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33-887: Audiences paid what they could afford, but at least one penny. It also pioneered the lunchtime performance, which bought in a whole new audience. The theatre staged seasons, including the first season of gay plays in Britain, the first women's season, a Jewish season, an anti-nuclear season and a season to mark the 1976 American Bicentennial. There were readings of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy 's controversial The Non-Stop Connolly Show (1976) on Irish politics. Numerous individual new plays by writers Mike Stott , Henry Livings , Michael Stevens , Wolf Mankowitz and Edward Bond were performed. Tom Stoppard developed several of his key one-act plays here, including After Magritte and Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth . His highly successful Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land went on to transfer from

66-509: 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

99-665: A dispute between the Peace News staff and the Peace News board of trustees, that had ended with the mass resignation of the magazine's staff. The Peace News archives are held at the Commonweal Collection in the J.B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford . Peace News opposed the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan and "seeks to oppose all forms of violence". It also opposes

132-409: 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 . In September 2024, it was announced that Peace News magazine had been closed. This closure was due to

165-474: 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

198-615: A jury acquitted the BWNIC 14 in 1975, although two members of Peace News collective were fined for helping two AWOL soldiers go to Sweden. In 1974, together with Nicholas Albery of BIT Information Service, Peace News began publishing the Community Levy for Alternative Projects , an invitation to supply funds for, generally, fledgling alternative projects, partly targeting shops and businesses that identified with counter-cultural ideas and aspirations. In August 1974, Peace News published

231-547: A nonviolent direct action project, Operation Omega , to challenge the Pakistani military blockade of then East Pakistan . In the same year Peace News criticised the attempt to ban the sex education book The Little Red Schoolbook , and reprinted extensive extracts from the publication in the magazine. In 1972 Peace News co-editor Howard Clark , after meeting activists from the Canadian Greenpeace boats, initiated

264-472: A peaceful society once hostilities ended. In 1940 the PPU asked Moore to step aside in the post of assistant editor (which post he held until 1944), and appointed John Middleton Murry as editor. 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

297-492: 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

330-461: A special edition revealing and printing in full Colonel David Stirling 's plans to establish a strike-breaking "private army", "Great Britain 1975". By arrangement The Guardian led with this story on the day of publication, Peace News won the 1974 "Scoop of the Year" award from Granada Television . In 1978, Peace News , together with The Leveller magazine, revealed the identity of Colonel B ,

363-680: A witness in the ABC Trial . Peace News fought its conviction for "contempt of court" right up to appeal in the House of Lords, where the Lord Chief Justice's "guilty" verdict was finally overturned. In 1995, Peace News and the Campaign Against Arms Trade were jointly sued for libel by the Covert & Operational Procurement Exhibition (COPEX) for repeating allegations that the exhibition

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396-1041: The Campaign Against Racial Discrimination . Throughout the 1960s, Peace News covered issues such as opposition to the Vietnam War and the Biafran issue in the Nigerian Civil War . The magazine's coverage of the Vietnam War was notable for its support for the protests of the Vietnamese Buddhists , who it argued could become a nonviolent "Third Force" independent of both the Saigon and Hanoi governments. 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

429-524: 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,

462-526: The Almost Free to run for four-and-a-half years at the Arts Theatre . 51°30′38″N 0°07′57″W  /  51.5106°N 0.1325°W  / 51.5106; -0.1325 This British theatre–related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . John Arden John Arden (26 October 1930 – 28 March 2012) was an English playwright who at his death was lauded as "one of

495-514: 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

528-441: 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

561-565: 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

594-552: The PPU as it had widened its focus into areas not directly related to absolute pacifism. Peace News in the 1940s published material from American journalist Dwight Macdonald 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

627-564: 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 . Peace News also had a large number of women contributors, including Vera Brittain , Storm Jameson , Rose Macaulay , Ethel Mannin , Ruth Fry , Kathleen Lonsdale and Sybil Morrison . Some contributors were so sympathetic to

660-508: The UK's "retention and renewal of nuclear weapons in the shape of Trident ". It states that it "draws on the traditions of pacifism, feminism , anarchism , socialism , human rights , animal rights and green politics – without dogma, but in the spirit of openness." Peace News has been associated with initiating numerous campaigns, and a number of its staff members have been arrested for taking part in peace actions. In November 1957 Hugh Brock

693-417: 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

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726-456: 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. Humphrey Moore’s emphasis on Peace News having a single-minded anti-war policy was increasingly being challenged. Others wanted greater emphasis on building

759-609: 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

792-513: The group that became London Greenpeace , at first campaigning against French nuclear tests. In 1973 Peace News played a central role in launching the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign (BWNIC) and in supporting the "BWNIC 14", fourteen activists, including a member of the Peace News collective, charged with "conspiracy to incite disaffection" via a leaflet "Some Information for Discontented Soldiers". After an 11-week trial,

825-709: The last of which was performed at the 1965 Chichester Festival by the National Theatre after it was rejected by the Royal Court. His 1978 radio play Pearl was considered in a Guardian survey to be one of the best plays in that medium. He also wrote several novels, including Silence Among the Weapons , which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1982, and Books of Bale , about the Protestant apologist John Bale . He

858-568: The most significant British playwrights of the late 1950s and early 60s". Born in Barnsley , son of the manager of a glass factory, he was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, King's College, Cambridge , and the Edinburgh College of Art , where he studied architecture. He first gained critical attention for the radio play The Life of Man in 1956 shortly after finishing his studies. Arden

891-558: The words "for nonviolent revolution". In 1974, the paper moved its main office to Nottingham, where it remained until 1990. In 1978, one worker at Housmans was injured after a bomb was sent to the Peace News offices, (allegedly by the neo-Nazi organisation Column 88 ) as part of a series of attacks on left-wing organisations (similar attacks were made on the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League offices before this occurred). Peace News suspended publication at

924-460: Was a founder member of the anti-nuclear Committee of 100 , and he also chaired the pacifist weekly Peace News . In Ireland, he was for a while a member of Official Sinn Féin . He was an advocate of civil liberties, and opposed anti-terror legislation, as demonstrated in his 2007 radio play The Scam . He was elected to Aosdána , an Irish arts academy, in 2011 before dying in Galway in 2012. He

957-600: Was a member of the Royal Society of Literature . With his wife and co-writer Margaretta D'Arcy he picketed the RSC premiere of his Arthurian play The Island of the Mighty , because they thought the production was pro-imperialist, and they wrote several plays together which were highly critical of the British presence in Ireland, where he and D'Arcy lived from 1971 onward. In 1961, he

990-703: 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

1023-756: Was initially associated with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in London. His 1959 play, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance , in which four army deserters arrive in a northern mining town to exact retribution for an act of colonial violence, is considered to be his best . His work was influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theatre as in Left-Handed Liberty (1965, on the anniversary of Magna Carta ). Other plays include Live Like Pigs , The Workhouse Donkey , and Armstrong's Last Goodnight ,

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1056-721: Was one of three founders of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, which was run from the Peace News office and involved many Peace News staff. The DAC produced the first badges with the Nuclear Disarmament/Peace symbol, and organised various actions of civil disobedience against nuclear weapons and also the first of the Aldermaston Marches in Easter 1958. In 1971 Peace News , together with War Resisters' International , initiated

1089-566: Was waked in a wicker casket. (Selected) Plays written in collaboration with Margaretta D'Arcy include: Peace News 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

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