Humphrey Moore

Who is Humphrey Moore?

Humphrey Sims Moore was the founder of Peace News, the British pacifist magazine.

Moore was a Quaker who had been born in Samoa where his father had been teaching. He joined the No More War Movement and embraced various socialist causes, while working as a journalist. In 1933 he became editor of the National Peace Council's publications.

Working with a peace group in Wood Green, London, Moore and his wife, Kathleen, launched Peace News with a free trial issue in June 1936. With good distribution possible through Moore’s contacts through the National Peace Council, the new magazine rapidly attracted attention. Within six weeks, Dick Sheppard, founder of the Peace Pledge Union proposed to Moore that Peace News should become the PPU’s paper. Early contributors to this new organ of the PPU included Gandhi, George Lansbury, and cartoonist Arthur Wragg.

Sales of Peace News peaked at around 40,000 during the so-called Phoney War following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and before major land battles in Europe. In May 1940, in the face of demands in parliament for the banning of the paper, the printer and distributors stopped working with Peace News. However, together with the typographer Eric Gill, Hugh Brock and his brother Ashley, and many others, Moore continued to publish Peace News and arrange for distribution around the UK. At more or less the same time Moore faced a conscientious objector's tribunal at which he was exempted from war service.