Trustee Albert Beale has been involved with Peace News for over 50 years

A MAGAZINE founded in King’s Cross 90 years ago to promote a more peaceful world has been relaunched after a two-year break.

Peace News, which dates from 1936, closed two years ago. But now the magazine, published from offices above Housman’s bookshop in Caledonian Road, is back on the stands.

Trustee Albert Beale has been involved with Peace News, a respected journal covering anti-war activism and the philosophy of pacifism, for more than 50 years.

He told the Tribune that the two-year break had allowed the managing board to consider the magazine’s role.

He said: “It is not the first time we have had to regroup in the past 90 years. We took the opportunity to think, regroup and consult widely on what Peace News should and could be.”

He said Peace News trustees spoke to people who had worked with “radical editors and journalists” about what was and was not feasible.

Its closure two years ago was prompted by a falling out between trustees and staff. A rogue edition, not cleared by a managing board, caused concern among trustees.

Mr Beale, a veteran of the pacifist movement, said: “It took us a long time to pick up the pieces, and we used that time to think about what we could produce and what it might look like.”

A new administrator has been appointed and they are now advertising for a new editor.

He said one challenge was to get the magazine, published quarterly, onto the radar of new readers.

He said: “We have to build up the circulation again. It closed selling hundreds of each issue, rather than thousands, as it has in the past.

“At its height it was tens of thousands – for years it was the only focus for conscientious objectors.

“During the heightened anti-nuclear campaigns in the 1960s and 1980s, we sold thousands.”

Mr Beale first bought Peace News from a bookshop in Brighton while studying at Sussex University in the 1960s.

He said: “I’d go each week to pick up Peace News for my pacifism, Freethinker for my atheism, and Freedom for my Anarchism.

“They were all weekly publications and it was my political education.” He added that as a maths and physics graduate, pacifism fitted a rational view towards a philosophy to live a life by. He joined the PN staff in 1972 and has been involved in various roles ever since.

The new edition of Peace News includes pieces on what pacifism really means and its application in the modern world, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, book reviews and news stories about the global arms trade.

Albert, who lives in Bloomsbury, says the quarterly offers an alternative view desperately needed in the face of global conflict and increased defence spending.

He added: “Pacifists have an approach where they say, ‘I personally renounce all elements of warfare and I am unconditionally taking myself out of the system’.

“Pacifism is the only logical approach and there is a role for a radically different voice. Peace News tries to look at the world afresh and it is in an area of politics that just does not get coverage.

“I used to do a lot of work for the Peace Pledge Union. I used to get requests from across the media for interviews, to offer a different take, a different approach – but the media today is just not interested in a different viewpoint. The spectrum for news is not based on common sense by an accepted view and we want to operate outside that spectrum.

“We need a publication that flies the flag for a different vision.”