Meet our Executive Committee
Read our EC’s bios below:
Monica Frisch
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Monica has been a member of the Executive Committee since 1991. She is now the Treasurer and a passionate campaigner.
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For many years Monica was Treasurer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Conscience and Network for Peace as well as a former war tax resister.
Simon Reed
Simon joined the EC in 2015, taking over from Dr Iain Farrell as Honorary Treasurer.
His professional background is in IT as a Chartered IT Professional and then in change management including eight years in the Ministry of Defence.
With four decades of experience on committees, he is currently active as a Fellow and Trustee of the charitable professional body the Institution of Analysts and Programmers (focused on improving software for society) and as a National Coordinating Committee member for the Scientists for Global Responsibility (promoting responsible science and technology).
He is now a recent post-graduate in Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies and recipient of a Lancaster University Gold Award. It is his aim to work full-time in the research, documentation and promotion of alternatives to war using evidence-based methods that provide better short term and long term stability and returns.
“Spending less on overseas destruction and more on peace building just makes basic humanitarian, ethical, economic and political sense; we already know this”.
Robin Brookes
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Robin rejoined the EC in 2015.
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He has been a member of Conscience since the mid 1980s – around the time cruise missiles were being deployed near him on Salisbury Plain.
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He became a war tax resister in 2003 and shortly after that joined with six others to apply for a judicial review to change the law to allow COs to divert their taxes.
They called themselves the Peace Tax Seven. Robin is keen to encourage the spread of local campaigning groups.
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“More people need to know about this campaign and support it, including many who are already in the peace movement”.
Anne McCullagh D'Lyske is an active member of our Executive Committee in Scotland. Her journey towards pacifism began during her school years, influenced by Benjamin Britten's stance during the war. While at Trinity College of Music, Bruce Kent, the college chaplain, further fueled her commitment to peace. Growing up in a military family, her anti-nuclear convictions and adoption of war tax resistance and conscientious objection did not distress her father, who understood military duty complexities. Anne has been a visionary for the Ministry for Peace concept, collaborating with John McDonnell and others over three decades ago. Her goal is to establish the Peace Tax concept within international law, redirecting resources towards lasting peace and justice for all. Anne envisions conscientious objectors as catalysts for change, leading humanity towards a future illuminated by universal compassion.
"My father, a British Army colonel, raised me in a military family, yet my anti-nuclear stance, War Tax Resistance, and Conscientious Objector position never bothered him. He believed soldiers don't want to kill but do so out of duty.
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Around thirty years ago, I joined John McDonnell and others to envision a Ministry for Peace. Today, Labour has a Shadow Minister for Peace, and Conscience presented a report to Parliament on the idea's practicality. There's a sea change happening.
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Politicians still rush into morally questionable and sometimes illegal conflicts. Our cultural attitude to war and defense needs a complete overhaul. I hope Conscience's work contributes to a more humane future.
My long-term goal is to establish the Peace Tax concept in international law, from the UK to the UN. No one should be forced into war tax slavery. Humanity's reliance on violence endangers us. We must choose to pay for lasting peace and justice, not self-destruction."
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“Conscientious Objectors are the leaven in this bread – the little candles alight in the inconspicuous corners of the world – which may one day in combination blaze out into an inferno of consciousness that will lead humanity out of our present state of barbarism and darkness and into the light of universal compassion. I have never paid for a weapon of war and I never will. But I want us all… all of us… all over the world to enjoy the right of being allowed to earn an honest crust without it having been obligatorily drenched in the spilt blood of our fellow man. This is our great task – to make such a simple thing so. This is my personal hope, and this is my personal dream”.