NSPM in 2004

Below is an ongoing, and interactive, review of 2004, looking at events organised by the Peace Movement and major political events of the last year. More than one team member has logged-in and developed the text. Anybody else is free to contribute via the comments box. If we end up with anything half-decent, it can go in the next edition of Ceasefire. If we end up with something rubbish... nah, we never do anything rubbish in the peace movement do we ;)

Peace Fora (that's peace forums to you or i ):
Building on the success of the Ramzi Kysia talk towards the end of 2003 the Peace Movement sought to organise a series of fortnightly discussion meetings quaintly entitled "Peace Fora". The first took place during One World Week with Alan Simpson speaking and attracted around 40 people.

Alan Simpson - Iraq and the prospects for world peace

• Alan gave a nice summary of his political views taking in not just Iraq, but Palestine and the rest of the world. The exhortations to join the Labour party did not find many sympathetic audience members tho...

Israel-Palestine Peace Forum

• Hich led a packed room of supporters through his accessible arguments for peace. As the room was almost entirely peace movement or pro-Palestine, not a huge amount of debate occurred.

Surveillance Peace Forum

• Dave Wills' expertise on surveillance and its insidious encroachment on our society was sparsely attended, but that allowed a complex and rich discussion. Interesting stuff (and he's coming back for the Peace Conference in Feb).

State and Militarism Peace Forum

• Unfortunately only me, Rich & Andy (the speaker) turned up! A shame as a deeply interesting and well-researched thesis was offered.

Black History Month - Malcolm X Event

• There were actually two events on Malcolm X this year.
  

Milan Rai - The war on/of terror

• First of the new academic year. Mil gave a searingly honest talk to our biggest audience yet (80+), to a reaction of celebration by most and disgust by a few (urm, the tories).

November 26 - Race, Justice and Peace

• Promised to be an interesting exploration of racism, but Simpy took ages to get to the point and then Tamimi turned out to be bleedin awful

Other Stuff We Did:
Kick Racism Out of Football tournament

• Messing about in boots!

March 20

• Demo on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Hardly our greatest success in terms of turn-out, but worth a mention.
  

Sounds on the Downs

• Saved from an almost terminal lack of planning by the 11th hour intervention of Lenton & Wortley hall. The day actually turned out to be a lot of fun with many bands, acoustic acts, Turkish dancers, MCs, and a big crowd. Some dispute over the extent to which it really fitted in with our aims, but certainly good fun!
  

Glastonbury Festival

• OK, so we can't claim credit for that, but a lot of us went. Which was nice. Dk

Geoff Hoon

• Bit of a twat... (need we say more)

European Social Forum

• Spawned a thousand (well, maybe about 10) blog articles back in the heady days when the blog got updated more than once a month (see October archives). About 20 of us went down and enjoyed the sights, sounds and controversy of the 2004 ESF at the Ally Pally in London.
  

Demo

• 'Our' first club night. Very succesful by all accounts. I certainly enjoyed myself. Over 300 people came during the night, to get covered in UV paint, hear the bands, pick up a copy of Ceasefire thinking 'what the f...', etc.
  

November 23-December 3 - One World Week

Major Events:
Stuff we weren't really involved in but which could hardly be left out of any serious review of 2004.

The year was not a good one for the inhabitants of Fallujah which was the target of two major US-led assaults the first in April in response to the lynching of four American "contractors" in the city and the second in November once the US Presidential Elections were out of the way. In the intervening period the city was under the control of the "Fallujah Brigades" made up of former Iraqi officers and insurgents and saw regular bombings carried out by the US against "safe houses" ostensibly un by the Tawhid Wal Jihad Group apparently led by Jordanian extremist Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.

June 28 - "Handover of sovereignty" in Iraq

Impeachment of Blair "proceedings" begin

Najaf

Death of Yasser Arafat

December 26 - Asian tsunami

A lot done and a long way to go. Coming in 2005: Look out for the Peace Conference (Feb 13th), Demo's official launch night (Jan 22nd), Counter Terror - Build Justice (Spring), March 19th protests, Iraqi elections (30th Jan), and many more unpredicted and unpredictable events.