Peace Pledge Union

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The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) is a non-governmental organisation that promotes pacifism, based in the United Kingdom. Its members are signatories to the following pledge: "War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war",[1] and campaign to promote peaceful and nonviolent solutions to conflict.[1] The PPU forms the British section of War Resisters' International.

History

Formation

Peace Pledge Union poster

The PPU emerged from an initiative by

F. P. Crozier (a former army officer turned pacifist).[5]

The PPU attracted members across the political spectrum, including

anarchists and in the words of member Derek Savage, "an amorphous mass of ordinary well-meaning but fluffy peace-lovers".[3] In 1937 the No More War Movement formally merged with the PPU. George Lansbury, previously chair of the No More War Movement, became president of the PPU, holding the post until his death in 1940. In 1937 a group of clergy and laity led by Sheppard formed the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship as an Anglican complement to the non-sectarian PPU. The Union was associated with the Welsh group, Heddwchwyr Cymru, founded by Gwynfor Evans.[3] In March 1938, PPU George Lansbury
launched the PPU's first manifesto and peace campaign. The campaign argued that the idea of a war to defend democracy was a contradiction in terms and that "in a period of total war, democracy would be submerged under totalitarianism".[3]

A large part of the PPU's work involved providing for the victims of war. Its members sponsored a house where 64

Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to enable them to be received into the United Kingdom".[7][8]

In 1938 the PPU opposed legislation for air-raid precautions and in 1939 campaigned against military conscription.

Attitudes towards Nazi Germany

Like many in the 1930s, the PPU supported aspects of

Versailles Treaty were undone.[9] It backed Neville Chamberlain's policy at Munich in 1938, regarding Hitler's claims on the Sudetenland as legitimate. At the time of the Munich crisis, several PPU sponsors tried to send "five thousand pacifists to the Sudetenland as a non-violent presence", however this attempt came to nothing.[3]

Peace News editor and PPU sponsor John Middleton Murry and his supporters in the group caused considerable controversy by arguing Germany should be given control of parts of mainland Europe. In a PPU publication, Warmongers, Clive Bell said that Germany should be permitted to "absorb" France, Poland, the Low Countries and the Balkans. However, this was never the official policy of the PPU and the position quickly drew criticism from other PPU activists such as Vera Brittain and Andrew Stewart.[10] Clive Bell left the PPU shortly afterwards and by 1940 he was supporting the war.[11]

Some PPU supporters were so sympathetic to German grievances that PPU supporter Rose Macaulay claimed she found it difficult to distinguish between the PPU newspaper Peace News and that of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), saying, "occasionally when reading Peace News, I (and others) half think we have got hold of the Blackshirt [BUF journal] by mistake".[12][13] There was Fascist infiltration of the PPU[14] and MI5 kept an eye on the PPU's "small Fascist connections".[15] After Dick Sheppard's death in October 1937, George Orwell, always hostile to pacifism, accused the PPU of "moral collapse" on the grounds that some members even joined the BUF.[16] However, several historians note that the situation may have been the other way around; that is, BUF members attempted to infiltrate the PPU. On 11 August 1939, the Deputy Editor of Peace News, Andrew Stewart, criticised those "who think that membership of British Union, Sir Oswald Moseley's Fascist organization, is compatible with membership of the PPU".[17] In November 1939, an MI5 officer reported that members of the far-right Nordic League were attempting "to join the PPU en masse".[18]

Historians have differed in their interpretation of the PPU's attitude to Nazi Germany. The historian

Richard Griffiths, published in 2017, suggests considerable division and controversy at the top of the PPU, with the editors of Peace News being generally more willing to play down the dangers of Nazi Germany than were many members of the PPU Executive.[20]

Controversy over the PPU's attitude towards Nazi Germany has continued ever since the war. In 1950,

Mussolini.[22]

Second World War

Initially, the Peace Pledge Union opposed the

Second World War and continued to argue for a negotiated peace with Germany.[3] On 9 March 1940, 2,000 people attended a PPU public meeting calling for a negotiated peace.[23] PPU membership reached a peak of 140,000 in 1940.[24]

For some members of the PPU, the focus was less on a negotiated peace and more on "nonviolent revolution" in both Britain and Germany. In 1940, the PPU published a booklet called Plan of Campaign, reprinting an article by the Dutch Christian anarcho-pacifist Bart de Ligt. He called for war to be made impossible by direct action, including "the most effective non-co-operation, boycott and sabotage". Not all PPU members were happy with this approach and the booklet was withdrawn from sale in London.[25]

In February 1940, the

Gandhi or others in the nonviolent wing of the Indian independence movement. The trial was held in secret. The PPU Council disassociated itself from Morris' actions.[29]

The critical attitude towards the PPU in this period was summarised by George Orwell, writing in the October 1941 issue of Adelphi magazine: "Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi".

Following the

conscientious objectors and supporting the Food Relief Campaign. A few members of the PPU joined the Bruderhof in the Cotswolds, which was seen as a radical peace experiment.[31] This latter campaign attempted to supply food, under Red Cross supervision, to civilians in occupied Europe.[3] From 1941, the PPU campaigned against the bombing of German civilians and was one of several groups to back the Bombing Restriction Committee (most of whose members were not pacifists or even opposed to the war as a whole). The Birmingham branch of the PPU declared, "We pacifists, while determined to resist the Nazi system, believe that nothing can justify the continuation of this slaughter and the moral degradation that it involves".[24] Throughout the war, Vera Brittain published a newsletter, Letters to Peace Lovers, criticizing the conduct of the war, including the bombing of civilian areas of Germany. This had 2,000 subscribers.[32]

By 1945, membership of the PPU had fallen by more than a quarter, standing at 98,414 when the war ended[33] (compared to around 140,000 in 1940).[24]

After the Second World War

Since 1945, the PPU has consistently "condemned the violence, oppression and weapons of all belligerents".[7] Immediately after the war, there was a focus on support for famine relief in Europe and elsewhere.[34] The PPU condemned the use of nuclear weapons against Japan in August 1945 and in October 1945, prominent PPU members were among the signatories to an open letter asking what the moral difference was between mass killing by Nazis in concentration camps and mass killings by atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was followed by the publication of the PPU leaflet Atom War.[35] In 1947, the PPU voted to make a priority of campaigning for the abolition of conscription (known in law as National Service).[36] Conscription in the UK was phased out from 1960 and ended completely in 1963.

In the 1950s, the PPU paid more attention to ideas of nonviolent civil disobedience, as developed by Mohandas Gandhi and others. This was not without controversy even within the PPU, with some members resigning as they objected to the use, or what they saw as the too frequent use, of methods of civil disobedience.[37] However, members of PPU were well represented in the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) founded in 1957, which organised the first of the Aldermaston marches in 1958.[38] In practice, however, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the PPU lost some members to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, even though CND was not a pacifist-only organisation and, at least in its early days, was less focused on direct action.

Some recovery in the PPU's fortunes took place after 1965, when Myrtle Solomon was general secretary. The PPU organised protests against the US war in Vietnam and handed out leaflets to US tourists in Britain stating "not only are Vietnamese being killed, but American men are dying for a cause war cannot achieve".[39] The PPU also opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and condemned both the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands and the British response.[7] It has also promoted the ideas of pacifist thinkers such as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Richard B. Gregg.[7]

The group had a branch in Northern Ireland, the Peace Pledge Union in Northern Ireland; in the 1970s this group campaigned for the withdrawal of the British army, as well as the disbandment of both Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups.[40]

The Peace Pledge Union's 21st-century activity has included taking part in British protests against the 2003 Iraq War.[41] In 2005, the PPU released an educational CD-ROM on Martin Luther King's life and work that was adopted by several British schools.[42] In recent years, the PPU has focused on issues including Remembrance Day,[43] peace education,[44] the commemoration of World War One[45] and what they describe as the "militarisation" of British society.[46]

White poppy campaign

CND symbol inside at a British Remembrance Day
event

The PPU's most visible contemporary activity is the

Women's Co-operative Guild alongside the Royal British Legion's red poppy appeal.[47] The white poppy commemorated not only British soldiers killed in war, but also civilian victims on all sides, standing as "a pledge to peace that war must not happen again".[48] In 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher expressed her "deep distaste" for the white poppies,[49] on allegations that they potentially diverted donations from service men, yet this stance gave them increased publicity. In the 2010s, sales of white poppies rose. The PPU reported that around 110,000 white poppies had been bought in 2015, the highest number on record.[46]

Notable members

Members of the PPU have included:

Arthur Ponsonby, Hugh S. Roberton, Bertrand Russell, Siegfried Sassoon, Myrtle Solomon, Donald Soper, Sybil Thorndike, Michael Tippett and Wilfred Wellock
.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "About Us". www.ppu.org.uk. Camden: Peace Pledge Union. 24 July 2018. Retrieved 3 November 2018.
  2. ^ Sybil Morrison, I Renounce War : The Story of the Peace Pledge Union : Sheppard Press, 1962. (99-100)
  3. ^
    ISBN 0802043712
    (pp. 169–185)
  4. ISBN 0198218826
    (pp. 321–22)
  5. ISBN 0199241171
    (p. 334)
  6. ^ "PPU Archives". Archived from the original on 30 March 2016. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
  7. ^
    ISBN 0-08-032685-4
    (p.243-7).
  8. ^ Juliet Gardiner The Thirties: An Intimate History, Harper Press, 2010, p.501.
  9. ^ a b David C. Lukowitz, "British Pacifists and Appeasement: The Peace Pledge Union", Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 9, No. 1, January 1974, pp. 115–127
  10. ^ "Miss Brittain and others found objectionable Murry's advocacy of a "Pax Germanica" on the European continent" Quoted in Richard A. Rempel, "The Dilemmas of British Pacifists During World War II", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 50, No. 4, Supplement, December, 1978, pp. D1213–D1229.
  11. ISBN 978-0748125357
    .
  12. ^ Julie V. Gottlieb, Feminine fascism: women in Britain's fascist movement, London: I.B.Tauris, 2003
  13. ^ Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War, Manchester University Press, 1998
  14. ^ Julie V. Gottlieb, Feminine fascism: women in Britain's fascist movement, London: I.B. Tauris, 2003
  15. ^ F. H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Simpkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War (London: HMSO, 1990), p. 37
  16. ^ Peter Brock and Thomas Paul Socknat, Challenge to Mars: essays on pacifism from 1918 to 1945, University of Toronto Press, 1999 (p. 141).
  17. ISBN 978-1-138-88899-9
    .
  18. ISBN 978-1-138-88899-9
    .
  19. ^ Mark Gilbert, "Pacifist attitudes to Nazi Germany, 1936-45", Journal of Contemporary History, July 1992, Vol. 27, pp. 493–511
  20. ISBN 978-1-138-88899-9
    .
  21. ^ Morrison, Sybil (1962). I Renounce War: The story of the Peace Pledge Union. London: Sheppard Press. p. 51.
  22. ^ Good Morning Britain, broadcast on ITV1 on 27 October 2017
  23. ISBN 978-0-902680-54-8
    .
  24. ^
    ISBN 978-0-902680-54-8
    .
  25. ISBN 978-1-138-88899-9
    .
  26. ^ "In a leading article the Daily Mail urges the Minister for Home Security (Sir John Anderson) to suppress the "near-treasonable work" of the Peace Pledge Union". "Peace Pledge Union National Menace".The Courier-Mail (Brisbane),24 February 1940, (p. 5)
  27. ^ a b Morrison, Sybil (1962). I Renounce War: The story of the Peace Pledge Union. London: Sheppard Press. pp. 45–48.
  28. ^ Spartacus Schoolnet Archived 2009-04-02 at the Wayback Machine
  29. ISBN 978-1-138-88899-9
    .
  30. ^ Morrison, Sybil (1962). I Renounce War: The Peace Pledge Union story. London: Sheppard Press. p. 41.
  31. ^ "A Christian Peace Experiment | WipfandStock.com". wipfandstock.com. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  32. ^ Mark Abrams, The Population of Great Britain, Hughes Press, 2007
  33. ^ Morrison, Sybil (1962). I Renounce War: The Peace Pledge Union story. London: Sheppard Press. p. 62.
  34. ISBN 978-0-902680-54-8
    .
  35. ISBN 978-0-902680-54-8
    .
  36. ISBN 978-0-902680-54-8
    .
  37. ^ Morrison, Sybil (1962). I Renounce War: The Peace Pledge Union story. London: Sheppard Press. pp. 70–74.
  38. ISBN 978-0-902680-54-8
    .
  39. ^ "European Groups Grinding Out Protests Against Vietnam War", Spartanburg Herald-Journal, March 9, 1968, p. 19
  40. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8
    ), p. 837
  41. ^ "They will be coming from every part of Britain representing bodies as diverse as the Peace Pledge Union, Britons vs Bush and the Woodcraft Folk. There will be people from dozens of small, newly formed anti-war groups from towns, villages, churches and colleges, many of whom have never been on a protest before". Quoted in Terry Kirby, "Doves on the warpath: a million ordinary Britons prepare to demonstrate for peace" The Independent (UK). 13 February 2003. Retrieved 24 June 2011.
  42. ISBN 0415466822
    ), p. 72
  43. ^ "White Poppies for Peace". www.ppu.org.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  44. ^ "Learn Peace". www.ppu.org.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  45. ^ "OBJECTING TO WAR". www.ppu.org.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  46. ^ a b "Peace Matters". www.ppu.org.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  47. ^ White Poppies for Peace
  48. ^ PPU: 100 years of action to peace, 1930-39
  49. ^ Margaret Thatcher Foundation

Further reading

External links

Media related to Peace Pledge Union at Wikimedia Commons

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