Peace News
front cover, July 1980
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| Editor | Humphrey Moore (1936–40), John Middleton Murry (1940–46), Frank Lea (1946–49), Bernard Boothroyd (1949–51), J. Allen Skinner (1951–55), Hugh Brock (1955–64), Theodore Roszak (1964–65), Rod Prince (1965–67), Ken Simons (1990–95), Tim Wallis (1995–97), Chris Booth and Stephen Hancock (1997–2000), Ippy Dee (2000–07), Milan Rai and Emily Johns (2007–present). |
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| Categories | Pacifist Magazine |
| First issue | 1936 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Website | http://www.peacenews.info/ |
Peace News (PN) is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International.
Peace News was begun by Humphrey Moore who was a Quaker and in 1933 had become editor of the National Peace Council's publications. Working with a peace group in Wood Green, London, Moore and his wife, Kathleen (playing the role of business manager), launched Peace News with a free trial issue in June 1936. With distribution through Moore’s contacts with the National Peace Council, the new magazine rapidly attracted attention. Within six weeks, Dick Sheppard, founder of the Peace Pledge Union, proposed to Moore that Peace News should become the PPU’s paper. Early contributors to this new organ of the PPU included Gandhi, George Lansbury, and illustrator Arthur Wragg.Peace News also had a large number of women contributors, including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Rose Macaulay, Ethel Mannin, Ruth Fry, Kathleen Lonsdale and Sybil Morrison.
Some contributors were so sympathetic to the grievances of Nazi Germany that one sceptical member found it difficult to distinguish between letters to Peace News and those in the newspaper of the British Union of Fascists. The historian Mark Gilbert has argued that "With the exception of Action, the journal of the British Union of Fascists, it is hard to think of another British newspaper which was so consistent an apologist for Nazi Germany as Peace News." However, Juliet Gardiner has noted that Peace News also urged the British government to give sanctuary to Jewish refugees from Nazism. The fact that some PN contributors were supporting appeasement and excusing Nazi actions caused PN contributor David Spreckley to express fears that "in their scramble for peace", they were gaining "some questionable allies".
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