Symon Hill - The Peace Protesters

The Peace Protesters

A History of Modern-day War Resistance

Symon Hill

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

Pen & Sword History

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Symon Hill 2022

ISBN 978 1 39900 786 3

eISBN 978 1 39900 787 0

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39900 787 0

The right of Symon Hill to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Dedicated to the memory of my mother,

MADELINE HILL (19402020)

Not forgotten though the day break and the shadows flee away.

When I began planning this book, I did not realize that I would be writing it all during a global pandemic. The difficulty of writing and research during lockdowns is fairly trivial compared to the suffering that many have experienced during the Covid pandemic and the attempts to deal with it. Nonetheless, I am especially grateful for the practical assistance and emotional support that I have received during this time.

First of all, my thanks go to staff at Pen & Sword, particularly my editor Claire Hopkins who commissioned the book and was always ready to discuss it with me, as well as Chris Cocks, Lucy May, the cover designers and their colleagues. Several chapters were improved considerably by the feedback of Christine Goddard and Hannah Brock Womack, who gave lots of time to reading earlier drafts. Christine also provided considerable moral support, general advice and encouragement, as did Ali Fleabite, Lindsey Hall and other friends, comrades and relatives too numerous to list. I owe many thanks to my colleagues on the staff of the Peace Pledge Union Kathryn Busby, Geoff Tibbs and Saffron Gallup for their patience and positivity about the book.

The book would not have been possible at all without the dozens of people who agreed to be interviewed, by phone, email or online. Many of them are quoted by name in the following pages, while others remain unnamed at their request. I hope I have represented them fairly and done justice to their experience. I was moved by the willingness of interviewees to devote time to answering questions, discussing their thoughts and in some cases digging out documents and information from the past.

I am very grateful to people who allowed me to explore archives for which they are responsible, particularly Claire Poyner at Peace News and John Cooper at the Fellowship of Reconciliation. They went out of their way to make this possible in a Covid-safe way at a time when we needed to stand at opposite ends of a room while wearing masks. Thanks to Bill Hetherington and others for their compilation over years of the archives at the Peace Pledge Union, of which I was able to make extensive use.

I have drawn on numerous books, newspaper reports, and peace movement publications, some published at the time to which they refer and others written at a later date. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to such records, which are referenced in the footnotes. I feel that I must mention two important sources by name. The Greenham Women Everywhere project has published a treasure trove of oral and written interviews with nearly 100 Greenham women, which were extremely useful for discovering varied views and experiences of the Greenham Common Womens Peace Camp. Ian Sinclairs book, The March That Shook Blair , an oral history of the protests against the Iraq war in 2003, proved invaluable for researching that vital time in the history of peace activism.

My biggest thanks go, of course, to everyone who has contributed to the peace movement in the UK and around the world over the last four decades. They are the people who this book is about. I owe more thanks than I can put into words to the people with whom I have had the honour of campaigning for peace and from whom I have learnt so much.

I make no claims to infallibility. The responsibility for any mistakes in this book is, of course, mine.

A small selection of key events in recent peace activism in the UK.