This international newsletter discusses actions to resist the arms race during the Cold War. Its overall aim is to ‘bring down to personal size’ the international peace movement through offering resistance tactics on a personal and political level. With headquarters in The Hague, the newsletter focuses on bringing together correspondents from across the globe in their common aim.

This issue from June 1984 focuses on resisting militarisation. From refusing conscription, to protesting military installation, to strikes and boycotts, it demonstrates how one can defy what it calls ‘active intimidation’: ‘when governments or other authorities say that issues of war and peace are too complicated for the likes of us, so we should shut up and follow the leader’.

Examples given include the refusal of draft registration by individuals in the United States, the ‘Fiscal Objection Campaign’ in Italy where people refused to declare 5.5.% of their income tax (the proportion of income tax revenue budgeted for the military at the time), and the commencement of the first Peace Week in Austria.

The Commonweal Collection includes around 60 copies of Disarmament Campaigns published between 1980 and 1991. Other materials in the Collection about Disarmament (Wd) can be found on the catalogue here.

Josie Mulligan (Commonweal volunteer).

A full list of over 1,700 magazines, newsletters, bulletins and journals that are in the Collection can be found here.