• ALBERT Beale’s letter highlighting the 85th anniversary of Peace News was proof that anti-war sentiment in the UK is still very strong, (Peace News was launched in 1936 and I was not one of its founders! May 6).

This is a great encouragement to all war-haters in Camden and beyond, as is the UK military failure to meet its recruitment target and more recently the government’s critical defeat on the Overseas Operations Bill.

The bill aimed to make prosecuting war crimes practically impossible by imposing a time limit (never mind the fact that these crimes are hardly ever prosecuted).

This defeat was possible thanks to the actions of a rainbow of military and civilian organisations and individuals, including groups at the Crossroads Women’s Centre.

Our campaign brought into the open the unpunished acts of war crimes and torture, past and present, committed by British troops, and that the majority of victims of war are women and children and overwhelmingly people of colour.

The British government has voted down an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, and there have been news reports of UK troops on the ground in the Yemen, a former British protectorate.

War crimes are still committed today against the population in Yemen by or with the complicity of the UK, including the bombing of civilians and the training of child soldiers. How long before those crimes are prosecuted and stopped?

GIORGIO RIVA
Payday Men’s Network Refusing to Kill, NW5