PEACE ON EARTH?
THE MINISTRY FOR PEACE DEBATE

THE CASE FOR:

We must wage peace with sophistication and commitment just as we now wage war.
Marianne Williamson, US Department of Peace Initiative.
A Bill has been presented to Parliament to pave the way for the formation of a Ministry for Peace.
Introducing his Bill, Labour MP John McDonnell called for a new Government Department whose sole purpose would be to focus the resources of government on the promotion of peace and the eventual abolition of war.
The Bill was initiated by Diana Basterfield, who chairs the steering committee promoting the Ministry of Peace. 'We came into being to be a voice for the millions who marched for peace through the United Kingdom in 2003', she explains. 'The British people in all their diversity clearly showed that we have evolved to a point where violence is morally unacceptable as a tool of foreign policy.'

A Minister for Peace would be a voice at the Cabinet table to speak up for non-violent conflict resolution and alternatives to war.
John McDonnell told the House, 'The Ministry would provide within Government an expertise in non-violent conflict resolution, through which Government could be advised on how policies can be developed across government to reduce the potential for conflict. Secondly, it would provide and co-ordinate Government resources to foster greater understanding in Britain and the world of how war can be avoided and peace achieved'.
In the last thousand years, England has been at war for 56 years out of every hundred.
'Violence of all kind permeates our society - in the home, in the playground, on housing estates, at football matches, between communities, between generations', says Diana Basterfield.
'What is needed is a cultural shift - from infants to foreign policy, the culture must be permeated with the tools of non-violence and conflict resolution.'

A Ministry of Peace would support and promote a renaissance of research in this country into the causes and impacts of conflict, monitoring potential areas of conflict and advancing practical techniques to avoid outbreaks of violence before they arise. That includes identifying the potential for conflict over the scarcity or maldistribution of natural resources, the impact of human rights abuses as a cause of conflict, the potential for reducing and eliminating the arms trade and demonstrating the potential of a variety of techniques for conflict resolution and effective community peace-building activities.
The idea for a Ministry of Peace originated in the United States where Dennis Kucinich introduced a Bill for a Department of Peace in Congress. Congressman Kucinich is seeking the Democratic nomination for President advocating the elimination of all America’s weapons of mass destruction the American Initiative for a Department for Peace has been working closely with its British counterpart.

The idea has also been taken up by the General Assembly of the European Women’s Lobby which recently called on the European Union Commission to create the post of Commissioner for Peace.
The British steering committee also want to see a Commission for Peace established in the UK outside Parliament which would bring together all the elements of civil society engaged in building a culture of peace who could advise the government.
They would like to hear from anyone wishing to get involved and urge people to encourage their MP’s to support the call for Ministry for Peace.FROM POSITIVE NEWS www.positivenews.org.uk

FURTHER ACTION
Contact: John McDonnell MP, House of Commons, London SW1.
Tel: 07870 852639
Email: mail@ministryforpeace.org.uk 
Website: www.ministryforpeace.org.uk

THE CASE AGAINST:

Cynical cries of 'haven't they read 1984?' aside, it's probably good to be sceptical about the idea of a UK Ministry For Peace. Mainly because, as we know, good ideas are sometimes just bad ones, cunningly disguised. But a 'Ministry For Peace' seems to have been received little critical examination, which is surprising. Peace is not precisely an uninteresting subject at the moment, and this is apparently a serious proposal. But we do, at least, know the proposed Ministry's sole purpose: in the words of John MacDonnell, it would be to 'focus the resources of government on the promotion of peace and the eventual abolition of war'.
Nothing against Mr MacDonnell, who sounds like an estimable person. And the Ministry for Peace is not his idea, precisely, but that of a peace marcher called Diana Basterfield. Let's, therefore, forgive him for using the phrase 'resources of the government' when what he means is 'resources of the people'. Focusing the resources of the people onto peace would, in fact, not be a bad thing at all, and rather simple to do. You stop spending the money on going to war. You start spending the money on useful social projects. So far, so good.

But then, Mr MacDonnell seems to tell us that, in effect, some of this money will be not be spent on mundane stuff, like hospitals. No, it - or the energies of the Ministry - will be devoted instead to a concept: the 'promotion of peace'. Do we really need to 'promote' peace?. Hardly, you would think, given the strength of the worldwide protests. Still, perhaps it would not be so bad to spend people's taxes on telling them what they already know - at least, they have been spent on worse.
It is the last bit which raises some serious critical opposition. Mr MacDonnell seems to be trying to make us - or himself - believe that the creation of this new and impressively titled engine of state is vital to world peace. In fact, better than that - approve this new Ministry, Mr MacDonnell suggests - and hey presto! The abolition of war!
He doesn't quite say that, of course. He says the Ministry's purpose would be 'the eventual abolition of war'. It is an interesting sort of purpose to have anyway, abolishing war. Obviously, you might as well try to abolish tablecloths. But it sounds sufficiently optimistic to make people wish for it to happen, and, more importantly, to overlook the word 'eventual' . Mr MacDonnell (or whoever ends up being employed in the Ministry For Peace) should obviously expect a long career, if one a little short on job satisfaction. But there are other reasons why the average observer might like to bear that word 'eventual' in mind.
There are, as with everything, practical issues surrounding a 'Ministry For Peace'. Who, for example, would it employ? Not, naturally, a majority of morally vacuumed careerists... but, then again, the notion that a Ministry for Peace would miraculously produce a new, energised wave of positive, cooperative, peaceful politicians who would dare to vote against their Party Whip is quite difficult to sustain. There are potentially rather more worrying issues, too. One might, even, mutter prophetically about 'peacewash'; surely soon to be any sensible warring government's answer to growing public criticism. 'Look we care. We do, really. There you are, you see, a nice new Ministry for Peace. Doesn't it look pretty?'.
And one might, in fact, sit up and think 'hey, what's with this eventual abolition of war business? For just how long, precisely, are they intending to keep draining us of taxes, and the country of resources, turning our young people into illegal killers, turning us into accessories, and still failing to solve the energy crisis? Eventual abolition of war? No mention of holding the givernment to account over the illegality of the last war, then, or of stopping it from going into another one. Just a cosy-sounding promise for the not-too-forseeable future. And these are meant to be the good guys.

Diana Basterfield, the originator of the idea, is obviously passionate in her desire for a 'cultural shift' away from the 'violence of all kinds (which) permeates our society' (so she won't mind being reminded that social violence is linked to social deprivation). But far more interesting than her idea, whether you see it as monumental, Kafka-esque irony, or a sticking plaster for MP's consciences, or political propaganda, or just a nice but daft idea, would be to determine where the culture of violence in governments springs from. Not all people act like our bullying, foul-mouthed, war-mongering blackmailing representatives. But even the decent ones, like Mr MacDonnell, have fallen short of anything but grasping at straws. We should avoid giving any of them more money. Instead, we should be asking who we're electing, and why.

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