OBITUARY: HOWARD CLARK

I'm sad to hear of the death of the anarchist pacifist activist and journalist Howard Clark at the age of 63. He was a stalwart of Peace News and War Resisters International for many years, and I got to know him through European Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s. He was a libertarian leftist of the old school, a sparkling, gregarious and tolerant man who put in untold hours keeping broke campaigns afloat but knew how to have a good time -- and his critical faculties were second to none. I remember him particularly for his ceaseless and brave activity in support of pacifists and draft-refusers in Poland in the 1980s in the face of a communist military dictatorship towards which much of the peace movement turned a blind eye. In the peacenik scene in Britain, he was a consistently solid comrade against  Leninist mountebankes of all stripes. I'd not seen him for ages when I heard he was gone; I wish I had. There's an appreciative notice by Michael Randle and Andrew Rigby here.