Origins of The Peace Museum at Bradford: Gerald Drewett
The concept of forming a peace museum goes back a long way.
I was the first chairperson of the Peace Tax Campaign when it was formed in 1979 with Quaker financial support. The aim of the Campaign is to have conscientious objection to military conscription extended to allowing that element of an individual’s tax which is effectively allocated to military spending, to be allocated instead to providing national security in a non-violent manner. Some supporters of the Campaign withheld their taxes and needed to deposit that money where it could earn interest but not be subject to tax.
Charities are exempt from taxation so I set about establishing a charity for that purpose. I engaged a solicitor who set up the Deeds of the Give Peace A Chance Trust and sought charitable registration. In the 1980s the word ‘peace’ was very political, the Charity Commissioners refused registration and the solicitor accepted that decision. I’ve never engaged a solicitor since. I took over and after some four years of disagreement registration was accepted in March 1986 ‘To advance the education of the public concerning the history and current activities of peace movements through the provision of educational facilities including publications, films, displays and the creation of a National Peace Museum’.
The immediate work of the Trust was to create travelling exhibitions and a network of Peace Education Centres (York, Milton Keynes, Brighton, Scarborough). Because we wanted to research the history of conscientious objection and peacemaking, I met with Peter van den Dungen in June 1987. Since 1976 Peter had been a lecturer at the School of Peace Studies at Bradford University and his speciality was peace history and peace museums. After this initial contact a project for establishing a peace museum appeared regularly on the agenda of Trust meetings and in 1991 a Working Group was set up under the Trust’s auspices.
The Trust agreed to underwrite the cost of the 1992 International Conference of Peace Museums at Bradford University (approximately £7000) brought together by Peter van den Dungen and came to favour Bradford as the place to establish the first peace museum office. In 1994 a staff member, Carol Rank, was engaged, a lease was taken on an office in the Wool Exchange, Bradford and a Steering Group chaired by Clive Barrett was appointed to take the project further. Eventually a lease of the second floor of 10 Piece Hall Yard, Bradford was taken from 29 September 1997 and on 1 January 1998 members of the Steering Group became directors of The Peace Museum (charitable company limited by guarantee) with Elnora Ferguson as chairperson. A companion trust, The Peace Museum Trust, was set up to hold all artefacts that the museum might collect.
10/2020
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https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/a7fcdd32-5b73-328e-b9dd-a4a7e3d07649
Records of the Peace Tax Campaign
Archive Collection
University of Bradford Special Collections
Scope and Content
This archive consists mainly of correspondence, within the Campaign, with supporters, Members of Parliament, and European and other external bodies. There are also minutes, circulars, and other promotional material.
Administrative / Biographical History
The Peace Tax Campaign was started in 1977 by Stanley Keeble, a Cornish Quaker. The objective of the campaign was to establish the legal right to conscientious objection to military taxation, as a parallel to the established legal right to conscientious objection to military service. The suggestion was that the proportion of tax that would be used for military purposes should instead be used for peacemaking.
Keeble aired the idea with his contacts in peace organisations and in October 1977 sent out a leaflet announcing the Peace Tax Campaign. Originally conceived as a campaign of the Peace Pledge Union, it was soon established as a separate body. The campaign began with letters, lectures and meetings to raise awareness of its aims. Peace and religious groups, as well as concerned individuals, were encouraged to lobby their MPs to support a change in the law. In August 1981 a letter to the Guardian signed by parliamentary and religious representatives publicised the campaign and resulted in many new declarations of support. By 1983 there were over 3,000 supporters and over 50 local co-ordinators.
Gerald Drewett became campaign chairman in 1980, and Margaret and Stanley Moore were appointed as joint secretaries shortly after. Stanley Keeble continued to edit the campaign newsletter until 1982 and, though he stepped down from the committee in 1985, he remained actively involved with the campaign until his death in 1996.
In 1981 Alex Lyon MP put an amendment to the Finance Bill to allow those with a “conscientious objection to paying for expenditure on defence” to pay the military part of their taxes to the then Ministry of Overseas Development. This, though unsuccessful, was the first of many attempts to enable such legislation. An Early Day Motion in 1982 to establish a Peace Fund to receive taxes diverted from military uses was supported by 31 MPs.
Associated with the campaign were tax resistance and tax diversion, individuals challenging the law by withholding the military part of the tax or endeavouring to pay it into a specific government department, such as the Ministry of Overseas Development. This often resulted in legal action from the Internal Revenue, leading to resisters having their goods distrained by bailiffs to pay off the tax, or even (as in the case of Arthur Windsor) serving prison sentences. Martin Howard ran a separate network with its own newsletter, Tax Direction Now, which “co-ordinated and cared for” tax diverters.
An International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns was held in Germany in 1986, the first of many worldwide, two of them in the U.K. The Peace Tax Campaign has twice changed its name: in 1990 the organisation was renamed conscience The Peace Tax Campaign, and in 2009 conscience Taxes For Peace Not War. It still campaigns for “the legal right for those with a conscientious objection to war to have the military part of their taxes spent on peacebuilding initiatives”.
Gerald Drewett 20 The Drive, Hertford, SG14 3DF
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