23rd May, they encountered pro-war slogans blasted through loudspeakers by the so-called Coalition for Peace through Security, a Tory group set up to attack the peace movement.

907 people were killed in the Falklands War: three civilian Falklanders, 255 UK armed forces personnel and 649 Argentinians. The much greater number of people wounded in body or mind can only be guessed at.

The final arrests related to the Falklands War came on 12th October at the Victory Parade. A group who had planned to chain themselves across the road were bundled into a police van before they could do so. One was knocked unconscious in the process. Peace News reported on “the many people held in police vans for the duration of the march, presumably for not looking enthusiastic and patriotic enough.”

By the end of 1982, the Anti-Falklands War Support Network reported that they were aware of 118 arrests of anti-war activists. This is a small number compared to many earlier and later wars. There is no doubt that the Falklands War had a lot of public support.

But as I have researched it, interviewed people who resisted it and dug through the archives of peace campaigns, I have discovered that it is an outright denial of the evidence to say that almost everyone supported the Falklands War. Wherever there is war, there will be resistance.

My new book is called The Peace Protestors: A history of modern-day war resistance. It will be published by Pen & Sword on 30th May 2022. It can be pre-ordered now, with a £5 discount.

In my part-time job at the Peace Pledge Union, I am pleased to work alongside teachers, parents and school students who are challenging everyday militarism in their schools.

On 12th April, I wrote about the growing problems of militarism in schools for the Morning Star. However, I’m not always very good at remembering to re-post my articles on this blog site after they have been published elsewhere! You can read my latest article on the issue on the Morning Star website.

Peace News recently asked me to write an article about the war in Ukraine from my persepective as a pacifist in the UK. I was pleased to be asked and my article appeared in the April issue.

Following this, I was invited to speak at a Peace News event on Ukraine, in which I was asked challenging questions about pacifism in the light of the Russian invasion. This has now been posted on YouTube.

Of course, there are many pacifists in Britain, and many more around the world, whose views on the war in Ukraine no doubt overlap in lots of ways but are not identical. I have no authority to speak on behalf of British pacifists as a whole. This is only my perspective, although it is informed by the thoughts of many other people from whom I have learnt much. If you’re interesteed, you can read my Peace News article here or watch my interview here. Many thanks to Peace News for running the article and event.