Originally published in Medicine, Conflict & Survival, vol.23, no.4. Republished here in
anticipation and some apprehension of the full reopening of the Imperial War Museum following the massive refurbishment at
present under way preparatory to reorganisation around the First World War
commemoration. It seems unlikely to enhance its peace-museum side.
Autumn 2013: “IWM London is undergoing a major
building redevelopment, transforming our museum to mark the Centenary of the First
World War.”
(The spelling-out of Imperial would seem to have become, belatedly,
something of an embarrassment)
Braving the enormous naval guns dominating the
approach and the tons of military hardware looming oppressively inside its main
entrance, about a hundred assorted anti-war activists, students and interested
parties made their way to London's Imperial War Museum (IWM) on Friday 13 and
Saturday 14 April 2007 to attend a conference entitled 'Peace History:
Encouragement and Warnings'. The invasion was officially sanctioned, and the
event which occasioned it organised by the International Peace Bureau and the
Movement for the Abolition of War, in association with the Imperial War Museum
itself, a cooperative effort welcomed and appreciated on both sides.
The
object of the exercise was to draw attention to forgotten or neglected aspects
of history concerned with peace-building, with an emphasis on practical
examples drawn mainly from the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.
Before proceedings began and at intervals throughout the two days, participants
had the opportunity to learn or remind themselves about many of these examples
by browsing an impressive array of exhibits on the walls, celebrating women
activists for peace on one side and Nobel prize winners on the other, while the
Peace Museum (Bradford) was prominent among many organisations which made
literature, posters, and speakers available. A banner of the Movement for the
Abolition of War (MAW) beside the platform caught the eye and set the tone with
its equation of war with poverty.
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| A later flyer for the Bradford Peace Museum |
After
introductory remarks from Bruce Kent, long-serving former chair of CND, and from
the Director of the IWM pointing out that this location for such a conference
was less incongruous than might appear, in view of its origin (commemorating
the end of the First World War), Peter van den Dungen from the University of
Bradford gave an informative paper on Bertha von Suttner, 'the woman behind the
Nobel Peace Prize'. He summarised her eventful career and the influence of her
writings, in particular Die Waffen Nieder! (1889), translated in 1892 as
Lay Down Your Arms). Another two outstanding personalities were
remembered in the following sessions: Hodgson Pratt, in connection with the
early history of the International Peace Bureau (IPB); and Abdul Ghaffar Khan,
the 'Frontier Gandhi' who proclaimed and fostered a non-violent Islamic
tradition in the face of daunting difficulties. These two figures, as described
by Verdiana Grossi (Univeristy of Geneva) and Shireen Shah (Bradford Peace
Museum) respectively, had in common, in addition to their dedication to
campaigning for peace, an awareness of the social context of their efforts and
of the inestimable value of education. More social background, and more
emphasis on collective action and general movements rather than individuals,
was evident in the lively presentation on 'Civilian Resistance to US entry to
the First World War', by Joe Fahey of Manhattan College, New York, who made the
point that the peace movement needed to organise protest from below instead of
always trying to appeal to the better natures, if any, of those in positions of
power.
The
first day's proceedings ended with a panel discussion and the programme
continued on the Saturday, with an introduction on the IPB leading on to a
paper from Terry Charman of the IWM on the League of Nations and the Briand-Kellogg
Pact, which had sought, in the optimistic aftermath of the 'war to end wars',
to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy. The history of the League
was covered in some detail, acknowledging its short-lived successes and
achievements in the areas of tackling epidemics; work for refugees and against
slavery, provision of a passport for the stateless; in relation to labour
conditions and in industrial health and safety. At the same time its
limitations and the factors inhibiting it from achieving its ideal aim of
guaranteeing world peace in perpetuity were discussed, including: problems of
representation; dependence on the victorious powers; the occurrence of
expulsions and withdrawals; a tendency to perennial indecision; and the fact
that there was no legal obligation upon states to apply sanctions which it was
anyway reluctant to enforce, indeed lacking the means to do so.
Kate
Hudson (South Bank University), current Chair of CND, continued the story of
attempts to ensure international peace, this time with reference to the World
Government Movement, looking at its early history, 1945-1950. One impulse for
its creation was a critique of the United Nations, based on the perception that
sovereign states were part of the problem, therefore not the solution, and that
their existence was itself the cause of war. The newly emerged atomic threat
lent urgency to the project, which gained widespread support, recruiting about
400 communities to 'mondialisation' and speading the gospel of world citizenship,
recorded in an International Registry in Paris. Its own model came in for some
criticism, however, as being too closely based on western, even imperialist
assumptions, Peace News, the newspaper of the Peace Pledge Union, being
among those to voice dissent. There were concerns over the apparent intention
that the proposed World Government was to have a monopoly of military force,
including atomic and other weapons of mass destruction, and of weapons research
and development, while mechanisms for control and accountability were unclear.
Nevertheless a People's World Committee was established in 1950-51 in Geneva,
and the plans included a World Bill of Rights, and Food Bank. That the idea
still has its adherents, despite its decline with the onset of the Cold War and
outbreak of the Korean War, was attested by at least one member of the
audience, a world citizen still belonging to a mondialised community.
The
afternoon began with a return to the theme of individual rejection of
particpation in war, in a survey by Guido Grunewald (War Resisters
International) of the history of conscientious objection, illustrated in its
early stages by efforts that predated the First World War, in the form of
non-violent anarchist publications and the English Peace Society's Pledge for
Young Men (1902). The risks run by and suffering inflicted on those who
followed this path, especially in wartime, were shown and compared, with an
account of the legal situation in different places. While some governments
enacted laws allowing for bona fide conscientious objectors (COs) to be
excused from military conscription on some terms at least, their implementation
was not always straightforward: in France, while such a law existed, there was
a ban on publicising that same law, and Greece was carrying out executions for
refusal of military service as late as 1949. Several countries were slow to
introduce laws to make any provision for COs, delaying until the 1960s and
1970s. Discussion followed, in the course of which Bill Hetherington of Housmans
Bookshop announced that a database of COs in the UK had collected 5,000 names,
and people were encouraged to contribute to its further development if they
knew of anyone in this category whose stand should be remembered.
In the last formal presentation the
'history of art working for peace' was summarised with reference to various
modes of cultural production but especially using the visual arts, including
posters and ephemera, many of which were shown in pictures of exhibits from the
Bradford Peace Museum, and again supporters were invited to join in the
preservation of this history by searching out any artefacts in their possession
that might be offered to the collection. The conference concluded, after a
summary of its coverage and success, with a film on Danish resistance to Nazi
occupation, and a closing reception. Participants are likely to have taken more
encouragement than warning from it overall, and anyone who wandered in from the
IWM at large (leaflets were left at the main desk) could perhaps have come away
with the feeling that working for peace is a less eccentric notion than the
media would sometimes have us believe.
L. W.
July 2007
The Peace History Conference series was to continue, sometimes back at the IWM:-
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| April 2009 |
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| June 2017 |
One way of looking at
it… (Such fun!) -
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