Remembrance Day 2012

To all who are planning or will be attending a Remembrance Sunday event on November 11th

Letter from Robert A. Hinde, former pilot,
Coastal Command, RAF 1941-45

Dear friend,

As Remembrance Sunday approaches, I feel more strongly than ever that the world is not as it should be. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Earth’s bounties are squandered and used to fill the pockets of the powerful. The so-called 'war to end wars' was followed by another world war and by many localised ones, often characterised by unspeakable cruelty.

In World War II my brother died, slowly and painfully of wounds, exposure and dehydration in a ship’s lifeboat. My boyhood friend, an RAF navigator, is buried in Germany.

Our War Memorials list those who 'gave their lives': it would be more honest to say they were killed. If wars continue, thousands more people will be killed or wounded. Families will be destroyed.

Remembering is not enough. The best way to honour the dead is to work for the world they wanted, a world without war. We must learn to settle our differences by negotiation and to see violence as very much a last resort. We must not shake our heads in the belief that war will always be with us: we have a difficult task, but change is possible.

War is almost unthinkable in western Europe, and we are moving towards the goal of the United Nations “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…” An important element in this has been the increased value placed on human life: capital punishment has been eliminated in western Europe, and no western commander would now send battalion after battalion over the top to be slaughtered by the guns at Passchendaele.

We must reinforce such change in moral values and ensure that it extends to all those who control our fate. Let us use Remembrance to further these aims. If you are planning an event or service, some of the publications below may help.

Robert A. Hinde

President: Professor Robert Hinde
Vice Presidents: Colin Archer, Martin Bell OBE, Christine Blower, Bruce Kent
www.abolishwar.org

‘War must cease to be an admissible human institution. The abolition of war must be our ultimate goal.'

***

By ordering and distributing these materials you can help to spread the message that war is not inevitable.

War No More film and discussion outlines
Excellent 14-minute film featuring Professor Rotblat, Bishop Tutu, Bruce Kent, Jon Snow, Caroline Lucas, Martin Bell and others. Ideal for classrooms and groups, comes with 32-page booklet of discussion starters by Valerie Flessati. 1500 copies already distributed.

Booklet and DVD or video (Please specify) £8.

Remember War, Make Peace
Services, reflections, prayers, etc for Remembrance Sunday, with a global perspective. Evolved from MAW’s ‘Remembrance for Today’ (see below) with two new complete services, children’s songs and free CD of backing tracks. 116 pages.

Book and CD £10.

Remembrance for Today
Readings, reflections, prayers, hymns and other resources, both religious and secular, to help turn Remembrance Sunday into an event which points towards the elimination of future wars.

40 pages, 2007 Booklet £3.

Ending War: A recipe
By Robert Hinde, MAW’s president. Abolition of war needs action; everyone can do something to hasten the day when war will be seen as an unacceptable way of settling disputes. The time to stop the next war is now!

48 pages, 2008. Booklet £4.

The Final Surrender: Time to Abolish War
Mini-booklet – ideal for handing out at meetings or in schools. Collection of quotations from various times, places and people, about eliminating war.

20 pages A6 booklet 50p.

To order any of the above items please send your request with cheque made out to MAW (plus 20% postage) to MAW Orders, 1 Thesiger Rd, Abingdon OX14 2DY.

Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain

Tate Liverpool: Exhibition 28 February – 11 May 2014 Adult £8.80 (without donation £8) Concession £6.60 (without donation £6) Help Tate by including the voluntary donation to enable Gift Aid Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain , is a new take on how the changes in the meaning of words reflect the cultural shifts in our society. This dynamic exhibition takes its name and focus from the seminal 1976 Raymond Williams book on the vocabulary of culture and society. An academic and critic influenced by the New Left, Williams defined ‘Keywords’ as terms that repeatedly crop up in our discussion of culture and society. His book contains more than 130 short essays on words such as ‘violence’, ‘country’, ‘criticism’, ‘media’, ‘popular’ and ‘exploitation’ providing an account of the word’s current use, its origin and the range of meanings attached to it. Williams expressed the wish some other ‘form of presentation could be devised’ for his book, and this exhibition i...

'Not as dumb as he looks' - Muhammad Ali on Bertrand Russell

In his autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story , Muhammad Ali recounts how Bertrand Russell got in contact with him, and their ensuing correspondence: *** For days I was talking to people from a whole new world. People who were not even interested in sports, especially prizefighting. One in particular I will never forget: a remarkable man, seventy years older than me but with a fresh outlook which seemed fairer than that of any white man I had ever met in America. My brother Rahaman had handed me the phone, saying, ‘Operator says a Mr. Bertrand Russell is calling Mr. Muhammad Ali.’ I took it and heard the crisp accent of an Englishman: ‘Is this Muhammad Ali?’ When I said it was, he asked if I had been quoted correctly. I acknowledged that I had been, but wondered out loud, ‘Why does everyone want to know what I think about Viet Nam? I’m no politician, no leader. I’m just an athlete.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is a war more barbaric than others, and because a mystique is built up ...

James Kirkup

James Kirkup has died, aged 91. In 2004 he sent us a copy of No More Hiroshimas . He had originally collected together this volume of hia A-bomb poems in 1983, but it took twenty years before we published it 'as a real book'. James recounts 'My A-Bomb Biography' in his preface. Here are the opening lines of the title poem, No Mor e Hiroshimas . At the station exit, my bundle in hand, Early the winter afternoon's wet snow Falls thinly round me, out of a crudded sun. I had forgotten to remember where I was. Looking about, I see it might be anywhere - A station, a town like any other in Japan, Ramshackle, muddy, noisy, drab; a cheerfully Shallow impermanence: peeling concrete, litter, 'Atomic Lotion, for hair fall-out', a flimsy department store; Racks and towers of neon, flashy over tiled and tilted waves Of little roofs, shacks cascading lemons and persimmons, Oranges and dark-red apples, shanties awash with rainbows Of squid and octopus, shellfish, slabs o...

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