The PaxCat Project: bringing peace archives to life

The Commonweal Collection Barbara Bruce and Walter Evans-Wentz Peace News 1937-8 Polaris Protest March Hands Off Greenham
Images copyright © University of Bradford. These are links to larger images and more information.

> collection descriptions > links > suggested reading

The PaxCat Project in Special Collections at the University of Bradford was funded by the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives.  The project ran from May 2009 to May 2010 and catalogued the peace archives acquired by the Commonweal Library.  Commonweal is an independent peace library centred on Gandhi’s ideas of non violence, and based at the University of Bradford since the death of its founder, David Hoggett, in 1975.  Over the years, its Trustees, volunteers, staff and friends developed many contacts among peace activists and pressure groups, which led to the donation of over 80 archive collections, complementing the Library’s wealth of rare activist literature, pamphlets, journals and audiovisual material.  The archives were donated to Special Collections by the Commonweal Trustees in 2005.

The Commonweal Archives cover the 1940s to the 1980s, beginning with the papers of Barbara Bruce, a Quaker nurse whose letters and photographs provide the earliest evidence of the historical link between Gandhi, the Commonweal Library and the British non violent direct action movement. 

The core collections covered by the project tell the story of the radical wing of the early nuclear disarmament movement in Britain.  Archives of Operation Gandhi (later the Non Violent Resistance Group), the emergency committee behind Harold Steele’s Christmas Island protest, the Aldermaston March Committee, the Direct Action Committee, the World Peace Brigade, the San Francisco to Moscow Walk for Peace, the Committee Against Tax for Nuclear Arms and the Committee of 100 have been discovered and described.  Spanning the early 1950s to the late 1960s, these unique sources document the ideas and the actions of those who were outside the political mainstream, developing new methods of campaigning against the threat of nuclear war.  

The Peace News archive provides a bridge between this era and the early 1980s, when the nuclear disarmament movement revived in protest at the stationing of Cruise and Pershing II missiles in Europe.  Supplementing Peace News, the growth of peace camps across Britain is also documented by archives on the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and the Molesworth Peace Camp, collected by peace activists Sarah Meyer, Tim Wallis and Ian and Jennifer Hartley.  In print since 1936, Peace News was embedded in the peace movement and its archives reflect its history as a record of events, a forum for ideas and a reflection of political change. 

- Helen Roberts, Project Archivist

Multi-level catalogues

  • Barbara Bruce (1906-1976): Quaker and supporter of Gandhi who volunteered as a nurse and relief worker in India in the 1940s
  • Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War: organisers of the first Aldermaston March, 1958; wound up in 1961 after the formation of the Committee of 100
  • American-European March: peace walk from San Francisco to Moscow, organised by the Committee for Non Violent Action, 1960-1961
  • Hugh Brock (1914-1985): peace activist, Quaker and editor of Peace News from 1955 to 1964
  • Peace News: published since 1936 in support of non violence, pacifism and anti-militarism
  • Mary Ringsleben (fl 1958-1968) and Derry Hannam (fl 1960 to present): members of the Committee of 100, 1960-1968
  • David Markham (1913-1983): actor who led a tax refusal campaign in the early 1960s
  • Margaret Gardiner (1904-2005): organiser of peace advertising campaign in Nottingham, 1962
  • Richard Taylor: academic and author of Against the bomb (1988)
  • Michael Randle (b 1933): peace activist and academic; includes papers about his prosecution for his role in George Blake’s escape from prison
  • Sarah Meyer (d 2010): peace activist who took part in Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, 1982-1985

Collection descriptions

Suggested reading

Links are provided to records on Copac for these items. The Copac library catalogue gives free access to the merged online catalogues of major University, Specialist, and National Libraries in the UK and Ireland, including the British Library. For more information about accessing items see the FAQs on the Copac website.

  • The disarmers: a study in protest, by Christopher Driver (1964) Records on Copac
  • Left, left, left: a personal account of six protest campaigns, by Peggy Duff (1971) Records on Copac
  • The Left in Britain 1956-1968, by David Widgery (1976) Records on Copac
  • Against all war: fifty years of Peace News 1936-1986, by Albert Beale (1986) Records on Copac
  • Articles of peace : celebrating fifty years of Peace News, edited by Gail Chester and Andrew Rigby (1986) Records on Copac
  • Campaigns for peace : British peace movements in the twentieth century, edited by Richard Taylor and Nigel Young (1987) Records on Copac
  • Against the bomb: the British peace movement 1958-1965, by Richard Taylor (1988) Records on Copac
  • Protests and visions: peace politics in twentieth century Britain, by James Hinton (1989) Records on Copac
  • The long road to Greenham: feminism and anti-militarism in Britain since 1820, by Jill Liddington (1989) Records on Copac
  • Peace camping: a history, by Michael Waugh (1997) Records on Copac
  • Pacifism in the twentieth century, by Peter Brock and Nigel Young (1999) Records on Copac
  • The struggle against the bomb: a history of the world disarmament movement (3 vols), by Lawrence Wittner (1993, 1997 and 2003) Records on Copac
  • People power and protest since 1945: a bibliography of nonviolent action, edited by April Carter, Howard Clark and Michael Randle (2006)

    Records on Copac

You might also be interested in...

Pressure groups

Delivering a petition

Find out more

Nuclear power & weapons

Nuclear bunker

Find out more

Robert Owen

Robert Owen

Find out more

Steve Cohen

Anti-deportation poster

Find out more