League of Nations flag
The International Peace Campaign, which was founded in September 1935 as a reaction to fascist Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia , held its 1936 Congress in Brussels. The General Council of the campaign had members from the following countries: Union of South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Haiti, Holland, Hungary, India, Irish Free State, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey, USA, USSR, Uruguay, Venezuela and Yugoslavia. The object of the Campaign was to seek to coordinate different peace organisations across Europe and beyond.
Some 5,000 delegates, representing a very wide range of organisations, agreed to adopt the following four points:
1. Recognition of the sanctity of treaty obligations
2. Reduction and limitation of armaments by international agreement and suppression of profit from the manufacture and trade in arms
3. Strengthening of the League of Nations for the prevention and stopping of war by the organisation of collective security and mutual assistance
4. Establishment within the framework of the League of Nations of effective machinery for remedying international conditions which might lead to war
Following on from this Congress the British Section of the International Peace Campaign urged British peace organisations to hold Peace Weeks, some of which took place in 1937. The Campaign ceased to exist after the outbreak of the Second World War.
References/Further Reading:
Peace Week booklet, Archive ref: DDX 1137/2/19, Lancashire Archives.
LONSEA: League of Nations Search Engine, International Peace Campaign .
Social Networks and Archival Context, International Peace Campaign.