Organised by Movement for the Abolition of War in partnership with IWM (Imperial War Museums)
Friday 9 June at Tavistock Square WC1 and Oasis Hub Waterloo, 1a Kennington Rd SE1
Saturday 10 June at IWM London, Lambeth Road, SE1
Protest, Power & Change is the theme of the 2017 Peace History Conference. Organised by MAW in partnership with Imperial War Museums, it will take place on Friday 9 and Saturday 10 June in London.
Frank Cottrell Boyce, children’s novelist and screenwriter, will open the conference. Among topics on the programme will be ‘Fewer Bombs, More Jobs: The Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards’ Alternative Plan 1976’ and ‘Lysistrata in the Rainforest: the women’s nonviolent campaign which ended the civil war in Liberia’.
Other sessions pick up on the anniversaries of 2017. It is 50 years since Martin Luther King’s momentous denunciation of the Vietnam War, 60 years since activists started coalescing into the movement that became CND, 150 years since the births of anti-war artist Käthe Kollwitz and feminist peace campaigner Emily Greene Balch, and 500 years since Erasmus published his ‘Complaint of Peace’.
PHC 2017 is timed to coincide with the exhibition ‘People Power: Fighting for Peace’ at IWM London, making a visit doubly worthwhile. (Exhibition ends 28 August – book here.) The Museum is the venue for the Saturday conference. On Friday 9th June there will be an afternoon walk along the London Peace Trail (starts 3.30pm from Tavistock Square) and at 7.30pm the acclaimed play ‘This Evil Thing’ performed by Michael Mears (at Oasis Hub Waterloo, 1a Kennington Road SE1 7QP). This is the compelling and inspiring story of the men who said no to war. From a chapel in Yorkshire to the House of Commons, from a cell in Richmond Castle to a firing squad in France, the questions raised here are as relevant and urgent as they were 100 years ago.
More information about the Friday evening play is here, and if you are only going to this, e-booking for the play alone is here.
The programme for the Conference is here, and e-booking for Conference, with add-on options for the Peace Trail and/or Play is here.