Brighton, Hove and District Branch updates July 2026.
The branch is keeping busy with monthly meetings, regular webinars with discussion group meetings, marking some international days and responding to local events. As the active members of WILPF are also Women In Black (WIB) there is an overlap of our activities.
On 15th May, International Conscientious Objectors Day we handed out many of the CODay leaflets at our WiB vigil as it happened to be on the same day, and collected a good number of signatures on the petition against conscription into the military forces, which was pleasing.
Carnival against the Far Right. We helped create a huge banner with other like-minded groups to be carried when the ‘far right’ came to town for what was a ‘carnival’ [to take the anger out of the day]. Several of us were there on the day in different parts of the crowd, we had liked the chants with humour. The Far Right numbered about 150-200 people and there were several thousand of ‘us,’ so we blocked them from moving more than a few yards. There was mostly a great atmosphere though we later heard there had been some aggravation, but it had felt to us largely, as intended, a Carnival with music and bouncing beach balls.
On 4th June, International Day for Child Victims of War – We managed to get some people to write their thoughts on a scroll about children caught up in warfare. We also focused on getting people to sign the petition against conscription and obtained quite a few signatures.
Discussion group. We continue to hold discussion groups most months and for the May
meeting we watched the WILPF webinar of the very inspiring young woman, Shah Mammouri
talking about what we call the ‘middle east’ but is known there as West Asia, and we had a good
conversation about it afterwards. We have worked together with refuge groups in the town,
many of whom are from that region. Last autumn we had a seminar with ‘We Are The Tree’ a
refugee self support group and we hope to have another one this autumn. At the July group we watched two talks by Richard Murphy on ‘The Caring Economy’ which presented a very good summary of how the country’s finances are run and how they could and should be run to benefit people rather than supporting corporations and the military. We are trying to learn about new systems of running the economy that make sense to benefit the majority of the citizens.
Farnborough Arms Fair. We handed out leaflets and talked with people about the disgrace of
this event and the DSEI in London on the alternate years. Once again we got several signatures on the petition and were able to send 10 completed forms of 25 signatures to the Peace Pledge Union [who are collating them], that we have collected since the petition was opened.
