echoes the more colourful ‘bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity’ (anti-Vietnam war placard, 1969).

The attempt to eliminate war with war is, of course, nonsensical. Radically different strategies are required.

The counter culture movement embodied the ideal that the route to peace was peace itself. Simple non-participation can have an unexpectedly radical quality as illustrated in the slogan, ‘suppose they gave a war and no one came’ (the title of a 1966 article in magazine by writer Charlotte E. Keyes, quoting the American poet Carl Sandburg).

is one of Firrell's favourite texts because (in his words) 'this deceptively plain and simple sentence has in it such revolutionary force, enough to change the world beyond recognition and yet that explosive power is non-violent and fittingly obscured by the apparent flat calm of the words'.