A new heritage trail will enable young people (and everyone) to explore Bradford’s amazing history of campaigning for peace and social justice: William Forster, Norman Angell,Margaret McMillan, J.B. Priestley, not to mention the Independent Labour Party, celebrated in the mural below …

“There is no weal save Commonweal” Mural in Bradford’s Little Germany, celebrating the centenary of the founding of the Independent Labour Party in the city in 1893.

Produced by the Peace Museum and local young people as part of the Routes to Peace season, the trail highlights interesting sites and stories around the city centre, with more ideas for longer walks and links to follow up.  The trail is available now as a downloadable pocket guide, with an app available in June.

 

NEW on the Special Collections website:

The Archive of the UK Campaign to Free Vanunu.  This large archive, received in 2012, tells the story of UK campaigners  for the release of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistle-blower, and for a nuclear-free Middle East.  It’s a fantastically rich collection featuring newsletters, photographs and press coverage alongside the usual minutes and records – plus a great deal of correspondence.  This is the first major campaign archive from the 1990s that we have received; the campaign’s use of celebrity musicians, comedians and actors in benefit events is particularly interesting.

We are also working on the many archives large and small which we did not have time to catalogue as part of the original PaxCat project.  For instance, the Archive of the Community Projects Charitable Trust is now available.  This covers work with communities in Northern Ireland during the 1970s.  As with the Vanunu archive, we have catalogued this in a very basic way in order to publicise it quickly.

We will do more detailed work on these collections in response to demand from researchers, so do contact Special Collections if you’re interested in either of these.

Here’s a piece in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus introducing the latest Archive to join the special collections at the University of Bradford.  It’s a collection of papers concerning the UK campaign to free Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordecai Vanunu.  As with all the Commonweal Archives, the papers can shed light on all kinds of research interests, including nuclear issues, campaigning methods and society/culture in the 1980s.  The Archive isn’t fully catalogued yet, but if you are interested in using it, do get in touch and we will do our best to help.   We’ll be putting more detail about it on our webpages very soon.

Reblogged from 100 Objects:

• 
• 

This photograph shows  Jonathan Priestley, father of the writer J.B. Priestley, serving school dinners to children at the White Abbey Dining Room, Bradford, in 1907.  Jonathan was Headmaster of Green Lane School, which hosted a new central depot which made meals for children across the city.

The introduction of "school-feeding" is an example of Bradford innovation in social welfare.  From its earliest days as a booming wool town through the 1890s and 1900s, the fast-growing city saw great poverty among its industrial workers and their families. 

Read more… 833 more words

A fascinating part of the history of radical progressive Bradford.

Gallery II at the University of Bradford is hosting an exhibition which will explore the life and work of three peace-builders (Gandhi, King and Ikeda) 7-28 March 2013.

Postcard of Gandhi’s 1931 visit to England

The exhibition is part of Routes to Peace, a season of peace related events to be held in Bradford between March and July 2013 and which aims to share and celebrate Bradford’s peace heritage and future.  It will be accompanied by workshops and lectures, including the Commonweal lecture, which takes place on the 7 March just after the exhibition launch, and Moving Mountains, a talk by Dame Claire Bertschinger on the 14 March.  The latter is free though you do need to book a place.

The Satyagraha Foundation have made available online a key article by anarcho-pacifist Geoffrey Ostergaard: Gandhian Nonviolence: Moral Principle or Political Technique.  The article was originally published in . T. PATIL, New Dimensions and Perspectives in Gandhism. New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1989.

Geoffrey Ostergaard’s academic life was centred on Birmingham University, but he was a Trustee of Commonweal Library.  His Archive is thus in Special Collections.  It is full of insight into Indian politics and University life, as well as his ideas about anarchism.  The collection was partially catalogued by the PaxCat Project though there is further work to be done before we can make it easily available.   We wrote about the Archive in this earlier post.

Here’s an indepth video interview with Professor Paul Rogers of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, in which he discusses the development of peace and conflict studies.  It’s part of a series of video resources on conflict analysis and resolution which look well worth investigation, hosted on Blip TV.

 

 

Sad news: painter and peace activist Cyril Mount died earlier this month.

Cyril had close links with Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and donated a large collection of what he described as his “most controversial” artworks to the University.

We wrote about Ruffling Feathers, his 2011 exhibition at the University here, and this is a tribute from our Visual Arts colleagues.

Find out more about Cyril’s life and works on his web page.

 

The Commonweal Lecture 2013 is a fantastic opportunity to hear Sharyn Lock telling her inspiring story.

“Sharyn Lock felt such a strong sense of solidarity with the people of occupied Palestine that she was one of 44 people who joined together to sail a boat through Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza in 2009. The story of the group is explored in the book Freedom Sailors, which Noam Chomsky described as : “a riveting account of one of the great moments of nonviolent resistance”. Sharyn describes it as “a triumph of hope and passion over all plausibility!”

Sharyn has kindly offered to give the second Commonweal Lecture on her experiences during this time, suggesting we don’t have to leave “heroism” to the imagination of Hollywood blockbusters and those, such as the people of Gaza, who have no choice.  Following the breaking of the blockade Sharyn was in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead and blogged extensively at : http://talestotell.wordpress.com/ this blog was later turned into the book Gaza: Beneath the Bombs”.

Free event, open to all!

John Stanley Bell Lecture Theatre, University of Bradford.  6.30pm.  Thursday 7 March 2013.

Facebook invitation to the Lecture.  Not on Facebook?  try Commonweal’s web page for more info.

Quoted text by Ellie Clement.

Adam Curle with a peace studies group, 1976 (he is in front of the blackboard)

What is peace studies?  What is it for?   Adam Curle, the first professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, reflected on this in his 1974  inaugural lecture, The Scope and Dilemmas of Peace Studies.  The lecture is Object no. 47 in the award-winning 100 Objects exhibition.  It is an excellent introduction to Professor Curle’s working life and how his ideas developed from his experiences as a mediator and outlines some of the questions those developing the discipline had to consider (and still do).  For him, peace was not vague or sentimental and was about more than just the absence of war: it was about the nature of relationships between people, groups and nations.  Adam Curle called for peace studies scholars to analyse those relationships, and then to find ways of using this information to make them more peaceful.