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PACIFIST COMMUNITIES IN BRITAIN IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Author(s) -
Rigby Andrew
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
peace and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1468-0130
pISSN - 0149-0508
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0130.1990.tb00544.x
Subject(s) - world war ii , political science , history , economic history , archaeology
Such was the optimistic hope and political strategy of Dick Sheppard, the founder and moving spirit of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), writing in 1936. His faith in the possibility of creating a pacifist movement of such a scale that no government could afford to ignore its influence was not totally unfounded at that time. The PPU had a membership of over 118,000, with some 300 local groups in existence, and a weekly newspaper (Peace News) with sales of approximately 6,000. The origins of the PPU date back to October 1934 when Sheppard published his Peace Letter requesting people to contact him who shared his pacifist determination to renounce war and never support or sanction another one. The burgeoning growth of the PPU in those prewar days, as the New Statesman observed, lay in its appeal “not only to the convinced absolutist pacifist but to the large number of people with only slight political knowledge but with a recent realization of the fearful imminence of war, who are fascinated by the direct simplicity of the crusade.” As it was, the PPU failed in its basic aim of preventing war, with the formal declaration coming on September 3, 1939. Given that the PPU had turned its back on becoming an active campaigning movement of war resisters prepared to resist the implementation of war preparations, it now had no practical proposals to offer pacifists as to their appropriate role in wartime. As Sybil Morrison has recorded: