Edinburgh Peace and Justice Resource Centre

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Rise Up Singing

“I believe that I am upholding international law, and that this is my duty as a citizen of this country, and of the world.”

To hear myself saying this was a great relief, as I had deliberately not prepared a statement to make when the charges “breach of the peace” were brought against me at Faslane Nuclear Base. I was relieved that what came out was both logical and correct.

We had been singing through ceaseless rain for many hours, with good humour, and with deep concern, assisted by our old friends the midges. Songsheets disintegrated in our hands, and we kept singing. This continued all day with different choirs and song leaders teaching us new songs, and munching through some old favourites, such as “War Machine”, that are sadly still relevant today. It was one of those days when you just have to give in to being drenched, and enjoy it all the better for it.

As a group, we moved into the road singing “Freedom come all ye” and continued to sing as some of us sat down. As a unified whole, we turned our backs on the beautiful countryside that holds our weapons of genocide, faced the gates of Faslane, and kept singing. We reinforced for ourselves that we will use our personal resources not for destruction, but for constructive means, by creating living, working music together as a community. We sang for ourselves and each other, and we sang for the police, the military, and the wider community, that they may hear our message and feel both the pain and hope that we express.

Those standing in the road moved away to the relative ‘safety’ of the pavement, and those of us sitting in the road remained. And still we sang.

I didn’t really notice being arrested on a very conscious level. We were singing “Bin the Bomb”, and I looked past the gates, and was very aware of being one of many voices, of being part of a choir. I met eye to eye with my arresting officers as I was carried away, singing with all of my force. One by one my friends joined me in the police van, and we continued to sing. We sang our way to Clydebank and spoke freely with the police whom we encountered as one by one we were processed. Having established that the lentils in my pocket were neither a sinister plot nor a tasty snack, but in fact a broken shaker, I was taken to my cell.

It’s surprisingly freeing, being locked inside a room for an act that you believe to be thoroughly correct. For innumerable logical, moral and legal reasons, it is obscenely wrong for us to be engaging weapons of mass destruction in our military defence, and not only allowing, but instructing members of our armed forces to prepare to commit war crimes. I say this particularly at a time when our departed Prime Minister, who is about to become a ‘peace envoy’, makes statements such as “The problem with this country is that we put civil liberties before the fight against terrorism.” Thanks Tony, but sadly, and in fact quite terrifyingly, the opposite is true.

All evening we sang in the cells. We sang “Peace Salaam Shalom”, “I shall be Released”, “Aye but I will sit here”, some arias by Vivaldi and Purcell, “Never give up”, and literally countless others.

During a brief logistical oversight, we failed to notice that all of the choir leaders had decided to blockade the road, thus risking arrest, leaving our singers without waving arms to encourage them.

Upon our release, some of us were driven back to Faslane, and some departed sadly, but with a song in the street and warm hugs to send them on their way. With most sincere delight, we returned to find our friends still singing by the gates, and evidently having a wonderful time, so we joined them for a couple of hours, learning new songs, remembering old ones, and enjoying conversations with the police and eating mercifully dry sandwiches.

The sheer force of a group of people singing is quite something to be reckoned with not only by the physical power of many voices together, but also by the beauty and pain which is expressed so thoroughly through this medium. It is a resistance that causes the police to unwittingly tap their feet, or to feel a depth of sorrow that we all, by our common humanity, instinctively feel about death and destruction. It is quite something to be asked by your arresting officer to continue singing – to continue to express that which you have been arrested for. Music has the power to unite a group of people who are visually divided by uniform: yet all embody the same principle of trying to regain and retain a place of safety and justice, but employ different means to achieve this. I feel that this is largely understood by the people who protest at Faslane, and by the people who police at Faslane.

In recent weeks, many of my friends have been somewhat preoccupied with the fact that I've been arrested, and have unfortunately missed the point completely. I did not go to Faslane to be arrested, although I was fully aware that this would happen. If I had wanted to get arrested I could simply have committed a crime much nearer to home. I went to Faslane to remove my consent from our national defence strategy of the threat and use of Genocide. I express myself through music, so I go to this place and I sing.

We sang in the rain, and we sang in the road. We sang in the police van, and we sang in the cells. They released us, and we sang our way back to Faslane.

As those wonderful singers slowly left Faslane to return to their ordinary lives, I was left with a great depth of sorrow. I was almost bereft at the loss of people who will willingly and ceaselessly sing with me, and who sing, as I do, with great strength of purpose. I was saddened by the unthinkable terror that we could release in one moment, and by the great length of the road ahead, but I was also galvanized by the knowledge that my action was not solitary, that it is part of a many stranded movement of people to create change for the better. Before I left Faslane, I wrote a song with only the words “Be still my sorrow”.

As I drove home, exhausted from four days of singing, I let out a guttural roar until there was no breath left in me.

- Penny Stone

The Government should commit to reduce UK emissions of carbon dioxide by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 if it is to do its fair share to prevent dangerous climate change, according to a report published today by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
IPPR's research shows that if global average temperature is allowed to rise more than 2?C above the pre-industrial level, dangerous climate change impacts are likely to occur including: billions more people facing water shortages worldwide; crop losses hitting major food exporting countries; a very high proportion of coral reefs dying; and the irreversible decline of the Amazon rainforest.

Originally posted to the old P & J website by Geoffrey Carnall

On the BBC’s ‘Today’ programme on 22nd January, Helena Kennedy spoke about the initiative to follow up the Power Inquiry: ‘Make it an Issue’. This was the latest phase of her concern to re-energise the democratic process, to re-connect people with politics. The cash-for-honours scandal had only reinforced the impression that people with money had far more influence than was good either for them or the wider community.

The following day there was an interview with a distinguished American physicist, Richard Garwin, who had designed the first hydrogen bomb. He was here to give evidence to the Parliamentary Defence Committee on Trident replacement. He made clear that the Government’s insistence on a decision now was at best extremely premature. Ministers spoke of the present submarines as having a 25-year life, but this was a minimum life, and there was no reason to suppose that, if the UK wanted to have nuclear weapons into the 2030s and 2040s the present batch would serve. Not that he wanted Britain or any other nation to have such weapons. He said that what was needed was a concerted effort to eliminate nuclear weapons, and this really would make the world more secure. At the time of writing it is too early to read about Dr Garwin’s actual appearance before the Defence Committee, but it sounds pretty devastating so far as the Government is concerned. Will it change their mind? Probably not, for reasons closely related to Helena Kennedy’s concerns.

In November last year, Murray Easton, head of the submarines division of BAE Systems, warned that same Defence Committee that if a decision to replace Trident submarines were not made soon, his company would begin to lose the skilled and experienced workers needed to do the job, with a catastrophic effect on the industry.

In effect, Mr Easton was saying that if the jobs were not available in the military sector, his staff would drift into more socially useful civilian work. Peace people are apt to deplore the failure to follow through on the defence diversification project initiated years ago by Lucas Aerospace workers. It is nice to learn that diversification can happen through the operation of market forces – no dramatic conversions, just an inexorable erosion.

But governments can intervene to control the market, and powerful players like BAE Systems can do great things. They were accused of bribery to secure a valuable contract from Saudi Arabia, accusations so substantial that the Serious Fraud Office launched an investigation. The Saudis were furious, BAE Systems was horrified at the probable loss of hundreds of jobs and millions of profit. BAE is on good terms with the Government: three times did the Government press the SFO to halt the investigation; three times did the Saudis do likewise. BAe Systems made representations only once, but the cumulative effect of seven petitions wore the SFO down: the investigation was halted, ‘in the wider public interest’.

BAE Systems needs the Trident replacement contract, so it will almost certainly get it. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is but a scrap of paper, tame Members of Parliament can be trusted to do as they are bid, Cardinals and Moderators can be ignored. As for the protesters at Faslane – words fail me. Of course it is just possible that the stench will become so overpowering that there will be trouble. Helena Kennedy may come into her own after all.

Originally posted to the old P & J website by Motunrayo Kinrin and Bob Warren

The 21st century has come to witness a wide range of interesting occurrences which are not only worthy of note but serve as yard sticks to measure future successes. The Global Xchange (GX) program is one of them. The program which is organised by Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), the British Council and Community Services Volunteers (CSV) is aimed at community development using young people within the ages of 18 – 25. The eighteen young people that make up the GX team are from Nigeria and the UK thus aside from developing the community, a base for cultural learning, religious tolerance and better international relationships are promoted.

For the Xchange the Scottish capital Edinburgh was twinned with Calabar in south-east Nigeria to be the host communities where the volunteers live and work for a period of six months (three months in each community).

As several ideas come into play fundamental projects are brilliantly executed. Work placements (of which the P&J is one) are carefully selected mirroring the individual interests of the volunteers in order to better develop their skills and help them to enjoy what they do. Amongst the projects which the volunteers undertook in Nigeria were the visiting of an orphanage, helping psychiatric patients with music therapy, embarking on an educational rally, monitoring the voter registration and performing a drama to fund raise for an impoverished special needs school.

Education, an indispensable tool in the 21st century comes into play as volunteers run weekly workshops and presentations around an issue of their choice affecting the host community. This further enhances the level of confidence in volunteers and broadens their insights in several fields.

As volunteers in the Edinburgh Peace & Justice Centre we are able to understand issues that not only affect Edinburgh but the UK and the world at large. The centre has served as an educative forum where materials for presentations, debates, thesis and seminar could be used. In a lot of ways we feel that the aim of the Global Xchange programme has a verisimilitude with the Peace & Justice Centre. As little as one volunteer is able to do, it goes a long way in preparing peoples minds for responsibilities that permeate our world. Thus as young activists we triumphantly join the Anti Trident campaign irrespective of our background, religion or culture. Because we understand the greatest need of the human race we say NO! to Trident, and all we want is PEACE!

It is not always easy to make the news, and it is important to keep trying!

“Publicity is vitally important to any campaign in raising public awareness, contacting and connecting with like-minded individuals and groups, and updating those involved and public alike to any developments or victories.

The Long Walk for Peace and Faslane 365 (which is, of course, still on-going) have succeeded in bringing together people from very diverse backgrounds and areas of the globe, all working autonomously toward their shared goal of nuclear disarmament and a more peaceful society. Many of these individuals have also worked hard to ensure that the word is our and spread by contacting local and national news and radio, often resulting in growing media interest and subsequently a higher profile.”

When I came into the Centre to see what the newsletter pixies had sent for January, I found the words above drafted on a piece of paper. It went on to mention a list of articles which I was not able to locate. I can however direct the reader to www.faslane365.org/links/press_coverage and www.scotland4peace/news which give a tasty selection of what the media picked up.
Browse the press releases and reports of the work and passion and action is necessary to obtain the vital “publicity”. I recommend it.
Trident, increasing insecurity and wasting resources badly needed for real needs, has been debated. The debate is not recognised. The recently revealed correspondance between Blair and Bush committing this country to this expenditure demonstrates Blair's 'debate' and Brown's 'personal opinion' as a travesty of democracy. The replacement or upgrading of Trident completely disregards the views of the majority of people in this country, its spiritual leaders and its trade unions.

On the Thursday before Christmas we saw ex CND members, now MSPs disregard the electorate. We were delighted at Malcolm Chisholm's stand and thank and congratulate him. (That was reported)We were moved by Chris Ballance's responsible and well argued appeal to his colleagues to follow their consciences rather than party whips (Not reported).

We cried shame on the politicians as we left the public gallery. And shame on journalists who treat the issue as a foregone conclusion, hold off from giving a clear and open account of events and neglect to report accurately on the activities of those who work for peace.

This article was originally posted to the old P & J website by Idoia Garcia

The human brain is a mystery. Scientists say that we only use 20% of our total faculty, which means that many things are still to be discovered. We can remember our first day of school, when we broke a leg at 5, but sometimes wehave trouble trying to remember what
we had for dinner last night. Why do we remember some things more easily than others? Is it maybe that we don't want to remember? We cannot answer these questions yet one thing is certain: we can't let ourselves forget.

Wars are the most cruel acts human beings have invented. Thousands of battles have been fought and innocent people have died. We can't let ourselves forget. They had names, dreams and hopes. They had expectations for a long and happy life. But we keep forgetting
them. We forget who they were, where they lived and what they did. We even have to build monuments to be able to recall that a war took place, and that men and women died. A long wall in Washington DC makes us remember each and everyone of the American soldiers that died in Vietnam, but who makes us remember each and every Vietnamese?. We can't let ourselves forget. We have forgotten how many
people died in Kosovo, how many were killed in Angola and how many died for the divided Korea. This probably is because unconsciously we forget the bad and ugly events of our lives. This is understandable. However we have to be persistent and not forget and learn from our mistakes to not let it happen again. We all know wars do not result in anything good, so why do we keep fighting? Wars have only left us poverty, sadness and desperation. But we can make them stop here and now, with the desire for a better world. Because as John Lennon said: "Imagine there is nothing to kill and die for... Imagine all the people living life in peace... and the world will be as one".