Casper Pottle

A pylon, lamppost and McDonald's drive-thru sign and some shrubs next to a carpark

Birding highlight of the year so far. A Cetti's warbler blasting out its song from this patch of scrub at Chester Services on the M56. Not what you expect when you pull off the motorway for a coffee #Birdsheardin2026 #birding

Morning dog walk

Vanessa Redgrave sitting next to Madame Linh Qui, anti-war protest, London, 1970.

📷 Bettman

YouTube video by eleanor anstruther The March to Aldermaston

Classic documentary "March to Aldermaston" 1958 , filmed by Lindsey Anderson, voiceover by Richard Burton www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmEp...

Brigitte Bardot down the pub

Off to the pub

Loving the AI-generated George Blake in hoodie and trainers 😂

Margaretta D’Arcy obituary Playwright and activist who, with her husband John Arden, was committed to politically engaged theatre

www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/d...

Protestors against America’s war in Vietnam, San Francisco, 1965, by Jim Marshall.

Perverting the course of justice? They admitted it. The judge said they had no defence. But last week, two people who attempted to trash a nuclear submarine were acquitted. Marcel Berlins and Clare Dyer on why more and more juries are...

"Pottle & Randle confirmed their responsibility for the crime & made impassioned speeches from the dock. The jury was clearly impressed & acquitted, knowing that it was delivering a perverse verdict, showing two fingers to a system that would behave in this way." www.theguardian.com/world/2001/j...

George Blake (1922-2020) – and our part in his escape He lived to a great age and got a fine media send-off, despite having received one of the longest prison sentences in British legal history. When news of George Blake’s passing in Moscow at t…

George Blake (1922-2020) – and our part in his escape
sentencingcrimeandjustice.wordpress.com/2020/12/29/g...

YouTube video by Contemporary Films Anti-Nuclear march in rural Berkshire, 1958

This morning I have been thinking about the first Aldermaston march in April 1958. Here we see the first official outing for the famous CND symbol. Some good 1950s leftist fashions in evidence

youtu.be/0w98RGjsaS4?...

Stills from the films March to Aldermaston and Neighbours, screening at the Macrobert Arts Centre's filmhouse on Monday 3 November 2025.

Neighbours / March to Aldermaston
Archive film screening
#NormanMcLaren #LindsayAnderson
2.30pm Monday 3 November @macrobertarts.bsky.social
Part of our REMEMBERED exhibition programme:
archives.stir.ac.uk/2025/10/06/r...
@csdocufest.bsky.social @artatstirling.bsky.social #CultureOnStirCampus

#OtD 22 Oct 1966 the most notorious prisoner in England, Soviet double-agent George Blake was broken out of jail by left libertarian peace activists (who didn't support the USSR at all) in an amusing and very "DIY" fashion stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9519...

Today in London diplomatic history, 1967: the Greek Embassy occupied protesting military coup On 28 April 1967, one week after the Colonels’ coup in Greece (which was to lead to a 7-year rightwing military dictatorship in the country), the Greek Embassy in London was occupied, by abou…

#OnThisDay in London penal history, 1967: Terry Chandler, Del Foley and Michael Randle jailed for their part in occupying the Greek Embassy earlier that year, in protest at the military coup in Greece.

More on the occupation:
wp.me/p74yfw-Kn

If you can find the documentaries of George Carey on British spies (Blake, Philby, and Burgess) they’re very well made. Excellent directorial style.

Committee of 100 – Direct Action in the 1960s Phil Hearse remembers a previous wave of mass non-violent civil disobedience from the 1960s

#OnThisDay in London policing history, 1961: Metropolitan Police ban a mass meeting of Committee of 100 peace activists, Many demonstrators are beaten up, 1300 nicked.
Useful summary of C100 here:
anticapitalistresistance.org/committee-of...

Ralph Schoenman: Unsung Hero of Progressive Thought and Action (RIP) [Prefatory Note: The post that follows was presented ‘remarks’ at a memorial for Ralph Schoenman (1935-2023) arranged by Mya Shone, and a publication of the proceedings in a format being arranged b…

Ralph Schoenman: Unsung Hero of Progressive Thought and Action (RIP) Ralph Schoenman was a lifelong dedicated socialist author, activist, adventurer whose death was inexplicably ignored in the public media richardfalk.org/2023/09/30/r...

#OtD 21 Aug 1971 George Jackson, a member of the Black Panther Party, and five others were shot and killed by guards in the San Quentin State Prison in California, during a supposed escape attempt stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9352...

Counter-culture newspaper International Times, 1972

We need more 60s counter-culture.

David McKee’s splendid cover for July 5th 1967’s Punch, offering medal designs for the counter-culture’s adoption of old military uniforms. I just don’t know how satirical it was intended to be, but those medals are pure playful pop art & I’d love to hang a full set on my study wall.

In 1961 political protestors were silenced under the Official Secrets Act – and forgotten – what will happen now the Terrorism Act is being touted in the same way? The government says that security concerns are a sufficient justification for banning Palestine Action from protesting genocide in Gaza by deeming it a terrorist organisation. Not for the first tim…

The ban on protesting genocide in Gaza is not the first time the British State has used "security" as a trojan horse to silence criticism. In 1961 members of the Committee of 100, the "Wethersfield Six", were silenced by the Official Secrets Act immaterialisms.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/i...

A typed letter from Bertrand Russell to the composer Benjamin Britten, inviting him as a prominent member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to join the "Committee of 100", a civil disobedience campaign.

Britten was sufficiently prominent as a pacifist to be invited to join the "Committee of 100" set up to mount a campaign of civil disobedience, though he turned the invitation down. (Inter alia, as a gay man before decriminalisation, it would have been best not to antagonise the police.)

A typed letter, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, to the composer Benjamin Britten, hoping that he can join the 1960 march from Aldermaston to London and/or speak at the closing rally. The letterhead and left margin list large numbers of prominent supporters; the letter is signed by Canon John Collins, the chairman of CND.

Today is the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and the start of the nuclear age. Britten and Pears, as pacifists, reacted strongly to the threat of nuclear war and were members of CND: here's Britten's invitation to take part in the 1960 Aldermaston march and rally.

Ernest Rodker obituary Other lives: Cabinetmaker and peace activist involved in the Aldermaston marches, action to oppose apartheid and local campaigns in south-west London

www.theguardian.com/theguardian/...

Direct action has a long history in Britain - from the DAC, the Committee for 100 & the Spies for Peace, to the Greenham Common Women - and that's only the peace campaigns. That's the history Palestine Action is part of - and it will continue no matter what the courts eventually decide.

MIke Lesser –Freedom is a Career

Committee of 100, Spies for Peace & the theory of Monotropism? Respect.

A lot of people have attempted to justify the proscription of Palestine Action on the basis that protests on military property or which damage military equipment have always been understood as terrorism. This is nonsense.

Some examples from the last three decades. Thread🧵🔽

Working for Rebel Verdicts – George Blake and Luigi Mangione Luigi Mangione and George Blake But what about the parallel to the case of George Blake? Two anti-war activists, Pat Pottle and Michael Randle, sprung Blake from a London jail in the 1960’s w…

Working for Rebel Verdicts – George Blake and Luigi Mangione tomasoflatharta.com/2025/01/05/w...

Saddened to learn of the death of Ernest Rodker. It was a joy to learn a bit of Rodker's life and politics through his influence on his friend & comrade Brian Barnes and some of their shared endeavours. Here he is clearing a park in front of Brian's first mural and in a quote from EP Thompson