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The London Peace Trail
Runs from Friends House, opposite Euston station, to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, a distance of approximately 4 miles.
The Trail takes in a number of important sites along the way which record some of London's rich 'peace' heritage, including:
- Tavistock Square
- Red Lion Square
- Covent Garden
- Trafalgar Square
- Whitehall
- Westminster
- Victoria Tower Gardens
- Harmsworth Park
Tavistock Square
This is just one block south of Euston Road and is the site of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, a memorial to conscientious objectors, an Hiroshima tree and Holocaust memorial.
Mahatma Gandhi was leader of the Indian independence movement and promoted the philosophy and technique of 'active nonviolence' or satyagraha as a means of personal and national liberation. His satyagraha campaigns eventually led to the end of British colonial rule in India and the creation of the independent states of India and Pakistan. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu extremist opposed to his conciliatory approach to Moslems in Pakistan. The statue of Gandhi in Tavistock Square was given to the city of London in 1967 by the then Indian High Commissioner.
Hundreds of British men were jailed or shot for refusing to fight in the First World War. This led to an official recognition of 'conscientious objection' by which those with a moral or religious objection to killing other people
could be exempt from military conscription. Thousands took this option during the Second World War and served on hospital ships, with ambulance units and undertook other tasks that did not involve carrying or using a weapon. In many parts
of the world men are still conscripted into the armed forces and large numbers opt for conscientious objector status. Many are still imprisoned or persecuted for this. The memorial to Conscientious Objectors was unveiled in 1995 by Sir
Michael Tippett, the composer and pacifist.
Cherry trees have been planted in public places around the world to remember the hundreds of thousands killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Every year on the 6th of August, when the first atom bomb fell on
Hiroshima, there are peace vigils and acts of remembrance here at the Hiroshima Tree in Tavistock Square as well as at other sites in London and around the country.
Red Lion Square
Fenner Brockway
Bust of Bertrand Russell
Conway Hall, home of the South Place Ethical Society
Covent Garden
The Africa Centre, King Street
Trafalgar Square
Edith Cavell
Whitehall
Earl Mountbatten, Horse Guards Parade
Westminster
Westminster Abbey and Martin Luther King, one of the 'modern martyrs' above the West Door
Westminster (Methodist) Central Hall, first home to the UN General Assembly in 1946, prior to construction of the UN building in New York
Victoria Tower Gardens
Sylvia Pankhurst
The Burgers of Calais
Harmsworth Park
The Imperial War Museum
The Tibetan Peace Garden
