BSNews editor Alison Banville writes: The great Jim Radford has died aged 91. I was privileged to know him through Veterans For Peace UK and spend time with him, like here when he took me to his local pub for a sing with his folk group. Jim was 15 years old and a cabin boy on a boat at D-Day […]
Tag: Veterans For Peace UK
A Tribute To Ben Griffin of Veterans For Peace UK
Ben Griffin – a few words:This is the first Remembrance Sunday in four years that I won’t be at the Cenotaph with Veterans For Peace UK, because I’m in Beirut. But I am thinking about them today, all the extraordinary men I’ve met with their stories of extraordinary courage – not the ‘courage’ of the war propagandists who are in […]
NEVER AGAIN: THE GENESIS OF CITY BOMBING
The Genesis of City Bombing in World War One A major raison d’être for the formation of the RAF in April 1918 – and establishing it as independent part of Britain’s armed forces alongside the Army and Navy – was to produce a strategic bombing force for the sole purpose of attacking built up areas deep inside western Germany. By […]
SUGGESTIONS ON NEUTRALITY
The following was written by Edward Horgan, coordinator of VFP Ireland and International Secretary of the Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance. Edward will be speaking about neutrality at our AGM on Friday 9 November. (Veterans For Peace UK). First of all, feel free to criticise and challenge what I am saying. Issues of war and peace especially are so complex and so controversial […]
VETERANS FOR PEACE FROM AROUND THE WORLD TO GATHER IN LONDON FOR ARMISTICE
This weekend military veterans from around the world; Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, USA, Wales and Zimbabwe, will attend the annual gathering of Veterans For Peace UK (VFP UK) in London. The weekend includes a public conference on Saturday and culminates with a remembrance ceremony at The Cenotaph in London on Sunday 11 November, Armistice […]
NEVER AGAIN: 1918 – 2018
Sunday 11 November 2018 will be the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. In the run up to that centenary, Veterans For Peace UK aim to resurrect the slogan Never Again which was widely used by the public in the years after the First World War. Never Again was a rally cry from the people who had lost friends, family […]
‘The Wrong Kind of Veteran’ – Veterans For Peace UK, Blackpool Council and the Death of Civil Liberties
Two weeks ago on Armed Forces Day a group of men handing out leaflets in Blackpool was ordered by a private security firm’s employees to stop what they were doing immediately and leave the promenade. What on earth was on those leaflets? Something highly offensive, surely, to have forced the authorities into such dramatic action to prevent the public seeing […]
Dispatches From Damascus: Part Five
The area I was standing in was made safe only a few days previously by the SAA victory in Douma and East Ghouta as a whole. Under the surrender terms Jaysh al Islam agreed to release all their kidnapped civilians, a number believed to be around 5000. All the families of these disappeared turned up hoping to be reunited with them, but only 200 people emerged from the tunnels. The others had all been killed.
SEARCH TEAM FINDS LASER WEAPON SYSTEM AT ARMS FAIR
DSEI (Defence & Security Equipment International) is the world’s largest arms fair. It allows arms buyers and sellers to network and make deals. It happens once every two years in East London. On Thursday 7 September 2017 Veterans For Peace UK (VFP UK) conducted a vehicle check point (VCP) on the route into the Excel Centre during the setup of the DSEi […]
Veterans For Peace UK Stall Armed Forces Day PR Machine
This fetishization of the ‘British Soldier’, emblem of the armed forces as a whole, has become pathological in its intensity in parallel with our foreign military interventions being prosecuted in an era of unprecedented political mendacity. The more profound the corruption, the greater the need for propaganda and, importantly, the cruder it needs to be as the most skilled propagandist of them all, Joseph Goebels, well understood when he declaimed that propaganda ‘must always be essentially simple and repetitious’ and must ‘appeal to the emotions and instinct, never the intellect.’ ‘Hero’, ‘Help For Heroes’, ‘our heroes overseas’, ‘our courageous men and women protecting our freedoms’, ‘protecting us’, ‘doing it for us’… ‘for us’, ‘for us’, for us’.
Moral Injury: The Wounded Soul
Veterans For Peace UK members John Bourton and Daniel Lenham each gave a fascinating talk at the Hexham Debates recently on ‘how to turn your child into a killer’ and ‘moral injury’ respectively. (See video above). John discusses ‘the psychological processes that go on to turn you from a child into a killer, which, essentially is what basic training […]
‘Become a suicide bomber!’: Trident whistleblower says artist’s spoof Navy ads are accurate
Spoof Royal Navy recruitment posters, which claim sailors on board Britain’s nuclear submarines are effectively suicide bombers, have won the approval of Trident safety and security whistleblower William McNeilly.