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Oral History

Simon Colbeck
("Beyond Remembrance: Pacifism in the Aftermath of War 1919")

Interview (30 Nov 2019) with Simon Colbeck, organiser of the conference "Beyond Remembrance: Pacifism in the Aftermath of War 1919", Friends House, London, and author of "Watford’s Quiet Heroes: Resisting the Great War", a 30 minute documentary telling the stories of some of those who defied the call to arms in World War One.

Albert Beale
(Peace Pledge Union)

Interview (30 Nov 2019) with Albert Beale (chair of Peace Pledge Union), author of "Against All War: Fifty Years of Peace News, 1936-1986" (1986), editor of Housmans Peace Diary & World Peace Directory, council member of the War Resisters' International (London).

Aled Eirug
(Senior Lecturer, Swansea University, Wales)

Interview (30 Nov 2019) with Mr. Aled Eirug (Senior Lecturer, Swansea University, Wales) is the author of "The Opposition to the Great War in Wales 1914-1918" (University of Wales Press, 2018):
"This study is the first thorough analysis of the extent of the opposition to the Great War in Wales, and is the most extensive study of the anti-war movement in any part of Britain. It is, therefore, a significant contribution to our understanding of people’s responses to the conflict, and the difficulty of mobilising the population for total war. The anti-war movement in Wales and beyond developed quickly from the initial shock of the declaration of war, to the civil disobedience of anti-war activists and the industrial discontent excited by the Russian Revolution and experienced in areas such as the south Wales coalfield in 1917. The differing responses to the war within Wales are explored in this book, which charts how the pacifist tradition of nineteenth-century Welsh Nonconformity was quickly overturned. The two main elements of the anti-war movement are analysed in depth: the pacifist religious opposition, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Nonconformist dissidents who were particularly influential in north and west Wales; and the political opposition concentrated in the Independent Labour Party and among the radical left within the South Wales Miners’ Federation."

William Hetherington
(Archivist, Peace Pledge Union)

Interview (30 Nov 2019) with William Hetherington (Archivist, Peace Pledge Union), editor of "Pacifism & Philosophy. An Aldous Huxley Reader" (1994) and author of "Swimming Against the Tide: The Peace Pledge Union Story 1934 -2009" (Peace Pledge Union, 2010):
"The Peace Pledge Union has campaigned against war for 80 years. Founded in the shadow of World War One with the threat of World War Two already looming, its basis has always been that each person has a choice: whether to accept war and war preparations as a fact of 'normal' life or to renounce war and actively work for peace. Swimming Against the Tide is the story of a group of people who challenge the belief that organised killing of fellow human beings is a just and moral project."

Tony Simpson
(Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation)

Interview (30 Nov 2019) with Tony Simpson (Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation), editor of "The Spokesman", journal of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

Christian Bartolf
(Gandhi Information Center)

Lecture (16 March 2016) by Christian Bartolf at the University of Leeds (England): "Karl Kraus, Kurt Tucholsky, Carl von Ossietzky and the Nie Wieder Krieg! (Never again War!) demonstrations between 1919 and 1924 in Germany and Austria".