Category Archives: Posts

On Saturday 9th August I joined other protestors in Queens Square Wrexham, in solidarity with the people of Gaza. We stand in solidarity not only with the Palestinian people but also with many Israelis who, believing their government’s racist policies to be wrong are making their voices heard.

In the square, outlines, names and ages were chalked onto the pavement of a few of the child victims of Israel’s indiscriminate killing. Some people handed out leaflets, whilst others held placards or waved Palestinian, Welsh and Peace flags. Speakers talked of the history of Palestine and referred to the diplomatic cables leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning which have exposed Israel’s lies about war crimes against Palestine. People were urged to join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel until it fulfills its obligation under international law.

Once the speakers had finished we walked the short distance from the square to Wrexham’s Barclays Bank, where around 25 people peacefully walked into the bank, whilst others remained outside. We sat down within the bank and gave leaflets to customers explaining the protest and Barclay’s involvement with the arms trade. The bank staff decided to lock the doors but did let a few people in one by one, some of whom turned out not to be customers but supporters who came in to make a donation, we applauded their generosity. (Along with other donations collected at recent town centre actions a total of around £560 has been collected, which will be donated to The Welfare Association’s Palestine Emergency Campaign). Some of the names and ages of the children were read out in the bank, a speaker talked again about BDS and another speaker talked about his reason for attending the protest. When the police arrived they made no attempt to end the protest they simply stood and waited until we voluntarily decided to bring it to a close after around half an hour.

On the 23rd July 2014, Barclays issued a statement ‘setting the record straight’ regarding allegations of Barclays and the defence industry. In the statement they say ‘Barclays hold a very small number of shares in Elbit Systems Ltd’.
Elbit Systems Ltd is an Israeli defence contractor with headquarters in Israel, they provides security surveillance around Palestine and sells drones and spy technology around the world. Israel’s primary armed drone (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) is the Hermes, produced by Elbit Systems Ltd it is responsible for the killing of civilians’ by its launched missiles.

On the 27th July 2014, Bloomberg L.P stated that Elbit Systems U.S. traded shares have advanced 6.1 percent to £63.01 since fighting intensified on July 8,. Stocks are close to the highest level since 2010 whilst its valuation on a price to earnings basis is near the most expensive in five years.

Barclays have not ‘set the record straight’ they have simply stated that they are involved with the Elbit Systems Ltd. Sir David Walker (Barclays Chairman), Antony Jenkins (Barclays Group Chief Executive) and the other 12 members of the board seriously need to address the ethics and integrity of Barclays Bank with immediate effect.

Kirk Sollitt served in the British Army during the Gulf War, he is now a member of Veterans For Peace.

Video of Ben Griffin and Jim Radford of VFP UK at the No Glory gathering in Parliament Square on the centenary of the start of the First World War.

Ben Griffin and Jim Radford of VFP UK at the No Glory gathering in Parliament Square on the centenary of the start of the First World War.

Wednesday 6 August

1200 – 1300 hrs

Japanese Cherry Tree,
Tavistock Square,
London.

Please join with VFP and others at this memorial to the victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on this day in 1945.

Speeches, Poetry, Music and a minutes silence to honour the victims. Flowers will then be laid at the base of the tree.

Jim Radford of VFP to speak and sing.

Join with VFP this Saturday and join the protest against the ongoing attack on GAZA

Date – SATURDAY 9 AUGUST 2014

Timings – 1200 – 1630 HRS

Location – BBC, Portland Place then march to Hyde Park via US Embassy

VFP RV – Call / email Ben 

Organised by The Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Monday 4 August 1830hrs
Parliament Square, London.
Dress – white poppies.

Monday 4 August is the centenary of the day that Britain declared war against Germany. The No Glory in War campaign is holding an event in Parliament Square to commemorate the 15 million killed in the “war to end all wars”, including nearly one million British soldiers, and to say they can best be commemorated by creating a world in which there is no more war.

Join us in Parliament Square and show your opposition to further wars. Hear the truth about the First World War and the protests against it at the time. MPs, actors, historians, campaigners, war veterans and others will be speaking and reading from anti-war authors and activists in 1914-18.

Jim Radford and Ben Griffin of VFP UK will speak at this WW1 Centenary event organised by No Glory. Jim will also perform “The Shores of Normandy”.

The demons and the pain shall last,
the dreams I have of a violent past.

People will watch but no-one care,
the truth of which the world cant bare.

The friends we buried in a shallow grave,
the country not caring of what we gave.

The war we fought for British prides,
tell that to their widowed brides.

Now half the man I used to be,
waits quietly for the blind to see.

Join with VFP and others this Friday to protest the ongoing attack on GAZA

FRIDAY 1 AUGUST 2014

1730 HRS

Outside the Israeli Embassy, High Street Kensington, London.

Nearest tube High Street Kensington

Organised by The Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Event Facebook page

The purpose of VFP UK is to work towards the abolition of war. To achieve this we focus on three areas; Education, Resistance & Solidarity. On Friday 4 July members and supporters of VFP UK, CAAT, ELAF, At Ease, LCW and others stood in Solidarity with Dan Ashman as he faced trial for blockading the 2013 Arms Fair at the Excel Centre in East London.

Dan defended himself well with the help of McKenzie friend Steven Rushton.

The verdict will be handed down tomorrow.

Solidarity Call Out;

Tuesday 8 July 2014

1330 hrs

Thames Magistrates Court, London, E3 

Rod Tweedy reviews the book War against War! by Ernst Friedrich

On May Day 1924 Ernst Friedrich published a collection of photographic images of the atrocities of World War I, hoping to use the relatively new medium of photography as documentary evidence to challenge the orthodox presentation of war. As Douglas Kellner has remarked, “Friedrich hoped that when they actually saw the reality of modern warfare, people everywhere would become more critical of war, the military, and militarism.”1 The book was called War against War!, and the photographs made an immediate and lasting impression on his contemporaries, both within and outside of Germany. The images attracted even greater attention when he put them in the window of his newly-opened Anti-Kriegs-Museum in Berlin, the first international anti-war museum (opened in 1925). Perhaps testimony to their unnerving power, the museum was subsequently targeted by Nazi storm troopers, and on the same night that the Reichstag was burned the whole collection was destroyed. Unperturbed, Friedrich re-opened it a few years later in Belgium where, following their invasion of 1940, the Nazis again shut it down. The museum finally re-opened in Berlin in 1982: Friedrich’s grandson, Tommy Spree now runs it. I find the history of this book very poignant – that the work of an anti-war campaigner in the 1920s is still being remembered and still reverberating today, and that these small photographs have outlived all the divisions of the Third Reich As William Blake once noted, speaking of the work of another radical: “is it a greater miracle to feed five thousand men with five loaves than to overthrow all the armies of Europe with a small pamphlet?”2 Sometimes the little acts of remembrance and continuation are more profound and meaningful than the big state occasions and the glitzy television spectacles. Sometimes the final victors of history are the most surprising, as Shelley intuited in ‘Ozymandias’; sometimes the everyday acts of courage and humanity outlive all of the bombast and bunting.

Friedrich’s own “small pamphlet” has recently been re-published by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, and ninety years on it loses none of its relevancy or indeed its power to punch. Friedrich’s hope was to bring home the mundane, brutalizing reality of war – through the very medium that many wars have been fought – images. The book is, he says, “a picture of War” – you can sense in Friedrich that desire to utilize the “truthfulness” of the photographic medium, to enlist it in order to show the dreadful “truthfulness” of war – “a picture of War, objectively true and faithful to nature, photographically recorded for all time”. If we’ve lost this view of photography, or are more wary of it’s objectivity today, it’s partly due to the abuses that have been made of it.

The book itself is a mixture of drawings, posters, children’s war games (today these might be represented by Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield 3) – to suggest where the military training actually starts – as well as the war photographs themselves. The force of the images is partly in their juxtaposition: soldiers eager to go to war in 1914 on one page, next to a heap of tangled corpses on the next – suggesting the actual nature of the of the “field of honour” into which they are unconsciously marching. But it also implicitly points out the highly selective editing of photography that goes on in mainstream publications – how pictures from the very same reel might be selected, filtered, in order to bolster whatever narrative the newspaper is taking. A German father looks proud, in his soldier’s uniform, amongst trees in France; two days later we see him again, dead and faceless amongst the mud. Perhaps unsurprisingly only the first made it into the Illustrated Family Journal.

These are not easy pictures to look at – like the later war photography of Don McCullin they ask us not to look away from the reality of war. This touches on one of the many paradoxes and ambiguities of a medium that’s based on wanting you to look at it. Neither are these images “Art”: they are ordinary snapshots taken from the Front, not composed or well-lit – as we expect photographs and oil paintings to be. Nor are they reproduced here on fine paper. But that is part of their point, and power – these photos are everyman, they are meant only to register a reality- not to airbrush it or rearrange it. All they are saying is that this did actually once happen, and this is what it did actually look like – and it’s a view of war that no modern Jeremy Paxman documentary, or learned Niall Ferguson tome, or Lloyd Georgean rhetoric, can really capture or come close to. In all of those verbal commentaries there are inevitably interpretations, biases, agendas, justifications – often quite disturbing and manipulative ones. But here we just see –both the propaganda photos (such as one of Kaiser Wilhelm walking nonchalantly along some duckboards specially constructed so he wouldn’t get his boots dirty) and the other less glamorous ones (a corner of a field where rag-like men lie dead, sprawled and humped over the earth – disappointingly not at all like the fun and energetic ‘paper soldiers for cutting out and pasting’ shown earlier).

The photographs also record the gulf between those who make the orders and those who do the fighting. They suggest the absence of representation of the one in the other. Generals sipping tea or surrounded by their greyhounds in the backstreets of an occupied town; a heap of tangled bodies dead in a muddy trench, to which Friedrich has added the caption: “At the front: the Crown Prince is not present”. They also suggest cause and effect. The cause: a soldier blasting out a jet of ‘liquid fire’ in the new flame-throwers that the war developed. On the next page, the effect: most of the human body torched by the burning gasoline is simply not there. What is, – scraps of face, a boot – is badly charred. Friedrich’s arrangement of these photos is obviously the result of an editing, a selection in itself; to suggest a way of viewing the images of war. In that respect it is like the usual editing of photos for propaganda magazines and recruiting adverts. But, significantly, it is one that evokes context, that holds the gaze – it reveals that throwing burning gasoline at another human being does actually have consequences. It makes you look at those consequences. This makes it completely unlike the standard lens through which we’re usually invited to view war – a way of seeing that is, like so many other aspects of the modern left-brain mode of attention, completely context-free.3

They are pictures of extremes: soldiers smoking, making merry. Soldiers undergoing extensive reconstructive face surgery, their mouths and jaws blown off. There is a familiar unease here: a sense that the one is somehow related to the other, however indirectly or unconsciously. Indeed, there’s a suggestion that the transient and perhaps superficial highs are somehow connected to or responsible for the abject lows, and on some level aware of this. That all of the successes and wealth within the current system is ultimately at the price of a dreadful human impoverishment and suffering (sweatshops, wars, chronic mental health) that we know goes on but which we are not usually invited to consider: virtual heaven at the expense of actual hell.

One of the most trenchant aspects of Friedrich’s work is its persistent questioning – he asks what “heroic death”, or “glory”, or “honour”, actually mean or corresponds to in these situations. There is one particularly upsetting image – which he’s ironically captioned “A ‘meritorious’ achievement” – that movingly brings home the potential insanity of this language, of these ridiculous awards systems. Perhaps these are similar to how other forms of marketing or advertising work, in inverse ratio to the reality: Gilette’s ‘The Best a Man Can Get’ (shaving is a humdrum nuisance); McDonald’s ‘I’m Loving It’ (this tastes like cardboard); the Military’s ‘Pour le Mérite’ (for those who die as cattle). This is not to dismiss the extraordinary acts of bravery that many soldiers perform, or the extreme difficulties they endure, but simply to note the unease with how these are formally recognised, and what they actually signify – especially when the causes of going to war are so uncertain and problematic. Siegfried Sassoon was one of many soldiers who recognised this unease, throwing his Military Cross ribbon (awarded to him for “conspicuous gallantry”) into the Mersey in 1916 to register his profound disillusionment with the war and those responsible both for it and for the manufacture of its medals.4

In these contexts, as Friedrich suggests, military medals, honours, and titles, often seem to be our way of masquerading unsettling truths about what’s going on, about what we are actually doing, just as poppies are also symbols of forgetfulness. The cemeteries for the dead in France and Belgium are poignant and dignified, and rightly so, but even they don’t convey the dreadful reality of the deaths that put them there, in the way that these photographs, assembled by Friedrich, do – the rigor mortis arms, the absence of limbs, the amalgamated heaps.

After a while, looking at photo after photo of these traumatic and brutalizing scenes, all words go. Looking at them becomes a bit like losing one’s moral compass. Maybe this is the testimony of photographs: to move beyond language, truisms, justifications, even articulation of outrage. What can you say when you’ve seen men stretched over barbed wire like rotting horses. How can you convey the pity of this all through the bayonets of language, of verse. Wilfred Owen’s achievement was so significant, as both a poet and solider, because he somehow did find the words – brought things back from that place, -although he himself was keenly aware of the inadequacy or inaccuracy of this articulation (“I heard the sighs of men, that have no skill/To speak of their distress”). The same anxiety that is evident in Friedrich’s work in 1924 – the concern that people may forget, or not even know in the first place, the reality of warfare – was also what drove Wilfred Owen back to the front line, to give a “voice” to the voiceless, as he put it.5 Friedrich shares Owen’s unease that the true nature of warfare was being concealed by both the home governments and the media and thus misunderstood by the wider public. This concern reaches from Sassoon, Friedrich and Owen to those calling for greater transparency and accountability in today’s reporting and understanding of war, such as Chelsea Manning.6 Sassoon’s protest was made, as he himself put it, to “help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.” It was to prod and awaken these imaginations that these writers worked. Each in different ways believed that the stark, sheer reality of war – of men’s faces torn apart (“faces blown half away”, as Bruce Kent strikingly puts it in his compelling new Introduction to Friedrich’s book) was being lost in unreal and untruthful rhetoric of “heroic death” and “fields of honour” – the “old Lies” that Owen also sought to combat.7

What has been torn away in these photographs is not only the mask of men’s faces but of war itself – the “beautiful phrases”, the old lies. It is the aesthetic nature of all this that is one of the most disturbing and puzzling aspect of Friedrich’s collection (and it may be significant here that he originally hoped to become a sculptor or artist, and later had close links with the Expressionist movement). It’s the same problem that confronted Owen in writing poems, and McCullin in taking pictures: how do you use a medium posited in many senses on beauty, to show not merely the horror, but also how the medium itself is in a sense part of the problem. In McCullin’s work this paradox is particularly acute, as many of his finest images have such technical accomplishment as to be almost things of beauty, works of art, and yet the subjects are such that deny and repel any hint of this. The instinct with taking a photo, any photo, is surely to make it look good. So how do we to react to horrific images that are beautifully taken? Something about that is troubling. It troubles both the reader and the artist – hence perhaps the haunted nature of McCullin himself, or Owen (“Am I not a conscientious objector with a very seared conscience”). There is something that is unearthed or unleashed in violence and the brutality of warfare that seems to call into question the whole business of art, – perhaps just as the experience of war calls into question the whole business of morality. All the rhetoric – “the halo and the humbug”, as Friedrich evocatively puts it – both invokes and appeals to it; all the military music, all the sexiness of the recruitment poster. Even the uniforms the Nazis wore by designed by Hugo Boss. And the same aesthetic of war is still relentlessly cultivated by contemporary manufacturers of video games, and government recruitment adverts, and surely needs to be challenged as much as the ideologies, intellectual justifications, and sexed-up dossiers themselves. The impact of the yearly televised Cenotaph rituals on Remembrance Sunday, as watched through the high definition lens of BBC television, is surely part of its huge appeal, a sort of Olympics Opening Ceremony for the royal family and British Legion – war as spectacle, even if these days it is rather a bruised sense of war.8

In the brief introductory statements that he provided for his book, Friedrich calls for a true understanding of the hidden motivations and causes of war, usefully citing Plato’s observation that “All wars arise for the possession of wealth”. For Friedrich, behind the smokescreen of morality and holiness, and the propaganda of adventure and reclaiming glory, the object in virtually all wars, when it comes down to it, is “to protect or to seize money and property and power”. When money or property or power is threatened, the reaction of the elites, he notes, is to rattle their sabres and call out “The Country is in danger!” And by “Country”, Friedrich nicely points out, they usually simply mean “money-bags”. Believing in one’s country can be a great thing, except when it’s based upon a fabrication – where the word “Country” is simply “the string which ties the robber’s bundle”, as Shelley noted two hundred years ago. This form of patriotism is a constructed fabrication because it is used to mask the power which actually runs the country –the “power of the rich”.9 This system is kept in place, Friedrich notes, not only by police and by blatant economic power and coercion, but also psychologically – through propaganda, such as the subtler programmes and neurological processes based on the desire to “command and dominate”, which capitalism in particular so tirelessly appeals to and targets. These processes, Friedrich notes, are replicated everywhere in our divided and unreal societies – in our offices and factories (“the battlefield in the factories”, as he puts it), and even at home, in domestic and sexual relationships (in the wish, for example, to “dominate and command … over his wife and children in his family”). “How many lightly overlook the fact that in one’s own home, in the family, war is being spontaneously prepared” – an acute, and depressing observation. Freidrich acutely refers to this as the need to fight against the “capitalism within yourselves”, in order to eradicate the basis on which it’s constructed.

Like Blake, Friedrich’s response to the culture of militarism is energetic and oppositional, hence the motivational title of his book. He is not an advocate for quietism – for holding hands and tea-cakes, as he rather disparagingly puts it.10 Indeed, again like Blake, he seeks to reclaim the concept of “fighting”, not in order to denote literal battles fought with equally literal bayonets and flamethrowers, but rather to signify what Blake called “mental fight” – the engaged, dynamic, passionate processes of the human mind. For both writers, this engagement involves the whole artillery of human consciousness: reason, empathy, instinct, and above all imagination. Physical war – “corporeal war”, as Blake called it, is presented as a dreadful perversion of this intellectual fight. Thus, instead of using our intense energies and impulses constructively, through passionate debate and dialectic, we are misled into downgrading them, turning the dynamic cultural struggle through which liberty is forged into a crude parody of struggle – into literal defences and attacks, when we should be winning arguments. As Friedrich observes, “True heroism lies not in murder, but in the refusal to commit murder”: one can be engaged, and at war, with the assumptions and platitudes of war itself. Indeed, Friedrich’s whole life is a striking and powerful example of “mental fight” in action.

So what is it that downgrades our imaginations – our way of seeing other human beings – in this way, and turns our energies into destructive, embattled literalisms? Blake suggests that it is based on a restricting, hardening vision that we are encouraged to have of other people – seeing them in terms of narrow self-interest (“selfhood”), and bolstered by a sense of moral self-righteousness. The trouble with self-interest is that it’s so easy to manipulate – one only needs to offer to reduce income tax rates to see this. Moral self- righteousness may give us a momentary sense of superiority and a virtuous rush to the head (an ‘Ego Rush’), but it is ultimately a very isolating and de-humanising way of relating to people. Capitalism, as Friedrich suggests in his introduction, hard-wires itself into this very narrow, prescriptive, and brutalising aspect of our natures in order to perpetuate itself.11 Through its appeals to self-interest and to supposedly moral codes (both of which aim at setting us apart from others) we can be trained to temporarily override our humanity. The ghastly and inexorable pull towards war that ignited the First World War illustrates what happens when we identify too strongly with rigid codes and laws – with bits of paper, which must then be “upheld”. Implicit in this moralising mind-set is an obsession with being “right”, with being “superior” and with being “priestly”. Indeed, Friedrich is furious about the role that the orthodox Church has played in this hardening and divisive process, dedicating his book to “the priests who blessed the weapons in the name of God”. A photograph later in the book shows: “The Bishop of Westminster reviews, alongside of a General, a parade of English Boy Scouts”.

The danger of urging a “war on war” of course, is that it simply ends up with more war – replacing one oppressive figurehead or system with another. This happens especially when the desire for liberation is intermixed with feelings of revenge and hatred, rather than with pity, for those currently maintaining the system. The whole point of the insanity of war is that it is us fighting ourselves, and so to see our leaders and elites as other, as less, as deserving of the revolution that’s coming their way, is to fall into a very similar mind-set that they already have: of Them and Us. So when Friedrich calls on the “war of the deceived against the deceivers”, “the victimised against the profiteers”, or “the tortured against the tortured”, it has to be understood in this context: i.e., not as literal war. Calling one’s opponents “scum” (as I have seen on many of today’s oppositional placards) is, I would argue, the quickest way into the next cycle of deception and victimisation. It is perhaps relevant here to note that our word for “war” is derived from an Old Saxon word meaning “to confuse” or “to perplex” – which is exactly what most governments intent on going to war are so keen on doing. Waking up from this confusion is really what War against War! is all about: “To all regions that have ears to hear I call out but two words and these are Man and Love … And as we all, all human beings, equally feel joy and pain, let us fight unitedly against the common monstrous enemy, War.” As mankind starts to awaken and begins to understand the processes which have been used to keep our shared humanity submerged and unconscious, a subtle but profound shift occurs – from self-interest to social-interest, and from corporeal war to mental war. In Blake’s work, how we view war is ultimately a question of vision, and he urges us to recalibrate and elevate our view of humanity (that is, of our own humanity) in order to challenge and effectively undermine the basis of the pathology that lies behind all appeals to war. This inevitably entails a change in how the human imagination, which is for Blake the basic operating system of man, functions and is perceived:

Urthona [the Human Imagination] rises from the ruinous walls
In all his ancient strength to form the golden armour
For intellectual War The war of swords departed now

“Intellectual War”: this is the true business of the human intellect, Blake suggests, and the literal “war of swords” is a crude perversion of it. As the modern media pervasively demonstrates, war is conducted precisely to stop people thinking, to prevent “mental fight”. “Therefore let us, who are fighters,” Friedrich urges, “join the war against war, let us examine the causes and the nature of war so that, armed with the weapon of knowledge and the sharp sword of the mind, we may emerge victorious from the fight.” And surely that is a war worth fighting.

Rod Tweedy is the author of The God of the Left Hemisphere: Blake, Bolte Taylor, and the Myth of Creation, editor of Karnac Books, and an enthusiastic supporter of the user-led mental health organization, Mental Fight Club. If anyone is interested in setting up an Anti-War Museum in London, along the lines of Ernst Friedrich’s original Anti-Kriegs-Museum, please contact Rod Tweedy c/o Veterans for Peace. Thank you.

Thursday 26 June 2014

1900 hrs

Friends House,
173 Euston Road,
London,
NW1 2BJ

Speakers;

Young people from Headliners and the Woodcraft Folk
Ben Griffin, Veterans for Peace UK
Owen Everett, ForcesWatch

Outline;

Young people are the primary focus of a growing range of initiatives that seek to promote military activities and approaches, including thousands of visits to schools each year and new government policies promoting a ‘military ethos’ within education.

ForcesWatch present a new short film, Engage: the military and young people, made by teenagers from the charity Headliners, which gives a number of different teenagers a chance to give their thoughts on the military’s youth engagement and to raise their own concerns about it.

The film launch comes just one day before Camo Day, when schoolchildren are encouraged to wear military uniforms to raise money for a veterans’ charity, and just two days before Armed Forces Day 2014, which will see communities across the UK encouraged to ‘show their support’ for the armed forces.

All are welcome. RSVP to education@forceswatch.net or by calling 020 7837 2822 (we need to know how many people are attending so we can order the right amount of refreshments)

In August 1968 my company surrounded a Vietnamese village so that the “lerps” could search it. (from LRRP, long range reconnaissance patrol.) Five soldiers appeared carrying M-16 carbines with silencers. Why would they need silencers?

When it was dark, they went into the village. When morning came, they were gone.

Carlotta Gall’s book about Afghanistan, “The Wrong Enemy,” tells a similar story. An Afghan translator said he accompanied a U.S. team on a night raid. They carried “American assault weapons with silencers attached.” They kicked in the door of a house and, without saying a word, killed the three adults and left the children orphaned. The translator “was never asked to translate anything.”

Our military thinkers still don’t know right from wrong, but they have learned something from Vietnam and El Salvador ~ how to keep wars quiet and, to paraphrase Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero’s letter to Jimmy Carter, how to become more efficient at murder.

“The Wrong Enemy” should cause us to reflect on Afghanistan’s future. Our taxes have paid for war in Afghanistan for years. Isn’t it time to shift our spending and our creative thinking to peacemaking?

In Afghanistan, over the last 35 years of war, there was one constant: the Pakistani military armed the most extreme fundamentalists. During 23 of those years our government took sides and paid for these wars.

During the 1980s our government paid Pakistan to arm Afghan guerrillas (the mujahideen) as they fought the Soviet army. Since 2001 our government has sent our military to fight the Taliban but kept silent while the Pakistani military continued to arm the Taliban. A Pentagon assessment from July 2013 said, “so long as the Taliban can find haven in Pakistan, defeating them on the battlefield will be difficult if not impossible.”

We have spent more than $1 trillion on the Afghan war. Of that, about $100 billion went to “reconstruction,” but almost all of that went to prop up the Afghan government, National Army and Police. Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence wrote that only $3 billion of that $1 trillion (one third of 1 percent) has gone to aid the average Afghan.

The anti-corruption group Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as one of the three most corrupt nations on earth, yet our government continues to give contracts to corporations with long records of fraudulent practices. (See “Windfalls of War” from The Center for Public Integrity)

Nation-building didn’t fail in Afghanistan; it never started. Corrupt contractors took huge payments, sub-contractors took theirs, and on down the line until there was very little left ~ the trickle-down theory in action.

Before September 11, 2001, Iran opposed the Taliban while Pakistan armed and supported the Taliban. After September 11 our government illogically designated Iran as our enemy and Pakistan as our ally. This only makes sense if we see that our government follows a logic of its own, based on profit and control of other nation’s resources. Iran was already on the list of countries whose oil and natural gas was to be stolen in the future, so they couldn’t be our ally.

With Iran off-limits, Pakistan became the only route from Afghanistan to the sea. Our geniuses of foreign policy may not have realized that they gave Pakistan veto power over any U.S. corporate get-rich-quick schemes. The root problem of our continuous war is that U.S. soldiers are caught in a war of attrition over how much control the U.S. and Pakistan will allow each other over Afghanistan.

If we care about the soul of our nation, we must question the official story. Why does our government support an illogical policy? Why do we enrich a few well-connected Americans and Afghans while pushing the average American and Afghan even deeper into poverty? And why does our government remain silent while Pakistan still provides the weapons that have killed 3,400 U.S. and NATO soldiers, hundreds of civilian contractors and aid workers, and tens of thousands of Afghans?

It appears that our government values profits over lives. Corporations will profit enormously from building infrastructure and exporting trillions of dollars worth of minerals from Central Asia and Afghanistan to seaports in Pakistan. More profits will come from supplying arms to those who will guard the transportation routes. If we don’t demand that Congress change course, a coalition of the greedy will continue to shape our policies.

After 33 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, General Smedley Butler described himself as “a gangster for capitalism.” Writing in 1935, General Butler titled his book “War Is a Racket.”

Ann Jones, in her book “They Were Soldiers,” says “a clever person just needs to find the right racket to profit endlessly from America’s endless wars.” The war in Afghanistan is a racket, and those who promote it for personal gain are gangsters for capitalism.

We can still heal the wounds of war. We should: speak the truth about war, as we understand it, to our fellow citizens; identify the Pakistani military as the problem and withdraw all support from them; test a new alliance with Iran to break Pakistan’s economic stranglehold; and shift our spending to projects chosen and directed by Afghan civic groups.

We owe a debt to the broken families of Iraq and Afghanistan and to our morally and physically wounded soldiers. We can start repaying that debt by spending whatever is needed to repair the damage.

Bill Distler was a fire team leader and squad leader in the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam from Dec. 1967 to Sept. 1968. He is a member of the Jonathan J. Santos Memorial Chapter of Veterans For Peace in Bellingham, WA. He spends his spare time thinking about Vietnam, El Salvador, and Afghanistan. He believes they are all one long war driven by greed, ignorance, and arrogance.

This article first appeared in the summer 2014 issue of the War Crimes Times.

Wednesday 2 July 2014

2000 hrs

Conway Hall,
Red Lion Square,
London

Meeting hosted by CND

Chair: Jim Brann, CND

Main Speaker: David Swanson

David sits on the Coordinating Committee of WorldBeyondWar.org. He will be visiting London from the United States on July 2nd before heading up to speak in Northern England with CAAB on the Fourth of July. Swanson is an author whose books include: War No More: The Case for Abolition (2013), War Is A Lie (2010), When the World Outlawed War (2011), and The Military Industrial Complex at 50 (2012).

Also Speaking;

Ben Griffin – Ben is a former SAS soldier who refused to return to Iraq in 2005. He is now the coordinator of Veterans For Peace UK.

Jim Radford interviewed on the BBC flagship current affairs programme Today. He talks about his experiences on D-Day and about Veterans For Peace.

If the audio keeps stopping the press pause and allow the blue bar to get ahead.

Or follow this link for the BBC, Jim is on at 1:43:20

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045bsc8

We now face the prospect of 16 year old girls joining the army in combat roles.

Shortly after announcing it would be reviewing the ban on women in combat roles, the Ministry of Defence last week published annual recruitment figures which revealed that 1,140 women joined the armed forces in the year to April 2014, accounting for 9.6 per cent of total intake.  This marks a small increase on the previous year’s figures, when just 8.4 per cent of new recruits were female.  Nevertheless, it is clear that the armed forces – and the Army in particular – remain overwhelmingly a young man’s game: last year, 17-year-old boys enlisting outnumbered women and girls of all ages combined.

Regardless of the numbers involved, it is right for the MoD continuously to review its personnel policies to ensure they are in line with anti-discrimination legislation and reflective of modern social norms.  If combat roles are opened up to women, it will be one of the biggest developments in British armed forces personnel policy since 1999, when a European Court of Human Rights judgement forced the MoD to end its ban on gay servicemen and women.

Prior to the court’s ruling, the MoD had argued vehemently that allowing openly gay people to serve in the armed forces would have catastrophic effects on unit cohesion and operational effectiveness.  Once the ban was lifted, these fears were demonstrated to be wholly unfounded.  The Army and Navy now rank in the top 100 of the 2014 Stonewall Workplace Equality Index and the armed forces continue to operate as effectively as they ever did.

An equally seismic policy shift occurred a few years later when the MoD was forced to introduce a minimum age limit of 18 for soldiers entering hostilities (although it still insists on maintaining a loophole to allow it to deploy younger soldiers if it considers necessary).  Once again the MoD fought reform for years, but had to concede defeat in 2003 when the UK ratified the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.  Yet again, the MoD’s fears of military disaster proved groundless.  The idea of sending into battle a soldier who is too young to play Call of Duty is unthinkable – but barely a decade ago this was routine practice.

Despite grudgingly accepting that it can no longer send under-18s to man the frontline, the MoD still refuses to review the minimum enlistment age.   It resists proposals to raise the enlistment age as passionately as it fought its previous battles over homosexuality and deployment age (using many of the same arguments).  This obstinacy now leads to an interesting scenario – the possibility, in the near future, of 16-year-old girls being enlisted into some of the British Army’s most dangerous combat roles.  Projecting figures which reflect the 2012/13 recruit intake (the latest year for which full role distribution figures are available), we could expect to see around 90 girls under the age of 18 joining the infantry (the Army’s largest combat branch) each year.  That’s about 3% of infantry intake.

The British Army’s policy on enlistment age is already seen as an anomaly internationally – it is one of fewer than 20 in the world which officially enlist from 16.  It is hard to predict the reaction of its military allies if it starts fielding a force in which a sizeable minority of its combat recruits are 16-year-old girls who, like the boys, will be sent to the frontline on their 18th birthday.

Arguing against lifting the ban on women in combat roles, Colonel Richard Kemp said “The essence of infantry soldiering is to close with the enemy and kill him face to face with bullets, bayonets and grenades… It is a dreadful, gut-churning, traumatic and incredibly tough job”.  But in January 2011, when Colonel Kemp argued with me on the Today programme against proposals to raise the enlistment age, he expressed no such qualms in relation to the 1,050 minors who joined the dreadful, gut-churning, traumatic Infantry that year.  For them, apparently, it was just “a good opportunity”.  Responding to renewed criticisms of the enlistment age last Sunday, he also argued that enlisting 16-year-olds “boosts the quality and fighting effectiveness of the armed forces”, although he didn’t specify how.

Understandably, “dreadful” is not the word the Army uses in its “Junior Entry”recruitment brochures directed at under-18s and their parents.  In fact, the words “kill”, “violence”, “trauma”, and “injury” do not appear a single time anywhere in the Junior Soldier information leaflet, which presents the Army Phase One training centre at Harrogate like a residential sixth-form college.  Remarkably, neither does the word “war”.  Not once.

The old guard will retort “But they don’t go into war until they’re 18!” as if an 18-year-old boy is more emotionally and psychologically resilient than a woman can ever be, simply by virtue of his penis.  This would-be defence also draws a false distinction between the experience of life on operations (including, but not limited to, combat) and life in training.  If somebody is recognised as too young to participate in war, they cannot logically be considered old enough to participate in all-immersive training for war.  Infantry training, as Colonel Kemp is at pains to point out, involves learning how to kill people “face to face with bullets, bayonets and grenades”.  It involves simulated warfare and prolonged, intense physical and psychological pressure, designed to make recruits crack.  It is inherently dangerous in and of itself, as the deaths in training (including three recruits aged under 18 in the past three years) will testify.  If frontline life was inherently different to training, then the training would be useless.  The whole purpose is for them to merge as seamlessly as possible, which makes a deployment age of 18 meaningless if the Army still trains from 16.

The MoD no doubt worries about the impact on public morale of female soldiers being killed.  In contrast, it believes we can tolerate the 92 British fatalities in Afghanistan who were still legally children when they enlisted – no doubt seduced by the sports, adventure, and “games rooms” promised in the same teen recruitment brochure which fails to mention the word “death” a single time.  And it thinks we can stomach the deaths in Afghanistan of the twelve British soldiers who were aged just 18 when they were killed.  Perhaps the MoD comforts itself with the fact that adolescents have an underdeveloped perception of risk and mortality, and consequently hopes that their experience of war – including their own death or permanent injury – is less traumatic for them than it might be for adult women.

Of course, there’s a big question over whether 16-year-old girls would ever be able to pass the demanding physical tests required for entry into infantry combat roles.  But the physical suitability of teenage boys for these roles is also highly questionable.  Whilst the 690 boys aged under-18 who enlisted into the infantry in 2012/13 “passed” the physical entrance tests, in the long term they are – according to internal MoD documents – twice as likely as adult recruits to be medically discharged due to training injuries.  MoD guidelines on training of young recruits explicitly state that under-18s “have lower bone strength and joint stability, making them more susceptible to acute and overuse injuries”.  Essentially, the problem with training teen soldiers is that they have children’s bodies.  This is brought home graphically by reports of medical staff working with military casualties who are forced to perform painful, repeated re-amputations on the youngest patients because their limbs keep growing through the scar tissue.

The idea of 16-year-old girls serving in the British Infantry sounds so ludicrous that most people dismiss it out of hand.  But if the majority of public and MoD opinion now accepts the concept of women serving in combat roles, it is clear that the real problem with 16-year-old girls joining the infantry is not that they are girls, but that they are 16.  And this should be equally true for 16-year-old boys.

From the Defence Select Committee to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, from children’s organisations to veterans’ groups, from the NUT to the EU Directorate-General for External Policies and the Bishops of the Church in Wales, the MoD is under constant pressure to raise the enlistment age to 18.  A 2013 survey found that an overwhelming 70 per cent of respondents who expressed a view thought the enlistment age should be raised to 18.  Yet despite all this the MoD still clings in growing isolation to its belief in the need to recruit minors.  In July last year, and again this March, the Defence Select Committee challenged the MoD to present evidence justifying this policy.  Nearly a year after the original request was made, the MoD has still not been able to produce a response.

There are undoubtedly great changes ahead for armed forces personnel policies, which we have every reason to believe will be implemented as successfully as those of the recent past.  But if the MoD truly wants to modernise the armed forces for the 21st century, it needs to start by recognising that “Boy Soldiers” are as outdated as the Cavalry.

Rachel Taylor is a research and advocacy manager at Child Soldiers International, and runs the campaign to raise the UK enlistment age to 18. 

Within the anti-war movement, we often hear from the various vocal organisations opposed to the practice of humans killing each other humans. These range from the likes of CND, Peace Pledge Union, Movement for the Abolition of War, Consciences Objectors, Quakers and our very own Veterans For Peace. But there is one group of Veterans always written out of the story, they are voiceless conscripts with no pressure group, no regimental association, no pension and no voting rights. If you haven’t worked out who they are yet. They are our fellow Earthlings, those animals that we share this planet with. We exploit their nature and cause them untold sufferings, just so we can carry on killing and maiming each other for some fleeting moment of perceived glory. Man has been exploiting and using animals in wars for centuries. But there is a particular pathos about the plight of horses conscripted to suffer in conflicts which they, unlike their riders, lack any means of understanding.

Many photographs and paintings depict warriors charging into battle with swords held high, wild-eyed mounts stretching out their necks as they surge full-tilt towards the enemy. Yet few pictures show the consequences: battlefields on which abandoned, maimed, traumatized and eviscerated animals wander in agony and bewilderment, lacking even a kindly bullet to free them from their misery. A million horses were sent to France during WW1 but only 62000 returned.

Many were killed or mutilated in some vainglorious cavalry charge, some were worked to death hauling overladen ammunition carts through energy sapping mud. Most of those that survived received the ungrateful act of a bullet through the brain, in order to feed troops and the local population, as the war ground to its miserable conclusion. Today it is search dogs that pay the price of human folly, as they stumble across IEDs wagging their tales, desperate to please their handlers. In recent times we have shot live pigs to study the impact of bullet wounds on ripped flesh, trained dolphins to attach limpet mines to hulls of ships, and poisoned monkeys at Porton Down, to gauge the effects that various battlefield chemicals have on we civilized humans.

Following the success of Jilly Coopers book ‘Animals in War’ a substantial memorial was erected in Hyde Park, by public subscription, to remember and mark the contribution made by these voiceless veterans. If Veterans for Peace is to come of age, we should set aside time and visit this memorial as a group, to pay homage and recognize all veterans, including those
that had no choice in dying for their country, our country. “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” Mahatma Gandhi. Animals in War Memorial, Hyde Park

Less explored issues in the world of animal welfare are brought to the foreground during periods of war. Neglect, injuries and death in places such as abandoned zoos are also a concern – at least to those who care about animals amongst the carnage of human war victims. In fact, millions more animals die from the causes of war than humans. For example, in the Afghan war during the 1990’s, more than 75,000 animals were lost due to mines – that’s over half of all animal livestock in Afghanistan.

We often hear of landmines causing death and severe injury to innocent people, but animals are suffering the same fate … In fact ten or twenty times more animals are killed and maimed from landmines every single day. Hundreds of millions of these hidden killers lay usually invisible just underneath earth or foliage – on roadsides, paths fields and scattered around woodlands. People of war torn countries are unable to plant their fields or even walk to the clinics or visit friends. Children can’t walk to school or play in their neighbourhood. Animals, both wild and farmed roam free across the danger areas under the constant threat of being blown up.

On leaving the Army I began employment as an RSPCA Inspector. During one particular task, I remember spending eight hours at the rescue of an emaciated ewe, stranded 100ft up on a craggy rock-face of the Pembrokeshire Coast. The sheep was chased over the cliff edge by a loose running dog, two other sheep fell to the sea rocks below and died in the fall. For my efforts, I was awarded the Bronze Medal of the Society, for humanity and courage in the rescue of the sheep. On that medal ribbon are the words ‘FOR HUMANITY’, something no medal awarded to me by the military has ever said or could say. I am extremely proud of that award and I feel it was a time in my life when I became fully human. When I was able to summon up enough compassion to extend my common humanity to what many people see as a vacuous joint of meat, totally void of feelings and intelligence.

We call animals dumb, but for anyone who has spent any time around these fellow sentient creatures, it quickly becomes evident that they are thinking feeling beings with needs of their own. When was the last time any of us saw a sheep with an AK47 in its possession, determined to cause carnage in order to dominate the corner of the field it lives in. What gives us the right to use and abuse them in our inane acts of violence, then cast them aside and forget them as if they form no part of the narrative? Surely that makes us the dumb ones. Humans cause these crazy wars, so why create even more layers of suffering for other species
of earth-life?

Who can be the voice of these silent veterans if not Veterans For Peace? When it comes to war and the merciless violence doled out to anyone in its path, then we must never forget those other victims, those faithful and loyal animals so often used and abused by us to further our violent ambitions. ‘For man who is kind unto beasts is kind unto himself.

Gus Hales is a member of Veterans For Peace UK

In 1966 I was a sapper serving with 34 Field Squadron, Royal Engineers, based at Tidworth Barracks, when we were told that we had to fly out to the Far East to help deal with problems in Borneo and Brunei. In early October, we arrived in Singapore to acclimatize for a week, but after a few days there we were all called to a meeting and told we would now be going to north-east Thailand instead. We were to take part in Operation Crown and complete the building of a military airfield. A few days later we flew out to the partially built airstrip, next to the Thai village of Loeng Nok Tha, which was about 25 miles from the border with Laos.

The stamp in my passport said that I was: ‘permitted to stay in Thailand until the completion of his assignment for SEATO.’ It was the height of the Vietnam War and about 60 miles south of Loeng Nok Tha lay the town of Ubon with its Royal Thai Air Force Base, from which the US 8th Tactical Fighter Wing were flying combat missions to attack targets, or provide protection from North Vietnamese MiG-17s and 21s. Often we would see the F-4 Phantom fighter bombers roar over us on their way to North Vietnam or the Ho Chi Minh Trail – which came through Laos from North Vietnam and then down to the South. Sometimes, on their way back, we could see holes and other bits of damage on some Phantoms, when they had been hit by anti-aircraft fire.

One day a rumour swept our base camp that Julian Pettifer, a BBC news correspondent then known for his reports from Vietnam, was in the vicinity and we were all ordered not to speak to him. Officially, Britain was playing no part in the Vietnam War. Harold Wilson, the British Labour PM, had come under strong pressure from the US to send British troops directly into this war. While he stood firm against this – and he deserves credit for that – it was thought that Britain could be helping the US in other, undeclared, ways. Our close approximation to the conflict had disturbed one or two of us and the question began to be asked: ‘To what use would the military airfield we were building be put?’ No one, however, got any logical answers, but we suspected that it must be something to do with the Vietnam War.

After nearly seven months, the runways had been built to a standard that jet aircraft could use and we were pulled out at the end of April 1967, leaving a completed, but seemingly deserted airfield. There the matter rested till 1993, when Willy Bach, another ex-sapper from 11 Independent Field Squadron, who had worked on the building of the airstrip in early 1966, decided to travel back to Loeng Nok Tha. Willy had been, like me, disturbed by our construction of this airfield and its unknown usage. Having moved to Australia, Willy decided to re-visit the now unused airstrip and ask the locals: ‘Who had used the airfield?’ The answer he got was: ‘Baby Airforce, people many countries.’

Baby Airforce was a colloquial name for Air America – the CIA’s clandestine airline – which carried out covert missions into Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. Their motto was: ‘Anything, Anytime, Anywhere’ and they usually used mercenaries – most were former military pilots and aircrew. In 1965, the area of Laos adjacent to the northernmost provinces of South Vietnam was claimed as part of the ‘extended battlefield’ by the US High Command. Loeng Nok Tha and the airfield we had constructed was less than 25 miles from this part of Laos. From 1965 to 1973 nearly 3 million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos and it became the ‘most bombed country in the history of the world.’ Ordnance that did not explode when dropped, still kills children and adults there.

After leaving the army, Willy Bach became a dedicated campaigner for peace. As for me, after we returned to Tidworth, I started to travel to London to take part in the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. Eventually, this brought me to the attention of the Special Investigations Branch (SIB) of the Military Police and my CO told me that the SIB’s secret reports said there was a possibility that I would try to make contact with enemy forces in conflict situations – and, therefore, this suggested that I could no longer be trusted. Shortly afterwards, in late 1968, I bought myself out of the army, just after I had spent two months serving in a then passive Northern Ireland. I have been a peace campaigner ever since and I started collecting information about the often hidden history of my country’s involvement in conflicts, including the following about Britain’s role in Vietnam since 1945.

Protecting the pre-War Status Quo

Even as the Second World War was ending British troops were being used to reassert the pre-war status quo in places as wide apart as Greece and Vietnam. In Greece, after the Germans were forced out, there occurred civil strife between right-wing royalist forces and the left-wing National Popular Liberation Army (ELAS) which had borne the brunt of the fight against the Germans. British troops were ordered to intervene on the royalist side, prolonging the conflict and sparking an all-out civil war. With the odds now stacked against them, the ELAS forces were eventually defeated.

While the victorious Allies moved to build a new world order open to their manipulation and control, tensions often surfaced between them. In SE Asia, Britain was suspicious of US intentions towards the old areas of European dominance. These issues were discussed among the Allies at Yalta in early 1945. Afterwards the US President, Roosevelt, stated:

‘I suggested … that Indo-China be set up under a trusteeship … Stalin liked the idea, China liked the idea. The British didn’t like it. It might bust up their Empire, because if the Indo-Chinese were to work together and eventually get their independence the Burmese might do the same thing.’

[The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy 1941-1946, by Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, Houghton, Mifflin, New York 1967].

Other European countries, like France and Holland, faced the loss of parts of their empires, because of the time it would take them to get their military forces back to the area. Britain, to stabilize its own colonial interests in the region, was determined to ensure Holland could return to dominate Indonesia and France to control Vietnam (Indo-China):

Throughout the war Churchill did his best to ensure the restoration of the pre-war Imperial status quo in Asia, American ideas of political emancipation for former French colonies were not to his liking. He knew well that independence is a contagious force, and that if allowed in Vietnam it might well spread to Burma and to India itself. Using every weapon in his formidable armoury, Churchill worked to scupper Roosevelt’s liberal policies, particularly over French Indo-China.

[The British In Vietnam – How the twenty-five year war began, by George Rosie, Panther Books 1970].

In both Vietnam and Indonesia nationalist movements, who in conjunction with the Allies had fought the Japanese, were preparing to come to power. In early September 1945, the Vietnamese made their Declaration of Independence:

‘We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam.’

The Vietnamese went on to explain that they were ‘a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent … We, members of the Provisional government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country…’

[The British In Vietnam – How the twenty-five year war began, by George Rosie, Panther Books 1970].

Ho Chi Minh was one of the leaders of the Vietnamese independence struggle. Twenty-five years earlier he had stayed in London for a short period:

On October 25 [1920], the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney – a teacher, poet, dramatist and scholar – died on the seventy-fourth day of a hunger strike while in Brixton Prison, London. A young Vietnamese dishwasher in the Carlton Hotel, London, broke down and cried when he heard the news. “A nation which has such citizens will never surrender.” His name was Nguyen Ai Quoc who, in 1941, adopted the name of Ho Chi Minh and took the lessons of the Irish anti-imperialist fight to his own country.

[A History of the Irish Working Class, by Peter Berresford Ellis, Pluto Press 1985].

In 1945, as British troops first entered Saigon, they were welcomed by the people. They had arrived at a time when Ho Chi Minh and the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet-Minh) had widespread support throughout the country. The British commander, General Gracey, later wrote: ‘I was welcomed on arrival by the Viet-Minh … I promptly kicked them out.’ [Journal of the Royal Asian Society, July-Oct. 1953].

The Japanese Rearmed

Twenty years later, one of Gracey’s officers, Robert Denton-Williams, told how he had arrived with the advance party of British troops: ‘As an officer of the Indian Army, I was part of the first allied unit to reach Indo-China in 1945. The 20th Indian Division was stationed in Burma. The greater part of it embarked by sea, but an advance battalion of Gurkhas (900 men with British officers) flew to Saigon via Bangkok. I was with the advance groups as ammunition and transport officer …’ Denton-Williams then gave his account of what happened:

‘The British troops were made most welcome … and posters from the airport to the rue Catinat (the centre of Saigon) bore the legend “Welcome to the allies, to the British and to the Americans – but we have no room for the French”. Everything seemed to be going well. The government of the country was in the hands of the Committee of the South, a united front organisation of the Viet Minh and various Buddhist and other groups. Ho’s picture was all over Saigon.

… Then an appalling thing happened. Some eighty Free French (not the discredited Vichy French) resolved to restore French power in Indo-China … they occupied a number of key public buildings in Saigon, hoisted the tricoleur, and declared the return of Indo-China to French sovereignty. Then they called upon the British to arm them and join them against “les jaunes” (the yellow people).’

[Statement by Robert Denton-Williams, in Ho Chi Minh and the Struggle for an Independent Vietnam, by William Warbey, Merlin Press 1972].

Back home people were deliberately misled as to what was happening. As Robert Denton-Williams explained: ‘In a command paper (R 2817; 25 March 1954), and also in other papers before and since, the Central Office of Information has given it out that because of “unrest and terrorism”, General Gracey had given orders to arm the French. Both parts of the statement were wholly untrue. There was at this time no unrest and no terrorism, and General Gracey did not give the order to arm the French. The order came from the Foreign Office through an F.O. official in Saigon, and it was delivered to the local British Commander, Brigadier-General Taunton.’ [Statement by Robert Denton-Williams, in Ho Chi Minh and the Struggle for an Independent Vietnam, by William Warbey, Merlin Press 1972].

To stem the increasing tide of nationalist hostility, the British sought help from their defeated enemy. Ironically, as the Allies tried and executed some Japanese soldiers as war criminals, others were rearmed and prepared for front line duty. George Rosie, in his book The British in Vietnam, said:

‘A further element of irony was contained in the unenviable role of the Japanese, who, defeated and humiliated, were obliged to pick up their arms for their former enemy and to bear the brunt of the “Allied” casualties.’
[The British In Vietnam – How the twenty-five year war began, by George Rosie, Panther Books 1970].

Robert Denton-Williams, who took part in this process, later recalled: ‘As there were less than a thousand allied troops and some 79,000 Japanese concentrated round Saigon, the Japanese units (previously under the command of Field Marshal Count Terauchi) were now taken under British command to defend Saigon.’ Denton-Williams also helped rearm the Japanese: ‘They were even issued with 3-inch mortars and bombs which they had themselves captured from the British at Singapore in 1942. I myself was responsible for issuing arms and deploying transport with the help of Colonel Endo and Lieut.-Colonel Murata of the Japanese army.’ [Statement by Robert Denton-Williams, in Ho Chi Minh and the Struggle for an Independent Vietnam, by William Warbey, Merlin Press 1972].

Alongside British soldiers, these Japanese troops were used to police Vietnam until French forces could return and take over. Military force was used to quell dissent, as Vietnam became a colonial battleground for British, then French and finally US troops:

We are used to the idea that wars in Vietnam have been exclusively the concern of first the French, and later the Americans. But, in late 1945, it was British bullets which were whining across the paddy-fields around Saigon, British mortars which were pounding the frail villages of the Mekong Delta (and British soldiers who were being brutally ambushed by the forerunners of the Vietcong). The history of the British occupation of South Vietnam does not form a happy narrative. Like most post-war colonial interludes, it is a tale fraught with political complexity and intrigue, with internecine struggle, with terrorism and repressive counter-measures…

[The British In Vietnam – How the twenty-five year war began, by George Rosie, Panther Books 1970].

Indonesia and Vietnam

In Indonesia, British forces were also used to occupy the country, allowing the Dutch to return and take control. Here the fighting was just as fierce as British and Indian troops suffered nearly a thousand dead and many more injured. The Japanese troops, who fought alongside them, also had some 1,000 soldiers killed. The 23rd Indian Division, which took heavier casualties in just over a year in Indonesia than in four years fighting the Japanese in Burma, recorded in its official history their feelings about fighting with their former enemy:

‘As remarkable as it was unwelcome … we had for a time to order the Japs to fight with us, an event hushed up at home.’
[A forgotten war: British intervention in Indonesia 1945-46, by John Newsinger, in Race and Class, vol.30, no.4, Apr./Jun. 1989].

Tens of thousands of Indonesians died as towns and villages were bombed by aircraft and shelled by artillery and Navy ships. With the population overwhelmingly on their side, the nationalists would not give in. The British Commander, Mountbatten, despairingly informed London that Indonesia threatened to become a ‘situation analogous to Ireland after the last war, but on a much larger scale.’ [Troubled Days of Peace, by Peter Dennis, Manchester 1969].

Many British soldiers, who had expected a quick return home as the Second World War ended, became resentful about having to stay on to ‘save’ Indonesia for the Dutch:

When the Seaforth Highlanders set off for Jakarta docks in November, 1946, after months of coping with the Indonesian liberation movement on behalf of the absent Dutch, they passed contingents of troops just in from Holland. With one accord, the British soldiers raised clenched fists and shouted ‘Merdeka!’ (‘Freedom!’). Liberation salute and slogan were more than just a joke at Dutch expense. They were a recognition by men of what was still an imperial army that empire was not going to long survive in the Indies – something which the young Dutchmen in the lorries going the other way did not yet understand.
[Guardian, 10th Sept. 1999. Article by Martin Woollacott about Indonesia and East Timor].

In Vietnam, after the Japanese had surrendered in 1945, British troops had taken control of Vietnam, south of the 16th parallel and forced on the people the return of French rule. British troops, with the Japanese now fighting alongside them, were as harsh and inflexible in suppressing Vietnamese independence as the French and Americans who followed them. George Rosie stated: ‘It is quite clear the war was no trifling affair, and that some of the operational instructions issued to the British division were implicitly ruthless. There was an alarming directness about the way in which the British troops operated, a directness which cost the lives of thousands of Vietnamese.’ Rosie went on to give as examples ‘two operational orders [which] stand out as indicative of the way in which the war was waged. Both are disturbing in their implications. They were issued to 100 Indian Infantry Brigade, operating to the north of Saigon (the worst area) under the command of Brigadier Rodham.’ Rosie continued:

The first is Operational Instruction No. 220, dated 27 October, 1945, which states that, ‘We may find it difficult to distinguish friend from foe … always use maximum force available to ensure wiping out any hostiles we may meet. If one uses too much no harm is done.’ Thus, while admitting that it was often impossible to tell combatants from civilians, the British units are exhorted to use ‘maximum force’, which means that in this thickly peopled territory any hostile act could have brought down fire from mortars, 25-pounders and the guns of the 16th Light Cavalry’s armoured cars. With such firepower, in these conditions, how could civilians (who were ‘difficult to distinguish’) have avoided high casualties? Similarly, the second order, Instruction No. 63, dated 31 December 1945, states quite categorically that it was ‘perfectly legitimate to look upon all locals anywhere near where a shot has been fired as enemies – and treacherous ones at that – and treat them accordingly…’

[The British In Vietnam – How the twenty-five year war began, by George Rosie, Panther Books 1970].

Critical Voices

By October 1945 British forces in Vietnam numbered nearly 26,000 men, backed by RAF Spitfire and Mosquito warplanes. Many of the troops were from India, where critical voices were raised. This dissent was given expression by Indian independence leaders like Pandit Nehru:

‘We have watched British intervention there [Vietnam] with growing anger, shame and helplessness, that Indian troops should be used for doing Britain’s dirty work against our friends who are fighting the same fight as we.’ [New York Times, 1st Jan. 1946].

Back home in Britain the wartime coalition government, led by Churchill, had resigned and, at the end of July, Labour won a ‘landslide’ victory in the 1945 general election. With its programme of ‘radical reforms’, many expected changes in overseas affairs from Attlee’s new government. Instead, it gradually became clear that Labour was continuing Churchill’s colonial policy. On 11th December in the House of Commons, Labour MP Tom Driberg questioned the use of British troops in Vietnam:
Claiming that the British people had ‘learned with dismay that four months after the end of the war in the Far East, British and Indian troops were engaged and were suffering heavy casualties in a war in … French Indo-China … the object of which appeared to be the restoration of the … French Empire.’ He made use of the fact that Terauchi’s soldiers were being used against the Vietnamese: ‘… their [the British people’s] dismay was not lessened when they learned that we were also employing Japanese troops…’

[The British In Vietnam – How the twenty-five year war began, by George Rosie, Panther Books 1970].

As late as the end of January, Driberg was still pressing for information on the activities of the British forces of occupation. On 28 January he demanded a statement on British withdrawal, details of casualties, and an assurance that guarantees of future independence would be given by the French. He was told that: ‘Allied casualties during the period from mid-October up to 13 January were 126 killed and 424 wounded. Of the killed, three were British and thirty-seven were Indian.’ The government also estimated that the Vietnamese dead numbered 2,700. No figure was given for Vietnamese wounded. [The British In Vietnam – How the twenty-five year war began, by George Rosie, Panther Books 1970].

In the end, military might won the day and the Vietnamese were forced back. As Robert Denton-Williams explained: ‘October and November 1945 saw some fierce fighting, and the Viet-Minh suffered severe casualties. Finally the Saigon bridgehead was made secure, pending the arrival of General Leclerc and his Foreign Legion troops from Madagascar.’ Britain’s actions in denying Vietnamese self-determination and restoring French rule led to three decades of bloody colonial warfare, before the Vietnamese finally achieved their independence. Many of the British forces fighting in Indo-China believed their government’s policy was the result of a ‘secret deal’ between the French and the Labour government:

As many British and Indian officers in Saigon understood it, a deal had been done between Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Secretary, and Massigli of France. Under this secret agreement, the French were to be allowed to re-establish themselves in Indo-China on the understanding that they would not attempt to return to Syria and the Lebanon. The Committee of the South, in the face of Western perfidy, resolved to fight; and nightly attacks on Saigon began. [Statement by Robert Denton-Williams, in Ho Chi Minh and the Struggle for an Independent Vietnam, by William Warbey, Merlin Press 1972].

Propaganda and Tragedy

Whatever the differences between Britain, France and the US, the West, as part of the Cold War, were united in depicting SE Asia as an area ripe for ‘communist subversion.’ They started a propaganda offensive based on the ‘domino theory,’ that outlined how if one country in that area should succumb – then the rest were sure to follow. The main believers of this theory, however, were its propagators and it came to dominate their strategy and objectives. After the end of the Second World War, from 1948 Britain had successfully fought a ‘communist insurgency’ in Malaya. In 1952, General Templer, the British High Commissioner of Malaya, stated that: ‘the hard core of communists in this country are fanatics and must be, and will be, exterminated.’ Templer worked closely with Robert Thompson, who many regarded as the architect of the British victory. In 1961 Harold Macmillan, the Tory PM, appointed Thompson as head of a British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam. Some of the counter-insurgency tactics used in Malaya, were adopted for use in Vietnam and in 1969 Thompson was appointed as a special ‘pacification’ advisor to Nixon, the US President.

After the Japanese had surrendered in 1945, British governments had used their armed forces to fight the Vietnamese independence movement, then supported the French politically and with military equipment, until their defeat. Afterwards, successive British governments did the same for the US. In 1954, as French troops were under siege at Dienbienphu, Harold Wilson had spoken against British complicity in Vietnam:

‘… not a man, not a gun, must be sent from this country to defend … colonisation in Indochina … we must not join or in any way encourage an anti-communist crusade in Asia under the leadership of the Americans or anyone else.’ [Daily Worker, 5th May 1954]

Eleven years later, Wilson, now the Labour Party leader and PM, described his present British policy: ‘We have repeatedly said … that we support the US in their policy in Vietnam.’ [House of Commons 14/12/65]. The next year I ended up at Loeng Nok Tha in north-east Thailand. Was the military airfield we helped to build there a covert part of Britain’s support? Was it instrumental to the bombings and killings in Laos and Vietnam? In 1975, nearly a decade later and now a civvy, I watched the scenes on TV as the last US helicopters fled from Vietnam. Ironically, almost forty years since that panic stricken exit, the US is now increasingly engaged in trade and investment with a united and independent Vietnam. Britain’s holding-role in 1945 had led directly to large scale colonial wars, which saw the Dutch forced from Indonesia and the French from Vietnam. Over 3,000,000 US troops were ultimately involved in Vietnam after the French withdrawal. While the US lost over 58,000 soldiers killed in the conflict, some estimates of the Vietnamese dead are above 3 million.

Aly Renwick served with the British Army in SE Asia and is a member of Veteran For Peace UK.

Not Another Day in Guantánamo demonstration in London
By Aisha Maniar of the London Guantanamo Campaign

On 23 May 2013, Barack Obama made the latest in a long line of high-profile broken promises to close Guantánamo Bay. During his speech on national security, Obama conceded that the original premise for opening Guantánamo “was found unconstitutional five years ago”, and “that [it] flouts the rule of law,” as well as that it costs the US taxpayer over $1 million a year to keep each prisoner there. These are not convicted prisoners: they are 154 men who have been held for over 12 years, almost all without charge or trial, as hostages of the US administration.

Barack Obama made his latest pledge at the height of media coverage of an on-going hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay. Over the past year, he has released 11 prisoners including former British resident Ahmed Belbacha to Algeria, reinstated the envoy to work on the closure of Guantánamo he dismissed just days before the mass hunger strike broke out in February 2013, restarted status reviews of prisoners detained indefinitely and lifted a moratorium on returning prisoners to Yemen he imposed in 2010. This is slow progress, and the fact that no Yemenis have been repatriated, even though they make up the largest single nationality and the largest number cleared for release, shows there is little intention to close Guantánamo and end indefinite detention there.

That may be good enough for the Obama administration, but it is yet another blow for the prisoners. With minimal progress and a lack of political will to close Guantánamo, and little mainstream media coverage of their plight, human rights organisations and activists around the world decided to remind Barack Obama of his latest broken promise on its anniversary. More than 45 actions were held worldwide in 9 countries on this day.

In London, over 70 people joined a lunchtime demonstration we organised in Trafalgar Square to call for Barack Obama to make good on his promise to close Guantánamo and to remind both the British and US governments that British resident Shaker Aamer remains there. Activists, some wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods, held up placards made by the LGC’s Noel Hamel that read “Not Another Day in Guantánamo” with the word “justice” chained to each letter of the name of the prison camp. Activists from Peace Strike brought along an inflatable larger-than-life Shaker Aamer to draw awareness to his plight outside the National Gallery. The silent protest drew a lot of interest from the public, leaflets were handed out and activists spoke to passers-by. With hardly any coverage in the mainstream media of Guantánamo Bay, Shaker Aamer or the hunger strike, now in its 16th month, many people were not aware that it was still open, let alone the various abuses and torture that continue there.

The action was supported by many organisations including Veterans for Peace UK, the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, Peace Strike, local Amnesty International groups, the Quakers, Friends of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, Occupy and Kingston Peace Council. The LGC thanks everyone who joined us.

The campaign to close Guantánamo goes on, and we cannot do it without YOU! Thousands of people worldwide took action on 23 May but with political and media inaction, the general public has to give Barack Obama every reason to show us a change WE can believe in by closing Guantánamo and ending the lawless regime it has created.

Last year, Obama asked the American people: “Is this who we are?” With on-going torture, indefinite detention and the latest ruling by a US federal judge on force-feeding of prisoners, his actions have responded in the affirmative. Although he has released 11 prisoners, the slow progress after so many years shows there is no real intention of ending what can be considered a mass hostage crisis. For the 154 remaining prisoners, held almost wholly without charge or trial, rhetoric is not good enough.

On May 15 2014 Veterans For Peace attended the Annual Conscientious Objector memorial in Tavistock Square, London. Over 300 people attended to commemorate the often unacknowledged and neglected story of Conscientious Objectors. Although remembering Conscientious Objectors from all conflicts and countries, this year paid particular attention to those Conscientious Objectors of the misnamed ‘Great War’. Great effort has been put into tracking down the families of these men and women.The untold stories of many of the Conscientious Objectors and the impact it had on their lives and the lives of their families was expounded upon by their descendants in a touching ceremony. What shone through whilst listening to the stories was their bravery in the face of overt hostility from the state and general public.

Family members carried photos of their ancestors and laid flowers at the granite memorial to Conscientious Objectors, which was erected in the square in 1994. The gospel choir of Maria Fidelis Catholic School in Somers Town added to the atmosphere.We were given some pertinent facts about Conscientious Objection such as there are more Conscientious Objection in prison in South Korea than anywhere else, ironic because S Korea is held up as a paragon of successful Asian Democracy. That in the British Army servicemen are not made aware of their right to Conscientious Objection status and those that do attempt to follow this route are often punished.

VFP UK have both Conscientious Objectors and Military Resistors within our ranks. In attendance on the day were Stephen Mann who obtained Conscientious Objector status whilst serving with the Royal Navy in the 1960’s. Ben Griffin who refused to return to the war in Iraq and myself who gained Conscientious Objector status whilst serving with the United States Marine Corps. We also have Joe Glenton and Mike Lyons who both served prison time for resisting the war in Afghanistan. All of us have in common that at some point during our service we found that military service and or war are irrational or immoral or illegal. After coming to this conclusion each of us decided to take responsibility for our predicament.

It is important to remember that resistance to war and militarism from within the military still occurs and is not a thing of the past. Within VFP UK we place a priority on supporting and standing in Solidarity with Military Resistors. Events like this can only help to raise the issue.

Chase Sydnor is a member of Veterans For Peace UK

The purpose of VFP UK is to work towards the abolition of war. To achieve this we focus on three areas; Education, Resistance & Solidarity. On Friday 4 July members and supporters of VFP UK will stand in Solidarity with Dan Ashman as he faces trial for blockading the 2013 Arms Fair at the Excel Centre in East London.

Solidarity Call Out;

Friday 4 July 2014

0930-1600

Stratford Magistrates Court, London, E15 (MAP)

Why I Blockaded The Arms Fair by Dan Ashman

I was unaware about the DSEI (‘Defence Security Equipment International’),(1) the largest arms fair in the world. I found out about it a month or so before it was due to take place in September 2013. It drew many groups together. Occupy, Veteran’s for Peace, Annonymous, Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Stop the War amongst many others.(10) Some how these events remain off the collective consciousness radar. Though I wasn’t massively surprised that such an event would be taking place in the capital. The UK government and all its embedded business associates managed for some time to create an image of being pioneers of democracy and human rights. Though the truth has had its way and their projected image only serves to further heap insult unto those who have had their lives destroyed by their Machiavellian masochistic greedy ways.

It was thanks to people getting in to the giant showroom, finding the evidence then passing it onto Caroline Lucas for her then to bring the issue to Parliament that got the two corporations (Tianjin MyWay International and Magforce International) ejected. The law has developed an aversion to equipment with the express design to torture, but not enough to arrest those who breach those rules.

Since the second world war 90 percent of casualties in conflicts are civilians.(2) That’s modern warfare. It is not even a stretch of the imagination to see that drones to guns are all forms of torture. They threaten people with their very existence, burn flesh, destroy well being, tare families apart. Mentally and physically scar. Traumatise. Plant the seeds of vengeance & desperation. Poisonous toxic shells and unexploded weapons still litter countries all over the world.(3,4) The right to life not an absolute right, a qualified right according to the courts.

Representatives highlighted by the UK government for their human rights abuse record were given free passage to attend.(5) Of course there are also those that go unrecognised by officials too. The US, Israel and the hosting government themself amongst them.

When we reported breaches of international law to the police at the gate, we were ignored. No statements taken. Just evidence gathered against us. When we attempted to stop entry to the event on the grounds that this event is an essential part of the process that gives human right abusive regimes access to weapons to further continue such treatment of others, we were arrested. I stood in the road that lead directly into the facility, stopping the entry of attendees of the arm fair. I refused to move.

I chose to represent myself in court with a McKenzie friend, those that elected to have a lawyer eventually had their case dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. Since then their lawyer has set up a private prosecution with fellow campaigners. I have been humbled by their efforts. If you can keep a finger on that pulse a glimmer of hope has been created by such effort.(6)

Less then 1 percent of the population control 40 percent of the world economy.(7) It surely stands to reason that where harm has been caused they should be accountable and redress be supported by a justice system that acknowledges the sanctity of life destroyed as a result. After all they have much power to incentivise human activity. Surely the true cause of modern war.

As with the City of London (the capital of the finance industry) incubating a den of fraud & theft that has led to poverty increasing around Europe, the governance in this country serves as nothing more than a facilitator in assisting the illegal practice of tooling up known human rights abusive regimes. Both industries enjoy freedom from accountability.

International law can only work when it’s enforced domestically and for far too many people in gate keeping positions, knighted & anointed, from CEOs to prime ministers, personal fortunes will be made. The revolving door between Parliament and Corporations means the democratic will of the people hijacked, peace un-achievable. The crimes of conflict passed on through the generations.

The trail of bureaucracy acts as a whitewash, the arms pushers, the engineers, scientists, factory workers, researchers, politicians, met police and shareholders all dependent on the credit flow. So long as on the public record there are no blemishes, the new generation can be showered in the heroic glory of such a record, even if its a lie. The commitment to the sanctity of life an illusion. Saved for the populations that live close to the power bases. (Diminishing as that is.)

The conflicts and the industry that lives off of it carves out the architecture of human relationships, terms/conditions, credit & resource flow. The destruction nothing more than a concept in the minds of the profit seekers and general public who never experience the actual nature of the destruction that occurs. They reap only the benefits in such a perverse value system. A disdain for other lives develops, “If it wasn’t us it would be someone else, human nature dictates, got to pay the bills, fighting terrorism, just following orders, its not perfect but its the best we have, fighting for freedom, rather them than me.” All justify the individuals relationship to the known harm.

The arms fair hosts 30,000 different registered companies every two years. Its hosted by a company called Clarion Events, the Home Office issues business visas to delegates, The Business Innovation and Skills department led by Vince Cable issues the export licences, the met police give permits to display the weapons. Without fail the inadequate arms control laws have been breached. Last year it was advertising torture equipment, in previous years it has played host to cluster bomb salesman. No arrests.(8) Perhaps a bureaucratic tap dance. A committee set up. Theatre. A sentence to legislation added that allows enough room not to restrict but give the appearance of some progress.

The dualities of storytelling culture, good and evil, heroes and villains exploited by the establishment by adopting the language of myth. The myth erected that has been fed through to us in entertainment culture and conditioning. The profiteers of mass killing hide behind an ordained higher mystical power (a myth in itself) where indiscriminate murder is collateral damage and forgiven by their god, thus the law in their grand quest for the Crowns interest. The Law system sworn to serve the interests of the Crown. Hardly impartial.

Later on in the week there was a “charity” gig put on for (or to) Help the Heroes. In what I can only describe as the Cruel Irony Loop; Arms dealers attended an evening of entertainment. For their entertainment young men from the army punched each others lights out in a boxing ring so they may be able to attain some money for their friends from the people who create the tools of the injury. Perhaps they believe this enough. It is not.

I learnt recently contracts are handed out to research departments in universities to improve the efficacy of drones and other tools of murder and oppression. The product then gets showcased at arms fairs such as DSEI. So who is culpable? The truth is, it’s an almighty team effort, a logistical extravaganza. Pay used as (it seems culturally popular to do) a disembodying rational to abandon responsibility and reason in how we use our energy, what we contribute to and what we create.

Transcending the control of money over our lives where it is evidently detrimental to ourselves and others is essential to peace & well being. For many reasons we have to go on a journey of transition to a way that is not dependent on their money, so respectful relationships; environmental, local to international can be formed.

So far all the various people that have come together have been graceful and supportive. I am grateful to be able to participate in that week of action along side inspiring people. I wish to thank Veterans for Peace for all the great work they do and for the courage they inspire by overcoming the cultural peer pressure and monetary control that make us believe we can’t create anything better or that we must just follow orders.

At the start of The Shadow World, an exploration of the Arms Trade,(9) the author, Andrew Feinstein selects a quote from the character Undershaft an Arms dealer in the play Sergeant Barbara by George Bernard Shaw. It is as relevant now as it is when it was written.

Undershaft [with a touch of brutality] The government of your country! I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn’t. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When other people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.

My Court Case is to take place on the 4th of July.

Dan

(2)
http://www.worldrevolution.org/projects/globalissuesoverview/overview2/PeaceNew.htm

(8)
http://www.stopthearmsfair.org.uk/about/dsei/history/

(9)
http://www.theshadowworldbook.com/

(10) Stop The Arms Fair 2013

Apprehension, fear, humility and positivity are not usually feelings you experience in the same day. Yesterday (13/05/14), however, was very different.

A number of weeks ago fellow VFP member Lee Lavis had mentioned the fact that he was going to be involved in a talk concerning the conflict in Northern Ireland with a group of students and academics from the University of Georgia, USA. He then went onto explain that he would be sharing the floor with someone from the Republican community in order to allow the group to ask questions based upon two different perspectives. Lee then invited me along to see in what way the event was set up and delivered.

Initially I agreed without hesitation but as the day of the event drew closer I started to have my doubts. Coming from a military family and coming from a largely Unionist/Loyalist community, I was concerned that our role in the event would be to wear the proverbial ‘Sackcloth and ashes’. Lee satisfied me that this was not going to be the case but I have to admit I still had my doubts with regard to what other people might think of our participation. However, I quickly realised that worrying about what other people might think is part of the problem as to why we haven’t yet moved on in Northern Ireland. As a result I decided to throw caution to the wind and see if the Republican monsters would gobble up these horrible Brit monsters, time would tell.

On arrival we were met by Seanna who showed us to a conference room above a Republican museum that is housed in Conway Mill just off the Falls Road in Belfast. We were warmly received and I have to admit that I was put at ease very quickly by the friendly demeanour of our host. As Lee’s co talker I later learned of Seanna’s childhood and a number of instances in which his family had been directly impacted by the actions of the British Army, how this experience related to his joining the IRA at a very young age and his subsequent time as a prisoner in the H Blocks during the ‘Blanket Protests’ and ‘Hunger Strike’. After Seanna completed telling his story Lee then spoke to the group about his experience of being a soldier who served in NI.

As an observer I was completely humbled by the two men before me and the openness of the accounts they gave. They both answered the questions the students and teachers put to them in a frank and honest manner. One thing that struck me was the total lack of finger pointing, the absence of charges of blame and the way in which two former opposing combatants were able to engage with each other and the group in a respectful manner, something NI politicians would do well to emulate. The post event feedback I got from the group as we later sat having lunch in West Belfast’s Irish language and cultural centre (this in itself was an amazing experience) was in symmetry with my own thoughts.

Nonetheless, the completion of lunch was not the signal that my day was finished because Lee had arranged for me to meet Claire Hackett of the Falls Road Community Council. Claire made the both of us very welcome and we discussed a variety of topics from our time in the Army to current affairs. Claire is a wonderful lady with a genuine interest to hear what it was Lee and I had to say.

Sitting here now reflecting on my day in West Belfast, I can honestly say that I was profoundly affected by what I witnessed. If we can park our fears and preconceptions of adversaries past, if we can put ourselves in the shoes of those who the Government tell us are our enemies, then we have a fantastic opportunity not only to affect change in wider society but we have a great chance to affect change within ourselves.

In sum, there is a huge opportunity for a true and lasting peace in Northern Ireland, but that this peace will not come from those with a vested interest in keeping things as they have been, it will come from individuals and groups who are willing to stretch out the hand of friendship and declare ‘No more war’. I believe, a landscape such as this provides an enormous chance for Veterans For Peace to take the lead and show by our actions that once the shackles and fears of the past have been cast off, nothing is impossible.

Kieran Devlin is a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

Veterans For Peace UK are currently working with groups in Northern Ireland to facilitate a veterans reconciliation trip later this year. BG

Ever wondered why, and how is it, that International laws, bodies, and public figures, that claim to maintain peaceful co-existence, keep silent whilst endorsing repeated NATO bombings? These acts have killed thousands of innocent men, women and children, and have destroyed public and private property in a show of supremacy and arrogance over the nations which they have targeted.

NATO war crimes extend from Yugoslavia, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria.
Why are international laws being manipulated to pressurize nations who are politically less powerful, yet bountiful in natural resources, or placed in influential economic routes?

This simply explains why nations are invaded in the present context and how NATO has become above the law.
Were there terrorists in power plants, electricity grids, water supply networks? were there terrorists amongst shops, universities and schools, stores, hospitals, farms and markets?

These have been key targets of NATO in its endless bombing campaigns which totally violate its own Charter and the UN Charter. So what is the use of the International Criminal Court at The Hague?

If the ICC is a tool, a manipulative organism that twists legal principles, it is time that the rest of the world knew about these duplicities, ambiguities and double standards and demand that it either stops the double standards, or these members vote for another alternative.

NATO in Yugoslavia
The International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia formed in 1993 was only a means to justify Western intervention in the Balkans. It has no links to the International Court of Justice based in The Hague.
The Tribunal is made up of US influenced appointees, so will NATO crimes in Kosovo be investigated? Mmm, I think not. Was it a surprise when the Tribunal branded President Milosevic a war criminal and the US is against the establishment of any international court that can charge US military and political personnel with war crimes? One rule of law for you, and the US/UK do what they want with no come back.

What NATO is accused of is violating the UN Charter– it is a violation to attack a sovereign nation that was innocent of any aggression.

NATO’s Charter Article 1 & 7 has also been violated – NATO is supposed to function as a “DEFENSIVE” organization, and only committed to force if ONE or MORE of its members are attacked! The US and British Governments along with the help of Mossad have used this Charter to justify their war on terror.

The usual excuse is given as “humanitarian” intervention and that was what the Clinton administration used, incidentally Mussolini used it to invade Ethiopia to save them from slavery and Hitler used it to occupy Sudetenland to save Germans.

If the US used the Nuremberg principles to charge Germany for ‘starting an unprovoked war’ shouldn’t the US be charged on similar grounds? Oh, that’s right they run the council!

On 22 September, 2000 in the District Court of Belgrade, the President of the Court handed down guilty verdicts against government leaders of NATO countries for ‘war crimes’. These defendants were Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia between March 24 and June10, 1999.

Former US President Bill Clinton was sent a verdict on April 18th, 2001 sentencing him in absentia to 20 years in prison for ‘crimes against civilians’, but he just laughed it off.

The Commission of Inquiry of the International Action Coalition in 1999 charged Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and William Cohen for violating the Geneva Convention, the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, Helsinki Accords and the US Constitution.

The 19 charges included starting a war and deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, thus violating and destroying the peacemaking role of the UN. One of the main arguments was that despite the Yugoslav parliament agreeing to NATOs demand for autonomy and allowing the armed UN peacekeepers into Kosovo, why was it still bombed?

Instead of the mass graves similar to the WMD in Iraq, ( do you see the pattern here?) there were perhaps just 200 dead persons – the 100,000 dead Albanians that NATO and US were promoting as grounds to, was just a lie.

NATOs air strikes in Serbia killed over 2000 civilians and wounded more than 7500. NATO has owned up to only 460 civilian deaths. The dead included farmers, city dwellers, reporters, diplomats, people travelling on public transport, patients in hospitals, the elderly & even children. That is the human factor – what about the enormous damages to the environment as a result of these NATO bombings –poisoning water supplies, loss of electricity that affects hospitals and other emergency requirements? There is evidence that some Spanish pilots refused to drop bombs on non-military targets.

Another accusation against NATO was the bombing of all bridges across the international waterway through Eastern Europe – the River Danube.

Some of these bridges were bombed while civilians were on them! All that NATO leaders said was that the incidents were ‘accidents’. This clearly violates the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12th August 1949 and the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1) – 8th June 1977.

NATO strategy was to destroy the whole infrastructure of Yugoslavia – that was why it targeted public services, rail and road networks, and waterways. The objective was always to detach Kosovo.

If you were to read the book (The White Book) published by the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NATO crimes in Yugoslavia, the book will reveal the damage caused by NATO bombings, and lists 400 civilian deaths and over 40 incidents involving civilian fatalities. If NATOs actions were illegal under its own treaty, in particular since aggressive military action was taken without a UN mandate, these killings were war crimes.

What is clear is that the US and UK Governments deliberately waged war against Yugoslavia by building a propaganda campaign that would be internationally welcomed and accepted by their countrymen.

The West / Nato war crimes in Iraq
The Geneva Conventions are clear “Civilians shall not be the object of attack.”According to the UN Security Council resolution, military forces were tasked with expelling Iraqi forces that invaded Kuwait. ( The fact that Kuwait was side drilling and stealing the Iraqi oil is nothing to worry about.) That task involved 88,000 tons of bombs that killed civilians and killed more civilians through the destruction of power grids, food, water treatment, sewage systems. US soldiers used napalm to incinerate entrenched Iraqi soldiers. US soldiers dropped fuel-air explosives, cluster bombs that use razor-sharp fragments, to shred people.

Depleted uranium was used to penetrate tanks, causing long term health risks, and the economic embargoes have killed as many as 2 million Iraqis. Why did the US and its allies deliberately destroy Iraq’s water supply and not repair it? Why did these western nations repeatedly bomb infrastructures for flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, communication towers, irrigation and hydroelectric power? (8 multipurpose dams, 7 major pumping stations and 31 municipal water and sewage facilities were destroyed).

These had nothing to do with Saddam or his supporters – these were services needed for the people of Iraq. The bombings created waterborne diseases, which have killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. The bombs and the weapons used, have caused radiation poisoning, and as a result of depleted uranium shells, birth defects have been recorded. The earth has been poisoned, leaving the country ruined for future generations. They really liberated that country didn`t they? Of course the oil had nothing to do with it…

Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states it is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population –including foodstuff, livestock & drinking water supplies & irrigation works.

Why were these acts not treated as war crimes under the Geneva Convention, and does this not constitute genocide by the US and UK governments? That’s right, they don`t answer to anyone.

NATO war crimes in Afghanistan

If NATO has committed war crimes in Yugoslavia, should we be surprised to read of NATO war crimes in Afghanistan? No not really.

Indiscriminate bombings, and killing unarmed civilians, have only been answered with an ‘apology’ by NATO. The presence of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, was similar to that which took place in Yugoslavia – without any proof a country has been taken over.

Indiscriminate bombings mean rebuilding projects being handed over to profit-driven, private corporations (that don`t even do the work that they have been paid to do.) The irony is that the Afghan government are compromising the welfare of its own citizens, for its own financial benefits. This has caused a rise in Pashtun nationalism and indirect support for the Taliban. Thus, it has been easy to pass blame for NATO killings on the Taliban while civilian deaths keep piling up. Infrastructure continues to be bombed and anarchy prevails throughout Afghanistan.

NATO in Libya
NATO’s Libya operation followed the UNSC Resolution, which NATO has violated through its presence on the ground and bombing of civilian structures. The greatest violation is by NATO is ‘taking sides’, which is illegal, together with the murder and attempted murder of government officials, with no formal declaration of war.

Put simply…. Let us, ‘NATO’, pay mercenaries to kill the people of Libya, and let us call them ‘rebels’… media response’ shush’…. Now, let’s wait for Gadaffis` forces to shoot back… media response ‘They are killing their own people’….Text book ‘problem, reaction, solution’. Parliament and congress will never know….

NATO used cluster bombs along with depleted uranium, both illegal.

NATOs violations in Libya are many, and what we would like to know is, why is the ICC silent? The ICC has no jurisdiction for Libya as it never ratified the Rome Treaty, nor has the US. However, under international laws, a Head of State has immunity.

So if the ICC does not question the US and its crimes against humanity, why should ICC question Libya, when the UN Security Council cannot refer to the ICC according to its Statute? ICC has been considering action against Georgia since 2008, against Guinea since 2009 and against Colombia since 2006, however took just 3 days to find Libya guilty. Again, did oil really have nothing to do with it?

The NATO countries participating in air strikes in Libya included France, UK, US, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy. What excuse does NATO have for bombing a Down’s Syndrome School, the University of Tripoli, the man-made waterway irrigation system which supplies most Libyans with drinking water, a hospital, killing over 50 people, many of whom were children, bombing villages and killing civilian population. Is this not genocide, and can the ICC continue to watch whilst doing nothing?

The sinister campaign to take over Libya, was by first projecting to Gaddafi that the US “deeply valued the relationship between the United States and Libya”(2009). This was because British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Chevron, Conoco, Marathon Oil & industrial giants like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Nonchemical & Fluor, signed investments and sales deals with Libya.

The US State Dept awarded a $1.5m grant to train Libyan civilian and government security forces in 2009. Many of these ‘trainees’, are now leading the NATO-backed ‘rebel forces’. The pretence by the US since 2009, of being a ‘friend’ to Gadaffi, was to get him to agree to allowing foreign presence in Libya.

NATO pounded Libya for months. Over 30,000 air and missile assaults, mostly on the civilian infrastructure, was expected, as was the ‘rebel uprising’, for they had already been trained to rise against Gaddaffi, and had the weapons supplied by NATO!

NATO also bombed Libyan airports, ships, energy depots, ports and highways, warehouses, hospitals, water plants and civilian homes. NATO was able to get diplomatic support, inclusive of the Arab League, (all bought and paid for by American Zionists). NATO removed services from hired mercenaries in Qatar. Libyan assets were frozen, amounting to billions of dollars. Economic sanctions were imposed by NATO, cutting off Libya’s income from oil sales. Is this what happens if you trade oil without the American blessing?

International media, also controlled by Western Imperialists ( Rothchild Zionists,) were relaying images that portrayed rebels waving rifles, and shouting against Gaddafi. These NATO funded rebels entered towns that had been devastated by NATO air attacks! They robbed homes, banks and destroyed public institutions, on the instructions of NATO.

Going against Gaddafi, does not equate to ruining the country’s infrastructure, and destroying property, that is used by your own people! NATO wanted Libya to be destroyed, just like they destroyed Yugoslavia & Iraq. NATO wanted to ensure that Libya had to be ‘reconstructed’, because all these contracts would eventually go to profit-making, Western companies, that, just like Iraq, would take the money, and not lift a finger to rebuild anything, except the oil production of course?

Incidentally, Libya was a country that had boasted the highest per capita income and standard of living in Africa. What took place in Libya is a message from the Rothschild’s and Rockefeller’s for other nations in North Africa, Asia & Latin America.

US-NATO is already engaged in colonial wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen & Somalia. What about the fall of Mubarak of Egypt, and Ben Ali in Tunisia, while uprisings in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Morocco, and Algeria were all associated with movements demanding end to EU-US & Israeli domination of the region, and would have caught their intelligence by surprise.

NATO provided the money to silence the ‘people’s march to democracy’, and the situation in Egypt is far worse than during Mubarak’s reign! In Bahrain, the West called for ‘reform’, while continuing to arm the Bahraini Royal Family, as seen in the NATO backed Saudi invasion of Bahrain, to support the Royal Dictatorship. In Yemen, the West continued to support the Ali Saleh regime.

What did Libya do to anger the West? Did the West not like its pursuance of pro-African agenda, which had funded an Independent Regional Bank, trading in gold, and a communications system designed to bypass IMF & World Bank control?

Nevertheless, NATO is now providing support to Islamic fundamentalists (paid so called rebels), in an attempt to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad. Have they got to stick to the ‘agenda’? Syria followed by Iran? Any excuse will do….Chemical weapons? That’s a good one, no one will question that.

Just like in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is likely to be an abominating US-NATO presence that is looking towards a military offensive in Syria, to run into Iran.

Sub-Saharan Africa may like to remember Gaddafi’s generous aid, grants and loans that helped these nations from the IMF, World Bank. Who will remember Gaddafi’s development programs and construction projects that offered many jobs to sub-Saharan African immigrant workers? Despite all these things, NATO came in and bombed the country!

NATO hit the Libyan water supply pipeline. Days later, NATO hit the pipeline factory producing the pipes to repair it. Could both incidents have been just accidents? NATO went on to target the civilian water supply network which supplied water to 70% of Libyan population. Nevertheless, the truth will emerge, just like Libya is now revealing it funded French President Sarkozy’s election campaign, and the numerous secret meetings that Tony Blair held with Gaddafi. Could there be more in the ‘Pandora’s box’? Did the West bump off Gaddafi as they did to Saddam, all previous friends of the West, just like Osama?

It is certainly time for UN Member States to stand up against aggression by Western neo-imperialism. Member states must demand a probe into all the atrocities by NATO, and demand that these nations steering NATO, be charged with war crimes.

Russia and China need to champion this cause. With only 28 nations making up the NATO Alliance, the UN has 53 African Member Nations, 48 Middle-East and Asian Nations together with 12 Nations in South America.

It is vital for these Non-NATO members to make a voice within the UN, and demand that NATO be investigated for all of its war crimes, and be charged for every crime committed.

We can now see the true colours of our nations obsession with money, oil and global control. Together, we can stop this madness before it’s too late, and we all become ‘slaves’ to this global cabal. 

News that Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond is to speed up the review that will see female soldiers allowed to join frontline units has met with widespread approval across both sides of the Houses of Parliament.

Rare are the occasions when decisions such as Mr Hammond’s order to General Sir Peter Wall, Chief of the Defence Staff, to present his report by the end of the year are met with such unified approval in Westminster.

Tory peer Lord Astor wants the Army’s wonderful “opportunities” in the infantry and armoured divisions to be available to all. Vernon Coaker , Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary, gave his backing to it and his colleague, Gloria Del Piero, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, agreed, saying the move was “long overdue”.

It’s heartening to see such agreement on the fundamental human right of “Our Girls” to close with and kill the enemy.
But it’s always useful to look behind the headlines and try to figure out whether there’s another agenda behind all the froth that’s presented. Is the policy just the natural progression of female emancipation or have our elected representatives just seen GI Jane too many times?

Is the war zone the next place that will witness mass demonstrations for all those excluded from participating in it? And what’s really motivating the powers that be to implement something that has been so widely dismissed for years?
Without a doubt, the coalition government’s controversial plan to cut back on Army numbers and replace those departed with part-timers is looking like a failure.

Heralded as the evolution of the Armed Forces into an agile, adaptive and effective organisation, the role of the Territorial Army (TA) was to be extended and utilised to make up for the shortfall in full time soldiers.
However, despite those plans, reservist numbers are actually down and well below the 30,000 figure required to fulfil the government’s target. They’ve even had to resort to offering departing regulars a 10k “bribe” to join the TA to attempt to cover the shortfall.

At the beginning of the year, Hammond had to assure us all that army recruitment was still continuing – just in case the British public had mistakenly come to the conclusion that they were now surplus to requirements.
It appears that despite all the grandstanding, keeping a steady stream of bodies through the office doors of the recruitment centres is proving to be harder than first imagined.

Unable to fill those yawning gaps by conventional means, it’s unsurprising that the government have decided to explore new avenues.

Therefore, General Wall’s report will now be four years early and no doubt present the case for women to be able to attach bayonets. And Hammond has also called for much greater efforts in recruiting form ethnic minority groups.

Of course, desperation isn’t something that can be admitted to, so it’s all painted as part of a strategy to improve diversity and bring HM Forces into the 21st century.

The truth, though, is much simpler. It’s often government policy to prey on the desperate, poor, misguided and disadvantaged. Military recruitment has also followed that strategy for many a century.

That won’t change with this policy and neither will the fact that while the sons (and daughters) of MPs are attending their private schools and elite universities, it will still be the poor doing the fighting and dying.

Thomas Paul (VFP UK) served in the Anglian Regiment in Northern Ireland.

Thursday 15 May

1200-1300hrs

Tavistock Square, London

Dress – VFP Members to wear a VFP Hoody if you have one.

Friday 23 May

1200hrs

Trafalgar Sq, London

Dress – VFP Hoody

On 23 May 2013, at the height of media focus on the ongoing hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay, Barack Obama made another promise to close the prison camp. In spite of positive measures in that time, such as the release of 12 prisoners, 154 prisoners remain, almost all of whom have been held without charge or trial for over 12 years.

With an ongoing hunger strike and daily human rights abuses against prisoners, the Obama administration continues to demonstrate that it has no interest in justice or freedom.

As part of an international day of action coordinated by Witness Against Torture (USA), Veterans For Peace will be joining the London Guantánamo Campaign for a demonstration to remind the US government and the mainstream media that Guantánamo prisoners do not only matter when politicians care to notice. These prisoners, including South London Shaker Aamer suffer injustice and indignity every day and have done so for over 12 years. Enough is enough…Not another broken promise! Not another day in Guantánamo!

The May 23rd Day of Action is coordinated by Witness Against Torture in collaboration with Amnesty International, Blue Lantern Project, the Center for Constitutional Rights, CloseGitmo.net, Code Pink, London Guantánamo Campaign, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, No More Guantánamos, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, Veterans for Peace, and World Can’t Wait. For a list of actions worldwide, please see www.witnesstorture.org

May Day should be a VFP priority by Dan Shea (VFP Chapter 72)

International Workers’ Day
Is more than the celebration of
the Eight Hour Day and the remembrance
of the Haymarket Massacre
it is recognizing the Captains of Industry
declared War against the Working Class

Veterans For Peace
demands Peace and Justice for all
for it is the working class who are sent
to fight rich men’s wars

The warriors sent into battle are
grunts coming from the underpaid,
the unemployed, the immigrant, the poor
ponds for slaughter and killing
profits for industries of Death

Come Veterans For Peace fly your flags
support your brothers and sisters
economic justice is the cause workers
the cost war is the ruin of workers’ pay
the price their blood, sweat & tears
their children lame and dead

War is the enemy of Workers everywhere
Demand Your Rights to Organize
Demand Life over Death, End All Wars
Defend Human and Civil Rights
Defend Our Planet against an Environmental Apocalypse
Defend Immigrant Workers & their Families
Not 1 More Deportation, Not 1 More War
Not 1 More Foreclosure, Not 1 More Job Lost
Not 1 More Step Backward

For “We shall not, we shall not be moved”

by Daniel Shea 4/30/14

VFP member Aly Renwick was invited to attend the launch of the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice’s Inquiry into Veterans within the Criminal Justice System, which will be conducted by Rory Stewart MP. This is Aly’s report of the meeting.

For 24 years now I have been campaigning, with others, to get the MoD and various Governments to recognise that if they send young soldiers into wars and conflicts, then some veterans will come back with psychological conditions like combat related PTSD – and in extreme cases this might even lead to them bringing the war home, by committing acts of violence in Civvy Street. And time after time we have come up against establishment hired and paid experts, who dismiss the hidden wounds of combat related PTSD as a trigger for such violence. In its place, the experts produce stereotypes of veterans – who’s ‘individual weaknesses’ can then be blamed instead.

The veterans’ problems and violence can then be explained away by saying they come from ‘broken homes’ and/or other ‘disadvantaged backgrounds,’ with low ‘educational levels.’ And when they abuse drugs and/or alcohol – it’s because they have ‘addictive personalities.’ Of course, like any good lie, there are some bits of reality in the typecasts outlined – with a few veterans conforming in one-way, or another, to the stereotypes constructed. This, however, only serves to further hide the real truth. We need to ask the question: Is the common denominator, amongst veterans who have ended up in the criminal justice system for violent acts, the fact that they have taken part in wars/conflicts? – Or is it that some have come from deprived backgrounds and others haven’t any GCEs?

This year we will commemorate the fallen of the First World War and among our casualties we must include over 300 British soldiers who were shot at dawn – charged with cowardice and desertion – by their own side. Most, however, due to the horrific nature of the warfare, were suffering from shellshock. Given the numbers of physically injured, perhaps it is not surprising that little sympathy would be spared for those suffering from hidden wounds. This harsh view was alleviated, to some extent, by the realisation that the officers appeared to be more susceptible to shellshock than ordinary soldiers. By the end of the first year of the war reports from the Army Medical Corps revealed that 7 – 10% of all officer patients and 3 – 4% of ordinary soldiers undergoing treatment were suffering from mental problems. Special shellshock treatment hospitals, like Craiglockhart in Edinburgh, were opened for officers. But in fact, the percentages mentioned are very low estimates – and anyhow suggest that more sympathy was shown to officer’s suffering, than that of the rank and file soldiers.

Through the realisation of what conditions at the front were really like and the evident effects this had on their returning men, the British public gradually came to accept shellshock as a condition, which could affect any soldier. In Europe, people like Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, took up this issue:

The war, as Freud noted in the introduction to a psychoanalytic study of shellshock, ‘was not without an important influence on the spread of psychoanalysis,’ because medical men ‘who had hitherto held back from any approach to psychoanalytic theory were brought into close contact with them when in the course of their duty as army doctors they were obliged to deal with war neuroses.’ The book had arisen from contributions to the fifth International Psychoanalytical Congress held in Budapest in late September 1918. A symposium had been held on ‘The Psychoanalysis of War Neuroses.’

… official observers from the highest quarters of the Central European Powers were present as observers at the Budapest Congress. In Freud’s words, ‘The hopeful result of this contact was that the establishment of psychoanalytic Centres was promised, at which analytically trained physicians would have leisure and opportunity for studying the nature of these puzzling disorders [the war neuroses] and the therapeutic effect exercised on them by psychoanalysis.’

Before these proposals could be put into effect, however, ‘the war came to an end, the state organisations collapsed and interest in the war neuroses gave place to other concerns’

[From War Machine – The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age, by Daniel Pick, Yale University Press 1993].

In the ten years after the ending of the war, pension boards examined over 100,000 cases of former front-line troops suffering from mental disorders. At the start of the Second World War the British Government was still paying £2 million pounds a year to shell-shocked veterans of the First World War.

Shellshock was the name then in vogue for a condition that has affected some soldiers since time immemorial. Shakespeare even wrote about it in his description of the warrior, Hotspur, in Henry IV, Part One. The condition has also been called ‘nostalgia’ or ‘camp disease’ in the US Civil War; ‘combat fatigue’ in the Second World War. In 1980, five years after the ending of the Vietnam War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was officially recognised as the modern name for this condition, when it was included in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual III (DSM III) of the American Psychiatric Association. Many veterans were plagued by war-related readjustment problems, such as flashbacks to combat, feelings of alienation and/or anger, depression, loneliness, nightmares, an inability to get close to others and using drugs or alcohol to mask and soothe their problems. Sometimes, this was leading to suicidal feelings or periods in jail and psychologists working with Vietnam veterans in outreach programs emphasised that these disorders were not mental illnesses, but rather delayed reactions to the stress these veterans underwent during the war in Southeast Asia.

It took a lengthy campaign by the Vietnam veterans and their friends to force the US Government to admit that some returning soldiers were suffering from combat related PTSD and other rehabilitation problems. The war had caused deep divisions within America and even 15 years after its ending many Vietnam veterans, and consequently those who came into contact with them, were still suffering from that conflict:

During the last decade of the twentieth century, America is still haunted by Vietnam. In 1990, a definitive study of the Vietnam generation revealed astonishing psychological costs of the war, still affecting veterans themselves and reverberating throughout much of American society 15 years after the last American combatant had left Vietnam. The study found that 15.2 percent of all male Vietnam theatre veterans, 497,000 of the 3.14 million men who served there, currently suffer from post traumatic stress disorder.

… those with posttraumatic stress disorder are prone to other profound affects: they frequently experience various psychiatric illnesses; they are five times more likely than those without the disorder to be unemployed; 70 percent have been divorced; almost half have been arrested or in jail at least once; and they are two to six times as likely to abuse alcohol or drugs.

[From Home From the War – Vietnam Veterans neither Victims or Executioners, by Robert Jay Lifton, Beacon Press Boston 1992].

In America, after years of campaigning, the Vietnam veterans began to win over public support. The veterans had to show courage and tenacity in taking their message to the American people, because there were many who were hostile, or who did not want to hear:

There is … considerable rage, much of it beneath the surface, towards Vietnam veterans. They are resented both for not winning the war and thereby being agents of humiliation, and also for the “dirty” things they have done. Moreover, they are deeply feared by a society that sense their potential violence and is all too quick to label them as “drug addicts” or “killers” – and this kind of fear can be quickly converted into rage.

Finally, there are large elements of American society enraged at – because deeply threatened by – the antiwar veterans’ transformation. For that transformation depends directly upon exposing the filth beneath the warrior’s claim to purity of mission, upon subverting much that is fundamental to American warrior mythology. Americans profoundly involved with that mythology may experience considerable rage towards these bearers of bad news, whom they may then blame for the news itself – for the decline of the old virtues. Underneath that rage are the profound doubts of everyone, even those who would most like to remain true believers in all aspects of American glory.

[From Home From the War – Vietnam Veterans neither Victims or Executioners, by Robert Jay Lifton, Beacon Press Boston 1992].

Nevertheless, the Vietnam veterans pressed on and won some concessions to help with their problems. Back in Britain in 1997, Roderick Ørner, the District Clinical Psychologist for Lincoln, contrasted the treatment of Vietnam veterans with British Falklands, Northern Ireland and Gulf War veterans. In an article in The Psychologist, he told how, less than five years after America’s withdrawal from Vietnam, a conference was convened to ‘review the status and predicament of the veterans of United States military engagement in South East Asia’:

Speakers from the fields of law, political science, philosophy, sociology, economics, psychology and psychiatry lent credibility to the campaigns of veterans’ groups. Thirteen years after the Falklands War it is doubtful if enough data have been gathered about our veterans group to even consider arranging a similar conference in the United Kingdom. Even less so for Northern Ireland veterans or veterans of the Gulf War.

All of this is entirely consistent with the impression left by recent commemorations of the end of World War Two. The welfare and welfare rights of British war veterans have so far not attained high public priority. At this moment of reckoning, it is clear that those who should have represented the interests of British ex-service personnel returning from war and their families, leave a shameful record. This may be a consequence of a conspiracy of silence and sanitation in relation to truths about wars and their aftermath…

[The Psychologist, August 1997].

In Britain, it was during the conflict in Northern Ireland that British prisons began to fill up with returning veterans. At the same time, anyone raising the issue of Northern Ireland veterans who were suffering from psychological problems after their tours of duty, could expect to face hostility from the military establishment. In 1992, Lynda La Plante’s TV drama, Civvies, was broadcast. La Plante had written Civvies after some ex-paras had done some building work in her home and told her about themselves. The series was about the violent lives of ex-paras:

Karl Francis, the director, believes that it reflects a much bigger real life story which has yet to be told.

As a self-styled radical film maker, Francis admits to finding the theme of Civvies a challenge: ‘Instead of looking at the hearts and minds of the communities the soldiers have tried to conquer, it looked at the minds of the soldiers themselves – trying to conquer their own demons and live with them afterwards.’

‘I’ve got cousins and friends who’ve been in the army’, he says. ‘I’ve heard how they try and deal with the stress – their wives have told me. I’ve met the soldiers who ended up pill-poppers and drug addicts. I’ve listened to the awful stories of their dreams.’

‘People respond to soldiering in different ways. Being a soldier doesn’t make you a good or a bad person. The lads in Civvies came out of the army still fighting, they were all wounded emotionally, they wanted healing…’

[Guardian, Nov.4th 1992, The mind as combat zone, by Martin Collins].

Lynda La Plante had made friends with the group of ex-paras she had met and based her drama Civvies on. She tried to help them settle back into civilian life: ‘But, by the time the show was broadcast, every single one of the soldiers she’d met and found jobs for was in prison. “It made me deeply angry, the betrayal these men had done to me”, she said. “The show was an angry plea to the Government to do something about PTSD”.’ [Mail on Sunday Magazine, 15th Jan. 1995, article on soldiers and PTSD by Jean Rafferty]. There was no doubt that Civvies was La Plante’s most difficult and controversial series. It was described as ‘offensive’ by the  Ministry of Defence, and as ‘inaccurate, belittling and will demoralise the troops’ by the Parachute Regiment.

Later Lynda La Plante commented:

‘Civvies is an open wound … Nothing in Civvies hadn’t happened. It wasn’t a fictional drama. It was fact, all of it. Yet I was vilified and abused by everybody. The shoals of letters I still get: “That was my brother, that was my father, that was my uncle, that was my husband”.’

[Observer Life, interview by Andrew Billen, 10th March 1996].

In Britain, at the end of the First World War, political battles had been fought in Parliament and in the medical establishment to prevent the practice of designating the worst cases of shellshocked soldiers insane and committing them to asylums. Many in the War Office were still refusing to accept shellshock as a diagnosis. They wanted the issue of the psychologically wounded to disappear and racism plus class prejudice was clearly evident when they were forced to look at the problem:

… the War Office Committee of Inquiry into Shellshock under the chairmanship of Lord Southborough in 1922 entertained but then rejected Freud’s therapy, or at least the ‘sanitised’ version they had been offered by Head and Rivers [British shellshock doctors]. The committee declared that Jews, the Irish and the working classes were more likely to break down, as were ‘artistic types’ and ‘imaginative city-dwellers’ and other such ‘highly strung’ people.

[From War Machine – The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age, by Daniel Pick, Yale University Press 1993].

Rather that confront the reality of war, the War Office had shown that it would rather construct stereotypes of the soldiers that they had sent to fight in them. And this is still happening right up to the present day.

Recalling the many struggles over these issues, both in the far and near past, I therefore couldn’t help feeling a sense of déjà vu about the launch of this new Inquiry. However, unlike when I started campaigning – when the MoD and the Government denied that there was any problem and claimed they did not know about PTSD – it is has now been clear for some time that everyone now recognises that there are extensive numbers of veterans in the criminal justice system and that this is a big problem that something must be done about it. So far, so good, but now the argument has switched from if there is a problem, or not, to what is causing the problem. Does ex-services personnel’s criminal behaviour stem from incidents that occurred during the veterans’ tours of duty -which then develop into combat related PTSD? – Or does it come from veterans’ backgrounds and personalities? And would it ‘have happened anyway,’ even if the veterans had been in a cushy job in Civvy Street?

A little while ago the Howard League set up a Commission to look into Veterans in the Prison System. The group, Veterans In Prison, then sent the Commission a list of over 50 veterans – serving time in prison – who had worked out what had happened to themselves and what had caused them to commit a crime in the first place. Not one of the veterans named on that list were visited, although the Commission did visit some other veterans in prison. But these were ones who had not as yet worked out what had happened to them, which suited the purposes of the interviewees – who could then produce any stereotype they wanted from these veterans’ muddled statements, which were little more than cries for help. So the voices of the veterans in prison, who had worked out what had happened to themselves, were totally absent from the Howard League Commissions’ report – which as a result was a total sham. Will these veterans’ voices remain hidden and be absent from Rory Stewart’s Review? Will the hidden wounds of combat related PTSD, as a main cause of the problem, be absent also? Sadly, they were mainly absent from the launch of this inquiry. If that continues, then this Review is likely to be a sham like all the rest, the equivalent of placing a bandage on a cancer wound – while the real problem goes on and gets larger.

Ryan Harvey – Your Poverty is Our Profit.

In the UK huge numbers are stuck in low paid jobs or unemployment, living in squalid conditions and struggling to make ends meet.  It is common knowledge that sections of the population are resorting to food banks to feed their families. The Trussell Trust which operates food banks across the nation attacked the governments claims that it’s economic and welfare policies are fair and just.

In my own experience, it is not just people on benefits who end up at food-banks but home-owning workers who find themselves in such a position. As a veteran, I was saddened to hear about a recently discharged soldier who was suffering with visible signs of PTSD and had come to my local food-bank because he could not find a job and had a young child to support. He was demoralized and embarrassed by his predicament as most people would be. This is the reality of modern Britain, a society that allows its government to run policies that reduce people to poverty.

The vast majority of politicians and those in power are in willful denial of the vast scale of poverty and hunger in the world’s sixth largest economy let alone the rest of the world. They would have you believe that it is ‘poverty of ambition’ and fecklessness which causes individuals and communities to wallow in deprivation. The remedy prescribed by those in power is ‘tough love’, but poverty is a policy, a tool brought to bear on our society in order to extract maximum profits.

But there is an elephant in the room, the military. In the UK we have the fourth largest military budget in the world. We both spend billions on Nuclear weapons that we will never use. Billions fighting wars that impoverish other nations. Billions on propaganda.

Within the military there is a culture of waste. Whilst serving in the USMC I was detailed to open up and dispose of huge amounts of perfectly good food on at least two occasions. We were prohibited from giving it to charitable organizations or our poorly paid civilian contractors because it was “government food not to be given to civilians”. For our ‘warrior meals’ we had vast amounts of burgers, hot-dogs and chicken shipped out to us at the end of training deployments much of which was not eaten. These are just some of the examples I can recall of the huge wastage of food within the military whilst people back home are barely able to feed themselves.

Politicians claim we must spend less on welfare, yet they always seem to find the money to buy weapons and wage war. Militarism and war lead to many forms of violence, let us draw attention to the violence which is poverty and expose the lies which propagate it.

Chase Sydnor – Veterans for Peace UK

Big news yesterday (24/04/2014) out of The Hague and San Francisco. The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has filed unprecedented lawsuits against all nine nuclear-armed nations for their failure to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament, as required under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The suits were filed against all nine nations at the International Court of Justice, with an additional complaint against the United States filed in U.S. Federal District Court.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation applauds the courage of the RMI’s leaders in bringing lawsuits against the nuclear-armed nations. The people of the RMI continue to suffer today from U.S. nuclear weapon tests that took place on their territory in the 1940s and 1950s, and they want to ensure that such devastation – or worse – is never brought on anyone ever again.

NAPF is playing a key role in the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits campaign, which just launched this morning. Please go to www.nuclearzero.org, where you can learn more about the specifics of the lawsuits and show your support by signing a petition supporting the RMI’s bold, non-violent action.

We’ll be bringing you much more news about these lawsuits in the coming days and weeks. But right now, there are two things I’d like for you to do:

1. Go to nuclearzero.org and sign the petition, and then share it with your friends.

2. Share / re-tweet announcements about the lawsuits from our Facebook and Twitter pages.

These lawsuits could be the thing that finally breaks the nuclear weapon states’ shameful decades of inaction on nuclear disarmament. Please take a moment to add your voice to the campaign today.

Sincerely,

Rick Wayman NAPF Peace Ops Director

Tuesday 29 April 2014

1830hrs

Cafe Diplo, The Gallery, 70/77 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6EJ

Resistance to war from within the military has a long history that predates well known instances during the Vietnam War. Ben Griffin (Iraq War resister and coordinator of Veterans For Peace UK) will talk about lesser known acts of resistance from within the military during post 9/11 conflicts. He will also focus on the actions and plight of US Army Soldier and convicted Wikileaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning.

Tickets – £3 on the door.

Thursday 1 May 2014

1200hrs

Clerkenwell Green, London

Veterans For Peace UK will join the May Day March and Rally organised by the London May Day Organising Committee

Dress – VFP Hoody / T-Shirt.

Info – Ben 07866559312

VETERANS FOR PEACE UK ANNUAL GATHERING 2014

Saturday 12 April 2014
1000hrs

Friends House
173 Euston Road
London

ATTENDED – 32

Aly Renwick,Ben Griffin, Bruce Kent, Charlie Bird, Chase Sydnor, Chris Roper, Dan Taylor, David Buck, George Hill, Glenn Fitzpatrick, Gray Ewlison, Gus Hales, Jim Radford, Joe Glenton, John Boulton, John Bourton, John  Lynes, John Watson, Karl Hemming, Kenny Williams, Lee Lavis, Les Gibbons, Michael Pike, Mike Lyons, Mike Nelson, Quinn Thomson, Stephen Mann, Stuart Griffiths, Thomas Paul, Tom May, Walter Heaton, Vince Chittock,

APOLOGIES – 17

Adrian Brook, Allen Jasson, Andy Lewis, Andy Mathia, Bob Cummins, Duncan Parker, Dave Orrey, Jay Munro Naan, Kev Donaghue, Kieran Devlin, Kirk Sollitt, Joe Lidster, John Tittley, Matthew Horne, Rob Bates, Terry Gardner, Terry Wood

MEMBERSHIP

We currently have 110 members with 63 having provided proof of service.

Annual subscription of £10 has started with 26 members have paid so far.

FINANCES

We currently hold – £4958 in cash
We currently hold – £907 in stock

We are in the process of adding Treasurer John Boulton to the bank account.

THE STATEMENT OF PURPOSE WAS READ BY CHAIRMAN JOHN BOURTON

BYE LAWS

The Bye Laws were explained with time for questions from the membership. The distinction was pointed out between speaking as a member of VFP UK and on behalf of VFP UK. Suggestions were made that we call the Bye Laws Standing orders or Code of Conduct instead. A straw poll was taken that proved inconclusive. Since the meeting it has been noted that the bank is already expecting a set of Bye Laws. So as not to complicate matters with the bank we will keep the term Bye Laws.

The Bye Laws were ratified unanimously.

STEERING GROUP

The Steering Group was introduced;

John Bourton – Chairperson
Dan Taylor – Secretary
John Boulton – Treasurer
Chase Sydnor
Joe Glenton
Jim Radford
Ben Griffin – Coordinator

The Steering Group will meet Bi-Monthly.

Two vacancies will become available next year and will be elected at the 2015 Annual Conference.

FUTURE DIRECTION

1. Education Resistance Solidarity
Our work falls into one or more of these categories. Education on the true nature of war both towards the public and amongst ourselves. Resistance to war and militarism through nonviolent action. Solidarity with the victims of war and those working for peace.

2. Linking up members and bringing more in.
The coordinator has been instructed by the membership to look into ways of joining up members around the country. Permission will be sought from members to circulate a closed contact list. As a start the profile page will now feature home towns to help members know who lives near them and the map will be put back on the website. Efforts will be made to get in touch with surviving members of Ex-Services CND. The Steering Group will formulate a recruitment campaign. All members should be on the look out for potential members.

3. Annual Conference
This was our third Annual Conference. So far the numbers have roughly doubled every year.

4. Remembrance Sunday
We will put effort into increasing the number of our members walking to the Cenotaph and encourage people to follow us. The lead up to Remembrance Sunday is our busiest period of the year and we need to be ready to respond. Members should look into what can be done locally.

5. Pre-Remembrance Sunday Meeting
It was agreed that we should meet the Saturday before Remembrance Sunday to prepare for the walk to the Cenotaph. We should prepare workshops to give to our members on a variety of related subjects.

6. Schools Project
Work into the schools project is coming along. The skeleton presentation is almost ready. We have been in touch with the Peace Education Network. We have a number of members willing to visit schools. We should also reach out to universities. So far our access to schools has been through friendly teachers.

7. Events
The following is a list of some events coming up. Members can send in information about other events that we could attend to the coordinator to be posted on the website. We also agreed that we should reach out to other Peace groups and put an effort into attending events organised by them.

1 May – Annual Mayday March (LMDOC)
15 May – International Conscientious Objector Day (Peace Pledge Union)
23 May – Global Day of Action to Close Guantanamo (LGC)
23/27 July – VFP Convention, Asheville NC (VFP)
4 August – Silent Vigil St Martins London (Pax Christi)
5 August – Official 1914 Centenary Launch Glasgow
4/5 September – No To Nato in Newport (NNN)
9 November – Remembrance Sunday walk to Cenotaph. (VFP UK)

8. Communication
The Coordinator and Secretary need to ensure that decisions are properly communicated to members.

9. Stalls
It was suggested that we hold stalls at e.g. Glastonbury. To enable this material needs to be manufactured. The coordinator was instructed into sourcing flags and banners. Individual members should be on the look out for opportunities to engage with the public.

10. Reconciliation
This was not mentioned in the business meeting but in the afternoon during the veterans panel. Work is now in progress for VFP UK to take part in reconciliation projects in Northern Ireland.

WORKSHOPS

Gus Hales gave a presentation on his lone action carried out on a pilgrimage to the Falklands Islands during a church service. He gave a good insight into the planning and preparation required to carry out a successful action.

Jim Radford gave a presentation on his involvement in anti-war activism since the days of the Direct Action Group. He told us about actions that worked and those that didn’t.

Ben Griffin talked the members through the skeleton presentation for schools. The presentation will be available for all members to use and adapt. There was a discussion about how to get into more schools

Chris Roper ran a workshop during lunch on how to resist nonviolently during protest situations.

LUNCH

Thanks to Sam Walton for sorting out a great buffet. This was an important part of the day for meeting new members and discussing our own experiences and journey’s.

PUBLIC EVENT

The public event was well attended. Artwork by Darren Cullen and Glenn Fitzpatrick was on display outside and in. The music of Ryan Harvey was played during the build up. There were stalls manned by Reel News, Forces Watch, Movement for the Abolition of War, Darren Cullen and VFP.

Michael ‘Spike’ Pike hosted the event that featured M15 whistle-blower Annie Machon who spoke about her own experience of working within MI5 and what happened to her after blowing the whistle on an organisation that was out of control. Vron Ware gave an informative presentation on the campaign initiated in 2006 by the military, government and media to persuade the British public that they should blindly support the armed forces. Frank Ledwidge a former military intelligence officer gave a presentation on the true costs of the war in Afghanistan. From the cost in lives to the cost of continued medical care for those injured there.

The veterans panel consisted of Gus Hales who spoke about his lone action at a remembrance service in the Falkland Islands. Lee Lavis who spoke about his reconciliation work in Northern Ireland and Charlie Bird who worked at a high level in the Foreign Office and attached to the Army. Charlie gave insight into how things work behind the scenes and told an incredible story about how he was responsible for passing the dodgy dossier to the President of Nigeria in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

2014 was our best attended Conference yet and was ended with a fantastic Street Poetry recital by Spike. He ran through his anti-war cannon before lifting the mood with some comedy. There was a good social evening afterwards marked by good conversation and a welcoming attitude from all.

2014 VFP UK Conference Gallery

Spike Pike of VFP UK recites his poem Fallen Heroes.

2014 VFP UK Conference Report

The origins of the modern British Army of today can be traced back to the English Civil War and Cromwell’s New Model Army. There had been no permanent army in England before then, because in the past the ruling King or Queen had raised armies to fight specific wars – after which these forces were then disbanded. A professional standing army, funded and controlled by Parliament, gradually emerged from the period of the Civil War and William’s ‘Glorious Revolution’, which followed. The unit that became the Green Howards was first raised in 1688 to support King William and fought with him in Ireland. Three hundred years later the regiment was still sending its soldiers to serve tours of duty in Northern Ireland.

From 1517 the Protestant Reformation had swept through Europe as feudalism was on the wane and bourgeois capitalism was emerging. In many countries the Catholic Church had become a principal feudal force, forming a rich and corrupt part of the state apparatus. In the old order the ‘will of God’, which governed many aspects of peoples lives, was passed down through popes, monarchs and an apparatus of church placemen. Very often their interpretation of God’s will was that the poor should accept their lot and obey their betters. So, the idea, implicit in the new religion, that an individual could have a direct relationship with God and interpret the divine will for themselves, was a revolutionary one – which threatened for a time to ‘turn the world upside down.’

In England, a more modest Protestantism gradually became established after King Henry VIII, who had his own reasons for rejecting the Papacy, turned his back on Rome and made himself head of the Church of England in 1534. But Henry, fearful of the radicalism the new religion had exhibited elsewhere, ensured that the new moderate Anglican Church became an integral arm of the Tudor state. Mary Tudor threatened to reinstate the Catholic Church during her brief reign, but Protestantism was consolidated under Elizabeth I. As the new religion became dominant in England many ‘martyrs’ were created in bitter struggles for and against it. Patriotism was whipped up to combat ‘Popish plots’ and supporting Protestantism became synonymous with national security and the need for a strong state. Sir Francis Walsingham, an ardent Protestant, became the state spymaster, running many agents both at home and abroad, including the playwright Christopher Marlowe.

Politically, the centralised state that grew under the reign of the Tudors had helped English trade and expansionism to develop. With the merchant centre, London, as the capital, the entrepreneurs and financiers who stood behind this growing commerce gradually increased in power and influence. It was largely this new merchant class that forced Queen Elizabeth I to use her navy to help check Spain’s competing overseas enterprises. While Elizabeth had been successful in balancing the various ruling interests and factions during her reign, differences intensified as the coming bourgeoisie gradually contested the dominance of the old feudal monarchy, aristocracy and church.

In 1640 a civil war started in England when these growing capitalist forces, allied with Parliament and some prominent Protestants, challenged the absolute power of Charles I and his nobles. Oliver Cromwell, a minor landed gentleman, rose to prominence in the fight against the king by bringing organisation, discipline and training to the Parliamentary military forces. His victorious New Model Army was composed mainly of disciplined and determined Puritans, who would often sing psalms as they marched into battle. A ‘Soldier’s Catechism’ was produced in 1644 for the New Model Army soldiers that fought against the king. It was ‘Written for the Encouragement and Instruction of all that have taken up Arms in this Cause of God and his People; especially the common Soldiers’. Like most texts of the period it was couched mainly in strident theological terms, but it was written to inspire a citizen army – albeit one motivated by a Protestant religious zeal.

Cromwell and his backers needed to mobilise the maximum support to defeat the Royalists and the New Model Army contained within its ranks many soldiers from the lower orders, who pursued objectives that were a great deal more radical than those sought by their leaders. Many became Levellers, who believed in the free interpretation of the scriptures and who opposed establishment control of the church. But they were also political – as well as religious – radicals, who advocated free schools and hospitals for all as well as a more equal society:

‘Round about 1646, towards the end of the first Civil War, the Levellers emerged as an independent group. There had been peasant revolts in the past. The first claim of the Levellers to originality lay in this, that they organised as a modern party, run on democratic lines, a third force, drawn from the lower middle class, the skilled craftsmen and the small farmers. Their followers ranged from some well-to-do merchants to the weavers of Spitalfields and the lead-miners of Derbyshire…. The Levellers were the first political party that dared to make complete religious toleration a chief plank in their platform. By 1647 they had behind them most of the rank and file of the New Model Army and many of its junior officers.’
[From The Levellers and the English Revolution, by H. N. Brailsford, Spokesman Books 1976.]

The Levellers, who got their name from levelling fences and hedges which enclosed former common land, opposed primogeniture and great estates. They demanded that ‘all grounds which anciently lay in common for the poor, [and are now enclosed], be laid open again to the free and common use and benefit of the poor.’
The Diggers, or ‘True Levellers’, who got their name from their attempts to dig-up and plant crops on enclosed land, considered Charles I to be the ‘Norman Successor’ and with his execution that the ‘Norman Yoke’ had at last been cast off. Gerrard Winstanley, a leader of the Diggers, declared that: ‘In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason made the Earth to be a Common Treasury … but not one word was spoken in the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another.’ Winstanley, an early environmentalist who also attempted to organise the rural poor, left these words for those who would come after:

‘When these clay bodies are in grave
and children stand in place,
This shows we stood for truth
and peace and freedom in our days.
And true-born sons we shall appear
of England that’s our mother,
No priests’ nor lawyers’ wiles to embrace
their slavery we’ll discover.’

The Agitators

In the New Model Army the Levellers sought to bring an element of democracy to the military and give lower ranking soldiers a voice. To this end they organised to elect soldier representatives, called Agitators, who put forward the rank and file’s point of view. Two were elected from each regiment and they, with two officers from the same unit, would meet and debate with the senior officers (Grandees) on the Army Council: ‘We were not a mere mercenary army, hired to serve any arbitrary power of a state, but called forth and conjured by the several declarations of Parliament to the defence of our own and the people’s just rights and liberties. And so we took up arms in judgment and conscience to those ends.’ [From Representation, a Leveller document addressed to Parliament.]

The modern negative connotation of the word ‘agitator’ comes from the establishments fear and distaste for this early example of rank and file power. The Agitators were part of a Leveller movement who stood for the separation of church from state and for toleration and liberty of conscience among the people – including soldiers in the army. Women spoke out for their rights and the Levellers included in their aims greater equality between men and women – that was to be enacted in law.

In London, during the autumn of 1647, a significant Army Council meeting took place at St Mary’s Church in Putney. The Royalists had been defeated and Charles I captured and therefore the future way the country would be run was on the agenda. The Grandees favoured an accommodation with the king and aristocracy, while the Levellers sought a parliament that would take its authority directly from the people – and be answerable to them. At these ‘Putney Debates’ the arguments were often enunciated in fairly archaic biblical terms, but it was clear that the Agitators stood not only for the rights of soldiers, but also, with the Levellers, for those of the common people. They complained of ‘rotten parliaments’ and argued for ‘An Agreement of the People’ that included many of the Levellers’ demands. While Cromwell and the other Grandees made their stand for ‘The Heads of the Proposals’, which advocated the preservation of property rights and for the rich to retain their privileges and power.

The Army Council voted mainly in favour of the proposals of the Agitators and Levellers and for a general rendezvous of the army, where things could finally be settled. In the meantime, the king had escaped, telling his supporters that ‘A people called Levellers’ were planning to overthrow him. It was suspected that Charles I was planning a second civil war and the need for unity in the face of this threat became paramount. The Grandees, moving from debate to repression, took advantage of this feeling and planned the army meeting well. The Leveller soldiers turned up with a copy of the ‘An Agreement of the People’ in their hats, to show their allegiances. But while on parade Cromwell rode amongst them, snatching the copies of the ‘An Agreement of the People’ and tearing them up. A budding ‘mutiny’ was firmly supressed and the leaders were court-martialled.

The king was recaptured and held in Carisbrook Castle, but his planned second civil war took place in 1648. The New Model Army reunited to win the battle all over again, but this time ‘the Man of Blood’, Charles I, was put on trial. Cromwell deserves credit for his part in removing ‘the divine right of kings’ and, in 1649, a major step towards this was achieved with the execution of the king. The main objective of Cromwell and his backers, however, was to open the way to a type of parliamentary rule that would be dominated by commercial interests, while the Levellers wanted to leap from the old feudal style system to a true democracy of the people. Attempts to suppress the Agitators, Levellers, Diggers and others had occurred before, but were now stepped up. Cromwell also ordered the New Model Army to prepare for a campaign in Ireland and some regiments refused. Leveller soldiers produced a broadsheet warning that service in Ireland would suit the designs of the Grandees, which was to reduce the soldiers to ‘a mere mercenary and servile temper.’

Eight years before, one of the periodic revolts against English rule had occurred in Ireland. Thousands of settlers were killed and many more driven from land taken during the plantations. The ‘Protestant massacres’ were much exaggerated in England and Cromwell made great play of these events to work up anti-Catholic and anti-Irish feelings. So strong was this propaganda that most of the Levellers believed it, especially after they heard that King Charles had made a pact with the ‘rebel’ Catholic Irish leaders. Yet many still stood against Cromwell’s re-conquest of Ireland and a popular Leveller leaflet asked a series of questions:

‘Have we the right to deprive a people of the land God and nature has given them and impose laws without their consent?

How can the conquered be accounted rebels, if at any time they seek to free themselves and recover their own?

Whether Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, William Duke of Normandy or any other great conqueror of the world were any other than great lawless thieves, and whether it be not as unjust to take laws and liberties from our neighbours as to take goods from another of the same nation?

Whether those who pretend for freedom (as the English now) shall not make themselves altogether inexcusable in entrenching upon others’ freedoms, and whether it be not the character of a true patriot to endeavour the just freedom of all men as well as his own?

Whether the English would not do as the Irish have, if the Irish should dispossess and tyrannise over them?’

[From Representation, a Leveller document addressed to Parliament.]

The leaflet was denounced as ‘treasonous’ for inciting the army to disobedience. Cromwell’s supporters published a counter broadsheet, which said that the Irish were ‘more brutish than the Indians’ and it was the duty of the English to ‘tame such wild beasts’. Bribery was also tried, with Cromwell offering Irish land to soldiers who would fight for him in Ireland.

Executions and War

While Cromwell had played a dominant role in the struggle against the Royalists, he was strongly against trying to level ‘the ranks and orders of men, whereby England hath been known for hundreds of years.’ In April 1649 a leading Leveller, John Lilburne, heard Cromwell tell the Council of State that if the Levellers were not broken in pieces:

‘They will break you; and bring all the guilt of the blood and treasure shed and spent in this kingdom upon your heads and shoulders, and frustrate and make void all that work that with so many years’ industry, toil and pains you have done.’

The evidence that Cromwell got his way still lies in three unmarked graves in Burford churchyard in Oxfordshire, which hold the bones of men who had been part of a Leveller regiment who had refused to fight in Ireland.

There were three major mutinies in 1649, the first by 300 men in an infantry regiment, who stated that ‘they would not fight in Ireland until the Leveller’s programme had been realised’. The men were discharged from the army without arrears of pay. In the second, men of a regiment stationed in London at Bishopsgate, made similar demands and were ordered out of London – away from Leveller influence it was hoped. The third and most serious was by 400 men stationed at Banbury and commanded by Captain Thompson. When they set off for Salisbury to discuss with other regiments their political demands, Cromwell offered to mediate and assured them that force would not be used against them. But then, under the cover of darkness, troops loyal to Cromwell launched an attack on the ‘mutineers’, killing several.

Captain Thompson and some of his troopers escaped, only for him to be killed a few days later by Cromwell’s men who had pursued them. The rest were captured and imprisoned in the church at Burford. Refusing to recant, three, including a junior officer who was Captain Thompson’s son, were selected and taken out and shot as an example, and a warning, to the others who watched from the roof of the church. The men executed proudly wore the sea-green ribbon of the Levellers on their chests and died upholding their rights as citizen-soldiers and for the liberties of their country. The events at Burford were one of the main steps, as Cromwell, allied to other conservative forces, gradually suppressed the Levellers and the Agitators.

While much of the initial opposition to Cromwell’s Irish war was motivated by economic grievances, like soldiers’ pay and conditions, this was combined with political demands to push on with the revolution in England and against being made the instrument by which the establishment imposed their will on another country by force. Another Leveller leader, William Walwyn, was imprisoned in the Tower where he made many direct appeals to the conscience of soldiers in the army. One of these was The English Soldier’s Standard, to repair to for Wisdom and Understanding, in these doleful, back-sliding Times: to be read by every honest officer to his soldiers and by the soldiers to one another:

‘It will be’, he declared, ‘no satisfaction to God’s justice to plead that you murdered men in obedience to your general.’ They would not be able to answer, as they might have done hitherto, that they had taken life ‘for those just ends, the rights and liberties of the people’. ‘Is there such haste?’ he asks, ‘If you are wise stay a little … Certainly before you go, it will be good for you to see those rights and liberties of the people, for which you took up arms in judgment and conscience, cleared and secured by Agreement of the People, and not to leave them at the mere arbitrary mercy of a Council of State or a packed Parliament’…. ‘For consider, as things now stand, to what end you should hazard your lives against the Irish. Will you go on still to kill, slay and murder in order to make them [your officers] as absolute lords and masters over Ireland as you have made them over England?… It has come to a pretty pass with most of your great officers. They would have you to obey their commands, through to the killing and slaying of men, without asking a reason.’
[From The Levellers and the English Revolution, by H. N. Brailsford, Spokesman Books 1976.]

Cromwell pushed ahead with his war in Ireland and crushed the opposition to English rule in a brutal and bloody campaign. In garrisons like Drogheda, which refused to surrender, the inhabitants were massacred. The Irish population of nearly one and a half million was reduced to almost half. Over 600,000 perished by ‘sword and brand’ or the subsequent pestilence and famine. Over 100,000 ‘captives’ were either forced to join foreign armies or were sold off as slaves to the West Indies and other colonies. Cromwell rewarded his troops with ‘tickets for land’ confiscated from the Irish (many soldiers complained that they were swindled out of ‘their land’ by the Grandees and the carpet-baggers who had followed Cromwell’s conquest).

The Path to Empire

Cromwell’s Army then campaigned to consolidate the whole of the British Isles for the new social order, which the army now represented. Afterwards, English troops went to the West Indies and America where their brutal methods of dealing with the Irish proved effective in winning empire. After Cromwell’s death, the Parliamentary forces made an agreement with the aristocracy and the monarchy was restored with Charles II becoming king. His brother James II succeeded him in 1685, but Parliament intervened once again because James was a Catholic and they favoured his Dutch son-in-law, William of Orange, a fervent Protestant. The deposed James went to Ireland and raised an army there. William, who ironically had the blessing of – and financial help from – Pope Innocent XI, followed and defeated James at the battle of the Boyne.

During the Protestant Reformation a number of penal laws against Catholics were implemented in England, some of which remain, in modified form, on the statute books to this day. In Ireland, however, the Catholic Church retained the people’s allegiance and religion took on a special importance there in the conflict between the native Irish and the British invaders. From 1695 the onslaught against the Irish way of life was now also directed against the native religion, and a series of anti-Catholic Acts were implemented in Ireland. These ‘Penal Laws’ were designed to keep the native Irish in a state of permanent subjection. Under these Acts:

Catholics were not allowed to be armed and they could not own a horse worth more than £5.
A reward of £5 was offered for the head of a priest (the same as offered for the head of a wolf).
Catholics were not allowed to vote and consequently were totally unrepresented in the Irish Parliament.
Catholics were barred from public office.
Catholics were not allowed to maintain schools and their children were not allowed to go abroad to be educated.
Catholics were not allowed to buy land and restrictions were put on them leasing it.

In 1603 Catholics owned 90% of the land in Ireland, by 1778 they owned less than 10%. At the same time Protestant land ownership rose from 10% to over 90%, forming the ‘Ascendancy’ landlord class. Irish agriculture and industry were strictly controlled to service British interests and subsequently famine was endemic in rural areas. The Penal Laws were designed not to rid Ireland of Catholics, but to reduce them to poverty and ensure they no longer posed a political threat. The Irish peasantry, cowed and often starving, could then be exploited in feudal-style servitude. In 1776, the English agricultural reformer, Arthur Young, visited Ireland and observed that: ‘A landlord in Ireland can scarcely invent an order which a servant, labourer, or cottier dares to refuse to execute. Disrespect or anything tending towards sauciness he may punish with his cane or his horsewhip with the most perfect security…’.

The Soldier’s Catechism

Inside what had now became a standard Imperial Army, most British soldiers came from the poor and dispossessed. Ironically, many who now filled the ranks were from Ireland and Scotland. During both the Highland clearances in Scotland and the famine in Ireland recruitment drives were undertaken. Scottish Highland soldiers, whose forbears had been hunted down for wearing their native tartan, now wore a new British military tartan to serve the Empire. Many clan chiefs were incorporated into the establishment, with their sons being educated at English public schools. Dr Johnson noted that many of the chiefs then ‘degenerated from patriarchal rulers to rapacious landlords’.

In his book Mutiny, John Prebble outlined the background to the many revolts of Scottish Highland soldiers:‘Highland soldiers were Britain’s earliest colonial levies, first raised to police their own hills, then expended in imperial wars. The Gaelic people of the 18th century, three percent only of the population, nonetheless supplied the Crown with sixty-five regiments, as well as independent companies, militia and volunteers. … He was often recruited by threat, or sold by the chief he trusted. Promises made to him were cynically broken, his pride was outraged by the lash, by contempt for his fierce attachment to his language and dress. The family he hoped to protect by enlistment was frequently evicted in his absence and replaced by sheep.’
[From Mutiny, by John Prebble, Secker and Warburg London 1975.]

As Prebble wrote, ‘Contrary to romantic belief, the Highlander was rarely a willing soldier, his songs lament the day he put on a red coat’:

If I were as I used to be,
amongst the hills,
I would not mount guard
as long as I lived,
nor would I stand on parade,
nor for the rest of my life
would I ever put on a red coat.

Over the centuries there were many revolts, both large and small, by soldiers and other service personnel. Often about wages and conditions, also sometimes about Imperial assignments, these mutinies frequently involved not only English soldiers, recruited from the poor and disaffected, but also ethnic troops, such as Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Indian or other soldiers recruited from colonies. Invariably, open mutinies were savagely suppressed, by execution, imprisonment and flogging, as the officers reasserted their control and authority. Under iron discipline and frightened of harsh punishments, most soldiers obeyed orders and tried to retain some dignity and honour in the battles they were thrust into.

While most serving soldiers carried out ‘their duty’, there was always an undercurrent of resentment and opposition. This was apparent in this satire on army life called the Soldier’s Catechism:

Question. What is your name?
Answer. Soldier.

Q. Who gave you that name?
A. The recruiting-sergeant, when I received the enlisting shilling, whereby I was made a recruit of bayonets, bullets, and death.

Q. What did the recruiting-sergeant promise then for you?
A. He did promise and vow three things in my name. First, that I should renounce all idea of liberty, and all such nonsense. Secondly, that I should be well harassed with drill. And, thirdly, that I should stand up to be shot at whenever called upon so to do …

Q. Rehearse the Articles of thy Belief.
A. I believe in the Colonel most mighty, maker of Sergeants and Corporals; and in his deputy the Major, who is an officer by commission, … and sitteth on the right hand of the Colonel, from whence he will come to superintend the good from the bad. I believe in the Adjutant; the punishment of the guardroom; the stopping of grog; the flogging with cats; and the certainty of these things lasting. Amen.

Q. What is your duty towards your Colonel?
A. My duty towards my Colonel is to believe in him, to fear him, to obey all his orders, and all that are put in authority under him, with all my heart; to appear before him as a soldier all the days of my life; to salute him, to submit to him in all respects whatever; to put my whole trust in him, to give him thanks when he promotes me, to honour him and his commission, and to serve him as a soldier. Amen. …
[From The Rambling Soldier, by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books Ltd 1977.]

While this was meant to light heartedly describe the realities of life for a soldier and poke fun at the way the army was structured, it was clearly written from a position of fear and weakness. Contrast this with the original Soldier’s Catechism, which was produced in 1644 for the New Model Army that fought against the king. This was ‘Written for the Encouragement and Instruction of all that have taken up Arms in this Cause of God and his People; especially the common Soldiers’. Unlike the sarcastic later version, the 1644 Soldier’s Catechism was written to inspire a zealous citizen army and for soldiers fighting for a cause they considered just.

The Agitators’ Legacy

Now, every year in mid-May, crowds gather at Burford Church, in Oxfordshire, where there is a memorial dedicated to the three Levellers – Cornet Thompson, Corporal Perkins and Private Church – who, on 17th May 1649, were executed for opposing Cromwell and refusing to fight in Ireland. These annual commemorations are organised by the Workers’ Educational Association and in May 1976 Tony Benn addressed the crowd:

‘The Levellers grew out of the conditions of their own time. They represented the aspirations of working people who suffered under the persecution of Kings, landowners and the priestly class and they spoke for those who experienced the hardships of poverty and deprivation.

The Levellers developed and campaigned, first with Cromwell and then against him, for a political and constitutional settlement of the Civil War which would embody principles of political freedom that anticipated by a century and a half the main ideas of the American and French Revolutions.

The ideas of the Levellers were thought to be so dangerous because of their popularity then, that, as now, the establishment wanted to silence them … But the elimination of the Levellers as an organised political movement could not obliterate the ideas which they had propagated. From that day to this the same principles of religious and political freedom and equality have reappeared again and again in the history of the Labour movement and throughout the world.’
[From The International Significance of THE LEVELLERS and the English Democratic Tradition, a Spokesman Pamphlet – No.92, May 2000.]

The history books tell us that Cromwell was the victor in the English Civil War, but he was also responsible for making sure that the religious and political revolutions were stopped halfway – ensuring that the new establishment kept control of both. Cromwell turned his back on many of those who had fought with him to defeat the king, helping conservative forces, allied to the City of London, to take control. The country’s permanent army was then financed by, and became subordinate to, this new state power. After its democratic tradition was overturned for the iron rule of the officer class, the British Army did, then and over the following centuries, undertake colonial expeditions and wars in the interests of its new masters. They are still doing the same thing today.

The Agitators and Levellers, by taking a stand against fighting in Ireland, had shown publicly for the first time that there are distinct divisions between establishment interests and those of the ordinary people on issues like this. In 1649 William Walwyn had stated this clearly:

‘The cause of the Irish natives in seeking their just freedoms … was the very same with our cause here.’
[From Reformation to Industrial Revolution, by Christopher Hill, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1967.]

In his book, The Levellers and the English Revolution, H. N. Brailsford concluded his introduction with these words: ‘The record of the Levellers is one of failure and defeat. But if history still takes account of moral values, it may rate higher than Cromwell’s victories at Drogheda and Wexford the daring of men who risked their lives to prevent the re-conquest of Ireland. The day when a group of Englishmen first publicly asked the question: By what right are we preparing to appropriate the lands and suppress the religion of the Irish? – that day, in the late summer of 1649, deserves to be remembered in our annals.’

In most democratic countries today the people are citizens who elect all the houses of their parliaments and their own heads of state. In Britain, where we are classed as subjects, not citizens, we get to elect one house of our parliament, while only those appointed, or with hereditary rights, can occupy the Throne and the Lords. All MPs, peers, judges, bishops and even soldiers and the police have to swear their allegiance, not to the people or parliament, but to the reigning monarch. The decision to go to war can still be a ‘Royal Prerogative’ and Parliament, never mind the people, does not even have to be consulted. The Prime Minister, who makes the actual decision, is not elected to that position by the public, but is given immense and unaccountable political power. Control then is concentrated among the few at the top, while war, after it is declared, is fought mainly by the many at the bottom. So, when all the paraphernalia of state power is laid bare – including The Crown, the Lords and the Honours List – we can see the important part it plays in preserving the status quo and why we still get ‘rotten parliaments’. The privileges of the powerful are both guaranteed and protected, while subtle ensuring that we, ‘the lower orders’, are all kept in our place.

At the Putney Debates the Levellers and Agitators had advocated a single elected representative assembly, under a sovereign people, to be voted in every two years. This could have put England on the path towards a true democratic parliament, in which the power of vested interests would have been destroyed and a country run by the people, for all the people, created. Instead, three hundred and sixty-five years ago, the Agitators and Levellers were broken by coercion and intrigue, which was highlighted by the executions at Burford and continued during the New Model Army’s bloody campaign in Ireland. This first national army then became totally undemocratic and the voice, views and interests of the ordinary soldiers and people were stilled and muted to this day. It was the suppression of the Diggers, Levellers and Agitators that made the exploitation of the people – in Ireland, other colonies and at home – possible. But their ideas could not be killed off and have lived on to our own time. The greatest tribute we can pay them is to continue their struggle for a democratic army and country and raise our voices to demand truth, peace and freedom for all the people of the world.

This article was written by Veteran For Peace Aly Renwick, who served for eight years in the British Army in the 1960s.

What starts in the USA often finds its way to the UK. Here is an article written by a VFP member in the States about military recruiters in schools.

In May, 2011, the Portland public school district voted unanimously to allow equal access for counter military recruiters into high schools. I have participated in speaking with high school students in classrooms for 3 years, finding it to be one of the best uses of my time. The students are amazing spirits and I am greatly thankful for the time I’ve had with them.

I was honorably discharged from the United States Navy in 2005. Having joined in 2001, I was stationed on the guided missile USS Cowpens. I was deployed to the Arabian Gulf for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The USS Cowpens fired the first ordinance to initiate the Iraq War. We stayed for over 3 months, launching tomahawk cruise missiles during very early morning hours, usually about 0300. To this day, I still don’t know what we hit or who we killed.

My participation in this has led to unexpected and complicated disturbing emotions today. When I worked at Habitat for Humanity, I was faced with a new guilt-driven situation: working with Iraqi and Afghan refugee families. They were getting homes through Habitat for Humanity, and my role was to direct them in daily warehouse duties, for their sweat equity hours. I discovered that all of them were beautiful people, intelligent, compassionate, and undoubtedly strong for the perils they endured having to leave war-stricked countries. One lady’s sister was abducted – she still doesn’t know where she is.

I am not a emotionless drone that can ignore these sensitive situations. These are part of a large story about why I want students to think carefully before they make the moral, ethical, logical, and even spiritual decision to join the military.

Yesterday myself, and Jeff, a twice-deployed army medic, went to Cleveland High School to talk with students. We were in a room filled with uniformed military recruiters, many more than necessary to staff a table. The Army, Army National Guard, Navy, and Marines were there. They had a prosperous flat screen tv which they showed continuous recruiting videos for at least half the class period. The majority of the time, there were 2 male and 2 female students present.

When it was apparent that we were not going to be given our time slot for equal access, which the school district voted for, and why we were asked to be there, we introduced ourselves to the class when there was not much conversation going on. When Jeff and I began speaking, we were immediately interrupted, laughed at, heckled, and some recruiters even stomped their feet. One of the recruiters started filming us with his phone (which I would love to get a copy of). One of the Army recruiters approached Jeff with his arm up in a blocking position, blasting “you’re time is done, and you need to go.” Within 3 to 4 minutes, we were essentially forced out of the room.

Our equal access visit, which I took time out of my work day to do, was not very equal at all. There were no school staff or faculty present. There were no moderators. It was telling about military recruiters’ attitudes and was terrible for the students to witness. The oath to protect the Constitution of the United States was lost with their actions. The military recruiters would not allow us to speak with the students, because they don’t want us to tell them what we know.

As two recently returned veterans, I believe we should have had the opportunity for true equal access. The attitudes and actions of the military recruiters were horrifying mutations of the rights and freedom that they supposedly protect. I want people to know this is not acceptable. It is not okay to refuse our presence when the school district made it law, and we were asked to be there by the school. In my 3 years of equal access visits, I’ve always been treated with complete respect and thanks.

What do I do now? I will keep going to schools, of course. In the future, if military recruiters and counter-recruiters are in the same location, there has to be a staff or faculty member present as a moderator. I’m not sure if it was legal for the recruiter to be filming or not. Their behavior was sickening, pathetic, and not to be tolerated. That’s why everyone needs to know about it.

Angie Hines is a member of Veterans For Peace and Iraq Veterans Against The War in Portland, Oregon.

Last November, although I didn’t know it at the time, was the last time I will make my annual visit to ward park, respectfully dressed with military medals gleaming to remember the fallen. Year on year I have listened to the message given by an appointed holy man that the deaths of young men and women in the Armed Forces are in some way righteous and noble. It is not and there is no glory in war.

Lest we forget, a phrase borrowed from a time before the First World War but used extensively after it, is by far the most over-used and least understood collection of words in our language. Since the First World War the British have had a hand in over 30 aggressive, military campaigns around the world. Yet annually we chant the mantra from our hymn sheets of ‘Lest we Forget’. It would appear that we forgot the horror and suffering the very second WW1 ended.

As our Government continually try to drag us into wars around the world, the drone-like public gleefully carry on with their programme of military worship. The Armed Forces are adorned with salutations of honour and festooned with glorious words like heroes, our boys and support our troops. We were all rightly disgusted by the ugly images that surrounded the death of Drummer Lee Rigby, yet we the British public, do not bat an eyelid at the millions of innocents that have been slaughtered in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Syria. Why is that? Are the millions of lives lost in foreign countries at the hands of our Military/Government any less important than the life of one of our own soldiers?

It is time to stop this Military worship that allows our Government to wantonly wage war around our planet. We the public need to be honest with ourselves and realise that our blind loyalty and support to the mechanics that deliver death and destruction to foreign countries is wrong. Our support and loyalty implicates everyone who blindly follows the Government’s mantra that the lives of brown people in their own countries are worth less than the citizens of our own country.

Kieran Devlin is a member of  Veterans For Peace UK.

Public concern is increasingly being expressed about the high numbers of veterans in the prison system – many more than from any other profession.

A considerable number of them are ex-soldiers who have served in conflicts and many of them are suffering from the hidden wounds of combat related mental traumas. It is these veterans who are increasing the numbers of former armed service personnel in prison.

A condition like combat related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trigger for the acts that lead many veterans to prison and it often remains undiagnosed.

Some veterans, suffering from undiagnosed PTSD and therefore not receiving treatment, have served one jail term, then been released and have gone on to commit the same sort of crime and have ended up in prison again.

Identifying Veterans Suffering from PTSD

A veteran may return bodily from conflict, but his head often remains in the war zone. Walking down to the shops, his wife will try to engage him in chat about everyday issues – but he is scanning the windows and roofs of buildings for snipers. A car backfires and she scarcely breaks step – but he has crashed over a front garden wall and is lying prone trying to discern the direction of ‘the shot’. In a pub the veteran will insist on sitting with his back to the wall, in a position to scan the entrance and exit doors.
Family and friends think that a stranger has returned to them, but the veteran will think that it is them who are out of step and not him. To them his behaviour is bizarre and irrational, but for the veteran it is not only rational – but also necessary (to protect his family and himself).

It has been my experience that the authorities prefer to ignore and hide the problem of veterans who are suffering from combat related PTSD, but an additional problem to identifying veterans with this condition is that they themselves are often very resistant to any suggestion that they may be suffering from ‘mental problems’ (veterans can also be very suspicious of interest in them and are often averse to answering question).

To overcome this problem, in our work with veterans in prison, we have produced a Veterans and their Families Survival Guide to Combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which Veterans in Prison (VIP) gives out free to any veteran, or close family member, who requests it. Jimmy Johnson, a Northern Ireland and Aden veteran serving a life sentence in HMP Frankland, wrote it in a way that veterans and their families can easily understand. Jimmy suffers from PTSD, is a founder of VIP and has campaigned on this issue for over two decades and has written extensively about it (page three of my submission – Recognising Combat Related Metal Trauma – was adapted from Jimmy’s writings).

Jimmy has met hundreds of other veterans inside prison and still has contact with many. He knows the prison system inside out and can give you invaluable advice about the problems veterans encounter within it.

I respectfully ask that your Inquiry should resolve to talk to as many of the veterans in the criminal justice system as is possible, starting with Jimmy – and not just rely on the information from ‘MoD experts’.

Recognising Combat Related Mental Trauma

Veterans will not tell their wives, families or friends that they are suffering from Combat PTSD – because they simply do not know themselves.
A veteran suffering from the hidden wound of combat related PTSD appears to live in a separate world – but the condition will often show itself in several ways

Strange Behaviour at Home – The veteran’s behaviour at home begins to get on his wife and family’s nerves. He often sits at home and hardly ever speaks to his wife and family. The veteran does not seem to care or worry about the running of the family home, he doesn’t seem interested.

Work – The veteran after a few weeks back home manages to get a job – then, often after only a few days or weeks, he packs the job in.

Horrors –The veteran suffering from Combat PTSD brings home ‘new’ sleeping habits: nightmares. He may also experience ‘flashbacks’ to traumatic incidents experienced during combat.

Drink and Drugs – The veteran suffering Combat PTSD starts drinking alcohol or taking drugs. This can be an attempt at self-medication – to take away the memory and pain.

Got to be Alone – The veteran may have a good job and working as normal then suddenly he disappears, away from everyone.

Wrong Information – The veteran suffering from Combat PTSD will at times feel very nervous for no apparent reason.

Sounds / Noises – Sudden loud noises like fireworks can dredge-up suppressed memories of combat, but veterans can also feel threatened if they hear any sounds they cannot recognise (especially at home).

Panic – A veteran will not stay inside a small room when other strangers are present – he will leave.

Mood Swings / Depression – The veteran has very bad mood swings and suffers from bouts of depression and thoughts of suicide.

The veteran has terrible outbursts of rage and resorts to violence easily – The veteran explodes with rage at small trivial things. Sometimes the rage explodes into fury and violence is used.

The veteran may well end up in prison
For many veterans the aftermath of conflict often leads to
Alcoholism, Divorce, Homelessness, Prison and Suicide
And this happens on a much larger scale than is generally known.
Combat Related PTSD

The early years of the conflict in Northern Ireland coincided with the latter years of the Vietnam War. One legacy of the USA’s involvement in Vietnam was the psychological problems that afflicted many of the GIs after they returned home.

In 1990, fifteen years after the ending of the Vietnam War, a study in the US found that over fifteen per cent of Vietnam veterans were still suffering from PTSD. Many with this condition were unemployed and liable to abuse alcohol or drugs. Seventy per cent had failed marriages and almost half had served terms in prison.

Four years later, in 1994, a study by CRISIS into homeless people in London found that: ‘Around one-quarter of all single homeless people have served in the forces.’ Twenty-nine per cent of the ex-service people interviewed said they were suffering from nerves, depression and stress. Forty-one per cent of them had spent time in prison.
These were mainly veterans of Northern Ireland and the Falklands, with a few from the 2nd World War, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden. They have now been joined by veterans from the Gulf War, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

During a visit to the US, in 1990, Vietnam veterans told me that it had taken a huge effort by them and their civilian allies to get the authorities there to admit that many veterans were suffering from combat related psychological problems. They faced a further battle before they succeeded in having the name post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recognised for the problem.
The US authorities, during an unpopular war, did not want the issue raised and preferred to blame the background / personalities of the veterans for their problems, rather than a condition (like PTSD) that could be traced back to traumatic incidents the veterans had experienced during their tours of duty.
Vietnam veterans also told me that the US authorities would often produce ‘experts’, who would claim to be non-partisan, but who always attempted to rubbish and negate the appeals and concerns of the veterans.

When I started to campaign for British veterans I soon realised that the authorities here were acting in the same way (that their preference was to keep the problems hidden – rather than do something about it).
The MoD and successive Governments denied there was a problem, or that there were high numbers of veterans in prison. Even today, they not only try to hide the numbers of veterans suffering from combat related mental traumas, but also try to obscure the nature and source of their conditions (like in the US they do not want to recognise PTSD as a main problem). They also produce ‘experts’, who are expert in spin, – and who, to those interested, attempt to minimise and bewilder about the numbers and nature of the problem.
However, the problem is further complicated by the fact that many veterans themselves do not want to know, or consider, that they might be suffering from ‘mental problems’. (Surely, hard, tough soldiers would not succumb to a condition like PTSD, they think).

Today, in the UK there are over 80,000 men imprisoned in England and Wales (with Scotland and Northern Ireland added the total is over 90,000). People from all walks of life have been imprisoned and even MPs have spent time in prison. So it should be no surprise that some ex-forces members end up in prison too.
However, it is the fact that there are such high numbers of veterans in the prison system that causes concern – many more than from any other profession. A considerable number of them are ex-soldiers who have served in conflicts and many of them are suffering from combat related mental traumas. It is these veterans who have drastically increased the numbers of ex-forces personnel in prison.

In the past, for over two decades Veterans in Prison (VIP) campaigners were consistently told by the MoD and Governments that there were ‘no statistics’ for the numbers of ex-forces personnel in prison. VIP then contacted veterans in different prisons and asked then to carry out head counts of prisoners, in total and then the veterans, on their prison wing. In the prisons tested the results consistently showed that 6% to 9% of prisoners were ex-army veterans, while less than 1% were either ex-Royal Navy or ex-RAF.

A few years later, in September 2009, NAPO – the Trade Union and Professional Association for Family Court and Probation Staff – published a briefing paper that concluded that 8.5% of the prison population, nearly 8,000, were ex-military and that 6% of those on probation and parole, about 12,000, were also veterans.

Shortly after this, in January 2010 the Ministry of Justice then at last produced a study suggesting that 3%, about 2,500, of the prison population are veterans.

The fact is, that up to now, there have been no definitive figures produced to give the exact numbers of veterans in the prison system – but the VIP and NAPO figures are a cause for alarm.
If they are correct, this would mean that a total of around 20,000 veterans are now in the criminal justice system – around 8,000 in prisons and 12,000 on probation or parole .

There is growing evidence to show that many of the veterans who find themselves in the prison system are suffering from PTSD, or other combat related mental trauma. NAPO stated in their study, which contained the details of 90 case histories of veterans sentenced to community penalties, that ‘nearly half were suffering from diagnosed or undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. The principal offence was one of violence, particularly in a domestic setting. The vast majority… did not receive adequate support or counselling …’

A condition like combat related PTSD is a trigger for the acts that lead many veterans to prison and it often remains undiagnosed. Some veterans, suffering from undiagnosed PTSD and therefore not receiving treatment, have served one jail term, then been released and have gone on to commit the same sort of crime and have ended up in prison again.

A comprehensive programme to recognise the symptoms of combat related PTSD, diagnose the condition and then provide proper treatment for it, could drastically reduce the number of veterans entering the criminal justice system.

I recommend:

That any veteran, who comes into contact with the criminal justice system, should be identified as Former Armed Service Personnel at arrest or report stage – and should then be checked for combat related PTSD.

That after arrest any veteran, found to be suffering from PTSD, can be considered to have the condition recognised as a ‘mitigating circumstance’ at their trial.

That those veterans, inside or outside prison, suffering from combat related PTSD receive full, proper and ongoing treatment for this condition.

This was submitted to Rory Stewart MP by Aly Renwick of VFP UK

MONDAY 17 MARCH 1900HRS, HOUSMANS BOOKS, 5 CALEDONIAN ROAD, LONDON, N1

SATURDAY 12 APRIL 2014, FRIENDS HOUSE, EUSTON ROAD, LONDON.

On Monday the 27th of January members of VFP UK attended “A celebration of the multi-faith nature of the Armed Forces” organised by Faith Matters in Haringey. We didn’t know what to expect from an event which was described  as “A community discussion highlighting the diverse nature of the armed forces and its role and work with faith communities”. Also in attendance were peace activists and concerned people from a variety of organisations and backgrounds including the Peace Pledge Union, Payday, Quakers, Christians, Sikhs and academics.

Faith Matters is run by Fiyaz Mughal and he chaired the meeting. The evening was kicked off and rubber stamped by Sheila Peacock, the mayor of Haringey. It soon became clear that the presentation was part back-slapping of fellow speakers and part display of personal status. It was quite amusing to listen to the various members of the panel deviate from the theme of the night and their own areas of expertise. Chief Supt Victor Olisa told us with authority that troops were killing in Afghanistan to keep our streets safe. Army Padre (vicar) Kevin Bell waxed lyrical about his time in the police cadets. He told us that he audibly witnessed the Birmingham IRA bombing in 1974, but failed to mention that 6 innocent people spent 16 years in prison as a result of police criminality. The Army’s only Buddhist Chaplin Sunil Kariyakarawana was having difficulty explaining how Buddhism and a career in the Army were compatible. He then produced a golden picture frame containing a letter from the Dalai Lama which he claimed justified his military service.

After congratulating each other on attaining the positions they occupied and painting a picture of the British military as a paragon/bastion of religious diversity and tolerance, they allowed some time for questions from the audience. The audience constituted peace activists and aging military personnel planted in the audience to provide biased and subservient interventions.

Over the next 30 minutes the panel was asked about:

• Racist and sectarian hatred within the Army.
• Racist and sectarian stereotyping of the enemy and civilians.
• UK involvement in torture.
• The racism and violence suffered by local Sikhs who had joined the Army.
• The aggressive nature of British foreign policy.
• How Christianity can possibly be compatible with military service.
• How the figures on faith diversity within the Armed Forces were greatly distorted by migrant soldiers and therefore not representative of British society.
• Police culpability in the death of Mark Duggan.
• The low number of rape allegations (2.5%) that result in convictions within the military.

The panel were quite unable to answer the questions. It is fair to say that we did not receive a single straight or sensible answer. Kevin Bell became so angry that he decided to patronise the young man from the Peace Pledge Union. Victor Olisa strayed further into unknown territory as he regurgitated sound bites about Afghanistan and the army. As chairperson Fiyaz Mughal could have been a lot better at getting the panelists to actually answer the questions, but why would he want to do that to his mates?

It was clear that the panel expected an easy time of it in Wood Green. They thought they would convince the locals that the Army is a force for good. They thought they could tell half truths and emphasise the positives of military service unchallenged. They were wrong. There wasn’t a single clap let alone a round of applause for any of the speakers.

What we learned from this experience is that even those hanging onto the coat-tales of the establishment will stop at nothing to infect society with the lies and fear-mongering that propagate war and militarism. We would encourage all members to attend such events in the future in order to challenge this disgusting non-sense.

Article by Chase Sydnor and Ben Griffin, VFP UK.

Next week the military is coming to Wood Green, London.

Haringey Civic Centre
1830 – 2030hrs
Monday 27 January.

They intend to hold A Celebration of the Multi Faith Nature of Our Armed Forces.

They also want to highlight the diversity of our Armed Forces, and its role and work within faith communities. Whatever that means???

The Army are drawing attention to this subject and misrepresenting the reality. There main effort is to recruit from ethnic minorities (an untapped resource) and win over the hearts and minds of the “community leaders”.

Our aim on Monday is to counter their vision of a harmonious multi-ethnic multi-faith army and to highlight the true nature of the work the army carries out abroad.

Hopefully our intervention on Monday will make groups like Faith Matters think twice before inviting the army into our communities.

If you are free next monday and can make it to Wood Green then please come along.

If you can’t make it but have some experiences you would like voiced please email veteransforpeaceuk@gmail.com.

Since 2011 Veterans For Peace UK have been using the standard VFP Logo.

We decided a while back that we would like a logo which was more easily recognised within the UK.

This year is the Centenary of the First World War so we have decided to use the helmet worn by British Forces during that war as the basis of our logo.

The font used for the slogan on our new T-Shirts is one that would was used in 1914.

We will be launching merchandise with the new logo later this month.

2013 has been a year of growth for Veterans For Peace UK. We started the year with 28 members and an average of 4 turning up to monthly meetings. We end 2013 with 101 members across the UK and on average 15 members turning up to monthly meetings in London. Chase Sydnor, Ben Wright, Aly Renwick, Joe Lidster and  John Boulton have been writing articles for the website. John Bourton gave a talk to amnesty in Leeds and is now working on our schools project. Our aim is to further grow our organisation in the coming year and to become more effective in working towards World Peace. I have put together a few of the highlights of 2013. Click on the pictures for links to longer articles and related websites. Ben Griffin

2013

Our vigils for Chelsea Manning continued outside the US Embassy every time she was in court. We managed to drag the mobile amp down there to bounce the Collateral Murder audio off the embassy as we stood in silence. Our efforts culminated in a Rally for Manning in June, Mike Lyons and I spoke alongside activists from a broad spectrum.

In February I was invited to The Oxford Union to take part in the “I Will Not Fight For Queen and Country”  debate. Adnan Sarwar accompanied me and was great support. Click the picture above for video footage.

In March Barry Ladendorf (San Diego), Gene Marx (Bellingham) and I traveled to Shannon Airport to join the monthly protest there. The USA has been using the airport throughout the “War on Terror”  to transit troops to Iraq and Afghanistan in violation of Irish Neutrality. The airport has also been visited by planes used in the rendition of detainees. We were hosted bu Ed Horgan of Veterans For Peace Ireland and it was a good opportunity to catch up with him and the other VFP Ireland members.

In April we hosted our annual conference. This year it was called Modern Warfare Exposed. It was well attended by VFP members and the public. Julian Assange gave an oversight as to the current direction of warfare in the digital age. Ian Cobain spoke about UK involvement in the torture and murder of detainees in Iraq. Chris Cole gave us a briefing on drones. Mike Lyons and Adnan Sarwar both gave accounts of there own experience.

In August Mike Lyons Les Gibbons and I headed out to the Mid West of the USA for the VFP National convention in Madison. Mike and I then went on a speaking tour taking in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri. The hospitality of the people we met and stayed with was second to none. Click the picture above for a full report.

On the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks we started our Fast on Friday campaign. Every Friday since we have fasted from 0600 to 1800 in solidarity with the men still held in Guantanamo Bay. On 3 Jan 2014 VFP members in the USA will start fasting every Friday. To join in click the picture above.

In September John Boulton, Ben Wright, Mike Lyons and Joe Glenton headed to the Excel Centre in East London to join the Occupy the Arms Fair protest. Click the picture above for a report.

In 2014 we will be joining several protests including the GITMO protest (Trafalgar Sq) in January and the NATO protest (Newport) in November.

Also in October Folk Singer and Anti War activist Ryan Harvey flew over from Baltimore for a European tour. Ryan is a long time collaborator with IVAW and set up the CivSol alliance. We put on a gig at Housmans Books in which Ryan sang and introduced veterans to speak about there experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. The evening finished with the band RAAST. It was fantastic to see John Boulton and Dan Taylor speak for the first time in public. Click the picture above for video.

In October I travelled up to Edinburgh to speak on a platform with Jo Metson-Scott about the unreported side of war. We had spoke together in March at The Frontline Club to launch her book “The Grey Line”. It is a beautiful photographic study of soldiers who resisted the war in Iraq. Click the picture above to buy a copy.

In October we publicly supported artist Darren Cullen and his work (Don’t) Join The Army. Joe Glenton and I attended the launch of the artwork and spoke to people there about how our own experiences related to the work. Click the picture above to visit Darren’s site.

In November David Buck appeared in a film about Army Recruitment and the negative effects of Army Service. The film was released to coincide with a report in Mental Health outcomes called  The Last Ambush  by David Gee of Forces Watch. Click the picture above to see the film.

 On Remembrance Sunday 18 VFP UK members gathered at the top of Whitehall. We were joined by around 80 supporters. We the walked to The Cenotaph and held ceremony in memory of all those killed in war. Our aim was to carry out an act of remembrance without the militarism of the official parade. Joe Glenton and Dan Taylor carried the banner NEVER AGAIN, Jim Radford sang 1916, John Boulton recited Suicide in the Trenches  and John Bouton laid the wreath. Special thanks goes to Mick Haggerty for playing a pitch perfect Last Post. After taking part Glenn Fitzpatrick was inspired to make the painting above. To see a video click the picture above.

For the start of 2014 we are launching a New Logo for VFP UK. We have used the outline of a WW1 British helmet. Please click the picture above for more information (link live from 1st Jan) .

Short film by Reel News showing the walk to The Cenotaph and ceremony carried out by Veterans For Peace UK on Remembrance Sunday 2013.