BPEC at 25
by Duncan Blinkhorn
It’s easy to take something like BPEC for granted when it’s been around for so long, but as someone who was coordinator from the late ‘80s until 2000 I know how fragile it always was (and I presume is). It’s a credit to Brighton, Hove and the thousands of volunteers who have nurtured and sustained it over that time, that BPEC remains to this day a ‘beacon’ providing a local access to global perspectives and enlightened thinking in a troubled and interconnected world.
I first stumbled on BPEC when I was a student in the early 1980s. This was during its first incarnation as the ‘Give Peace A Chance’ shop
(also referred to as the ‘CND shop’) in Kensington Gardens - a glorified
cupboard at the back of what was then the Kensington Arcade. Rather than just running a stall each Saturday, the twenty-or-so CND groups in the Brighton & Hove had combined to support this tiny shop which stocked leaflets and a whacky range of badges and T-shirts. It was
also the place to get your coach tickets to the London demos, pick
up the latest news about Greenham Common and to link up with peace activists. I had little idea then that I’d devote a large part of the following 16 years involved with it.
With Reagan & Thatcher ratcheting up the arms race, apartheid reigning over southern Africa and Central America under the boot of US foreign policy, it was a period of intense activity and the shop soon moved to much larger premises in Trafalgar Street and became the Brighton Peace Centre. I was very involved with the non-violent
direct action wing of the peace movement – breaking into military bases, blocking runways, occupying cranes and generally being a spanner in the works of the cold-war machine. I started volunteering at the Centre on its ‘information desk’ to make sure details about various actions were going out. I soon got involved in the running of the Centre and worked to develop the shop to ensure that this brought in the money to cover the ever-increasing rent.
Gradually we broadened the stock to included campaign goods from environmental, human rights, animal rights and fair trade projects and
were soon turning over the £60,000 a year we needed to be viable.
BPEC stalwart, Mabel Pratt, brought back inspiration from her time in Tasmania and developed the lending library and built up links with local
schools. We also started to provide equipment to member groups – a marquee, photocopying and a minibus, as well as access to three inflatable protest boats which a few of us would take down to Portsmouth or up to Faslane Naval Base, hooked on to the ‘Peace Bus’ to confront the arms race at sea. BPEC provided an essential space for receiving news about actions around the country and a place to rally support for these. Our minibus was a regular sight, carrying activists to conferences, marches, blockades and all manner of actions on land and sea.
In 1994 we moved to Gardner Street where we became BPEC – the ‘E’ reflecting the significance of environmental issues at the heart of global
security – and occupied four floors including an IT suite in the basement and an Education Unit on the top floor. On Saturdays we supported campaigning groups by providing space for their stalls outside the shop. As the millennium approached we launched our lottery funded Peace 2000 Project, doing peace education work in local schools. This culminated in a big festival on Hove Lawns in May 2000 to ‘celebrate a culture of peace’ for the new millennium.
It was great to be in the thick of the North Laines but the ever spiralling rents made it hard to continue beyond our lease term and the
prospect of the new Eco-Centre on Surrey Street seemed to provide BPEC’s obvious future home. So, following a temporary spell in the basement of the Unemployed Centre in Hollingdean, we arrived at where and what we are today with a new band of volunteers and even a few familiar faces from the early Give Peace A Chance days – notably Len Goldman who in his 90s continues his regular shift, as well as hardy perennials like me who reappear each year to do fundraising around the Glastonbury Festival.
I’m sure I speak for the thousands who’ve passed through the Centre over the last quarter century, including many good friends I’ve met there, in wishing BPEC a happy 25th anniversary and for all those involved today, best wishes for the future, where clearly BPEC will continue to have a role.