Howard Clark (pacifist)

Howard Clark (6 March 1950 – 28 November 2013) was an

active pacifist who was Chair of War Resisters' International
(WRI) from 2006 until his sudden death from a heart attack.
As well as having played an important role in the WRI from
the 1980s, he had been an active contributor to the British
pacifist magazine, Peace News. [1] [2]

Howard Clark was born in Bath into a devout Methodist

family and his father was a minister. He was a large,
energetic man who suffered from nystagmus, otherwise
known as “dancing eyes”. He became a pacifist around the
time he went to the University of East Anglia in 1968, where
he met, and eventually married the daughter of a World War
II conscientious objector. At university he was a member of
the British National Council of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. On graduation he was offered a position as
co-editor of Peace News, a job he held until 1976. In this
time he helped to launch several campaigns and
organisations including London Greenpeace, the British
Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign, and the
Campaign Against the Arms Trade.[1][3]

In 1976 Clark left Peace News and moved to York, where he

became a member the editorial collective of York Free Press,
an alternative newspaper. He became an active campaigner
against nuclear power, undertaking a solo cycle tour round
all the UK nuclear power sites. In 1980 he moved to Bradford
where he studied and worked as assistant to Michael Randle
on the Alternative Defence Commission that produced the
report, Defence without the Bomb.[4] During this period that
he also helped write the 1983 Peace News/Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament publication Preparing for nonviolent
direct action.[5] In 1985 he joined the WRI London office. [1]
[3][6]

In the early 1990s he travelled regularly to the Balkans to

support the anti-war groups that had formed there. He
became impressed with the civil resistance movement in
Kosovo, which led to the publication of several works, such
as Civil Resistance in Kosovo.[7] In 1997 he became an
Honorary Research Fellow of the Albert Einstein Institution in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded by Gene Sharp. In the
same year he resigned from his staff position with WRI but
continued to be active with Peace News and the WRI
executive. In 2006 he was elected Chair of WRI, and started
teaching a postgraduate programme at a university in Spain.
The following year he launched the website
Civilresistance.info. In 2013 Howard Clark was awarded a
PhD from Coventry University in recognition of his research
and publications on Kosovo.[1]

See also
 List of peace activists

References
1. ^ a b c d Rigby, Andrew; Randle, Michael. "Howard Clark
(1950-2013)". War Resisters' International. Retrieved 20
June 2019.
2. Speck, Andrea(s). "Howard Clark (* 6 March 1950,
28 November 2013)". Retrieved 20 June 2019.
3. ^ a b Randle, Michael. "Remembering Howard Clark".
Open Democracy. Retrieved 20 June 2019.
4. Defence without the bomb : the report of the
Alternative Defence Commission set up by the
Lansbury House Trust Fund. Taylor & Francis. 1983.
p. 318. ISBN 978-0850662405.
5. Preparing for nonviolent direct action. Peace News.
1984. p. 80. ISBN 978-0946409020.
6. "Howard Clark Obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 20
June 2019.
7. Clark, Howard (August 2000). Civil Resistance in
Kosovo. Pluto Press.