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Foreword by Paul Rogers, Acknowledgements, About the Compilers

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People Power and Protest since 1945: a bibliography of nonviolent action compiled by April Carter, Howard Clark and Michael Randle

Foreword by Paul Rogers, Acknowledgements, and About the Compilers

 

Foreword

 

The great achievement of this book is the way in which it brings together an extraordinary wealth of experience in a manner that will be an ye-opener for most readers. If we talk about “people power” or “nonviolent action”, most people will immediately think of Gandhi or Martin Luther King, a few will recall the end of the Marcos regime in the Philippines in the mid-1980s and some others will remember or have heard of the Prague Spring nearly two decades earlier. Even for most activists and others involved in peace action and movements for social change, there will be little knowledge of the theories of nonviolent action and still less of the huge number of actions taken in so many countries and in such different circumstances across the world.

Although the book is subtitled A Bibliography of Nonviolent Action, it is much more than this. In addition to an introduction that is both succinct and helpful, all the main sources have accounts of their content and relevance, frequently managing to get to the core of the books or articles in just a couple of sentences. What really comes across is the sheer range of examples contained within this bibliography. It is extraordinarily impressive, taking us through the campaigns in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, the earlier actions in late colonial Africa, campaigns of nonviolent resistance in Latin America and the Middle East and the many examples of transnational social movements. Green movements, feminist protest, campaigns for indigenous rights and the global justice movement are all covered, and the book ends with a useful section on websites, archives and academic theses.  

To my knowledge this is the first time that a task such as this has been attempted with this degree of thoroughness. It is long overdue and is a really powerful antidote to the pervasive and negative outlook that believes that change will only come through violence. By bringing together such a range of writings, the authors have done a real service to all those people who seek positive social change through peaceful means.  

Paul Rogers Department of Peace Studies Bradford University November 2005

 

Acknowledgements

We (the compilers) are very grateful for advice on particular sections of this bibliography to Adam Baird, Jonathan Cohen, Fay Gadsden, Harri Pritchard-Jones, Lena Pritchard-Jones, Roseanne Reeves, and Jenny Pearce.  

The Commonweal Collection, which specializes in books, journals and pamphlets related to nonviolence and radical politics and is housed at the the J.B.Priestley Library at Bradford University, was an invaluable aid in compiling this bibliography. Finally, we owe a particular debt of gratitude to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust for their indispensable financial help towards the publishing and promoting of the work. 

 

About the Compilers of the Bibliography

April Carter has lectured in politics at the universities of Lancaster, Oxford and Queensland, and was a Summer Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute 1985-87. Her publications include The Politics of Women’s Rights (Longman, 1988), Success and Failure in Arms Control Negotiations (SIPRI/Oxford University Press, 1989), Peace Movements (Longman, 1992), and The Political Theory of Global Citizenship (Routledge, 2001). Her latest book is Direct Action and Democracy Today (Polity, 2005).

Howard Clark has been a nonviolent activist since 1968, engaging in a variety of campaigns and projects at local, national and increasingly international level. He has a continuing close involvement with Peace News (co-editor 1971-76) and with War Resisters’ International (coordinator 1985-97). In addition he has been a research fellow of the Albert Einstein Institution and the Coventry University Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies. His publications include: Making Nonviolent Revolution (Peace News pamphlet, 1978 and 1981), Preparing for Nonviolent Direct Action – with Sheryl Crown, and Angela Mckee (Peace News and CND, 1983), and Civil Resistance in Kosovo (Pluto, 2000).

Michael Randle has been involved in the anti-war movement in Britain since the 1950s and was one of the organizers of the first Aldermaston March against Britain’s nuclear weapons in 1958. A former Chair of War Resisters’ International, and subsequently co-ordinator of the Alternative Defence Commission, he is now a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. He is Minutes Secretary of the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support and co-edits their quarterly Review. His publications include: People Power: The Building of a New European Home (Hawthorn Press, 1991), Civil Resistance (Fontana, 1994), Challenge to Nonviolence, (editor), (Department of Peace Studies, Bradford University, 2002), and Jubilee 2000: The Challenge of Coalition Campaigning (Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Coventry University, 2004).

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