Opinion piece published Ilford Recorder, Romford Recorder and Docklands and East London Advertiser April 2026
John Lennon wrote ‘Imagine,’ his iconic peace song, around this time 45 years ago. It was his humanistic response to the war the US was then waging on Vietnam.
Trump’s threat to bomb Iran ‘back to the stone ages where they belong’ channelled US air force commander Curtis Le May. In 1965 Le May demanded that ‘…North Vietnam stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.” He was the inspiration for two of the unhinged characters in the apocalyptic film Dr Strangelove. Trump and his circle evoke frightening parallels.
As a Humanist, I of course want rid of the vile Iranian regime and its fundamentalist religious ideology. But bombing doesn’t change regimes or ideologies. Not least when done by rival religious fundamentalists. It will not be lost on the theocrats that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War and sword-bearer for the Christian Right, boasts a tattoo harking back to the crusades.
East London was the first place to ever suffer aerial bombing. In 1915 Zeppelins dropped grenades on Dalston, Shoreditch and Leytonstone. Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette, peace activist and humanist, described how ‘panic ran rampant’ in Hoxton. Angry mobs attacked businesses of Londoners associated with the ‘enemy.’ Increasingly intense air raids followed. By the end of WWI, 668 Londoners had been killed.
Pankhurst campaigned against aerial bombing, and its devastating impact on innocent civilians. Angered by the failure of the 1932 World Disarmament Conference to outlaw it, Pankhurst erected an anti-air war memorial near her home in Woodford Green. It’s the world’s first anti-war memorial, and now a Grade 2 listed building.
East London went on to suffer the horrors of the blitz in WWII. The spirit shown then is a lesson in how counterproductive it can be to rain destruction on people.
Humanists don’t have hymns, but Lennon’s song could in some ways serve as a humanist anthem.
“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try, no hell below us, above us, only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there’s no countries; it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people, living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”
Paul Kaufman
Chairperson East London Humanists
