Network for Peace

Speaker: Dr Kate Hudson. Kate, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, has held that post since 2010, having previously been Chair of the campaign since 2003. A leading anti-nuclear & anti-war campaigner nationally & internationally, she is the author of 'CND Now More Than Ever: The Story of a Peace Movement'.
Times 7.30 Buffet (please bring something if you can) 8.00 Talk & discussion, followed by social ending.

Speaker: Carrie Supple. Working with educators, youth groups, community, human rights & faith groups, historians, artists, curators, students & politicians, Carrie is creating a travelling exhibition telling the story of the US civil rights movement, showing how it affected people here & elsewhere at the time & to this day. It will make connections to local campaigns for freedom & rights, e.g. Peasants’ Revolt (East Anglia); Suffragettes (Manchester); trade unions (North East) & civil rights (Northern Ireland).

Speakers: Dave Morris & Michelle Lawson. Dave Morris, a member of the Friends of Lordship Rec in Tottenham & chair of London Green Spaces Friends Groups Network., is a long-term campaigner for the development of Friends groups for all Haringey green spaces. Michelle, also a Friends of Lordship Rec member & a south London parks gardener, is co-ordinating the production of a parks booklet on community empowerment in Haringey parks.
Times 7.30 Buffet (please bring something if you can) 8.00 Talk & discussion, followed by social ending.

Speaker: Colin Waugh. Colin, author of the pamphlet 'Plebs': The Lost Legacy of Independent Working-Class Education, will explain how trade unionists, mainly miners & railway-workers who were students at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1909, went on 'strike' (actually a boycott of specific lectures & lecturers) in an attempt to prevent the principal from being sacked, in the process creating a national system of socialist adult education genuinely independent of the powers-that-be, parts of which survived until the 1960s.

Speaker: Roger Huddle. Roger, a lifelong socialist, born & bred in Walthamstow, is a writer & local historian. During the 1889 dock strike, Mary Gray, a local member of the Social Democratic Federation, began a soup kitchen & school at her home for children of the strikers. Shocked at the lack of knowledge of their own history, in 1892 she began the Socialist Sunday School. It became a national movement. In various forms & different levels of secularism, socialism & religion, it continued till World War Two (& longer in Scotland).

Speaker: Anita Lasker Wallfish. Anita Lasker Wallfisch was born in Breslau (now Wroclaw), the youngest of three sisters. Her parents were deported in 1942. Arrested & sent to prison that year, she was sentenced for 'Forgery, Attempted Escape & Helping the Enemy’ & sent to Auschwitz/ Birkenau in 1943 where she became the only cellist in the Women's Orchestra. Transported to Bergen Belsen November 1944 & liberated by the British Army on 15th April 1945, she has lived in England since 1946, becoming a founder member of the English Chamber Orchestra with which she still plays today.

Speaker: Dr Ruth Cherrington. Working men’s clubs have been a neglected area of working class leisure, yet they were often at the heart of working class communities. This talk introduces the development of clubs from their mid-19th century origins to their current period of decline. Signed copies of Ruth’s book., ‘Not Just Beer & Bingo: A Social History of Working Men’s Clubs’ will be on sale tonight.
7.30 Buffet (please bring something if you can) 8.00 Talk & discussion, followed by social ending.

With Kate Hudson. Recent disclosures of classified documents have illustrated the ever present danger of accidental nuclear missile detonation, and Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown the risks of nuclear power generation. At the same time the US/UK Mutual Defence Agreement binds the UK to permanent involvement in nuclear armaments. Kate Hudson is a political activist and academic, and has been General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament since September 2010.

Nearest tube station Farringdon. 6.45pm (doors open 6.30).

With Chris Cole. The issue of the use of armed unmanned vehicles drifts in and out of the news cycle as individuals are targeted and eliminated in areas of conflict under the mantle of the War on Terror. A number of civilians have also become victims of the snipers in the sky. Chris Cole speaks and campaigns widely on behalf of Drone Wars UK http://dronewars.net/ of which he is Director. The organisation aims to be a source of information on the growing use of armed drones, and particularly of British drones in use in Afghanistan since 2007.

With Dr Phil Clark. A vast country with immense economic resources, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been the theatre of particularly bloody and intricate conflicts for most of the last two decades, causing an estimated 5.4 million deaths and an ongoing humanitarian crisis, with widespread rape used as a weapon of war. The recent signing of peace agreements between the Congolese government and the M23 rebel group has brought the conflict back into the spotlight.

London Pacifism and Nonviolence Discussion Group meet on the second Tuesday of the month. All are welcome, but please be prepared to join in the discussion. Please try to turn up by 7pm sharp.

LGBT History Month/Paradise Press book launch. Paradise Press launch two new titles by gay authors, as part of LGBT History Month celebrations. With Christopher Preston and David Gee.

The OT will be launching their 24th issue, which has a particular focus on the politics of mental health. There will be a facilitated panel and audience discussion exploring contemporary themes surrounding the ideas and lived experiences of 'madness', including: relationship to the state & capitalism, divide & control, the role of drugs and psychiatry, its intersection with gender and race struggles and the possibilities for resistance and transformation in the midst of undoubted suffering.

With Lynne Segal. A profound and sympathetic investigation of ageing, in life and literature, by Lynne Segal. Lynne has been described by Judith Butler as “one of the most capacious readers of feminism and sexuality studies I have ever encountered.”

With Dr Hakim Adi. Dr Hakim Adi examines the role of the Comintern in liberation struggles in Africa during the inter-war period, as explored in his recent book ‘Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919-1939’ (Africa World Press, 2013).
Housmans Bookshop,
http://www.housmans.com/events.php

Conference: The First World War- imperial war to class war.
See http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com

Speaker: (Ex-soldier) Joe Glenton.

Afghans celebrate their Now Ruz (New Year) on the 21st of March and Voices for Creative Non-Violence UK is holding a weekend of solidarity with Afghan people by holding a kite flying weekend. Kite flying has become synonymous with Afghanistan as a well loved pursuit which was banned under the Taliban. Afghans are now more used to the presence of UK armed and surveillance drones flying overhead and with the mental pressure and physical destruction which this brings. The Afghan Peace Volunteers based in Kabul will also be taking part in the international action of solidarity.

A public meeting with Ben White, a freelance journalist, writer and activist, specialising in Palestine and Israel.

International Conference to be held as part of the 40th Anniversary Celebrations of the Division of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. The conference is organised around eight themes: Disarmament; War and Peace in Africa; Peace Education: Participation; Conflict Resolution; Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding; Philosophy and War; the Security-Development Nexus. Conference participation is free but no travel or accommodation grants can be provided. Registration for the conference opens on 1 December 2013 and continues until 31 March 2014.