working for peace since 1934 number 72 Winter 2016 ISSN 1350-3006 w e n e h t peace matters WORKING FOR PEACE WITHOUT VIOLENCE “Shoulder to shoulder with all who serve.” Royal British Legion support our work ISSN 1350 – 3006 Peace Pledge Union help build a culture Peaceworks 1 Peace Passage London N7 0BT of nonviolence Phone: 020 7424 9444 Email [email protected] Web site: www.ppu.org.uk Peace Matters is published by the Peace Pledge Union. I/we would like to join the PPU www.peacematters.org.uk Annual subscription : Material published in Peace Matters does individual £21.00 not necessarily reflect PPU policy. two at the same address £28.00 Editor: Jan Melichar. low income £10.00 With help from: Annie Bebington Or subscribe to Peace Matters and Peace Works only Typeset and design: PPU Annual subscription: £6.00 Printing: Lithosphere I/we enclose £ cheque bankers order The Peace Pledge Union is the oldest or debit my card non-sectarian pacifist organisation in no Britain. Through the War Resisters’ Inter - national it links with similar groups expiry date throughout the world. It is one of the security no __ | __ | __ original sponsors of Campaign Against Arms Trade, a member of Liberty and a co Name operating organisation of Landmine Address Action For information contact: Annie, PPU 1 Peace Passage London N7 0BT . or www.ppu.org.uk ONLINE www/ppu.org.uk/join Next Council meeting 9 March To: The Manager: Bank Address Your account number Please pay on / /2016 and on the same day each MONTH / YEAR (delete as appropriate) To: The Co-operative Bank plc, 62 Southampton Row London WC1B 4AR 08-90-61 Peace Pledge Union Main Account no 50504527 the sum of £ _______ amount in words__________________________ Signature ________________________________ date _________ www.peacematters.org.uk winter 2015/16 3 COMMENT e were pleased to welcome 1500 new supporters to our white Job Opportunity Wpoppy project last year. With help from many of you around the PPU Coordinator Salary £30,000 pa. country we distributed well in excess of 110,000 white poppies. A sub - This is a big and challenging stantial increase on last year. Last year many more white poppy wreaths post requiring imagination and a mix of skills. From were laid and more white poppies have gone to Canada and New being the public voice of the Zealand where 25 April - Anzac Day - is their equivalent to Britain’s PPU to managing the PPU’s published output and proj - Remembrance Day. While in Belgium more white poppies can be seen ects to ensuring the smooth amid the deluge of the British Legion (Shoulder to shoulder with all running of the organisation, the post offers a opportunity who serve) red ones each year. Many thanks too for the generous do - to take the PPU forward nations which make our work possible. from a well-established base to challenge the war-making Remembrance Day is now only one of several events in support of values embedded in society. the armed forces that have imposed themselves on the national calen - See www.ppu.org.uk/jobpack Closing date 12 February dar. Martial values and the opaque but turbo- charged military ethos, as government ministers like to call it, or mil - itarism as the PPU calls it, is seeping largely signs and symbols unnoticed into every crevice of civil life. At Jan Melichar events and displays around the country, at ceremonies, at ‘Meet the Army’ events, in schools and in the graveyards in Flanders in one form or other the military is ever present to impress on us that their way is the only way. There is no alternative. The overt militarisation has been visibly underway since 2000 when the Ministry of Defence published ‘Soldiering – The Military Covenant’. A document that attempts to give substance to 400 years of wishful thinking. It speaks of the military person’s ‘ultimate sacrifice’ and the special bond and duty the nation therefore owes the soldier. It is silent on the considerable penalty that the citizens pay as a consequence of the soldier’s work! Soldiering and its development of a military covenant is special pleading on behalf of a dangerous institution which, together with its many supporters, is demanding our sympathy and money. Whatever sympathy one may have for individual military persons who have been injured or traumatised or for the families of those who have been killed, it must surely be tempered by the fact that in the last 25 years of Britain’s wars these men and women have willingly (and one might say gratuitously) invaded sovereign countries, caused mayhem and untold misery there; the consequence of their actions are all around us Laying wreaths of white poppies and have in no small measure contributed to the instability in much of in Aberystwyth under the watch - the world. After all the majority of the military personnel are no more ful eye of the military. 2015 Bertold Brecht 4 www.peacematters.org.uk winter 2015/16 PERSPECTIVE likely to face the ‘ultimate sacri - Armed Forces Covenant insists fice’ that any of us. Though a bet - that local services should privilege ter resourced NHS might offer military personnel. What is your greater security and save more local authority doing? lives than any IED proof vehicle. [http://tinyurl.com/mfm3pun] The military covenant was Armed Forces Day, launched originally no more that a nine years after ‘Soldiering’, was grandiose aspiration. As a conse - Gordon Brown’s more muscular quence of the British military’s version of the Veterans Day he Laying white poppies at the con - scientious stone. Remembrance ‘self inflicted’ casualties and fol - launched 3 years previously. While Day 2015 lowing noisy promoting by Gen - ‘Soldiering’ was a response to eral Dannatt and the British Britain’s increasing military pur - Legion a reluctant government suits and Tony Blair’s ‘vision’ at the was forced to codify many of the time: ‘…today our Armed Forces covenant’s expectations. In its new are called upon to take action in guise as the Armed Forces many different parts of the world, Covenant it places all kinds of not so much to defend our coun - legal obligations on local councils try but to defend its long-term se - and institutions. The state has curity interests. …in truth, today never cared much for the shat - an army fights not just for terri - tered bodies returning from the tory and military superiority but wars it sent them to. As cuts in often for hearts and minds, and it local services are taking place the depends not simply on discipline, White poppy extravagnza in Whitstable November 2015 www.peacematters.org.uk winter 2015/16 5 PPU NEWS but also on belief’, Armed Forces Day was and is designed to embed the military world more closely, more firmly, more seamlessly into civil life and the state is anxious we are in tune with its drumbeat. While once governments prom - ised us a better future today they only promise to protect us from a fearful world full of terrorists, rad - icals, ‘money sucking migrants’ and Europe. More military ethos in schools along with renewal of Trident, closer surveillance, more cadet forces, armed policemen In a previous issue we mentioned the failed attempt during the War and plenty of drones is thought to Resisters International conference in Cape Town to paint a giant AK- 47 rifle. This has now been accomplished. The image, over 100 do the job. meters in size, by Ralph Ziman and his team shows a broken AK-47 Who do you think you are rifle wrapped in world currencies. It is situated on The Grand Parade kidding mister politician… in Cape Town. public understanding of WW1 What we are reading A Kingdom United popular response to While the two year funded term of the PPU’s challenge to narrow and narrowing un - the outbreak of the First World war in Objecting to War Project has come to an derstanding of war and more crucially to Britain and Ireland. Catriona Pennell. Oxford 2012 end we continue to object! The publicising a lack of understanding that war is not Life in the United Kingdom a guide for and promotion of the values that motivated inevitable. new residents. Home Office. 2013 many to become conscientious objectors in The anniversary of WW1 has done little Remembering the First World War. Bart WW1 will continue (www.menwho - to better public understanding as the Ziino Ed. Routledge. 2014 An Intimate War: An Oral History of the saidno.org) side by side with a vigorous word diagram here shows. This is based Helmand Conflict. Mike Martin. C Hurst on a YouGov survey for the British Coun - & Co. 2014 cil and shows… well you decide. Kill Chain drones and the rise of high- tech assassins. Andrew Cockburn. Verso. 2015 What are you reading? mail @ppu.org.uk militarism The PPU is making a submission to the governments’ Education Committee's 'purpose and quality of education' in England inquiry and will shortly publish a paper on Militarisation of Education (www.ppu.org.uk/militarism). If you are interested in participating in this work please get in touch [email protected],uk 6 www.peacematters.org.uk winter 2015/16 EDUCATION FOR PEACE whose war, whose memory? Peter Glasgow n a Thursday evening in Novem - whether English teachers should be Ober I delivered a 20 minute pres - involved in teaching cultural history. entation to a diverse audience of With both sets of teachers, there was academics, teachers, teacher trainees clearly a relationship between popular as well as undergraduate and post perception of the war and the default graduate students at the University of topics that are taught - notably the Birmingham.