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Join the National Demonstration Against Trident Renewal
Midday on Sat 27 Feb 2016
London – Marble Arch

The dominant mode of thought which has historically influenced the way in which states view security claim that at the basis of politics lies a drive for power which is rooted in human nature making conflicts inevitable.  History is marked by recurring patterns of conflict and repeated use of tactics such as deterrence and power balancing against enemies. States compelled by threat of extinction will prioritise their own security, ensuring the security and survival of the state is from which all other spheres of life can occur, such as welfare, education, human rights etc. This has historically been the justification with regards to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

In this view the five nuclear weapon states as recognised by the Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT) have managed to avoid war directly with one another, not least in part due to the threat of ‘mutually assured destruction’ (under the aptly named acronym MAD).  There are even arguments for a nuclear armed Iran, as this would restore a power balance to the Middle-East against a nuclear armed Israel, in a similar way that deterrence applies between two of the non-NPT nuclear states of Pakistan and India.  And it is this justification of power balancing which continually undermines the NPT, the Nash Equilibrium outcome shows us that whilst neither side is motivated towards nuclear conflict, nor is it motivated to disarm, and this is why the renewal of Trident is even on the table, when the UK should be focusing on meeting its disarmament commitments.

There is no way of telling if nuclear superpowers have genuinely avoided war thanks to nuclear weapons, what we do know is that war, whilst on the decline in the post WW2 years, has not been eliminated thanks to nuclear weapons, the Cold War years which were marked by proxy wars between nuclear superpowers US and former USSR are testament to that.  The proliferation of nuclear weapons is just one way in which states have used military force to maintain power balancing, states have always used military force as a deterrent, and it’s important to see nuclear weapons and military might as two sides of the same coin – nuclear weapons are but an extension of that same train of thought and fit well within this paradigm.

But is this really where the threat to our security lies?  Well first, we have to unpick what we mean when we talk about security.  Arguments supporting the renewal of Trident focus on a view of a powerful state being best placed to provide security to its citizens.  The consequence of this is that to ensure security a state must put its own population in a hostage situation to an adversary’s nuclear weapons.

One alternative critical focus on security focuses on individuals within states, and suggests this focus on states as a cause of insecurities, not least because focusing on states security obscures the insecurities of individuals within states.   As renowned Critical Security Studies scholar Ken Booth points out the primary threats faced by individuals come not from foreign armies, but from economic collapse, political oppression, scarcity, overpopulation, ethnic rivalry, environmental degradation, terrorism, crime and disease.  None of these problems and causes of insecurities can be solved by spending billions upgrading never-to-be-used nuclear weapons systems.  Alongside high military spending comes the militarisation of societies which bring with them a whole host of insecurities, research of the highly militarised societies of Israel show a link between the militarisation and the prevalence of domestic violence.    Feminist International Relations scholar Cynthia Cockburn describes this phenomenon as a “continuum of violence” and that “the violence of militarisation and war, profoundly gendered, spills back into everyday life and increases the quotient of violence in it”.

Opposition to nuclear weapons and the renewal of Trident therefore must be seen in the context of opposition to increased militarisation.  To dedicate billions of pounds to perpetuate this state of existence as hostages to nuclear annihilation by other nuclear states is not only difficult to comprehend, it detracts us from asking deeper questions about our highly militarised societies in which prioritising the need to prepare us for violence between states become a self-fulfilling prophecy in creating violence within our societies.

Nadia Mitchell served in the British Army and is a Veteran For Peace.

TRIDENT MISSILE (Trident is a three-pronged spear, the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, Greek god of the sea and protector of aquatic life).

The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Each nuclear-powered submarine is capable of carrying up to 24 Trident thermonuclear missiles that are independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV) with a range of 4000 nautical miles. Each of the Trident missiles is capable of carrying up to eight independently targeted nuclear warheads — meaning hydrogen bombs. Doing the math, eight times 24 is 192 warheads on each submarine. Each of these hydrogen bombs/warheads possesses 38 times more destructive power than the Hiroshima bomb. And each Trident submarine in total possesses the collective destructive power of hundreds of Hiroshima bombs indiscriminately murdering millions of civilians. Upon launching, total flight time is 25 minutes or less depending upon the target location. Trident’s accuracy and short flight time makes it a first-strike weapon.

Trident missiles are carried by 14 US Navy submarines, with US warheads (8 in Bangor, Washington; 5 in King’s Bay, Georgia, and 1 in Portsmouth, Virginia), and 4 Royal Navy Vanguard-class submarines, with British warheads, home ported at the British Navy base, Clyde in Faslene, West Scotland.

One Trident submarine can destroy an entire country. A fleet of Trident submarines is capable of destroying the world. These nuclear weapons threaten us as much as they do the other side. There’s nothing more suicidal than a nuclear weapon. Just one use of a Trident threatens to create a global nuclear winter, destroying the capacity for any human life at all to exist.

Use of first-strike weapons such as the Trident are war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg principles which serve as a foundation of international law. The Trident missiles are designed such that each reentry missile with its hydrogen bomb hones in on an underground missile silo in the targeted country and destroy it — before its missile could be launched.

On July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, rendered an advisory opinion that the threat or use of nuclear weapons violates various articles of international law including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Further, weapons systems like the Trident violate any sense of reason as its existence and ultimate use assures destruction of much of the world, no matter where one is living. There is no safe place with nuclear weapons. Any sane nation, its leaders, and citizens should understand, the continued manufacture, deployment, and/or use of these weapons is an act of suicide. Therefore if we are sane we should demand, with our bodies if necessary, their immediate dismantlement as a threat to all of humanity, including yours and mine.

S. Brian Willson is a Veteran For Peace living in Portland, Oregon, USA

A key argument publicly espoused by those who think Trident should be replaced is that a nuclear weapon provides the ultimate deterrent to any aggressor seeking to invade the United Kingdom. Further, having a such a deterrent will prevent the UK from being subject to nuclear blackmail and be an insurance policy against threats unknown.

So what government or what organisation will threaten the UK with invasion? The UK’s nuclear deterrent did not seem to deter the Galtieri-led military junta from invading the Falkland Islands, a British territory inhabited by British Citizens. What about Putin’s Russia? Despite the Fallon and Hammond rhetoric, a Putin-led Russia poses no military threat to the UK.
The argument that Iran or North Korea are a nuclear threat to the UK is spurious at best, redolent of the 45-minute claim made by Blair and Campbell in the infamous dodgy dossier that attempted to justify the invasion of Iraq. Neither country has the capability to launch any military campaign let alone deliver a nuclear device to the UK. The UK governments possession of a nuclear deterrent has not prevented the leaders of either of these ‘rogue states’ from attempting to develop a nuclear device either.

Another claim by pro-Trident voices is that a nuclear deterrent will prevent actions by terrorist organisations. The suggestion is that terrorist group or a new rogue state could threaten the UK. The UK’s military deterrent did not prevent the 2005 London bombings in London by an Al-Qaeda inspired group. The assessment that terror groups are a threat that can be dealt with by nuclear weapons is false.

Militarily the UK has some 255 nuclear warheads. This is portrayed as a major element of NATO and the West’s nuclear deterrent. The US has some 4,500 warheads and France 300; the UK’s contribution to this total deterrent is 5%. Operationally this is just one submarine with 16 missiles that can deliver a total of 128 warheads. Militarily this is insignificant. Militarily this is not justifiable. Militarily it is assessed there are no circumstances that a UK Prime Minister would use Trident or any replacement unilaterally.

But what about the future? Pro-Trident replacement supporters claim that the deterrent is needed to deter possible future threats we do not yet know about. So what countries could threaten the UK in the future? Germany? France? It is assessed that there are no friendly or allied states that present any threat of invading the UK. Even the extremist right and left wing parties in the UK’s nearest neighbours are in no way threatening the UK with military action. Simply put there are no military threats to the UK that Trident could deter in the present, or in the operational lifespan of any Trident replacement.

Trident will be replaced. Not for any rational military or intelligence led reasons but purely for political reasons. The Conservatives are using this issue to help sustain their ongoing narrative that a Corbyn-led Labour is weak on National Security and a direct threat to the security of UK families. Trident is a £100 billion campaign tool that the Conservatives hope will convince UK undecided and swing voters in 2020 to vote Conservative or at least not vote Labour.

A further reason why Trident will be replaced is that both Conservative and Labour politicians like to think being a government minister of a nuclear state gives clout in diplomacy, and maintains the illusion that the UK is one of the great powers in the world. This is gesture politics that should not have any influence on a decision to replace Trident, but politicians like their egos boosted.

The UK nuclear weapons programme has always has been and always will be a politics led project in no way connected to any credible military or intelligence-led reasons.

Phillip Clarke is a Veteran For Peace and a former British Military Intelligence Analyst

Before Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army, there had been no standing army in England. In the past the monarchy had raised armies to fight specific wars, after which these forces were disbanded. A permanent standing army gradually emerged from the period of the English Civil War and the ‘Glorious Revolution,’ when William of Orange’s forces had defeated those of James II.

Most rank and file soldiers came from the poor and dispossessed. Ironically, many who later filled the ranks were former enemies – including Irish and Scottish clansmen. 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.

Most clan chiefs were incorporated into the establishment, with their sons being educated at English public schools. Dr Johnson noted that these 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 per cent 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.’ [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.

In 1881, under the Childers Reforms, a new Highland regiment was created by amalgamating the 91st (Argyllshire Highlanders) Regiment of foot and the 93rd (Sutherland Highlanders) Regiment of foot. The men of the 93rd had been acclaimed as ‘the thin red line’ in the Crimean War. The new amalgamated regiment, called the (Princess Louise’s) Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, was to forge a reputation as ‘glorious’ and ‘honourable’ as any in the British Army. They fought with the Highland Brigade in the Boer War; they won six Victoria Crosses in the First World War and fought with distinction in the Second World War and Korea. In 2006 the regiment was amalgamated into the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

The ‘Pitchfork Murders’

In 1972 in Northern Ireland two Catholic men, 31-year-old Michael Naan and 23-year-old Andrew Murray, had been found murdered at isolated farm buildings in County Fermanagh. Murray had been stabbed 13 times and Naan 19 times through the heart and chest. Michael Naan had been a prominent member of the Civil Rights Association and had taken part in a number of protest marches. The pathologist said Naan’s wounds were ‘consistent with an attack by someone who had gone berserk.’ A sectarian motive was attributed to the killings and loyalists were suspected of carrying out a crime, which became known as the ‘pitchfork murders’ – after the suspected murder weapon.

Later in the 1970s Britain was horrified by a series of brutal murders of young women, many picked up from ‘red light’ areas in northern cities. Reading about the latest ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murder in 1978 had a profound affect on a Scottish ex-soldier. The lurid accounts of the multiple stabbings of the latest victim had evoked memories of a night, six years before, when he had been a member of a British Army patrol in Northern Ireland.

The veteran knew who had really carried out those killings of Naan and Murray in 1972 and the similarity between those and the Yorkshire Ripper murders began to prey on his mind. Convinced that the same people must have carried out both the ‘Ripper’ and the Northern Ireland killings, he went to the police and gave them full details of those killings in County Fermanagh.

In reality there was no link between the two crimes. But the police were under intense public pressure to catch the ‘Ripper,’ so they began to investigate the ex-soldier’s allegations. Subsequently, in 1980, two former compatriots of the ex-soldier, a staff-sergeant and a sergeant, were tried and jailed for life for the murders of Naan and Murray. When the staff-sergeant confessed to the police he broke down in tears and said:

‘I did it. I did the killings. I killed them and they just wouldn’t stop screaming. Oh my god – I have been having bloody nightmares about it.’

Other members of the patrol received lesser sentences for aiding and abetting or withholding information – including the officer in charge. Described as an ‘exemplary officer,’ he had attended Harrow and Sandhurst and came from ‘a distinguished military background.’ The officer said he’d been in charge, but was not on the patrol. He had, however, found out about the killings and he said:

‘I mulled the whole thing over in my mind and decided that for the good of the army and the regiment it must never go any further.’

It also come out during the trial that the murder weapon was not a pitchfork as first thought, but the stabbings were in fact carried out with a bowie knife which one of the soldiers possessed. It subsequently emerged that many of the troops in Ireland carried ‘personal weapons,’ to which those in authority had turned a blind eye.

Murders in Aden

The story did not end there, because the veteran who had revealed the information had received several death threats during the trial, which he believed had come from members of his former unit. So, upset and angry, he handed over to the Scottish Sunday Mail paper a dossier containing information on up to forty killings carried out by fellow soldiers in Aden fourteen years previously.

The paper printed many of these in early 1981 and a controversy ensued, with the Sunday Mail being inundated with letters. Serving soldiers complained bitterly about former mates telling tales out of school and attacked the paper for printing material detrimental to ‘the honour of the regiment.’ Others, mainly ex-soldiers, wrote in telling how the terrible events in Aden had been on their minds. Unable to forget, they welcomed the opportunity to unburden themselves and wrote of their own experiences, telling how:

The Yellow Card instructions – which laid out the circumstances in which soldiers could open fire – were abused. To detain an Arab, soldiers were taught to shout “waqf” – pronounced as “wakeef” – meaning halt. If three warnings were ignored troops were then entitled to shoot, but some soldiers treated this as a joke and shouted “fuck off” or “corned beef” instead. Not surprisingly, most Arabs did not understand this and several were just gunned down.

The army had set up machine-gun emplacements on high ground overlooking the Crater district and some nights – especially if there had been attacks on soldiers – those heavy guns were fired into this deprived area as a punishment. Ripping through the thin walls, the heavy velocity bullets must have caused untold deaths and destruction.

The bodies of Arabs killed by soldiers were taken in a three-ton truck and dumped off a bridge into the bay, some of the dead were suspects who had been arrested, or wounded Arabs who had been taken to the army medical centre. A soldier who had carried out the “dumping” of the bodies stated:

‘Some of the prisoners’ bodies had gunshot wounds, but some had been given injections.’

Clearly showing the racist way Arabs were viewed by the military, officers had initiated inter-platoon rivalry by awarding Robertson’s Jam ‘golliwog’ stickers to units for each killing of an Arab. An ex-soldier recollected:

‘At one stage my platoon had notched up 13 kills and another platoon were one kill behind. Their corporal even told the privates to use their bayonets, for it was to be that sort of killing. They went into an alley and killed a young Arab who was out after curfew.’

[Sunday Mail (Scotland) 17th Dec. 1978; also the editions of the paper on 26th April, 3rd May, 10th May and 17th May 1981].

The Sunday Mail passed the dossier to the Scottish Lord Advocate who promised an investigation. But this time there was no pressing reason to examine these events. Two years later the Sunday Mail printed a tiny article saying the Lord Advocate had decided that no proceedings should be instituted in this case.

The military unit involved in those incidents in County Fermanagh and Aden was the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. In Aden the regiment had been led by Lt-Colonel Colin ‘Mad Mitch’ Mitchell, a British ‘war hero’ who became a right-wing Tory MP after leaving the army.

Colonial Conflicts

From the end of the Second World War British Governments had been confronted with freedom demands from national movements in British colonies. At first Westminster ignored these pleas and then used armed force in attempts to crush them. These conflicts are a hidden history for most British people, because they were often concealed from view and/or had their events distorted by biased reporting. Just as the Victorian wars to build the Empire had been accompanied with waves of jingoism and propaganda, so the run-down followed a similar pattern. During these conflicts the press, cinema news and later TV took up the task of imperial cheer leaders with a relish.

Cocooned in a media web – of ‘Our boys doing a jolly good job in trying circumstances,’ ‘peace keepers’ amid ‘bandits,’ ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’ – the folks back home rarely asked any questions. The truth was usually quite different as these ‘small wars’ were about the hegemony of strategic areas – as well as plundering natural resources, exploiting cheap labour and making vast profits. Conflicts where intimidation, internment, torture and mass murder was systematically used to protect ‘British interests.’

The late James Cameron was a journalist who covered many of Britain’s colonial conflicts. His reporting was an honourable exception to the usual jingoistic type of coverage. In an article about Northern Ireland, published in The Guardian in 1975, he made these comments about the previous small wars:

‘I have spent the greater part of my working life watching British troops being pulled out of places they were never going to leave. The process started in the 1940’s, when Mr Churchill insisted that the British could never leave India, and of course they did. A wide variety of Colonial Secretaries in the years to come made it abundantly clear that their forces would never leave Malaya, or Kenya, or Cyprus, or Aden. All these places were integrally part of an imperial system that could not be undermined and must be protected, and one by one all these places were abandoned, generally with the blessing of some minor royalty and much champagne.

In most cases some rebellious nationalist was released from gaol, or its equivalent – Nehru, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Makarios – given the ritual cup of tea at Windsor and turned into a President. The thing in the end became a formula, though the process wasted a great many lives and much time and money, and as far as I know on every occasion the formula followed the one before it: We shall not leave; we have to leave; we have left. At no time in our colonial history did one occasion leave any precedent for the next one, except for the statement that we would never pull out, which was always one thing before the last.’ [Guardian, 2nd June 1975].

The murders committed by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Northern Ireland and Aden would not have become know about if a veteran in civvy street had not been so worried by the circumstances of the ‘Ripper killings’ that he’d felt compelled to disclose the events he had witnessed while serving – and revealed the guilty secrets of his old regiment. How many other regiments of the British Army have similar guilty secrets that are yet to be uncovered? While they claim a ‘proud,’ ‘glorious’ and ‘honourable’ history.

It is now over twenty years since the guns fell silent in Northern Ireland and almost eighteen years since the Good Friday Agreement.  But what do the post ceasefire Millennium babes think about life in a society that seems unable to escape the legacy of its violent past?  VFP activist Dr James Wilson got a unique chance to find out when he was invited to be an active listener at an innovative forum hosted by the 4 Corners Festival which brought together 90 sixth form students from all 25 of Belfast’s second level educational establishments.

In addition to actively listening to the students discuss relevant topics including; social inequality, academic selection, immigration, lack of jobs, and the dysfunctional devolved government, the organisers very kindly allowed James to conduct a VFP  attitude survey with a random 18% of the attendees that explored areas such as our militaristic culture and popular memorialisation of wars and conflict that are so prevalent in the centenary  year of both the Easter Rising and battle of the Somme.

The results of such isolated opinion polls need to be treated with caution and tested  by more serious dedicated study, but would suggest that – in general the youth of  Northern Ireland – are subject to a cultural conditioning through memorialisation and glorification  that makes them respond positively to the dog whistles of recruiters into the Armed Forces or paramilitary groups.  This might go some way to explaining why Northern Ireland-  an area of 3% of the UK population- provides a staggering 20% of the entire British Armed Forces .

The Belfast Branch of Veterans For Peace are in current discussion with a number of schools, universities and colleges with the objective of opening up the debate on how we decommission the mindsets and create an awareness of the dangers of glorifying militarism in our civic and popular culture.

Watch this space.

Any member who would like to be involved in future outreach initiatives please contact the Belfast coordinator ni@vfpuk.org

The BBC is reporting that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) is to rule tomorrow that Julian Assange is being arbitrarily detained within the United Kingdom.

In a clear breach of protocol, a source within the UK Government has leaked this information early. The ruling was not expected to be announced until Friday by the UN. This is yet another example of the improper way in which Julian Assange has been treated by the United Kingdom.

Daniel Taylor who served in Iraq said “Julian has faced persecution from the Britain, Sweden and the United States of America since Wikileaks released the Afghan War Diaries, Iraq war logs and the Collateral Murder video”. Daniel continued “We have seen Private Chelsea Manning sentenced for 35 years for her part in these courageous publications, we know that a similar fate is planned for Assange which is why the Government of Ecuador has granted him political asylum.”

Ben Griffin who served with the SAS in Iraq said “Those publications enlightened the public on the true nature of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The collateral murder video revealed the brutal reality of military operations within Iraq and the callous disregard for life that was a defining feature of that occupation.” Ben continued “We have stated throughout his ordeal that he is being persecuted not because of an allegation made in Sweden but because of his work as editor of Wikileaks.”

The ruling of the UNWGAD will state the Assange is being detained arbitrarily. Veterans For Peace UK expect the immediate release of Julian Assange and assurances from the United Kingdom that his passport will be returned and that he be able to leave this country without further harassment.

https://vimeo.com/151893522

by Benjamin Gilmour

Here is a war film with a difference. A war film that refuses to glamorise death, or justify revenge, or thrill gun-lovers. A war film that won’t be neatly dividing the good from the bad, the black from the white, the cowboys from the Indians. In this war film you’ll soon enough forget whose side you are on.

As a writer and filmmaker I’ve been a guest in Afghanistan and shared tea with men my age who have only ever known a state of war. As a paramedic and aid worker I have treated the casualties of this conflict and others, including returned soldiers with physical and mental disabilities like PTSD. There’s no doubt in my mind that war is profoundly immoral and, in most cases, illogical and completely unnecessary.

Pacifist filmmakers and civilian victims of war are not the only ones who believe this. Even soldiers do, many soldiers who have been there and fought ‘the enemy’ face to face. Our film ‘Return to Kandahar’ is about one such soldier.

In ‘Return to Kandahar’, a US marine, tormented by the nightmares of war, flies back to Afghanistan as a tourist to track down the family of an unarmed civilian he killed in the throes of a raid on a remote village. He does this to beg forgiveness from the family and face the consequences of his actions.

Our story aims to humanize Afghans and Muslims in general, showing an alternative  perspective on an ongoing conflict we struggle to make sense of. It also aims to demonstrate the mercy in Islam that is so commonly ignored by extremists and Islamophobes alike.  Our central character Mick’s courage in going back without protection to the centre of his nightmare and discovering the source of healing is something I believe will promote understanding and empathy with Afghans and damaged war veterans alike, helping pave the way to peace.

The Filmmakers

Ever since my first feature film ‘Son of a Lion‘ was selected for the Berlinale and screened in cinemas worldwide I’ve been eager to go back and work with locals in Afghanistan and Pakistan on another project. Finally, after several years of intense research and writing, I have a script. The film is inspired by dozens of true Afghan hostage stories dating back to the First Anglo-Afghan War in the mid-1800s.  The story is also my answer to recent Hollywood ‘war porn’ like ‘Seal Team Six‘ and ‘Lone Survivor‘.  With this film I want to obliterate the ‘Islamic terrorist’ stereotype at the centre of modern war propaganda.

For our feature film ‘Return to Kandahar’ we are pulling together a truly amazing team. Already we have attached an experienced Afghan crew and Pashtun producers Asif Ullah Khan and Omar Ali Arbab, along with a celebrated LA-based cinematographer and one of Australia’s most respected film editors. Casting is currently underway on for the role of our central character, Mick. And our Afghan producers are scouting locations right now in one of the most spectacularly beautiful countries on earth.

Trident is expensive
The government wants to spend over £100 billion on a new nuclear weapons system. This is an appalling waste of money. Cancelling the Trident replacement would mean we could instead invest in our troops, building more ships and aircraft. We could invest billions in the NHS, make our schools and universities better, build new homes and develop renewable energy sources. In other words, things we need.

Trident does not keep us safe
In terms of national security, nuclear weapons are irrelevant. Britain currently faces no nuclear threat and Trident is useless in addressing the real problems we face such as terrorism, cyber warfare and climate change. Nuclear weapons actually put us at risk and make us less safe. They make us a target, encourage other countries to get them and the risk of accidents or miscalculation is high.

Most of the world doesn’t want nuclear weapons
Britain is in the minority possessing nuclear weapons. In fact, over a hundred governments have signed a pledge calling for them to be outlawed. Germany and Japan are economically and politically important countries and they do not possess nuclear weapons. The UK even committed to disarming in 1968, when it signed an international treaty.

Trident is illegal
Nuclear weapons have no legitimate purpose: their use would be illegal under almost every conceivable circumstance, as huge numbers of civilian casualties would be unavoidable. That is why the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996 the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law.

Trident is not the jobs provider it claims to be
Replacing Britain’s nuclear weapons system sustains only a small number of jobs in relation to the money spent. Research has shown that if we scrapped Trident, 7,000 jobs would be lost compared to the 62,000 that could be created if the annual running cost was invested in the housing sector instead for example. A government-led economic diversification plan would minimise the job losses should Trident be scrapped.

It is time to STOP TRIDENT
Veterans For Peace UK are supporting a major national demonstration called by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) to Stop Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system. To make sure this will be the biggest protest against nukes in a generation, we need your help. You can get involved in the following ways:

• Confirm your attendance on facebook
• Get involved in action days which will mobilise for the event
• Contact information@cnduk.org / 020 7700 2393 if you would like to volunteer to arrange transport for the demo, request a local media pack or steward on the day

Together we can show the government the scale of the opposition to its plans for nuclear bombs. Let’s Stop Trident.

Details

Assemble 12 noon • Saturday 27 February 2016 • Location Central London • Meeting point is Marble Arch
March to Trafalgar Square Rally with contributions from a range of political & celebrity speakers

Supporting organisations: Campaign Against Arms Trade, Compass, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Friends of the Earth, The Green Party of England & Wales, Greenpeace, International Peace Bureau, Medact, Movement for the Abolition of War, Muslim Association of Britain, Pax Christi, People’s Assembly, Quakers, Scientists for Global Responsibility, Stop the War, Veterans for Peace, War on Want, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom: WILPF.

‘Soldiers have spoken out, protested, and revolted in almost every war in history. We need this resistance… one of the single strongest factors in bringing wars to an end.’

This article written by Vron Ware first appeared on Open Democracy.

2015 has been a year of extraordinary activism for the UK anti-war movement. A wide array of groups has been busy forging creative campaigns to educate new generations against war in general, to disrupt the trade in lethal weapons and to oppose military intervention in particular places. Very little of this political work gets reported, unless it can be used to attack Jeremy Corbyn.

But one set of protests was so spectacular, so radical and so eloquent that the corporate media was obliged to sit up and take notice. In July and again inDecember, members of Veterans for Peace UK staged demonstrations that challenged the deep-seated belief that military service was an honourable profession that had turned them all into heroes.

On Friday 10 July, three former soldiers, all members of VfPUK, walked from Trafalgar Square to Downing Street where they lined up, faced the police barricades and declared:

‘We are members of Veterans For Peace UK, an ex-services organisation of men and women who have served this country in every conflict since the Second World War. We exist in the hope of convincing you that war is not the solution to the problems of the 21st century. We have come here today to hand back things, given to us as soldiers, that we no longer require or want.’

The men took turns to make brief statements before dropping their ‘things’ on the ground. They did this three times: first with their Oaths of Allegiance, then their army hats and finally their medals. It was this last gesture that was so powerful.

John Boulton said:

‘These are the medals given to me for the sick dichotomy of keeping the peace and waging war. They are trinkets, pseudo payments. But really all they represent is the self interest of those in there, who hold power.’

Kieran Devlin said:

‘These are my medals, these were given to me were given to me as a reward for invading other peoples’ countries and murdering their civilians. I’m now handing them back’.

Ben Griffin, founder of VfPUK and a former paratrooper and member of the SAS, said:

‘I was given these medals for service on operations with the British Army. This particular medal here, was given to me for my part in the occupation of Iraq. Whilst I was over there, I attacked civilians in their homes and took away their men, off to be tortured in prison. I no longer want these despicable things.’

After the vote in the House of Commons to sanction RAF air strikes in Syria, three more members, Daniel Lenham, Kirk Sollitt and Phil Mace with Ben Griffin, this time representing Dave Smith, returned to Downing Street on December 9. As a group they explained:

‘We are here today in protest at the decision to bomb in Syria and to return medals given to us for our participation in previous attacks on the Middle East.’

We are Veterans For Peace, our members have served in every war that Britain has fought since WW2. We bring you the simple message that war is not the answer to the problems of the 21st Century.”

Each one made a similarly powerful declaration of their commitment to turn their experience of military service into a vehicle for campaigning against war. These can be read on the organisation’s website and the group’s Facebook page has a video of the demonstration as well. Phil Mace explained in a particularly heartfelt way what it meant for him to reject the use of violence as a means to solve political problems:

 ‘I don’t understand what these medals are for or what they are supposed to mean. I joined the army as a teenager hoping to better myself and I believe I did that whilst on operations in Afghanistan. One day whilst out on patrol I was asked to blow a hole in a building, not knowing what was on the other side. I thought to myself What if? What if it is a baby? What if it’s with its mother? What if it’s there with the whole family? I would much rather live my life not having to deal with the consequences of What If. That is why I throw these medals back. What if every soldier past and present did this?’

It must be said that these actions represent a fraction of VfPUK’s work against militarism and war – something that will be clear from scrolling through their Facebook page. Two more examples of their contribution to peace education stand out in particular. One is Ben Griffin’s incredible lecture on ‘The Making of a British Soldier’ delivered to the Kingston Peace Council in October 2015. This can be watched in full here.

The other example is the series of talks from women members of the organization, given in November as the group gathered from all over the country to make their statement at the Cenotaph. The inclusion of female veterans’ voices, American as well as British, provides an essential dimension to the collective project to explain and dismantle militarism.

And finally – there’s the anti-war Christmas single which features a video of VfPUK members walking to the cenotaph behind their banner which declares, ‘NEVER AGAIN’. Produced by Tom Morello’s (erstwhile leader of Rage Against the Machine) Firebrand Records, and written by co-founder, folk singer, and longtime anti-war activist Ryan Harvey, ‘ Christmas Truce’ is performed by the Belgian-born, London-based singer Fenya who is an active member of London’s Food Not Bombs.

Ben Griffin explains the premise of the song:

‘The Christmas Truce lives in the hearts of millions of people. However we need to move on from the idea of a truce being something that is only carried out at Christmas. Throughout history soldiers have formed truces with their supposed enemies; in fact soldiers often find that they have a lot more in common with the enemy than with their own governments.’

‘I wrote this song to tell a simple story that reflects a much larger reality,’ Harvey says. ‘Soldiers have spoken out, protested, and revolted in almost every war in history. We encourage and need this resistance, because historically, it is one of the single strongest factors in bringing wars to an end. At a time when a civil and proxy-war is ripping Syria apart and the world seems to be lingering on the brink of yet another global catastrophic conflict, this ever-relevant song references history to describe the present.’

Ahead of the House of Commons debate on the Armed Forces Bill on Wednesday 16 December, ForcesWatch has published a new report calling for a change in the law ending military recruitment under 18 years of age.

This report, highlights seven recommendations from the Defence Committee’s report Duty of Care: Third Report of Session 2004-05 which, ten years on, have not been partially or fully implemented, and around which substantial concerns about the welfare of young recruits remain.

An amendment to ensure that only those above 18 years of age are able to enlist in the armed forces will be debated in the House.

Britain is the only country in Europe and sole permanent member of the UN Security Council which enlists 16 and 17 years old into its armed forces.

This policy has been called into question by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and many other respected bodies, including Children’s Commissioners. A number of other bodies, including the Defence Committee have called for the policy to be reviewed.

The welfare of young recruits became a significant matter of concern for MPs after the deaths of four young soldiers at the military training barracks at Deepcut in Surrey. The Defence Committee’s Duty of Care report recommended many changes to the way that the armed forces approach its duty of care responsibilities. A number of important recommendations, with particular relevance to the youngest recruits who are under the age of 18 have not been partially or fully implemented. These include:

• The Ministry of Defence should examine the potential impact of raising recruitment age for all three services to 18.
• Information available to potential recruits, and their parents, must make clear the rights, responsibilities and the nature of the commitment, and be written in language that potential recruits will understand
• Recruitment standards should not be diluted.
• The MoD must ensure that under-18 year olds do not undertake armed guard duty.

ForcesWatch coordinator, Emma Sangster, said:

“A thorough and independent review of the age of recruitment has not been done by the Ministry of Defence. We urge the Prime Minister to – as he often puts it – ‘do the right thing’ and heed calls from the United Nations to raise the age of recruitment without delay.

“All four deaths at Deepcut involved a young recruit on guard duty, and two were just 17, yet the practice of under-18s taking part in armed guard duty continues to this day and does so despite the Duty of Care report from MPs.

“In essence the MoD are prioritising operational effectiveness over the rights and welfare of young people in its care. We think MPs on all sides would wish to rectify this situation and bring Britain fully into line with international standards on the age of military recruitment.”

Notes

Read the report: ‘Commonsense and Understanding’: Recommendations from the Defence Committee’s Duty of Care report page 1that are still outstanding 10 years on

An amendment to the Armed Forces Bill will be debated during the House of Commons Third Reading on Wednesday 16 December. This amendment ensures that only those above 18 years of age are able to enlist in the Armed Forces.

During the Christmas of 1914, soldiers on multiple fronts of the First World War put their weapons down and made an unofficial and illegal truce. When the celebrations ended, many would not go back to war with each other. The popular story has been re-told many times as a Christmas miracle.

This December 18th, an organisation of veterans of the British military and Tom Morello’s new Firebrand Records release “Christmas Truce” a holiday single and video to promote the ideals behind that truce – soldier-led resistance against war and militarism.

Written by Firebrand Records co-founder, folk singer, and longtime anti-war activist Ryan Harvey, “Christmas Truce” is performed by Belgian-born, London-based singer Fenya, an active member of London’s Food Not Bombs. Accompanying the song is a video shot with members of Veterans For Peace UK, featuring former soldiers of conflicts stretching from the Second World War to the present interventions and occupations in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.

“The Christmas Truce lives in the hearts of millions of people,” says Veterans For Peace UK coordinator Ben Griffin, who served in Northern Ireland, the former-Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan with the Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Service. “However we need to move on from the idea of a truce being something that is only carried out at Christmas. Throughout history soldiers have formed truces with their supposed enemies; in fact soldiers often find that they have a lot more in common with the enemy than with their own governments.”

“I wrote this song to tell a simple story that reflects a much larger reality,” Harvey says. “Soldiers have spoken out, protested, and revolted in almost every war in history. We encourage and need this resistance, because historically, it is one of the single strongest factors in bringing wars to an end. At a time when a civil and proxy-war is ripping Syria apart and the world seems to be lingering on the brink of yet another global catastrophic conflict, this ever-relevant song references history to describe the present.”

“We hope to convince people that war is not the solution to the problems of the 21st century,” Griffin concludes.

Notes

Veterans For Peace UK is a voluntary ex-services organisation of over 300 men and women who have served in every war that Britain has fought since WW2.

Firebrand Records was launched in June, 2015 by Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) and Ryan Harvey (Riot-Folk Collective) to give a voice to socially-active, politically-conscious musicians globally.
Ben Griffin
+44 7866 559 312
coord@vfpuk.org

Ryan Harvey
ryan@firebrandrecords.com

Whilst there are different strands of pacifism (e’g’ religious and ethical), Pacifists in general and certainly all those that I have known, are people who hold the conviction that all violence is wrong, that killing other human beings can never be justified, and therefore that one should not participate in war under any circumstances!

Anti war campaigners like me and most of my comrades in ‘Veterans For Peace’, are people who share very similar views, often acquired through traumatic personal experience, that violence, killing and wars, are inhuman, brutal, degrading and usually ineffective ways of resolving disputes, that we should make every effort to avoid. The difference is that we do not say “under any circumstances”. That is because we can envisage or, as in my case, have experienced, situations and circumstances, such as World War Two, in which we believe that violent resistance can be justified, when it is clearly necessary to prevent greater violence, injustice and oppression.

If you were watching Channel Four News last night, You might have seen me accompanying a group of Veterans for Peace, down Whitehall to Downing Street, where  several of them ceremoniously discarded their medals, to express their anger at the British Governments total inability to learn from experience, as demonstrated by the decision to commence bombing yet another Middle Eastern country. The equivalent in our view of poring petrol on a fire which you have previously lit. These younger veterans had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, in wars of aggression that they  had come to see were  unjustified and which were contributing to the spread of violence and extremism. I supported their decision but I did not discard my medals because I believe that the war I fought in was necessary and justified to defeat a monstrous tyranny.

The last week has seen a signiificant increase in the number of veterans applying to join VfP.  It is encouraging to see that young men who have been have sent out to kill and to be killed, in our name, are learning and drawing the right conclusions from their experience. But how depressing to note that the politicians who send them out, appear to learn nothing from theirs!

Jim Radford served on a Tugboat during the D-Day landings and subsequently in the Royal Navy. He is a long time anti-war activist and a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

In protest at yet another attack on a middle eastern country, veterans of the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya will discard their medals at Downing Street tomorrow.

One of the veterans, Daniel Lenham who served in the RAF from 2002 to 2014 said “In protest at the decision to bomb Syria, we will hand back medals given to us for participating in previous attacks on the Middle East.” He continued “These invasions, occupations and attacks have caused great destruction, killed hundreds of thousands of people and have led to the destruction of societies. Bombing is never a solution it is time to stop.”

David Smith who served in the Royal Green Jackets said “I want to express my utter disgust at the decision to unlawfully bomb Syria, god help all those who are likely to suffer as a result of this action. I renounce all forms of state sanctioned Warfare and Violence.” 

Kirk Sollitt who served in the Gulf War said “By bombing in Syria innocent, vulnerable sentient beings are being killed, men, woman and children. You cannot sow bloodshed and reap peace. I no longer want these medals.”

Veterans For Peace is a voluntary ex-services organisation of men and women who have served in every war that Britain has fought since WW2. We exist to convince people that war is not the answer to the problems of the 21st century.

Date – Tuesday 8 December

Time – 1pm

Location – Meet at Nelsons Column before heading to Downing Street, London

Dress – VFP Members to wear VFP Hoodies

Supporters welcome.

Contact

Ben Griffin, Coordinator VFP UK
07866 559 312
coord@vfpuk.org

By Charlie Bird of Veterans For Peace UK

There are a number of false assumptions that have sprung up in the debate over whether the UK should join in the bombing campaign against ISIS/ISIL/Da’esh in Syria. I suspect that that they have been encouraged by politicians who hope that the issue will cause some domestic party political collateral damage, particularly to the Labour Party leadership. But bombing Syria is not a party political issue; it is a moral one quite separate from politics. And a refusal to support the bombing campaign is not a lack of support for the French and all others who have suffered at the hands of ISIS, nor is it a sign of being weak or half-hearted when faced with the appalling atrocities and perversion of Islam perpetrated by ISIS. We are being led to believe that the decisions are binary ones: bomb Syria or we fail to support our allies, bomb Syria or we are not serious in the fight against ISIS. This is convenient shorthand to shame us into supporting a decision to join the bombing campaign.

In the aftermath of the atrocities in Paris (which Iraqis and Syrians living in areas under ISIS control will recognise from their own experience) there is tremendous pressure on Governments to “do something” and to be seen to be doing it. The action becomes almost more important than the objective we are trying to achieve. Most of us can agree that ISIS needs to be eradicated both in terms of its presence on the ground and in terms of its ideology. If that is the case, then we should be able to work backwards to find the actions or combination of actions that will achieve those objectives, rather than hoping that our added presence in the already overcrowded skies above Syria will miraculously lead to the collapse of ISIS.

There is general agreement that the UK’s participation in the bombing campaign will be of greater symbolic rather than military significance. But we are told that it will help make the UK a safer place. That is what we were told about the UK’s involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former Director General of MI5 told the Iraq Inquiry that the invasion of Iraq actually increased the terrorist threat to the UK. Dropping bombs on Syria is likely to encourage nascent “home grown” terrorists in the UK who may not be members, in the conventional sense, of ISIS but who are sympathetic to and inspired by them. There are many ways other than bombing Syria in which we can demonstrate real and practical support both for France and for the military and ideological struggle against ISIS. Provision of intelligence, resources and logistical support, tactical and strategic advice as well as a leading role in the search for a political settlement in Syria may be less visible and dramatic than news footage of RAF aircraft dropping bombs, but arguably may be more effective.

But for me, the final argument against the UK’s participation in the bombing campaign is that however smart our bombs may be, we will kill innocent civilians. There hasn’t been a recent bombing campaign without civilian casualties. And even if, by some miracle, RAF bombs don’t kill the innocents whom ISIS use as human shields, some of our “allies” in the campaign certainly will. They have already done so, and we will be associated with those killings. No doubt we will express our profound regret……ISIS have are responsible for the most disgusting offences against the people under their occupation, including crucifixion. The shrapnel from our bombs will tear through the flesh of the innocent like nails. Make no mistake; it will be done in our name.

VFP TO MEET UNDER THE VFP FLAG FROM 5:30PM

Adrienne Kinne of Veterans For Peace speaking about her experiences in the US Army at our Remembrance Gathering in November 2015.

Lots of different groups will be attending this.

VFP to gather under the VFP flag: 1200 on Saturday 28 November at Downing Street.

If you want a VFP hoody to wear get in touch with Ben.

Iraq Veterans Against the War statement following the recent attacks in Lebanon, Afghanistan, France, Iraq, & Nigeria.

Our hearts and thoughts go out to the victims and families who have suffered from the acts of brutality committed in Beirut, Paris, Baghdad, Zabul and now multiple cities in Nigeria over the last number of days.

We condemn these terrorist attacks in Lebanon, Afghanistan, France, Iraq and Nigeria. We mourn with the victims and send our deepest condolences to their families. No one’s life should end in this way; no family should suffer the anguish and loss that these people are suffering.

For these attacks to stop, we must address their root causes and take responsibility for U.S. participation in the destabilization of countries that span the Middle East, North and Western Africa, and South and Central Asia. The deliberate destabilization of once functional states in the region, and the current bombardment of Yemen by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, has created the perfect environment for groups like ISIS and Boko Haram to grow and thrive. We must see the rise of terrorism and the attacks in Paris for what they are, blowback for western intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe.

We, as current and former military members, understand that who the U.S. military kills is never certain and differentiating combatants from civilians is not a priority. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been killed and thousands of others are being stalked and killed by drones in at least seven countries, creating an environment filled with constant terror. Russia joining the bombardment of Syria and Iraq, the recent announcement of more troops to be deployed around the globe, and the extension of troop withdrawal in Afghanistan will only exacerbate an increasingly volatile situation until the “all out war” that France’s President Hollande called for is upon us. The end result of all of this can only be destruction, terror and lost lives, not only from predominately Muslim countries, but everywhere terror and war will inevitably reach.

We know from experience that declaring war on terrorism is a futile gesture that engages the world in a downward spiral of destruction. A full land war in Syria plays into the goals of terrorist groups and will undoubtedly destroy more innocent lives. Meanwhile, western countries will be no safer than before, in fact, increased blowback resulting from these actions will remain an ever present threat for years to come. An escalation of warfare will also violate civil liberties by establishing a securitization regime in France as an extension of the already existing “security measures” in the U.S., England and elsewhere

We call on the US and its NATO allies to;
1) Exercise restraint and exhaust all avenues of diplomacy;
2) Take full responsibility and hold themselves accountable for the illegality of the Iraq war and the continuance of the Afghanistan war, their colonial exploits, and their extra military actions which gave rise to the instability of various regions as we see today;
3) De-escalate from the perpetual violence, and reduce militarization both at home and abroad; and
4) Accept responsibility for the resettlement of all refugees, who are victimized by the so-called “War on Terror,” and resist scapegoating those with the least power in this tragic string of events.

Repeating the disastrous choices made by our nation after September 11th will result in nothing short of squandering the future of millions. This cycle of violence and exploitation has to end now.

During a recent VFP event I had the pleasure of listening to Jim Radford give a short presentation regarding aspects of his service career. During that talk he mentioned the disdain he felt for military chaplains. Up until that moment I thought I was alone in my revulsion of these pernicious pseudo soldiers. However, don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to belittle anyones faith, beliefs or religious inclinations, but only to challenge this department of the military who preach peace whilst at the same time giving moral justification for a young soldier to stick a bayonette in a strangers chest.

British Military Chaplains wear the uniforms of the associated service and accompany their troops whever they are deployed. They are non-combatants and do not bear arms. This not bearing arms is a gross hypocrisy in itself, in other words, go and do your duty son but don’t expect me to do it after all I’m above all that.is moral dissonance reached it’s pinnacle of absurdity during WW1, where local priests would receive a stipend for recruiting eligible parishioners to go and do Gods work on the battlefields of the Western Front. As Siegfried Sasoon said “It may have been the soldier who shot the rifle, but it was the Padre who gave him the ammunition.” There are few and scant records of any priests urging young men not to go. However, nothing new here, isn’t it the Vicar who bangs the military gong on Remembrance Sunday, as he recites before the great and the good, the words “We are gathered here before God”. Wasn’t it the Vicar who read out the last rights before the firing squad shot one their own for refusing to fight and wasn’t it the same vicar who buried the young man and mentioned not a word to his relatives of how he met his demise.

Religious moral conditioning has been used for centuries by the instigators of violent conflict, Adolph Hitlers appeal to divine authority is well recorded in Mein Kampf, in addition every German soldier had the words ‘Gott Mit Uns’ embossed on his stable belt and various renditions of this slogan have appeared on many imperial military emblems, Nobiscum deus in Latin, Μεθ ημων ο Θεος (Meth imon o Theos) in Greek, С Hами Бог (S Nami Bog) in Church Slavonic, or ‘God is with us in English,’ was a battle cry of the Roman and of the Byzantine Empires. Christian gospels were not the only religious conditioning tool. Buddhist texts were read to Kamikaze pilots pre mission and a connection between religion and battle was made through the way in which Zen Buddhism wedded Buddhist purposes to both the Taoist practice of an art or a craft and, in an historical tradition dominated by a military class, the Japanese “martial arts.” The chant of Allahu Akbar or Insha’Allah can be heard from those fighting for the Muslim cause. Could this be why the British Military now employ Buddhist and Muslim chaplains?

So, to me these particularly odious individuals who claim to be men of peace, do in fact support and prop up the whole show, by conditioning young minds to believe it’s right and just to kill and in addition to act as recruiting Sergeants for the naive and vulnerable. I well remember taking my signing up papers to my local Sunday school vicar (a former Naval Chaplain) as a so called professional person, he never hesitated or offered any words of resistance only encouragement. In addition sailing South in 1982 the chaplains rousing call to arms in the ships makeshift church or entertainment centre still echoes through my mind come the anniversary time of a departed friend, killed in action during the Falklands War. I guess the cap badge motto of the British Chaplains “In this sign Conquer” sums up the madness of it all.

Today the British Military employs Chaplains of all faiths from Jews to Hindu’s and Sikhs. So it would appear that no young person from which ever ethnic group be they male or female is immune from the duplicitous, insidious and subversive nature of religious moral conditioning within the military. We can however take heart from those non belligerent believers who refused to join in with the madness, such as Quakers, Amish and Christadelphians. For if you truly believe in peace, how can you ever condone violence.

Gus Hales served in the British Army, he is a member of VFP UK.

Sunday 8 November, Veterans For Peace UK walked to the Cenotaph for the third year in a row. The sole opposing military voice to the clamour of jingoism that has overtaken what was once, rightly, a solemn occasion. This year we were led by women veterans from the US and UK − a fact of which we are all particularly proud. They bore our group’s colours, which are emblazoned with a call for peace, and lay a wreath of white poppies to remember all the war dead, rather than just one section of the slain.

In the last decade, against the background of failed and illegitimate wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the meaning and value of the red poppy has become debated furiously in Britain.

“At the cenotaph on Sunday […], arms dealers, hawks and warmongers stand shoulder to shoulder as if to lament the deaths and injuries their actions inflict.” In one sense, this is a good thing, because those who have now taken ownership of it − arms companies, the gutter press, unbloodied battalions of long-range patriots in parliament − must be challenged.

In Veterans For Peace UK, we have ourselves debated the poppy many times and a multitude views have emerged.

For our older generation of veterans, such as those who saw action on D-Day and in Malaya, men whose fathers were in the trenches of the Great War, the red poppy is still the symbol of insurgent anger and grief that it was at the start. Some of these men combine red and white poppies.

For many of the veterans of the 1980s, 1990s and, like myself, the 9/11 wars, the red poppy has fallen to the enemy − the aforementioned hawks and death-dealers − and is at best a deeply concerning symbol. Many of these veterans wear only the white poppy.

For years, I have worn neither white nor red, though I am increasingly drawn toward the anti-imperialist black poppy, which recalls the war dead of all sides, slaughtered civilian and the endless list of military objectors, rebels and mutineers.

All this aside, and in contrast to many military-oriented organisations at this time of year, Veterans For Peace do not preach about what poppy to wear, or if people should wear one at all. We honour the war dead by trying to limit their numbers, and we do that by putting the view, as women and men who have come to the cause of peace through military conflict, that war is not the answer to the problems of the 21st century.

Veterans For Peace, which is now hundreds strong, has always encapsulated a broad range of opinions and politics, as it should. Increasingly mine is that, while an important argument to have, the fight for the poppy is a row over a symbol. The fight for a future without the scourge of war is also partly the fight against militarism.

By that I mean the promotion of military values, the framing of the military as somehow noble and heroic and the priming and grooming of our population for wars to come, often by rewriting current and past conflicts. And militarism has been increased many-fold in recent years.

From The Sun’s ‘Millies’ military awards and greater number of soldiers in uniform at sporting events, to the rise of very successful charities with a militarist tinge, like Help For Heroes, we are bombarded with a narrow, cultish, one-sided view of what the military is and what it does. To question this narrative is now a kind of apostasy.

One recent example is that of George Evans, a veteran in his nineties, who fought through Normandy. He was prevented from reading out a peace poem at his local cenotaph ceremony, which he had done in previous years. A Royal British Legion representative said this was because George would not stick to the script. This is one individual example of a broader trend.

The militarisation also involves targeting children and young people, for example by increasing the number of military cadet forces. Military values are also promoted as positive on a local level too, with the new armed forces “community covenant” being rolled out. Framed as an equalising initiative for armed forces personnel, it also, in effect, a programme of grass-roots militarism, the beating ideological heart of which is prizing the warrior over all others.

Our answer, as veterans who are tired of our name and our legacy being taken in vain and who reject militarisation, is to challenge the steady indoctrination of society.

That is why we marched to the cenotaph on Sunday, into what has become the dark heart of British militarism. Where arms dealers, hawks and warmongers stand shoulder to shoulder as if to lament the deaths and injuries their actions inflict.

And we will be there every year until our aims are achieved. Not to cause a scene, not to be contrary, but as a matter of duty to the generations who will follow.

Joe Glenton was a British soldier for six years, serving in Afghanistan, whose book Soldier Box was published in 2013. Follow him on Twitter at: @joejglenton

Click here to read the full report; My Name is Legion: The British Legion and the Control of Remembrance

Published by Veterans for Peace, 5 November 2015

With its links to the arms trade, increasingly militarised presentation of Remembrance, and growing commercialisation and corporatisation of the poppy “brand”, it’s time to reconsider whether the Royal British Legion is still suitable to be the “national custodian of Remembrance”.

My Name is Legion: The British Legion and the Control of Remembrance explores how the Royal British Legion’s status as the self-appointed “national custodian of Remembrance” has been compromised through its collaboration with some of the world’s most controversial arms dealers, its increasingly militarised presentation of Remembrance, and its commercialised and trivialising corporatisation of the poppy “brand”.

It draws on the work of a number of journalists, campaign groups, veterans, and religious organisations who have expressed concern at the direction the Legion is taking, and asks whether the charity is still fit to be the “national custodian of Remembrance”.

One striking manifestation of the synergy between the British Legion and the British arms trade is its relationship with BAE Systems, who in 2003 not only funded sales of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, Libya, and the Middle East, but also the RBL’s annual Remembrance events. As the Telegraph noted, “a decision by British defence manufacturer BAE Systems to sponsor this year’s Poppy Day has been likened to ‘King Herod sponsoring a special day reserved to prevent child cruelty’”.

The Legion’s £100,000 sponsor and “platinum corporate member” is not only one of the world’s most profitable arms companies (as the world’s third largest arms producer its revenue in 2013 was $26.82 billion) but also one of its most controversial. One of its main markets is Saudi Arabia, which the British Intelligence Unit ranked 163rd out of 167 countries in its “democracy index” – just above North Korea and Syria.

Despite the “King Herod” associations, the Legion has maintained and even strengthened its relations with arms traders. This year (2015), for example, the British Legion’s annual ‘Poppy Rocks Ball’ is being sponsored by Lockheed Martin UK, the subsidiary of the world’s largest arms supplier, Lockheed Martin; the slightly grander Poppy Ball is sponsored by Sphinx Systems Limited, who manufacture handguns and pistols.

The increasing involvement of the arms trade in the Legion’s activities also coincides with a much more coercive and aggressive ‘in-your-face’ campaigning style that the Legion has adopted in recent years, as many journalists and veterans have noticed.

In 2014, for example, Quaker Peace & Social Witness produced a document that explores how “the involvement of the military in the RBL’s campaign has increased” over the last few years, in line with a rise in the more general promotion of the military, and noted that this involvement marks “a substantial departure from the RBL’s historic message of remembering the horror of war, towards those involved in current war” (The New Tide of Militarism).

A number of veterans also signed a public letter to the Guardian in 2010 complaining that the RBL’s Poppy Appeal was subverting the original intention behind Armistice Day: “A day that should be about peace and remembrance is turned into a month-long drum roll of support for current wars.” Respected war correspondent Robert Fisk has written eloquently about his anger and disillusionment with the “bloody poppy”, and how the symbol of the death of so many men has now “been turned into a fashion appendage”. Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow has referred to modern “poppy fascism”, to denote the increasingly coercive and militarised presentation of Remembrance these days.

This shift towards a far more commercialised and corporatised approach to Remembrance has developed since 1997, when the Legion formally applied to trademark what they now refer to as their “iconic poppy brand”. The Legion are also taking a new litigious heavy-handed stance towards anyone deemed to be “infringing its trademark”, as its website page makes clear: “The Legion’s 2-petal poppy is a registered trademark and should not be used without permission.”

Transforming the Remembrance symbol into a “product”, an “iconic brand”, may be a way of ensuring that the Legion gets more money but it also places the Poppy firmly in the world of the corporate logo, like the Nike Swoosh, or Coca-Cola. And at least with Coca-Cola you are not harangued for choosing not to consume its iconic brand, unlike the Legion’s increasingly coercive ‘For their sake, wear a poppy’, ‘For his family’s sake, wear a poppy’, ‘Something Missing?’ advertising campaigns launched in recent years.

The growing commercialisation and corporatisation of Remembrance is evident both in the thirty pages of website “Poppy Shop” (selling you everything from poppy ceramic stud earrings and poppy golfing umbrellas, to poppy dog name tags, poppy iPhone covers, and “I Love Poppy’ t-shirts) and also in the new “designer” poppy brooches that the Legion is actively pushing and promoting. “Updating your poppy” – or “pimping your poppy” – is another way the Legion has cheapened and trivialised our collective remembrance of the dead.

The RBL’s decision to launch their 2013 Poppy Appeal with corporate-friendly girl band The Saturdays dressed in patent leather mini skirts singing “I’m a bad girl, I’m a bad girl, I’m notorious” while wearing Swarovski-encrusted poppies, shows how badly the Legion has lost its way. In one sense it’s a remarkably clever and commercially savvy instance of brand product placement and what the Legion calls “Cause Related Marketing” – i.e. using a “cause’ that people care about in order to co-opt it to sell frozen goods, ketchup, or jewellery. But it’s also a deeply demeaning and disrespectful way to commemorate the deaths of those who dies in conflict.

That these trivialising and commercialised “brand poppies” the Legion wants us to endorse and buy are being sponsored by some of the world’s most aggressive and controversial arms traders makes them even more sinister and toxic. For these reasons, it is surely time for the British Legion to stand down and return the poppy to us as a shared symbol of national commemoration, and for the British government to take responsibility for the welfare of the men and women it sends to war and not leave it to a charity.

Click here to read the full report; My Name is Legion: The British Legion and the Control of Remembrance

Rod Tweedy is author of The God of the Left Hemisphere: Blake, Bolte Taylor and the Myth of Creation, and Secretary of the William Blake Society.

They are all in the same casket called betrayal.
Just like over 50,000 from the Vietnam War.
In Vietnam, I experienced soldiers committing
suicide by gun, and homicides by gun.
I saw many destroy their lives by shooting
heroin, a slower death that eventually took
their lives when they returned from betrayal.
Everything is about deceit.
Everything is about lies.
I talked to an Iraq vet last week who was
involved in the early invasion in 2003.
He saw American soldiers do things that
would probably lead to suicide when they
came home.
This is all secret stuff,
stuff that the American people will stuff
away even if it gets out.
When the truth threatens one’s core beliefs,
there is an urgent need to deny its reality.
Denial always allows the casket to repeat
itself.

Mike Hastie
Army Medic Vietnam

W A R
Wealthy Are Richer

Photograph by Mike Hastie

Towards the end of the 18th century William Cobbett (1763 – 1835) had spent nine years in the British Army, rising through the ranks to become a regimental sergeant-major. Officers could buy their commissions and often cheated their men out of pay, equipment and rations. As Cobbett remembered, the soldiers received only six-pence a day, hardly enough to keep them alive:
‘We had several recruits from Norfolk (our regiment was the West Norfolk); and many of them deserted from sheer hunger. They were lads from the plough-tail. All of them tall, for no short men were then taken. I remember two went into a decline and died during the year, though when they joined us, they were fine hearty young men. I have seen them lay in their berths, many and many a time, actually crying on account of hunger. The whole week’s food was not a bit too much for one day.’ [The Rambling Soldier, by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books Ltd 1977].

Cobbett left the army in 1791, fed up with the attitude of some officers who disliked his habit of reading books. He then wrote ‘The Soldier’s Friend’, which protested against the harsh treatment and low pay of the enlisted men who had joined the British Army. He also set about exposing some of the corrupt practices he had witnessed among officers, but had to flee to France for a time to escape retribution. Perhaps not surprisingly, with his sergeant-major background, Cobbett’s views then were fairly conservative. After moving from France to America, where he lived for a period, he wrote articles denouncing the French Revolution and supporting the British government’s military actions against the United Irishmen.

Back in England Cobbett’s attitudes began to change and he started to publish a campaigning paper called ‘The Political Register.’ In 1809 at Ely, five soldiers were sentenced to 500 lashes each for ‘mutiny’ after protesting in a ‘threatening manner’ over having to pay for a knapsack, on top of arrears of pay. Cobbett, in his paper, attacked the soldiers’ sentences in a forthright and sarcastic way:
‘Five hundred lashes each! Aye, that is right! Flog them! flog them! flog them! They deserve a flogging at every meal-time! Lash them daily! Lash them daily! What! mutiny for the price of a knapsack? Lash them! etc.’ Cobbett was arrested, charged with ‘sedition’, and found guilty of treasonous libel. He was sentenced to a £1,000 fine and two years in Newgate Prison. He continued to publish ‘The Political Register’ from his prison cell. When the government imposed a large tax on newspapers, Cobbett changed the ‘Political Register’ into a pamphlet and reduced its price to two pence. It then became the publication most read by working class people and Cobbett became a dangerous subversive in government eyes.

After the Peterloo Massacre, Cobbett, along with others in the radical movement, attacked the government actions and he was charged with libel three times over the next two years. [For details of the Peterloo Massacre see: http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/2015/waterloo-and-peterloo-by-aly-renwick/ ]. Cobbett was very argumentative and was often involved in spats with fellow reformers as well as with establishment interests. One such quarrel was with William Wilberforce, who was to become famous for his opposition to the slave trade. While Cobbett quite rightly criticised Wilberforce for his support for government actions and laws against working class people in Britain, he then wrongly also took to belittling him for his campaign against slavery. And, rightly, this was a blemish on Cobbett’s reputation. [For details of the Slave Trade please see: http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/2015/britannia-waives-the-rules-by-aly-renwick/ ].

Cobbett was not a revolutionary and combined his still held conservative instincts with his new radical beliefs and sometimes the former overcame the latter. He did not want to destroy the old order. But on issues to do with the working people in England, he was a militant and honest reformer, fighting against government excesses and bad laws. Cobbett was at his best, when he looked at situations and problems himself. He had been brought up on the land and in 1821 he began his famous rural rides around England. His findings about the conditions of the land, society and the people were printed in his paper over the next nine years. They were then, in 1830, published as a book, ‘Rural Rides.’

Cobbett and Ireland

Cobbett then tried to have his voice heard in the House of Commons and after a few failures was elected a member of parliament for Oldham in 1832 at the age of 69. He found that the Westminster Parliament was mostly filled by MP’s representing vested interests and the opposition to Cobbett’s reforming views was overwhelming. This led him to become involved with the Irish MPs who were led by O’Connell. Cobbett became intrigued with what the Irish MPs had to say about their homeland, which was often in total contradiction to government statements. So, he decided to see the country for himself and, in July 1834, he wrote about his wish to view Ireland in ‘The Political Register’:
‘I have resolved to see this country with my own eyes, to judge for myself, and to give a true account of it, as far as I am able, to the people of England. I am resolved to go, as if to a country about which I have never said a word. I have now, for two sessions of Parliament, listened to such contradictory statements, both coming from gentlemen of unimpeachable veracity, that it is impossible I should not desire to have the evidence of the facts before me. … In short, I have a desire to know the whole truth; and if I cannot get it by seeing the country, very few men can.’ [Not by Bullets and Bayonets – Cobbett’s Writings on the Irish Question 1795-1835, by Molly Townsend, Sheed and Ward Ltd 1983].

Later that year Cobbett sent a series of letters from Ireland to the paper. In the 4th letter he described some of his findings: ‘I have now been over 180 miles in Ireland, in the several counties of Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny and Waterford. I have, in former years, been in every county in England … I have been through the finest parts of Scotland. I have lived in the finest parts of the United States of America. And here I am to declare to all the world, that I never passed over any 50 miles … of land so good on an average during the whole way, as the average of these 180 miles. … And yet here are these starving people!’
Cobbett went on to describe why this was happening:
‘In coming from Kilkenny to Waterford, I … came through a little town called Mullinavat, where there was a fair for cattle and fat hogs and apples. There might be 4,000 people; there were about 7 acres of ground covered with cattle (mostly fat), and all over the street of the town there were about THREE THOUSAND BEAUTIFUL FAT HOGS, lying all over the road and the streets. … Ah! but there arose out of this fine sight reflections that made my blood boil; that the far greater part of those who had bred and fatted these hogs were never to taste one morsel of them, no not even the offal, and had lived worse than the hogs, not daring to taste any part of the meal used in the fatting of the hogs! The hogs are to be killed, dried or tubbed, and sent out of the country to be sold for money to be paid to the landowners, who spend it in London, Bath, Paris, Rome, or some other place of pleasure, while these poor creatures are raising all this food from the land, and are starving themselves.’ [Not by Bullets and Bayonets – Cobbett’s Writings on the Irish Question 1795-1835, by Molly Townsend, Sheed and Ward Ltd 1983].

Cobbett told his readers about the hovels where most of the poor lived and the rags many used as clothing. Just a decade before the famine that would devastate Ireland’s population, he also explained to his readers how the poor people were forced to rely on ‘lumpers’, the worst quality of potato, for food. In his 5th letter he also hinted at the coercive system that was used to allow such a situation to exist:
‘From Clonmell we came to Fermoy … Fine land; a fine country; flocks of turkeys all along the way; cattle, sheep, hogs, as before; and the people, the working people, equally miserable as before. … From one side of this valley there rises up a long and most beautiful chain (miles in length) of gently sloping hills, and on those hills and on their sides, corn-fields and grass-fields are interspersed with woods and groves. But, standing on the bridge, and viewing this scene, my eyes were blasted by the sight of three BARRACKS for foot, horse, and artillery; buildings surpassing in extent all the palaces that I ever saw; elegant and costly as palaces; buildings containing, they say, three thousand windows and capable of lodging forty thousand men!’ [Not by Bullets and Bayonets – Cobbett’s Writings on the Irish Question 1795-1835, by Molly Townsend, Sheed and Ward Ltd 1983].

Barracks and Famine

There were barracks for British soldiers all over Ireland. Fermoy, built overlooking the Blackwater River in County Cork, was a huge barracks around which the town was built to service it. The largest garrison, the Curragh, was first established in 1646. Built on a large plain near Kildare, the barracks occupied one side of the Dublin road with the race-track on the other. Ireland became crisscrossed with large army barracks situated at strategic locations, and the smaller, but much more numerous, fortified buildings of the Irish Constabulary (IC).

During the period of the famine there were 1,600 IC barracks throughout the country, situated in villages, towns and cities. Backed by soldiers when necessary, armed IC men assisted in enforcing evictions, protected landlords and their agents, and guarded the foodstuffs that were still being shipped abroad for profit. An extensive prison network was also constructed, as the system of transporting prisoners was ending. By the time of the famine 26 new prisons had been built to augment the 18 already in existence. In these buildings political prisoners, especially, faced a harsh regime of control, punishments and forced-labour.

In 1856, Frederick Engels visited Dublin and gave his view of the country:
‘Ireland may be regarded as England’s first colony … the so-called liberty of the English citizen is based on the oppression of the colonies. I have never seen so many gendarmes in any country and the sodden look of the Prussian gendarme is developed to its highest perfection here amongst the constabulary, who are armed with carbines, bayonets and handcuffs.’

Thirty years later, in 1887, Francis Adams also visited Dublin and recorded this image of the city and its colonial style police, in his poem, ‘Dublin At Dawn’:

Dublin At Dawn

In the chill grey summer dawn-light
We pass through the empty streets;
The rattling wheels are all silent;
No friend his fellow greets.

Here and there, at corners,
A man in a great-coat stands;
A bayonet hangs by his side, and
A rifle is in his hands.

This is a conquered city;
It speaks of war not peace;
And that’s one of the English soldiers
The English call “police”.

Located just a narrow strip of water away, it was inevitable that Ireland would become an early victim to English expansionism. While land and exploitation were the main motive behind the drive to subdue the Irish, there was a second reason. In the past, O’Neill and Tone had forged links with England’s enemies, Spain and France, who had both landed troops in Ireland. This had fuelled England’s determination to control Ireland and ensure it could never again pose a military threat.

Cobbett also thought that Britain’s security should be protected, but he knew that the use of repressive laws and military might in Ireland was wrong and counterproductive. He believed that ‘a real union of the hearts’ could be achieved between the people of Britain and Ireland if reason was used instead of force:
‘It is not by bullets and bayonets that I should recommend the attempt to be made, but by conciliation, by employing means suited to enlighten the Irish people respecting their rights and duties, and by conceding to them those privileges which, in common with all mankind, they have a natural and legitimate right to enjoy.’ [Not by Bullets and Bayonets – Cobbett’s Writings on the Irish Question 1795-1835, by Molly Townsend, Sheed and Ward Ltd 1983].

If Cobbett had been listened to, his approach might have altered the history between the two islands, and prevented the many conflicts that were to follow. Instead, his appeals fell on deaf ears, and even a tragedy like the famine brought no change in policy. In 1846, a new Coercion Act designed to control possible insurrection by the starving Irish people was enacted. It was the eighteenth Coercion Act to be brought in since the 1801 Act of Union. As Lord Brougham remarked, the new bill, ‘possessed a superior degree of severity.’ As over a million Irish people died from starvation and the subsequent diseases, ships still left Irish ports laden with meat, flour, wheat, oats and barley. The London government refused adequate help, claiming that the market could not be interfered with. And profits were clearly more important than Irish lives.

You join the U.S. military thinking you are going to defend your country.

You spend months of intense training that will make you a soldier.

Your ego and your pride becomes the high grade oil that makes all the moving parts work smoothly.

Your equipment is the best in the world.

The pay and the benefits are more than acceptable, seeing that you could not find a job before enlisting.

When you arrive in-country at the age of 19, you are more than ready to be tested by the training you are convinced has prepared you for war.

You wear your unit patches with dignity.

You are ready to obey orders.

Then one day, eleven months after arriving at this place, and shortly after returning from a combat mission, you realize the entire war is a profound lie, and that you are the enemy.

You have just taken part in a killing frenzy, that broke every moral rule that was ever taught to you by a so-called civilized society.

Everything you have ever been taught at home, at school, and at church has just stopped.

You are in an emotional whiteout.

There are only 30 days left in your tour, so you just walk around in what appears to be slow motion, and the only thing you really hear is the ringing in your ears.

You never fire another round from your M-16.It’s over.

When you arrive home after taking a cab  from the airport, the first thing your father asks you is how you are doing.

You answer by saying everything is fine.

Your mother says she loves you, and they are so happy you are home.

Both of your parents notice that your face has changed, as you look much older, but they are afraid to say you have aged.

They can see grief in your eyes.

Your mom says you can stay in your old bedroom until you report to your next duty station.

After dinner, you go up to your room and straight to the closet.

You remember that your mother stored your old toy soldiers there in a shoe box.

She just couldn’t give them away.

When your parents are asleep later that night, you grab the box of soldiers and head to the garage and look for a can of lighter fluid.

When you find the container, you notice your dad’s American flag hanging on the wall.

You also grab it and the matches your dad always kept in a certain drawer.

You take a walk in the woods behind your parents house like you did thousands of times as a child growing up.

After five minutes of walking you come to a clearing where you use to play.

You spread the American flag on the ground, pour the toy soldiers in the center, pour the lighter fluid on the toy soldiers, strike a match, and light the whole goddamn thing on fire.

It’s over.

You will not report to your next duty station.

The price of freedom is beyond belief, as your old belief system goes up in flames.

Profit is the lubricant that oils the war economy.

Mike Hastie
Army Medic Vietnam
September, 2015

In memory of six friends who didn’t die in Vietnam, but as a result of being there.

Photo by Mike Hastie, This picture of a small boy playing with toy soldiers was taken at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Portland, Oregon. It was Memorial Day in 2003, two months after the U.S. started bombing Baghdad.

For more info https://dronecampaignnetwork.wordpress.com/drones-week-of-action/

Saturday 7 November 2015

1000 to 1700 hrs

George Fox Room
Friends House
Euston
London

1000 to 1300hrs – VFP UK EGM – Timings not fixed

1000 – Business Meeting

1100 – Cenotaph Briefing

1115 – US VFP Q&A Panel

1400 to 1600hrs – Public Event – Women in the Military

The public are invited to attend a panel discussion involving four female veterans. The women will talk about their experiences within the British Army and the US Army.

Adrienne Kinne – US Army

Nadia Mitchell – British Army

Kathryn Piquette – US Army

Rachel Thompson – British Army

1600 – 1700 Time for end of conference discussions and networking as we pack up.

Stalls – TBC

Rail – Euston

Tube – Euston

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/events/1491473377843737/

VFP UK and Ryan Harvey LIVE at HousmansMonday 2 November
Doors at 1830
Housmans Books, Caledonian Road, London – Map
Facebook – Link

VFP and Ryan Harvey at The LCW
Thursday 5 Novemeber
Doors at 1830
49 Mattison Road, London, N4 – Map
Facebook – Link

Remembrance Gathering and EGM
Saturday 7 November
Doors at 1000
Friends House, Euston Road,  London – Map
Web – Link
Facebook – Link

The Cenotaph
Sunday 8 November
Gather at 1330
Whitehall Place, London – Map
Web – Link
Facebook – Link

Sunday 8 November 2015

1330 HRS

Whitehall Place, London

Facebook Event Page

On Remembrance Sunday, Veterans For Peace UK will walk to The Cenotaph under the banner “NEVER AGAIN”.

We will hold a ceremony at The Cenotaph to remember all of those killed in war including civilians and enemy soldiers. 

Supporters of VFP UK are invited and encouraged to follow us to The Cenotaph.

Timings TBC

1330 hrs Meet at Whitehall Place

1400 hrs Form up at Whitehall place

1410 hrs Move off from Whitehall Place

1415 hrs Arrive at The Cenotaph and carry out the ceremony.

1430 hrs Depart from The Cenotaph

1435 hrs Arrive back at Whitehall Place

1500 hrs Disperse from Whitehall Place

The Ceremony

VFP UK enter the enclosure and line up facing the Cenotaph.

Jim Radford will sing

Karl Hemming will recite a poem

The Wreath will be laid.

The Last Post.

One minutes silence.

Reveille

VFP will move off out of the enclosure and back towards Whitehall Place.

Dress

VFP Members – VFP UK Hoody, Shirt, Black Tie, Dark Trousers, Dark Shoes. Poppy (White / Red / Both / None).

Followers – As if you are attending a funeral.

Equipment

Never Again Banner – To be carried by two VFP members at the front.

Wreath of White Poppies

VFP UK Banner – To be carried by two VFP members at the rear and before the followers.

Media

Only the designated film-makers Shaun Dey and Guy Smallman can enter the enclosure of The Cenotaph.

VFP Members will not be conducting interviews on the day.

Instructions for Followers

All are invited to follow us to The Cenotaph.

Followers are not to enter the enclosure of The Cenotaph.

No banners, placards or megaphones are to be carried by those following VFP UK.

Dress must be smart / sombre as if you are attending a funeral.

All attending agree to conform to the VFP UK Statement of Nonviolence

This article was written by CJCL and was publised here off-guardian.org

Yesterday David Cameron admitted to murder. He did it loudly, in public, with self-justications primed and a self-important look plastered across his quivering jowls. The repurcussions? He faces applause from some sectors…and “scrutiny” from others. Is that all the outrage our atrophied imaginations can offer?

The metaphor of the boiling frogs has long been over used. It takes its place alongside the “smoking gun” and “ticking all the boxes” in the pantheon of phrases that declare a lack of imagination. And it is no longer apt. The unthinkable is no longer being “normalised”…it is normal. It happens every day, and we shrug it off. The frogs have been simmering for hours, they’re nearly done.

Just for a moment, let us compare the world of today to the world of fifteen years ago…

Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on “normalization.” This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and
unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as “the way things are done.” Edward S. Herman – THE BANALITY OF EVIL

In 2000, before 9/11 and all the subsequent horror that mental trauma caused a psychotic American Empire to loose upon the world, can we even imagine that a “civilised” government would claim the power to seize people without charge? detain people indefinitely without trial? Would a watching public have stood for that? But nevertheless, that is the world we live in now.

Ten years ago would an American President blithely admitting to torture have passed off the public conciousness with so little notice? Would CIA black sites, extraordinary rendtions and all the stuff – likely worse – we don’t get to hear about be cause for a “debate” about its efficacy? Does a civilised culture ban torture, or simply worry about whether or not it works? Nevertheless, that is the world we live in now.

Five years ago anybody claiming that the Western intelligence agencies were recording the data from millions and millions of people – Were spying on civilians and foreign heads of state and practically the whole world – would have have been met with snorts of derision. “Go find your tin-foil hat!” we would have said, “they can’t do that, it’s illegal” we would have said, “You’re crazy” we would have said. But Edward Snowden is real, and he’s not crazy. And now we know – was there a revolution? Were there speeches railing against the NSA on the floor of the UN? Not even close. “It’s necessary” they said. “OK”, we said. And then the “free press” that reported the goverment’s illegal activities voluntarily smashed up their computers. Since those times Cameron’s government has handed over even greater powers to GCHQ and their brothers. We don’t want to a be spied on. We don’t want a digital panopticon keeping us all inline. But nevertheless, that’s the world we live now.

…and yesterday David Cameron admitted to murder – today he faces scrutiny. Just last week anybody accusing the government of carrying out extra-judicial executions on foreign soil would have been laughed at. Called paranoid. But here we are. Apparently there was a “legal justification”, but we’re not allowed to see it. Apparently it was done at a time and place that “minimised risk to civilians”…minimised, you understand, not removed. We still don’t know if there any civilian casualties – it doesn’t really matter. It was still murder. Apparently he was “planning attacks” and it was “self defence” – there’s plenty of evidence for this, but we’re not allowed to see that either. That’s the world we live in now.

Currently we live in a society where the government claims the right to:

• Arrest and detain any individual, indefintely, without charge or trial.
• Extradite any civilian overseas to any foreign power, even those who use torture.
• Observe and record the internet, email and phone communications of anybody in the world without warning or warrant.
• Execute, by drone strike or other means, anybody anywhere in the world – regardless of whether or not they have been convicted of a crime

Read those back to yourself – out loud if it helps. There’s a word for that kind of society, and it’s not “democratic”. It’s not “civilised”.

It’s tempting, and easy, to always view yourself as the good guy. Nobody watches a movie and thinks “Man, that villain is just like me!”. But no villains ever realise they are villains. The trick is in mental reversal, to imagine your actions as if someone had done them to you.

Russia currently stands accused of “assassinating” Alexander Litvinenko – the inquiry into his death is being held just down the road from the room where Cameron signed off on the execution of Reyaad Khan. If the story had broken that Putin or Assad or Kim Jong Un had wiped out a “security threat” by setting off a bomb on the streets of Cairo or Mexico City…how would we react? How would our press react? What if Xi Jinping ordered the execution, by drone, of a Chinese national living in Washington DC? Would we shrug it off as “neccesary” or “understandable”? We wouldn’t have time – it would be World War III.

The danger, as Orwell wrote, is in the language. The sterilization of words. Meanings are cleaned and refined and sanded down. Torture is what other people do, we use “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Propaganda is what other people do we “promote democracy”. War is what other people do we “pre-emptively defend ourselves”. Assassination is what other people do….we “carry out targeted strikes to remove threats.” When we eventually declare war on Syria, when NATO bombs start dropping on the only even remotely stable areas left in the country, they won’t be bombing raids they’ll be “humanitarian missions”.

The double-think is everywhere, practically every story in the press. Syria is fighting a civil war against zealots and insurgents, but Assad’s regime is “brutal”. Israel shelling a walled off ghetto because some kids threw stones at them…that is “self defence”. The totally bloodless referendum in Crimea is an “invasion”, but the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were “spreading democracy”. People like Huey Long, Castro, Chavez and Putin – who redistribute wealth to the poorer sections of society – they are “corrupt”. Whilst the politicians on our side, forever breaking expenses scandals and taking jobs on the boards of banks, pharmaceutical firms and arms manufacturers – they are just trying to make the world a better place, a free place.

Now, to talk specifcally about the RAF and their new toys, the defensive perimeter has already set up, the “justifications” have been deployed. He revoked his citizenship. He joined a terrorist organisation. He declared war on Britain. I don’t know if all that’s true, but I do know it doesn’t matter. The point of a society governed by law is that there are no exceptions. If pyschopaths and murderers aren’t protected by laws, then no one is. If a terrorist can be summarily executed…then anyone can.

I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.Robert Bolt – A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

One can’t fall into the trap of separating oneself from ethereal “other”. You can’t sit back, comfortable in the knowledge these laws only apply to them, but never to us. First they came for the Jews and all that. Don’t pretend to yourself that they would never use these tools on you. They are making a machine that will chew us all up and spit us all out eventually. That’s the world we live in now, it’s time to engage with it.

A frog that doesn’t realise it’s boiling still dies just the same.

This article was written by CJCL and was publised here off-guardian.org

I have to bear the guilt and shame of contributing to the present situation in which hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are trying to escape the brutality of war and the cold cruelty of ISIS. As a former diplomat who was seconded to the UK military for the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, I have seen at first hand how successive British Governments have, by their overt and covert involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria helped stoke the conflicts that have resulted in the suffering of our fellow human beings who now look to us for help, compassion and sanctuary.

The reaction of the Government to date has been heartless and disgraceful. It is not sufficient to claim that we are doing more than anyone else to provide humanitarian aid for those in the camps in Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere in the region nor to make great play of how we export values of democracy, human rights and concern for the individual wherever we dispense our overseas development budget and then squirm away from offering practical help to those who take our claims at face value. The Prime Minister has said that taking more and more refugees is not the answer but that bringing peace and stability to the region is. Since 1945 and before, diplomats, politicians, soldiers, spies and, of course, Tony Blair, have been trying to do exactly that, succeeding only in making the situation worse. What are those who are suffering right now meant to do while the Prime Minister adds his efforts to those of his predecessor?

We have been put to shame by acts of kindness by Germans, Icelanders and others who have been prepared to open their homes to individuals and families. It is too much to hope that our political leaders could demonstrate similar compassion. I have space in my house and I am sure that there are many others who are willing to dissociate themselves from the present Government’s attempts to live up to the Eton motto “Floreat Etona” (Let Eton Flourish) with the apparent addition of “……. and damn the rest”.

Charles Bird served with the British Army in Iraq, he is a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

With the Syrian refugee crisis dominating the headlines, and the mainstream media and politicians demonstrating quite possibly the greatest hypocritical U-turn of the century, I thought it would be wise to do a bit of research into the origins of Syria’s ‘civil war’. The mainstream media like to present things in simplistic terms, i.e. good guys and bad guys, and they have certainly done that here, with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad placed firmly in the ‘bad guy’ camp.

In Aug 2013 Sarin gas was used on innocent civilians in the Ghouta district near Syria’s capital Damascus, with claims of up to 1400 killed. It was a terrible attack and the videos are horrific. There was an international outcry and our ‘good friends from across the pond’ the American politicians, called for a bombing campaign to topple Bashar al-Assad from power.

Now call me cynical if you will, but haven’t we seen this kind of thing before? The demonising of a countries leader and a call for a military intervention on humanitarian grounds? Surely there has to be some other motivation for western intervention in Syria? Well, I did a bit of digging (just basic google searches) which took me to the South Pars/North Dome Gas Condensate Field. Apparently, it’s the worlds largest natural gas field, shared by both Qatar and Iran.

Now in 2009, Qatar (allied to western powers, USA, UK etc) proposed to run a natural gas pipeline from the South Pars/North Dome gas field through Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey to Europe . Instead, Bashar al-Assad later signed a $10 Billion pipeline deal with Iraq and Iran.

So basically, Bashar al-Assad decide to buy gas from the Iranians not western backed Qatar, and crucially (i believe) this would mean that the sale would not be in United States dollars, which would undermine the whole American economy (research ‘the petrodollar’).

Other leaders of countries have also also attempted to sell oil or gas in a currency other than the US dollar, they include Saddam Hussain leader of Iraq, invaded and killed. Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya, bombed, overthrown by western backed rebels and killed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former leader of Iran, placed on ‘axis of evil’ list, crippling sanctions against the country. Vladimir Putin, leader of Russia, placed on ‘axis of evil’ list, crippling sanctions against the country.

Now the case of Libya is quite interesting because there is a direct link to the funding and arming of rebels there and the rebels in Syria. After the overthrow of Gaddafi, all the weapons that the Americans provided were then put on a ship to Turkey where they were then passed over the Syrian border to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad. We like to refer to them as ‘moderate rebels’ when we give them arms to fight our proxy wars. However, there are videos of these moderates cutting out the hearts of the enemy and eating them, cutting off heads, burning people alive and drowning them. There are numerous groups, Al Nusra Front (sometimes called al-Qaeda in Syria), Free Syrian Army, ISIS, etc all funded by western powers such as the USA and the UK, yes that’s right, our taxpayers money. Hopefully you can see a pattern here, but this is just a simplified version of a complex situation based on limited research that I have done, there is no doubt more to this that I have not covered. I’ve included a list of source references below. I’m just trying to make connections and amongst other things, show that despite a sudden show of compassion from David Cameron and the Mainstream media, there is so much more to this story and geopolitics as a whole. I believe that most people in our country think our government is benevolent, however you only have to peel back a few layers from the ‘official version’ of a story that is presented through the mainstream media to realise that that is not the case.

Just a final point about the Sarin gas attack, it is still not known who did it, some say it was Bashar al-Assad, others say it was the rebels. Would Assad do that, knowing it would bring the American bombs on him? or did ‘our rebels’ do it in order to gain a outcry from us, the public, demanding intervention, so we could overthrow Assad, put in our puppet leaders and get our gas pipeline from Qatar, sold in good old American Dollars?

EITHER WAY, THE RESULT IS DEAD BABIES FLOATING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA.

Steve Jefferries served as a Navy signaller in 148 Commando Bty RA and is a member of Veterans For Peace UK

References and source material

http://stormcloudsgathering.com/the-geopolitics-of-world-war-iii

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/pipeline-politics-in-syria/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903591104576467631289250392

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article3537770.ece

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Syrian_Army

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pars_/_North_Dome_Gas-Condensate_field

http://stormcloudsgathering.com/the-covert-origins-of-isis

Unnatural Morality

From Tudor times the English, and then the British, state had gradually been constructed into a fiscal system capable of financing the building of an empire on a world scale. The slave trade and global profiteering helped provide the surplus money that financed the technological advances of the industrial revolution and led to the expansion of empire. In Britain the rural poor and Irish emigrants, flocking into the ever expanding industrial cities, worked long hours on starvation wages to facilitate the mines, mills and factories prolific output. For the ruling class, cheap labour at home and exploitation and plunder abroad – combined with trade monopolies – became the order of the day.

Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ published in 1776, had argued for a policy of government non-interference in economic affairs and for giving free rein to the ‘magic hand of the market.’ These moves toward a ‘laissez-faire’ economic policy led to the Reform Acts, from 1832, which consolidated the hold of predatory capitalism over parliament and gave ever-increasing power to the magnates. The administration of government, centred in Whitehall since the 16th century, was also modernised after the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1845, which extensively increased the number of civil service mandarins and their departments. Although unelected, they evolved into a permanent background executive, who provided the safe hands for establishment interests and operated the machinery of control and exploitation – both at home and across the Empire.

From Cromwell’s time to the start of the 19th century Britain’s rulers had sent their armed forces to fight 10 wars against European rivals. The Seven Years War, which ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763, had shown how Britain, through force of arms, could extend the Empire at the expense of other colonialists. French territory was seized in Canada, America, India, West Africa and the West Indies – and Florida, Manila, Havana and Minorca were taken from Spain. The quest for empire went on apace and was undertaken through state power and force of arms:
‘England’s wars led to the acquisition of new territories and markets. Contemporaries had few doubts that, in the words of Lord Holderness, “our trade depends upon a proper exertion of our maritime strength.” “The rise of the British economy,” writes Professor Wilson, “was based, historically, on the conscious and successful application of strength; just as the decline of the Dutch economy was based on the inability of a small and politically weak state to maintain its position against stronger states”.’ [‘Reformation to Industrial Revolution,’ by Christopher Hill].

In the early days of capitalism in England little heed had been taken of the plight of the poor. Later, as the demand for soldiers and sailors multiplied, unemployed and homeless youths were seen as potential cannon fodder for the army and navy. In the 18th century the rich had formed ‘societies’ to recruit and train these youngsters for conflicts, like The Seven Years War from 1756 to 1763, between several of the major European powers:
‘The more blatantly chauvinist societies tried to encourage good conduct among ordinary soldiers and sailors. Each boy recruited by the Marine Society was supplied with a new set of clothes and with a new set of ideas:
“You are the sons of freemen. Though poor, you are the sons of Britons, who are born to liberty; but remember that true liberty consists in doing well; in defending each other, in obeying your superiors and in fighting for your King and Country to the last drop of your blood.”
… Just how many of the boy-sailors were able to read and understand these words is unclear. What is certain is that many of the Marine Society’s more affluent supporters … advocated recruiting orphans and unemployed men for the Royal Navy as a sterling solution to crime, disorder and poverty. Stronger national defence was to go hand in hand with clearing the streets of potential thieves, beggars and disturbers of trade. And perhaps it worked. Of the 4,787 boys recruited by the Marine Society during the Seven Years War, only 295 could be accounted for at its end.’ [‘Britons- Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837,’ by Linda Colley].

In the British Army and Navy, it was the upper class, who had much to gain from colonial conquests, that provided the ‘superiors,’ or officer class – whom the ordinary soldiers and sailors must obey. But now and again some of the rank and file disagreed with the actions they were ordered to carry out. In 1870, ‘Poetry of the Pavement’ carried a poem called ‘The Hulks,’ with this introduction:
‘The Hulks are old vessels kept for the convenience of imprisoning disobedient sailors, who presume to have a conscience opposed to the destruction of foreigners who have no wish on their part to interfere with the private affairs of other countries.
But a warrior should never think, and if he keeps a conscience he must soon learn to surrender it to the call of duty (which means the doing of acts contrary to his inclinations, and which may therefore be defined as unnatural morality), or he will soon feel the reason why.’
The poem followed:

The youth now leaves his home, his work, his friends;
All social happiness on earth he ends,
And learns assassination as a trade,
Which does his Christian feelings deep degrade.
Conscience at last will claim the power to speak,
And now for conscience brave, for duty weak,
In calm refusal to engender strife,
He earns with conscience clear the hulks for life.

Awake – free trade! and teach us better things;
Show earth is for the people, not for kings;
Show man should send his produce to exchange,
Not armies over other lands to range,
And claim possession through success in war.
Free trade! we ask that you at once restore
The Nation’s sense of justice, and disperse
Kings, Priests, and Warriors, every nation’s curse.

Free trade had been promoted as a liberating force, where all trade would be equal and a portion of the wealth would trickle down to the poor. But British big-business, while demanding that no restriction were put on it, ensured that ‘foreign interests’ were shackled – shutting off any chance of conquered nations setting up competing industry. Just as in our own time, there was also no sign of the trickle down of wealth effect – either at home or abroad. Laissez-faire had not led to social emancipation as promised – but rather to the growth of monopolies and the increased exploitation of workers and natural resources. The ethos of empire was conquest and profit – not a trade that was free – so, not surprisingly, the plea from ‘Poetry of the Pavements’ fell on deaf ears.

The Slave Trade

While the British Empire was built by violence, superior arms and the practice of divide-and-rule, the justification for it was usually made in racist terms. Conquest and colonisation had always brought with it changes in attitude towards the conquered – and the slave trade, which required ignoring and justifying the suffering of the slaves, deepened that process.

In his book, ‘Reformation to Industrial Revolution,’ the historian, Christopher Hill, wrote:
‘Early references in English literature to people with non-white skins – Pocahontas, Othello, Massinger’s The City Madam, many early seventeenth-century poems about flirtation between black and white, Mrs Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko – all suggest that an attitude of racial discrimination was the result, not the cause, of the profitable slave trade: in the seventeenth century far greater generalized contempt seems to have been shown for the Irish than for Negroes… The consequences of the slave trade in brutalizing English opinion, and in fostering the Puritan tendency to hypocrisy, should not be underestimated.’

Control of the West Indies had opened the way for the slave trade as conquest and exploitation went hand in glove. From 1500, over the next three-and-a-half centuries, some twenty million African slaves were shackled in irons and forced aboard ships so they could be transported to the ‘New World.’ About a quarter of the slaves did not even survive the journey, dying from trauma and illness due to the conditions in which they were kept – and from the brutal treatment of their captors.

Slavery, the ultimate exploitation of human beings, made fortunes for those who ran and controlled it:
‘“All this great increase in our treasure proceeds chiefly from the labour of Negroes in the plantation,” said Joshua Gee in 1729, with a frankness that few historians have emulated. The slave trade was essential to the triangular imperial trade which grew up under the Navigation Acts. It seemed to economists an ideal trade, since slaves were bought with British exports, and transported in British ships…
“When I think of the colossal banquets of the Barbados planters [wrote Richard Pares], of the money which the West Indians at home poured out upon the Yorkshire electorate … of the younger William Beckford’s private orchestra and escapades in Lisbon, of Fonthill Abbey or even of the Codrington Library, and remember that the money was got by working African slaves twelve hours a day on such a [starvation] diet, I can only feel anger and shame”.’ [‘Reformation to Industrial Revolution,’ by Christopher Hill].

Captured Africans were treated like animals and not humans, with slave traders even using branding irons to brand their initials on slaves. This was justified by calling the Africans ‘barbaric heathens’ and saying they were not Christians. Ottobah Cugoano was a 13-year-old when he was kidnapped in Ghana and shipped to the West Indies as a slave. After he was eventually brought to Britain and freed, he questioned the morality of those who had enslaved him:
‘Is it not strange to think, that they who ought to be considered as the most learned and civilised people in the world, that they should carry on a traffic of the most barbarous cruelty and injustice, and that many … are become so dissolute as to think slavery, robbery and murder no crime?’ [‘Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain,’ by Peter Fryer].

The City of London boomed with wealth and ports like Bristol and Liverpool expanded dramatically during the slave trade. The profit made from the production of sugar on plantations using slave labour, became a major source of funding for the industrial revolution. Slavery continued as a lucrative trade for British ships until the early 19th century, when parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. But it wasn’t till 1838 that it was abolished in British colonies.

While many sincere people campaigned against slavery, it also came to an end because of a clash between the requirements of old and new capitalism. Industrialisation and factory systems demanded an ever-expanding exploitable labour market, which was best provided by creating pools of workers who were free – but unorganised, property-less and poverty-stricken. And therefore ready to be forced into being wage-slaves, the new form of exploitation.

When slavery ended, the British Government paid out £20m in compensation. Not a penny of this money was paid to any slave; the total sum, almost £17bn in today’s money, was paid to the slave owners. Although ‘freed,’ former slaves received little help towards integration and social and financial improvements. They were also forced to work on as slaves for a set number of years, to reduce the distress that the ending of slavery was causing for the slave owners.

The East India Company

In 1942 George Orwell wrote, in a review of ‘A Choice of Kipling’s Verse’ by T. S. Eliot, that Kipling: ‘Was the prophet of British imperialism in its expansionist phase…. and also the unofficial historian of the British Army…’ Orwell continued:
‘It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realise, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelising. You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed “natives”, and then you establish “the law”, which includes roads, railways and a court house.
… His outlook, allowing for the fact that after all he was an artist, was that of the salaried bureaucrat who despises the “box-wallah” [business man] and often lives a lifetime without realising that the “box-wallah’ calls the tune”.’ [‘Horizon,’ Feb. 1942].

India, Kipling’s birthplace and where he spent his early life, was exploited ruthlessly by the East India Company and English ‘box-wallahs’ like Sir Josiah Child and Robert Clive. Given its first charter and monopoly privileges under Queen Elizabeth I, the East India Company was first set up in 1600 when 125 London merchants launched the company ‘for the honour of this our realm.’ The company’s stock increased nine fold in the period of Cromwell, who protected it from competition, allowing the company to set itself up for future expansion:
‘The Charter of 1661 recognised the company’s right to tax, and gave it power to wage war against non-Christian peoples. By 1684 Sir Josiah Child was advocating “absolute sovereign power in India for the Company.” In the mid-eighteenth century Clive, began to execute this policy, to his own and the company’s great financial advantage.’ [‘Reformation to Industrial Revolution,’ by Christopher Hill].

Bengal was brought under East India Company rule after Clive’s victory at the battle of Plassey in 1757 and the land tax was tripled. Million of ‘the soft Bengalese’ died during the subsequent famine, while the company continued to extract wealth from the country. Many more Indians were to die from war, pestilence and famine in the years to come, including tens of millions in the last three decades of Victoria’s rule alone. Others were forced to move to different areas of empire, as semi-slave labour.

As it expanded, the East India Company manipulated and moulded the indigenous order and rulers to accept company domination and swiftly moved to extinguish any opposition. Divide-and-rule tactics gradually allowed a tiny group of colonial administrators and soldiers to dominate the vast continent and impose their strict central control over the areas occupied. To enforce its exploitation, the company also formed its own navy and army and built a network of forts, taxing the Indian population to pay for their upkeep.

Clive served as a military officer and then governor of East India and he, with other ‘box-wallahs’ like Warren Hastings, used the money they extorted to gain fame and influence back home:
‘The great wealth won by the plunder of India enabled the plunderers to buy their way into English politics. Clive himself acquired first a Parliamentary seat, then a peerage. It was alleged that between 1757 and 1766 the company and its employees received £6 million from India as gifts. Warren Hastings prided himself on never defrauding the company: before accepting money he asked himself only this, “whether it would go into a black man’s pocket or my own.” In thirteen years he remitted to England over £218,000, which he had saved from black men. There had been nothing like it in history since the Spanish conquistadors looted the Aztec and Inca civilisations of America in the early sixteenth century.’ [‘Reformation to Industrial Revolution,’ by Christopher Hill].

Back in London in 1773, with the East India Company on the verge of bankruptcy, Clive and others were criticised by a parliamentary inquiry for enriching themselves while ‘oppression in every shape has ground the faces of the poor defenceless natives.’ Clive, whose military victories had paved the way for company expansionism and made him a great British hero, replied that he was “astonished at his own moderation” for taking so little. Exonerating him, the House of Commons ruled that while Clive had pocketed £234,000 he had performed “great … services to the state.” However, Clive found it difficult to refute his detractors and suffering from depression committed suicide the following year.

State Drug Trafficking

The East India Company was saved from bankruptcy and forcibly extended its operations into China to trade opium for tea. The company forced Indian peasants to stop growing food and cash crops and to instead grow poppies, which were then harvested as an opium crop. In 1830 nearly 450 tons of this opium reached China and the next year a House of Commons report stated that: ‘The monopoly of Opium in Bengal supplies the Govt. with a revenue amounting to £981,293 per annum; and the duty amounts to 302% on the cost of the article. … It does not appear advisable to abandon so important a source of revenue.’

When the Chinese tried to stop this drug trade, Britain resorted to warships and soldiers to crush any resistance in the Opium Wars of 1839-42. The defeated Chinese were forced to hand £2,000,000 and Hong Kong over to Britain and four ‘treaty ports’ opened up China to foreign (mainly British) trade.

The East India Company had lost most of its autonomy under the India act of 1833 and in 1857 its demise was ensured when many native soldiers rebelled. The ‘Indian Mutiny,’ which rocked British rule in India, was ruthlessly suppressed by British and loyal native troops. Many rebels were executed and some were hanged out of hand. But others were dispatched by a new method:
‘Hanging … was usually thought too good for mutineers. When the facilities were available, it was usual to blow them from guns. It was claimed that this method contained “two valuable elements of capital punishment; it was painless to the criminal and terrible to the beholder.” The ritual was certainly hideous. With great ceremony the victim was escorted to the parade ground while the band played some lively air. The victim’s back was ranged against the muzzle of one of the big guns and he was strapped into position. Then the band would fall silent and the only sound would be the faint crackle of the portfire, as it was lowered to the touch-hole. With a flash and a roar, an obscene shower of blood and entrails would cover both the gunners and observers.’ [‘The British Empire,’ vol. 2, Orbis 1979].

State drug trafficking expanded after the East India Company was abolished in 1858 and the crown took over direct control of India. While 2,000 tons of opium was exported to China in 1843, this had soared to 5,000 tons by 1866. In 1875 alone £6,500,000 was made from the trade in opium. On the 1st of January 1887 Queen Victoria was formally proclaimed Queen-Empress of India, at that time her government had became the biggest drug trafficker in the history of the world. Meanwhile, Indian peasants suffered from poverty, starvation and famine – and in China tens of millions were dying from the effects of opium addiction.

The Myth of Free Trade

Towards the end of the Industrial Revolution, Frederick Engels’ book, ‘The Conditions of the Working Class in England,’ had exposed the terrible slum living environment in British cities and the brutal working conditions in factory, mine and mill. The Chartists were campaigning for change and against the ‘old Corruption’ in parliament. Only the comparatively wealthy were enfranchised and the Chartists demanded an extension to voting rights – and wanted to remove the fixers, who rigged the electoral system, and the Victorian equivalent of today’s ‘spin doctors.’

In1842, during the Opium Wars, the Chartists presented a six-mile long petition of 3,317,702 signatures to parliament calling for the adoption of a Charter of Rights, which demanded:
Universal male suffrage; Equal electoral districts; Annual parliaments; Payment of MPs; Secret ballots and No property qualifications for MPs.
The ‘Peoples Charter’ was dismissed in Westminster by 287 votes to 49. Riots and strikes broke out, but were suppressed by the police and soldiers. This was anther chapter in the constant struggle for basic human rights in Britain, which has included the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, the Levellers and Agitators movement during the English Civil War in 1642-51 – and which still continues to this day.

Engels had written that while: ‘England was to become the “workshop of the world;” all other countries were to become for England what Ireland already was – markets for manufactured goods, supplying her in return with raw materials and food’.
In ‘The Economic History of India,’ the Indian historian Rumesh Dutt wrote that: ‘The East India Company and the British Parliament … discouraged Indian manufactures … in order to encourage the rising manufactures of England. Their fixed policy … was to make India subservient to the industries of Great Britain, and to make the Indian people grow raw produce only, in order to supply material for the loom and manufactories of Great Britain.’

The traditional Indian production of silk and cotton goods was suppressed by laws and tariffs and the raw materials sent to England for manufacture in ‘the dark satanic mills.’ The effect was catastrophic for Indian artisans as a Select Committee of the House of Commons heard in 1840: ‘Dacca, which was the Manchester of India, has fallen off from a very flourishing town to a very poor and small one; the distress there has been very great indeed.’

While ‘free trade’ had been claimed as the justification for the activities of organisations like the East India Company, in reality trade was only free one way and remained a stitch-up for the native peoples. British business interests bitterly resisted any attempt to impose public control over their activities, but demanded that governments impose all manner of protective measures on their behalf. Moral issues did not play any part in decision making, because it was the profit motive that predominated and ensured that a monopoly of manufactured goods was maintained – with the cards kept stacked against ‘foreign interests’.

The Butcher’s Apron

East India House, in the City of London, was one of the nerve centers from which this system operated. Situated a short distance from the Bank of England, this grand building, with its elaborate facade, stood as a striking monument to ‘imperial achievements.’ It was demolished after the company’s demise and it is fitting that the Lloyds building now stands in its place, because, in its own time, the East India Company was an integral part of a global economy:

Opium from India bought tea from China, which was sent to Britain with Indian raw materials like cotton.

Imported raw materials were processed into textiles and other manufactured goods in British factories, which were then sold throughout the Empire, or exchanged for slaves in west Africa.

African slaves were bartered for sugar and tobacco and/or sold for gold and silver in the West Indies and America, while plantation owners worked slaves to death to produce vast profits from crops like sugar and cotton.

The gold and silver and the profits from slave labour helped fund the industrial revolution and the subsequent monopoly of manufactured goods, combined with cheap labour at home, ensured British dominance of world trade.

It was during this time that tea became a common drink in Britain and even something as mundane as this was procured by force and exploitation. The leaves to make the tea, were mostly obtained from opium trading in China, and were combined with sugar, produced by slave labour on the plantations, to produce what became England’s national drink.

The army and navy, who were controlled by the officer-class, with the rank and file soldiers and sailors drawn mainly from the Celtic fringe and the urban and rural underclass, protected this system. Mercenary units of soldiers and colonial police, recruited from the previously conquered, often playing a crucial role. While ‘civilisation’ and ‘Christianity’ were the oft-declared motives for empire, many of the subject peoples, over whose countries the Union Jack flew, had their own view of British rule. They called Britain’s flag ‘the butcher’s apron’ and when British politicians boasted that the Empire ‘was the place where the sun never sets’ they added ‘and the blood never dries.’

Pro-imperialist historians often brag that, at its height, the British Empire covered a quarter of the world’s land surface and contained a population of over 400 million. They neglect to tell us, however, that it was drug trafficking and the slave trade that helped put the ‘Great’ into Great Britain. Or that the famines in Ireland and India, that caused millions of deaths, were the result of an unyielding market ideology – backed by official callousness.

In our own age, we have new forms of slavery, which includes women trafficked for the sex trade, children trafficked for domestic, factory and even sex work and migrants forced into labour gangs. We also have the market led neoliberal economic and political agenda combined with the US-led new imperialism and the ‘war against terror’ – all of which are conducive to the new slavery happening and bear a remarkable similarity to the Victorian period. In both times, those, in who’s interests these economic and political systems are imposed, are in numbers very much smaller than those they are imposed on. So, perhaps the biggest question we all need to answer is: Why do we allow these political and economic systems to be imposed on us over and over again?

Emancipation in the Victorian period – whether for those at home, including veterans in “Great” Britain, or those suffering under imperialism in the Empire – could only have come from throwing off the legal, social, political and economic restrictions and systems being inflicted upon them. This also holds true for us today. At the very least, we should understand that – while profits multiplied in the City of London during the Victorian heyday of the British Empire and in our own time – at home and abroad many of the people face/d subjugation, slavery, misery, starvation and death.

Every time you buy a boy a violent toy you trample his soul.

The following is a cadence that was sung by the Marine Corps during basic training, and also midshipmen at the U.S. Navel Academy during the Vietnam War. In 2006, I met Kim Phuc, who was the nine-year-old Vietnamese girl who was napalmed during the Vietnam War. The picture of her running down a road with her arms stretched out became one of the most iconic images ever taken. When I heard her speak, she broke down during her presentation, and the shame we all felt in the predominately American audience was beyond belief.

Napalm Sticks to Kids

We shoot the sick, the young, the lame,
We do our best to maim,
Because the kills all count the same,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Chorus: Napalm sticks to kids,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Flying low across the trees,
Pilots doing what they please,
Dropping frags on refugees,
Napalm sticks to kids.

See those farmers over there,
Watch me get them with a pair,
Blood and guts just everywhere,
Napalm sticks to kids.

I’ve only seen it happen twice,
But both times it was mighty nice,
Shooting peasants planting rice,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Napalm, son, is lots of fun,
Dropped in a bomb or shot from a gun,
It gets the gooks when on the run,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Drop some napalm on a farm,
It won’t do them any harm,
Just burn off their legs and arms,
Napalm sticks to kids.

CIA with guns for hire,
Montagnards around a fire,
Napalm makes the fire go higher,
Napalm sticks to kids.

I’ve been told it’s not so neat,
To catch gooks burning in the street,
But burning flesh, it smells too sweet,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Children sucking on a mother’s tit,
Wounded gooks down in a pit,
Dow Chemical doesn’t give a shit,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Bombardiers don’t care a bit,
Just as long as the pieces fit,
When you stuff the bodies in a pit,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Cobras flying in the sun,
Killing gooks is lots of fun,
Get one pregnant and it’s two for one,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Shoot civilians where they sit,
Take some pictures as you spit,
All your life you’ll remember it,
Napalm sticks to kids.

NVA are all hard core,
Flechettes never are a bore,
Throw those PSYOPS out the door,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Gather kids as you fly over town,
By throwing candy on the ground,
Then grease ’em when they gather ’round,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Several years ago I met a woman who was married to a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War. He spent three tours in Vietnam flying heavily armed jets. Their two sons were born during his time in the military. She told me he got out of the service after the war, and spent most of his time being very depressed. Two of his pilot friends who were also in Vietnam committed suicide. One day when their boys were still young,
her husband walked out of the house and never came home. He simply vanished, and she never heard from him again.

Mike Hastie served as an Army Medic in Vietnam he is now a member of Veterans For Peace.

The Victorian Expansion of Empire

In Britain and Ireland, the suppression of the democratic ideals thrown up by the French Revolution culminated in the defeat of the United Irishmen. On the first of January 1801 the 500 year-old Irish parliament was dissolved and the Act of Union came into effect. A new flag, the Union Jack, was unfurled – which added the cross of Saint Patrick to those of Saint George and Saint Andrew. British soldiers would take this new symbol of empire to the far corners of the world as they were used in a long series of engagements to extend the boundaries of British control.

With the police and emergent intelligence forces now taking the front line role in preserving the status quo at home – and with ‘the world’s largest navy’ to protect national interests – the army was left relatively free to concentrate on colonial conquest. So, while the navy protected the Empire and its trading routes at sea, it was the army that forced its extension on the ground.

During Queen Victoria’s reign, from 1837 to 1901, the British Army carried out the following colonial campaigns:
Anti-colonial revolt in Canada, 1837. Capture of Aden, 1838. First Afghan War, 1838-42. Against Boers, South Africa, 1838-48. Opium Wars in China, 1839-42. War in the Levant, 1840. War in Afghanistan, 1842. Conquest of Sind, India, 1843. Gwalior War, India, 1843. First Sikh War, India, 1845-6. Against Native Africans, South Africa, 1846-52. North-West Frontier of India, 1847-54. Second Sikh War, India, 1848-9. Second Burmese War, 1852. Eureka Stockade, Australia, 1854. War with Persia, 1856-7. North-West Frontier of India, 1858-67. Storming of the Taku Forts, China, 1859-60. Maori Wars, New Zealand, 1861-4. Operations in Sikkim, India, 1861. Ambela Expedition, 1863. Yokohama, Japan, 1864-5. Bhutan Expedition, 1865. Expedition to Abyssinia, 1868. Red River Expedition, Canada, 1870. Ashanti War, West Africa, 1874. Expedition to Perak, Malaya, 1875-6. Galekas & Gaikas war, Cape Colony, 1877. North-West Frontier, India, 1878-9. Second Afghan War, 1878. Third Afghan War, 1879. Zulu War, 1879. North-West Frontier of India, 1880-4. Transvaal Revolt or First Boer War, 1880-1. Bombardment of Alexandria, 1882. Expedition to the Sudan, 1884-5. Third Burmese War, 1885. Suakin Expedition, Sudan, 1885. End of the Nile Campaign, 1885. North-West Frontier of India, 1888-92. Minor Operations in India, 1888-94. Siege & Relief of Chitral, India, 1895. Mashonaland Rising, East Africa, 1896. Re-Conquest of Egypt, 1896-8. Tirah Expeditionary Force, India, 1897-8. North-West Frontier of India, 1897-8. Boxer Rising, China, 1900-1.

Besides these conflicts, the Crimean War, 1853-6; the Indian Mutiny, 1857-8; and the Boer War, 1899-1902, involved the British Army in major warfare during this period. Troops also continued to be active in Ireland especially during the Famine, the Young Ireland revolt of 1848 and the Fenian Rising of 1867.

Some historians have described this time as the period of Pax Britannica – the smooth and almost peaceful rise of a great empire. In fact, in the 100 years from Wellington’s victory at Waterloo to the start of the 1st World War, there were only 15 years when Britain’s forces were not engaged in bloody conflict in some part of the world.

Jingoism

To counteract critical voices and win support for further conquests, the expansion of Empire was accompanied by waves of popular jingoism back home. During the Victorian era the music halls often promoted this type of sentiment in songs, like ‘Another Little Patch of Red’:

This John Bull is now a mighty chap, boys
At the world his fingers he can snap, boys
Eastward – Westward – you may turn your head
There you’ll see the giant trail of red
Dyed with the blood of England’s bravest sons
Bought with their lives – now guarded by her guns

Red is the colour of our Empire laid
England will see the tint shall never fade
For of pluck he’s brimming full
Is young John Bull
And he’s happy when we let him have his head
It’s a feather in his cap
When he’s helped to paint the map
With another little patch of red.

Jingoism came to stand for the belief that Britain had the right to conquer and exploit other countries and to decide conflicts of interest in the nation’s favour by armed force. The word itself came into use after 1878, from these lines in G. W. Hunt’s music hall song:

We don’t want to fight; but, by Jingo, if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
we’ve got the money too.

W. E. Henley also wrote verse which exalted Empire. He did not deem the casualties suffered by the conquered worth considering. The suffering of his own side was portrayed as a glorious sacrifice:

What if the best of our wages be
An empty sleeve, a stiff-set knee,
A crutch for the rest of life – who cares,
So long as the One Flag floats and dares?
So long as the One Race dares and grows?
Death – what is death but God’s own rose?
Let but the bugles of England play
Over the hills and far away!

Other writers like G. A. Henty, once editor of ‘The Union Jack’ – a ‘One Penny Weekly Boy’s Paper,’ wrote adventure books for boys which glamorised colonial warfare. His fictional public school characters were put into real life actions and were always ‘honourable’ and ‘manly’ and exuded ‘character’, ‘self-discipline’ and ‘authority’. Yorke Harberton, a typical ‘hero’ who went ‘With Roberts to Pretoria’ was:
‘A good specimen of the class by which Britain has been built up, her colonies formed, and her battle-fields won – a class in point of energy, fearlessness, and the spirit of adventure, and a readiness to face and overcome all difficulties unmatched in the world.’

Henty, who was the eldest son of a stockbroker mine-owner, hated trade unions and wrote his books to foster ‘the imperial spirit’, stating that ‘the Negro is an inferior animal and a lower grade in creation than the white man.’ [‘The British Empire,’ vol. 4, Orbis 1979].

For many British youngsters, indoctrination started even earlier, with pro-imperial themes appearing in nursery books like the ‘ABC for Baby Patriots’:

A is the Army
That dies for the Queen;
It’s the very best Army
That ever was seen.

I is for India,
Our land in the East
Where everyone goes
To shoot tigers and feast.

N is the Navy
We keep at Spithead,
It’s a sight that makes foreigners
Wish they were dead.

‘Scientific’ Racism

During the Victorian expansion of empire suspicious and hateful attitudes towards foreigners became widespread in Britain, sustained by jingoism and new pseudo-scientific theories of race. A hierarchy of races was proclaimed, with white Teutonic Anglo-Saxons at the top and black ‘Hottentots’ at the bottom. In between were the Irish, the Jews and the British working classes – about whom it was claimed that they had darker skin and hair than the upper classes. An ‘index of nigrescence’ was produced, so the racial components of any population could be deduced.

The British establishment hailed the quest for empire as a civilising mission and took it upon themselves to become the arbiters of world morality – representing conquest as a duty and exploitation as a noble task. ‘Scientific’ racism fuelled these prejudiced views, which were propagated in the music halls and in the writings and poetry of the pro-imperialists. In 1899, Rudyard Kipling encapsulated this sanctimonious ideology in his poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’:

Take up the White Man’s burden –
Send forth the best ye breed –
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man’s burden –
The savage wars of peace –
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to naught.

While the fighting qualities of Britain’s forces were glorified at home, it was really the superiority of military technology that in many cases won the day. In 1898, at the battle of Omdurman those fighting under the Union Jack fired 3,500 shells and 500,000 bullets. The British casualties numbered in the low hundreds, while 11,000 Sudanese Dervishes were killed. Most died from Maxim machine-gun fire:
‘It was not a battle but an execution … The bodies were not in heaps – bodies hardly ever are; but they spread evenly over acres and acres. Some lay very composed with their slippers placed under their heads for a last pillow; some knelt, cut short in the middle of a last prayer. Others were torn to pieces…’ [‘With Kitchener to Khartoum,’ by G. W. Steevens].
Wounded Dervishes were shot or bayoneted where they lay. Afterwards General Kitchener boasted that his victory had opened all the lands along the Nile: ‘to the civilization influences of commercial enterprise.’

As the superiority of British weaponry and technology over native peoples became greater, so racist feelings increased. Where there had been interest and sometimes admiration for aspects of other peoples’ culture and religion, there was now, all too often, only contempt. Sadly, British society is still permeated by these attitudes today.

The Officer Class

In order to perpetuate their rule and counteract critical voices the establishment had developed the ‘public school’ system of private schools. By the 19th century nearly all officers came to their regiments via public schools, which, often followed by spells at Oxford or Cambridge, had become the training ground for all the ruling class:
‘Around 1800 – over 70 per cent of all English peers received their education at just four public schools, Eton, Westminster, Winchester and Harrow. And in the first half of the nineteenth century, sons of the peerage and the landed gentry together made up 50 per cent of the pupils of all the major public schools … Removed from the private, introspective worlds of home and rural estates, they were brought into protracted contact with their social peers, were exposed to a uniform set of ideas and learnt how to speak the English language in a distinctive and characteristic way.’ [‘The British Empire,’ vol. 4, Orbis 1979].

The cadet forces in public schools were steeped in patriotic traditions and these became the seedbeds for the officer class. This concentration of young aristocracy and gentry, in institutions which moulded their perceptions and formed their ideology, helped create a cohesive and integrated ruling elite:
‘Patriotic duty was stressed in practical ways, as when public-school masters encouraged boys to participate in national subscriptions and to celebrate British military and naval victories. And patriotism of a kind was embedded in the classical curriculum. The emphasis on Greek and Roman authors and ancient history meant a constant diet of stories of war, empire, bravery and sacrifice for the state.
… Classical literature was doubly congenial because the kind of patriotic achievement it celebrated was a highly specific one. The heroes of Homer, Cicero and Plutarch were emphatically men of rank and title. As such, they reminded Britain’s élite of its duty to serve and fight, but in addition, affirmed its superior qualifications to do so.’ [‘The British Empire,’ vol. 4, Orbis 1979].

In 1864, a Royal Commission stated that public schools were:
‘The chief nurseries of our statesmen; in them, and in schools modelled after them, men … destined for every profession and career, have been brought up on a footing of social equality, and have contracted the most enduring friendships, and some of the ruling habits of their lives; and they have perhaps the largest share in moulding … the character of an English gentleman.’

‘Old Boys’

In the past primogeniture had tended to restricted opportunities in ruling families to all but the male first born, but empire and industrialisation now opened the way for all ‘gentlemen’ to gain fame and fortune. James Mill described the colonies as being ‘a vast system of outdoor relief for the upper classes.’ Armed with a comprehensive view of their superiority and right to dominance, ‘old boys’ spread out into positions of power and influence both at home and abroad.

In 1878, G. A. Denison, the son of a Nottinghamshire landowner, wrote ‘Notes of My Life,’ in which he told of his brothers and sisters:
Six of us were at Eton, one at Harrow … My eldest brother John, Viscount Ossington … after 30 years of Parliamentary life, became Speaker of the House of Commons … William went from Eton to Woolwich, then into the Engineers … After employment at home and abroad, he became in 1846 Governor of Van Dieman’s Land; Governor-General of Australia, KCB, 1855; Governor of Madras, 1861.
Stephen, … was for many years Deputy Judge Advocate. Alfred, after some 20 years of laborious, honourable, and successful life in Australia, returned finally to England, and became Private Secretary to the Speaker. Charles was in the 52nd Regiment, and became Colonel in it. He had sundry Staff employments in India; and afterwards … was Chief Commissioner of Civil Service at Madras.
My sister Charlotte, … married Charles Manners Sutton, then Judge Advocate General; afterwards, for seventeen years Speaker of the House of Commons.’

The British Army’s primary role as an imperial guard was affirmed in the Cardwell reforms in the 1870s, which strengthened the links between the officer corps and the government as well as recommending innovative procedures and logistics. The linked-battalion system would see one of a regiment’s battalions away on Imperial duty while the second unit remained in Britain. This system allowed a flexibility for individual units to develop their own techniques and procedures for waging colonial warfare. It also ensured there was, throughout the army, a shared experience of such methods. The second battalion, stationed at home, was handily available to use a refined version of this type of warfare against any internal threat.

Other Western countries had also carved out colonial empires. However, in the rest of (landlocked) Europe the primary role for most national armies was to provide defence from any external threat. Conventional warfare was the normal function, with colonial duty, entailing more irregular forms of warfare, tagged on. In island Britain the main defensive role fell to the navy, leaving the army relatively free to concentrate on the task of conquest and subjugation overseas.

While the foot soldiers came from the poor and colonised, the officer corps, produced by the public school system, ensured the perpetuation of the status quo. The history of the army can be traced back to Cromwell’s New Model Army, but its enduring character was forged, and the hierarchy strengthened, during the Victorian colonial wars. It was then that the British Army acquired its contemporary reputation among the armies of the major powers of the world as a ‘counter-insurgency’ force.

‘Pictures for Little Englanders’ was a Victorian book for young children. Under a sketch of Kitchener the soldier and Kipling the writer, the following lines were written:

Men of different trades and sizes
Here you see before your eyses;
Lanky sword and stumpy pen,
Doing useful things for men;
When the Empire wants a stitch in her
Send for Kipling and for Kitchener.

In the last years of Victoria’s reign England did send for Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the ‘great warrior hero’ of Khartoum and the battle of Omdurman, who was dispatched to South Africa to deal with the Boers who were waging guerrilla warfare against the British forces. He ordered that Boer homesteads be burnt and the women and children herded into ‘concentration camps.’ Over 60,000 ended up in conditions that an Australian reporter called the ‘criminal neglect of the simple laws of sanitation.’ By the end of the war 28,000 Boer detainees had died – 22,000 of them were children.

Tommy Atkins – dreams of love and hate

In Victorian Britain, just like in our own time – despite the waves of pro-imperial propaganda – many people had misgivings about the morality of taking and holding other peoples’ land by armed force. This often gave rise to contradictory feelings about Britain’s soldiers, which were expressed by Francis Adams in his poem ‘England in Egypt’:

From the dusty jaded sunlight of the careless Cairo streets,
Through the open bedroom window where the pale blue held the palms,
There came a sound of music, thrilling cries and rattling beats,
That startled me from slumber with a shock of sweet alarms.
For beneath this rainless heaven with this music in my ears
I was born, and all my boyhood with its joy was glorified,
And for me the ranging Red-coats hold a passion of bright tears,
And the glancing of the bayonets lights a hell of savage pride.

So I leapt and ran, and looked,
And I stood, and listened there,
Till I heard the fifes and drums,
The fifes and drums of England
Thrilling all the alien air!
And “England, England, England,”
I heard the wild fifes cry,
“We are here to rob for England,
And to throttle liberty!”
And “England, England, England,”
I heard the fierce drums roar,
“We are tools for pious swindlers
And brute bullies evermore!”

And the silent Arabs crowded, half-defiant, half-dismayed,
And the jaunty fifers fifing flung their challenge to the breeze,
And the drummers kneed their drums up as the reckless drumsticks played,
And the Tommies all came trooping, tripping, slouching at their ease.
Ah Christ, the love I bore them for their brave hearts and strong hands,
Ah Christ, the hate that smote me for their stupid, dull conceits –
I know not which was greater, as I watched their conquering bands
In the dusty jaded sunlight of the sullen Cairo streets.

And my dreams of love and hate
Surged, and broke, and gathered there,
As I heard the fifes and drums,
The fifes and drums of England
Thrilling all the alien air! –
And “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,”
I heard the wild fifes cry,
“Will you never know the England
For which men, not fools, should die?”
And “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,”
I hear the fierce drums roar,
“Will you always be a cut-throat
And a slave for evermore?”

Francis Adams was a writer and poet who produced a sizeable quantity of work in his short life. He was the son of an army surgeon and his mother was a novelist. He joined the Social Democratic Federation in London in 1883 and moved to Australia the following year. He dedicated his life to writing and, at the end of 1887, Adams wrote what became his best-known collection of poems, ‘Songs of the Army of the Night.’ This provoked mixed feelings – rage from the establishment and affection from the downtrodden – in first Australia and later in London. The extracts here are from two poems taken from this collection.

This was a time when our soldiers were expanding and consolidating the empire – and throughout this period there were frequent revolts against British rule. Adams was deeply affected by the suffering of people, wherever he found them. His poem, ‘Hong-Kong Lyrics,’ was about the plight of those suffering under the yoke of British colonialism in various parts of the Empire:

I stand and watch the soldiers
Marching up and down
Above the fresh green cricket-ground
Just outside the town.

I stand and watch and wonder
When in the English land
This poor fool Tommy Atkins
Will learn and understand?

Zulus, and Boers, and Arabs,
All fighting to be free,
Men and women and children,
Murdered and maimed has he.

In India and in Ireland
He’s held the People down,
While the robber English gentleman
Took pound and penny and crown.

To make him false to his order,
What was it that they gave—
To make him his brother’s oppressor?
The clothes and pay of a slave!

O thou poor fool, Tommy Atkins,
Thou wilt be wise that day
When, with eager eyes and clenched teeth,
Thou risest up to say:
“This is our well-loved England,
And I’ll free it, if I can,
From every rotten bourgeois
And played-out gentleman!”

There was a sad end to the life of Francis Adams, which was cut short because he suffered from an incurable lung-disease. In 1893, when he was 31 years old, Adams shot himself while suffering a massive haemorrhage caused by tuberculosis.

Adams often pitched his poetry to contrast his ‘dreams of love and hate’; feelings of love and respect for our soldiers and a hate and disrespect for what they were ordered to do – and ‘their stupid, dull conceits.’ His answer was to suggest that ‘Tommy Atkins’ should revolt against those who controlled him. The best way to honor the memory of Francis Adams is to support, or if a veteran join, Veterans For Peace and help us to take up his task of opposing our establishment’s occupations and wars in other people’s countries – and, like him, to expose the contradictions caused by our soldiers having to take part and fight in such actions.

Aly Renwick served with the British Army he is now a member of Veterans For Peace UK

Being a Londoner I have always taken a keen interest in cockney heritage and none more so than that most joyous of London attractions, The Music Hall.

Reading through the history of the Music Hall, at least the official one, you would think that it was as patriotic as fish and chips or football but there were dissenting voices that tried to counteract the mindless jingoism and xenophobia around the Boer War and The First World War.

Finding these dissenting voices is hard but I’ve had a look around and found the above song.

The provenance of the song can be read on Wikipedia here.

Sung in the Vaudeville/Music Hall style originally in the USA where isolationist and anti war sentiment was more to the fore than anywhere else, one can only imagine what would have happened to any Music Hall artist who had dared sing it in England. Sadly I can find no evidence of this song ever having been sung in a London Music Hall.

Graham Horne served in the British Army, he now lives in Bournemouth and is a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

On Friday 10 July 2015, three members of Veterans For Peace UK met in Trafalgar Square, London and walked down Whitehall towards the residence of the Prime Minister. Once at Downing Street the veterans lined up, faced the police barricades and made the following statements.

“We are members of Veterans For Peace UK, an ex-services organisation of men and women who have served this country in every conflict since the second world war. We exist in the hope of convincing you that war is not the solution to the problems of the 21st century. We have come here today to hand back things, given to us as soldiers, that we no longer require or want.” Said Ben Griffin.

“This is my Oath of Allegiance, it is something I had to recite in order to get the job as a soldier. At 15 years old I had little understanding of its true meaning. Now I fully understand the words, they have no meaning at all.” Said John Boulton who then discarded his Oath of Allegiance.

“This is my Oath of Allegiance, this was a contract between the Monarchy, the British Government and a fifteen year old child. I am no longer loyal to the Government or the Monarchy.” Said Kieran Devlin who then discarded his Oath of Allegiance.

“This is my Oath of Allegiance, I made this oath when I was 19 years old. It required me to obey orders without question. I am no longer bound by this contract.” Said Ben Griffin who then discarded his Oath of Allegiance.

“This is my Army hat, it defined me as a soldier and a cog in the military machine. I reject militarism” Said John Boulton who then discarded his beret.

“This is my Army hat, this was given to me as a sixteen year old boy. I reject militarism, I reject war. And it means nothing to me.” Said Kieran Devlin who then discarded his beret.

“I used to wear this hat as a soldier, it used to have great significance to me. I no longer want to keep hold of this symbol of militarism”. Said Ben Griffin who then discarded his beret.

“These are the medals given to me for the sick dichotomy of keeping the peace and waging war. They are trinkets, pseudo payments. But really all they represent is the self interest of those in there, who hold power.” Said John Boulton who then discarded his medals.

“These are my medals, these were given to me were given to me as a reward for invading other peoples countries and murdering their civilians. I’m now handing them back” Said Kieran Devlin who then discarded his medals.

“I was given these medals for service on operations with the British Army. This particular medal here, was given to me for my part in the occupation of Iraq. Whilst I was over there, I attacked civilians in their homes and took away their men, off to be tortured in prison. I no longer want these despicable things.” Said Ben Griffin who then discarded his medals.

The three veterans then walked away from Downing Street leaving the oaths, berets and medals lying scattered on the floor.

John Boulton served in the Armoured Corps. He deployed on operations to Cyprus and Afghanistan. He is now a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

Kieran Devlin served in the Royal Engineers. He deployed on operations to the Gulf War and N Ireland. He is now a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

Ben Griffin served in the Parachute Regiment and the SAS. He deployed on operations to N Ireland, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is now a member of Veterans For Peace UK.

Although not all veterans are severely affected, a military career carries significant mental health risks, particularly at times of war when substantial numbers of psychiatric casualties are usual. Research from the last decade shows that certain mental health-related problems in the armed forces, particularly harmful alcohol use and post-deployment violent behaviour, are a serious problem. Those who have left the forces during the last decade show markedly higher rates of a number of mental health-related problems, particularly PTSD and harmful levels of drinking. These issues are of particular concern in relation to ‘Armed Forces Day’, which serves among other things as a recruitment opportunity for the armed forces. But what are the mental health implications for those who enlist, particularly the youngest recruits who are most vulnerable to these risks?

The Origins of Mental Health Problems within the Military

Armed forces personnel are controlled from the moment they turn up for training, which steadily turns young civilians into operationally effective combatants by inculcating conformity with and obedience to the martial system. Whilst training includes conventional teaching of skills such as field-craft and handling weapons, its main objective is to reinvent how recruits think and behave (Hockey, 1986; Grossman, 2009). Training “breaks you down and then rebuilds you in a different way”, as one veteran has put it (Green et al., 2010). Another described training as operating on two fronts. First, it shapes minds by ‘indoctrinating’ recruits into the ideological values of the military system; and second, it ‘conditions’ behaviours by rewarding obedience and punishing dissent, to the point where all orders are obeyed without question or pause.

To read the rest of the article on the Karnacology blog please click HERE

Resist Militarism Network andVeterans For Peace UK have collaborated today in erecting a pop-up cinema in Glasgow city centre to draw attention to a campaign to raise the British Army recruitment age from 16 to 18.

(photo: Darren Cullen and Veterans for Peace)

The cinema screened Action Man: Battlefield Casualties,which has been viewed over 400,000 times in just 36 hours. The series of dark, satirical adverts showing three toy soldiers complete with anti-depressants, wheelchairs and body-bags has received wide praise from veterans and civilians alike, who have commented on its brutal honesty.

The Action Man film, written by artist Darren Cullen, has been released this week to counterArmed Forces Day, a marketing push by the Ministry of Defence focused on children and their parents in operation since 2009. Cullen said “Armed Forces Day is designed to capture the imagination of children, with face painting, marches and military vehicles. But the flag waving and grinning photo opportunities conceal the brutal possible outcomes of military service. Our film is intended to counter the recruitment propaganda of Armed Forces Day”.

By the Duke of Wellington statue (famous in Glasgow for the traffic cone on his head), opposite the military recruitment office and just a street away from the City Council’s festivities for Armed Forces Day, Saturday afternoon shoppers, as well as veterans and service-members who had just left a civic reception held in the City Chambers, watched the videos inside an ex-Army tent.

(photo: Resist Militarism Network)

Veterans For Peace UK are using the film to build support for the campaign to raise the recruitment age of the British Army. The UK is the only country in the EU who recruit 16 year old children, and astudy by human rights groups ForcesWatch and Child Soldiers International in 2013 found that soldiers who enlisted at 16 and completed training are twice as likely to die in Afghanistan as those who enlisted aged 18 or above.

Veterans for Peace member, John Boulton, who joined the army at 16 and went on to serve in Afghanistan commented, “The UK is one of only nineteen countries worldwide still recruiting 16 year olds into the Army. We want to put pressure on the government to bring UK recruitment policy into line with the rest of the world.”

(photo: Resist Militarism Network)

The pop-up cinema also screened The Unseen March, a new film developed by Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) about the increasing influence that the military have in schools nation-wide. According to a report from Forces Watch, on 2 September 2014 the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Defence launchedThe British Armed Forces: Learning Resource 2014. The document is framed as a History, English and Citizenship resource for Key Stages 1-4 (5-16 year-olds) ‘to educate children about the work of the UK armed forces’¹

Former head of the Army’s recruitment strategy Colonel David Allfrey has said that, “Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air-show and thinking, “That looks great” From then the army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip.”

Helen Croxton from Resist Militarism Network commented “The military have ramped up their efforts in schools – along with the North of England, Scotland is their favourite recruitment catchment area. The glorification of the Armed Forces in George Square today is part of a dampening of critical thinking and a worrying trend of militarisation across the UK. There needs to be alternative messages out there for our youth.”

Veterans For Peace and Resist Militarism Network are calling for the recruitment age in the UK to be raised to 18 in line with most countries worldwide. The video as well as details about the campaign are on the Vets For Peace website:www.battlefieldcasualties.co.uk

—

1Prime Minister’s Office (2014), The British Armed Forces Learning Resource 2014,http://www.armedforceslearningresources.co.uk; press release from Ministry of Defence, Anna Soubry MP, Department for Education and Prime Minister’s Office (2 September 2014), Armed forces learning,http://www.gov.uk/government/news/armed-forces-learning

Today Southampton today will hold ‘The Other Armed Forces Day’ Event

This MOD approved event (check their website) strongly informs and challenges commonly held views of war in days past, now and for the future.

This event involves well-researched and little known radical history; both locally and regionally that looks at the ways during the first and second world wars people who resisted or opposed it were treated, it looks at the nature of war.

A day of creative expression, dialogue and workshops that include veterans, artists, historians, poets and we hope- you too!

Stories of people who were and still are the ‘conscience of war’- telling how it was, is and what it’s like for new recruits. Also includes:

-New short films by Darren Cullen- Action man: Battlefield Casualties. This ‘other’ Armed Forces Day Event in Southampton proudly hosts this controversial quality video exposing the brutal potential outcomes of the armed service, which has become a viral hit online and gotten into national and international papers. Action Man: Battlefield Casualties, a Veterans For Peace UK film has been viewed over 300,000 times in just 36 hours.

-Ex SAS soldier Ben Griffin founder of Veterans for Peace UK: What to expect if you ‘join up’ now. Speaking from personal experience/ involvement.
-Little known accounts from Bristol Radical History Group on mutinies local and regional as well as strikes across the south of England and Europe.

-An interactive workshop with Emily Johns and Gabriel Carlyle: The world is my country – Inspiring art and histories of resistance.

-Art by CRASS member Gee Vaucher, Darren Cullen, Printmaker Emily Johns, Local Painter Lizzie Jones and so much more.

Creative activities for children arranged.

Veterans for Peace UK want to build support for the campaign to raise the recruitment age of the British Army from 16 to 18. “The UK stands alongside Iran and North Korea in continuing to recruit children into its armed forces. We want to put pressure on the government to bring UK recruitment policy into line with the rest of the world.”

ENDS

————-

a) Veterans For Peace UK, is a voluntary ex-services organisation of men and women who have served in every war that Britain has fought since WW2.

We focus our work to:

• Educate young people on the true nature of military service and war.

• Resist war and militarism through non-violent action.

• Stand in solidarity with people resisting militarism and war.

b) Battlefield Casualties was directed by Price James, written by Darren Cullen, featuring Matt Berry, produced by Agile Films.

To speak about any aspect of this day please come to the event, say who you are and ask to speak to a facilitator who will endeavor to assist you.

Email coord@vfpuk.org to speak to Veterans For Peace.

Towns and cities across the UK will today be ‘celebrating’ Armed Forces
Day. Many councils hold these events as signatories to the Armed Forces
Community Covenant; almost every local authority has now pledged support
to the armed forces in perpetuity, and hundreds of businesses,
charities, and even schools have signed the Armed Forces Corporate
Covenant.

Many of today’s events are packaged as ‘family fun’ with military
vehicles and weaponry to entice young people, and cadet and armed forces
careers marketing to recruit them. War is not family entertainment.

The school assembly packs on offer from the Ministry of Defence display
a breath-taking economy with the truth about the purpose and
consequences of military action.

Rather than institutionalising public support for the armed forces we
should stop selling war to children through sanitised celebration of the
military and the promotion of ‘military ethos’ in schools. It is
unacceptable for the UK to be the only country in the EU to still
recruit 16 year olds into the armed forces, defying the growing
international consensus against child recruitment. As one of the
thousands of signatories of our petition to change the law said,
‘Children should be protected from conflict, not incorporated in it’.

Pat Gaffney, Pax Christi UK
Emma Sangster, ForcesWatch
Ben Griffin, Veterans for Peace UK
Bruce Kent, Abolition of War
Matt Jeziorski, Peace Education Network
Claire Poyner, Network for Peace
Philip Austin, Northern Friends Peace Board
Brian Larkin, Edinburgh Peace & Justice Centre