«Peace News»: История пацифистского журнала (1936–…)

British pacifist magazine started in 1936

Peace News (PN) is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), and from 1990 to 2004 was co published with War Resisters' International.

Peace News was begun by Humphrey Moore who was a Quaker and in 1933 had become editor of the National Peace Council's publications. Working with a peace group in Wood Green, London, Moore and his wife, Kathleen (playing the role of business manager), launched Peace News with a free trial issue in June 1936. With distribution through Moore’s contacts with the National Peace Council, the new magazine rapidly attracted attention. Within six weeks, Dick Sheppard, founder of the Peace Pledge Union, proposed to Moore that Peace News should become the PPU’s paper. Early contributors to this new organ of the PPU included Mohandas Gandhi, George Lansbury, and illustrator Arthur Wragg. Some contributors were so sympathetic to the grievances of Nazi Germany that one sceptical member found it difficult to distinguish between letters to Peace News and those in the newspaper of the British Union of Fascists. The historian Mark Gilbert has argued that "With the exception of Action, the journal of the British Union of Fascists, it is hard to think of another British newspaper which was so consistent an apologist for Nazi Germany as Peace News." However, Juliet Gardiner has noted that Peace News also urged the British government to give sanctuary to Jewish refugees from Nazism. The fact that some PN contributors were supporting appeasement and excusing Nazi actions caused PN contributor David Spreckley to express fears that "in their scramble for peace", they were gaining "some questionable allies". Sales of Peace News peaked at around 40,000 during the so called Phoney War between September 1939 and May 1940. In that month in the face of demands in parliament for the banning of the paper, the printer and distributors stopped working with Peace News. However, with help from the typographer Eric Gill, Hugh Brock and many others, Moore continued to publish Peace News and arrange for distribution around the UK. By 1946 Murry had abandoned pacifism and resigned. Hugh Brock took on the role of assistant editor of Peace News in 1946 and became editor in 1955, lasting until 1964. During his period of tenure the magazine separated from the PPU as it had widened its focus into areas not directly related to absolute pacifism. and Maurice Cranston (later to become a noted philosopher). From the 1940s on, Peace News began to take a strongly critical line towards British rule in Kenya. The magazine also established links with African anti colonial activists Kwame Nkrumah and Kenneth Kaunda, and "Peace News′ close involvement with the anti apartheid struggle led to the banning of the paper in South Africa in 1959". During the 1950s, Peace News contributors included such noted activists as André Trocmé, Martin Niemöller, Fenner Brockway, A. J. Muste, Richard B. Gregg, Alex Comfort, Donald Soper, Michael Scott, MPs Leslie Hale and Emrys Hughes, Muriel Lester, Wilfred Wellock, and Esmé Wynne Tyson.

In 1959, a gift of £5,700 from Tom Willis enabled Peace News to buy 5 Caledonian Road, London, N1. This became its office and printing press and was also shared with Housmans Bookshop. It was at the Peace News office that the nuclear disarmament/peace symbol was adopted. Describing the British pacifist tradition in the 1950s, David Widgery wrote "at its most likeable it was the sombre decency of Peace News, then a vegetarian tabloid with a Quaker emphasis on active witness". The magazine campaigned against nuclear weapons, often working with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. During this period Brock brought to Peace News "a staff of writer activists committed to developing Gandhian nonviolent action in the anti militarist cause", including Pat Arrowsmith, Richard Boston, April Carter, Alan Lovell, Michael Randle, Adam Roberts and the American Gene Sharp. Brock's successor in 1964 was Theodore Roszak. In the same year, a Caribbean Quaker and PN writer, Marion Glean, "contributed to a series of statements by post colonial activists on 'race' in the run up to the 1964 election, published by Theodore Roszak, editor of Peace News." After the election, Glean helped bring together several activists, including David Pitt, C. L. R. James and Ranjana Ash to form the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination. Peace News also ran lengthy analysis of left wing thinkers, including E. P. Thompson's two part study of C. Wright Mills and Theodore Roszak's assessment of Lewis Mumford.

In 1971 it added to its masthead the words "for nonviolent revolution". In 1974, the paper moved its main office to Nottingham, where it remained until 1990. Peace News suspended publication at the end of 1987, intending to relaunch after a period of rethinking and planning. In May 1989 the paper resumed publication, but quickly ran into financial difficulties. In 1990 it became linked to War Resisters' International and was co published as a monthly until 1999, then as a quarterly with a British orientated Nonviolent Action published in the intervening months. Peace News came out strongly against the Iraq War while at the same time condemning Saddam Hussein. In 2005, Peace News resumed monthly publication, as an independent British publication and in a tabloid format. In June 2014, Peace News ran an article calling for a "Yes" vote in the Scottish independence referendum.

In the 2015 United Kingdom general election, Peace News endorsed voting Green as "the default position for folk who’re willing to vote at all – unless you’ve got a sitting left wing Labour MP like John McDonnell. Tony Benn described Peace News as "a paper that gives us hope (it) should be widely read". In the 2019 United Kingdom general election, Peace News endorsed voting Green, Labour or Plaid Cymru. Peace News continues to be published in tabloid size print media and as a website by Peace News Ltd. It describes its editorial objectives as: to support and connect nonviolent and anti militarist movements; provide a forum for such movements to develop common perspectives; take up issues suitable for campaigning; promote nonviolent, antimilitarist and pacifist analyses and strategies; stimulate thinking about the revolutionary implications of nonviolence. It is currently edited by Milan Rai and Emily Johns. The Peace News archives are held at the Commonweal Collection in the J. B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford.

The following is a partial list of Peace News publications.

+#NameTermNotes1Humphrey Moore1936–402John Middleton Murry1940–463Frank Lea1946–494Bernard Boothroyd1949–515J. Allen Skinner 1951–556Hugh Brock1955–647Theodore Roszak1964–658Rod Prince1965–679Editorial committee1967 1990All editorial staff jointly lead the paper.10Ken Simons1990–9511Tim Wallis1995–9712Chris Booth and Stephen Hancock 1997–2000Joint editors.13Ippy Dee2000–0714Milan Rai and Emily Johns2007–presentJoint editors.