Campaigning for peace in north Wales

By Ray Jones

On 29th June the Conwy Peace Group held a public meeting in Llandudno attended by about 30 people under the title Plan for Peace, Resist Militarism.

David Gannon from, Veterans for Peace UK, told how he left the Army after an injury and how ex-squaddies were left to the NHS and charities to be cared for, with a third of them “not in a functioning condition”,  and many homeless and suicidal.

He also gave an interesting and in places a deep analysis of the roots of militarism in our society, which included the profits from weapons, the drive for private ownership in the Forces and war as a “tool of austerity”.

Veterans for Peace do not call for immediate disarmament by Britain but for Britain to become a permanently neutral country, which would mean: it would protect the territory of the UK; develop an independent defence policy; expel foreign military personnel; withdraw from treaties that would involve it in a future war; and undertake not to attack other countries nor enter into wars between them.

Compared with Britain’s recent imperialist wars this would be a great step forwards of course and may make the basis of immediate demands. But it does not take into account the economic pressures that are rooted in our capitalist society and which David seemed to be aware of elsewhere in his talk.

Communists recognise that coercive force is a factor in any state, and the question is which class controls the force and the state. We are not pacifists, and we see the work against the reactionary and imperialist activities of the British armed forces as part of the fight for socialism. We see the attempt by the Tories to promote and glorify the Armed Forces as part of their efforts to boost support for their imperialist programme and therefore to be resisted.

The second speaker was Rhianna Louise from Armed Forces Watch UK, which she explained was mainly a research and support organisation.

She gave the recent example of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon’s claim that the Forces are a successful source of social mobility. No doubt you could find individual cases where this was true, said Rhianna, but in actual fact there were not enough statistics available to support the sweeping claims he made.

What we do know however, is that a third of under 18s joining the Army leave or are discharged before even finishing their training. So it can hardly be doing much for their social mobility. We also know that formal education in the Army is generally poor.

Rhianna also congratulated Conwy Peace Group for its forthcoming protests against Armed Forces Day, the arrangements for which were outlined when the speakers had finished.

Campaigners were out the following day to counter Armed Forces Day in Llandudno. This relatively new event, aimed to bolster Britain’s imperialist foreign policy, gave the town the very doubtful honour of a visit from Princess Anne and Prime Minister May.

Prior to the event Conwy county officers took the expected fawning positions, and rubbed their hands with glee at the prospect of the great and the good arriving and all the money that was expected to flow into the towns businesses from the crowds of visitors.

No doubt Llandudno was chosen largely because it’s a small, quiet, conservative (small ‘c’) town without much of a student population. But Conwy does have a thriving peace group that rightly took exception to this blatant promotion of militarism on their doorstep.

Plans were made and on the day there were stalls and leafleters at key points, a vigil of people dressed in black, a 10 foot high CND sign that had the appearance of being made of stone and banners that were carried along the route of the parade.

It was a large area to cover and resources were necessarily stretched, and for an hour or so I was left alone with my home-made placard (Fund the NHS not Bombs!) and a pile of leaflets. I got a couple of nasty comments, but most of the people who spoke were supportive and very many people were obviously just there for a day out with the family.

The impact of the protest was enough that BBC Wales felt it could not ignore the protestors entirely and gave them a few seconds on the main news.

People Power: Fighting for Peace

Imperial War Museum: The history of the peace movement in Britain

Review

by New Worker correspondent

THE IMPERIAL War Museum in south London is currently staging an exhibition on the history of the peace movement in Britain, running from March until 28^th August (£10 entry to the exhibition; £7 concessions).

One of the main purposes of the museum from its foundations has been never to allow the horrors of war to be forgotten, so promoting peace has always been part of its agenda. The exhibition on the history of the peace movement, starting from opposition to the First World War and the rise of conscientious objection, has therefore been long overdue.

The exhibition, on the third floor of the building that used to house a mental asylum, begins with the opposition to the First World War and a faded dark red banner hung from the ceiling with the image of a dove and the message: “Blessed are the peacemakers”.

From March 1916, military service was compulsory for all single men in England, Scotland and Wales aged 18–41, except those who were in jobs essential to the war effort, the sole support of dependants, medically unfit, or “those who could show a conscientious objection”. This later clause was a significant British response that defused opposition to conscription.

Further military service laws included married men, tightened occupational exemptions and raised the age limit to 50. There were approximately 16,000 British men on record as conscientious objectors to armed service during the First World War. This figure does not include men who may have had anti-war sentiments but were either unfit, in reserved occupations or who had joined the armed forces anyway.

There are many letters and documents from men who refused to be conscripted to fight at the front, even though they faced prison, where harsh as the physical conditions were, it was the harassment, jibes and being branded cowards that hurt the most.

Many of these objectors were either very religious or socialists who objected to being used as cannon fodder by an imperialist government.

Some objectors were offered a non-combatant role within the armed forces and others were offered essential war work at home to replace workers who had gone to the trenches.

Many went to the front line as ambulance workers, pulling wounded soldiers from the thick of battle. The exhibition has uniforms and identity documents from the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) – formed by the Society of Friends (Quakers), who are pacifists. Their passes had international recognition amongst the allies and the exhibition includes a Croix-de-Guerre medal awarded to one FAU worker. The FAU also operated in the Second World War.

The exhibition also includes a painting by Paul Nash and a poem from Siegfried Sassoon – two serving soldiers whose opposition to war developed from their experience of it and who used their talents to convey the horror of it to those at home.

In the inter-war period there was a strong peace movement – a reaction to the slaughter of the First World War. But this was put under pressure with the rise of the menace of fascism and particularly of Nazism in Germany.

The exhibition includes a letter from AA Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh, agonising over the dilemma of opposing war yet recognising the need to stop Nazism.

It also includes an identity document from Paul Eddington, the actor made famous in the sitcoms The Good Life and Yes Minister. He was registered as a conscientious objector and ended up as a non-combatant with ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association), where he began his acting career.

The exhibition goes on to cover the rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the origins of the CND symbol, the foundation of the Committee of 100, the Aldermaston marches and Greenham Common women’s encampment against cruise missiles being kept at the US military base there.

There is a screening of an excerpt of the 1960s film The War Game about the effect on the population of a nuclear bomb being dropped in Kent.

Opposition to the war in Vietnam is given a small space in the exhibition, mainly devoted to American youths refusing to be drafted.

Then it moves on to opposition to the wars in the Middle East and the biggest demonstration in the history of Britain when, in February 2003, between one to two million people marched through London to protest at the war against Iraq that was just about to be launched by George W Bush and Tony Blair.

There is the famous image of Tony Blair taking a selfie against a backdrop of burning Iraqi oil wells.

It finishes with a screening of the poignant ceremony last summer when three members of the British Veterans for Peace organisation marched in uniform to Downing Street and threw down their berets, badges and medals, renouncing these symbols of war and oppression and the roles they had been ordered to play in in the Middle East in oppressing the people there.

The symbolism of this is very powerful; when rank and file troops refuse to obey their imperialist masters and walk away from war en masse – as in Russia in 1917 and in Vietnam in the 1970s – the imperialists are rendered powerless.