Jeremy from The Stroud Red Band speaks at the Stroud Ceasefire Now Coalition vigil at Wallbridge, Friday 10th October 2025. The vigil meets every Friday from 6-6.20pm. You can watch or read the speech in full below. We have included some clips of Karen Coldrick singing with the Band.
As well as the Red Band, the coalition includes us at Community Solidarity Stroud District, Stroud Against Racism, Stroud District Together With Refugees, Palestine Solidarity Campaign – Stroud District, Na’amod Gloucestershire, Nailsworth Quakers, Stroud Quakers, Parents for Future – Stroud, and The RYSE. If your group would like to join the coalition, please approach one of the organisers at the end of a weekly vigil.
Speech transcript
Friends, it falls to me to open the vigil tonight as we enter into our third year of standing here to bear witness to the slaughter in Gaza and call for a permanent just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As ever, one of the Ceasefire Coalition partners will say a few words, and then we’ll have fifteen minutes of silence, and then I will read some notices about upcoming events.
Oddly, I now have to call on myself to speak, because today it’s the Red Band’s turn to say a few words to open the vigil. The Red Band is Stroud’s progressive street band, and we’ve been a member of the Ceasefire Coalition since March.
Last time it was our turn to speak we played music for the vigil – the antifascist anthem “Bella Ciao”, which is also used by the Palestinian resistance, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother”, and The Internationale.
We’re not playing for you tonight. The band is on a pause, because one of founder members – Karen Coldrick – died two weeks ago. We are devastated, and we have chosen not to play at all during the month of October. Karen was a lovely, kind, beautiful, talented, enthusiastic member of our band, and her death has affected us all deeply.
There is a saying in the Jerusalem Talmud that goes: “”Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world.” A similar phrase is in the Koran – “whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity.”
Karen’s death, one death, connects us to the many thousands of people who have died since the latest round of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians began in October 2023. The tens of thousands who have died in Israel’s assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The twelve hundred Israelis who died as a result of Hamas’s attack on 7th October. Every one of them was someone’s friend, someone’s mother or brother or father or child.
Earlier this year Karen sang at the annual Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in Stroud, which the band co-organises with Community Solidarity Stroud District – another Coalition partner. In Yiddish she sang the Jewish partisans’ song, Zog Nit Keynmol, an anthem for hope and against despair. It begins with the words “Never Say This is Your Last Road”. It reaches across the years, from one genocide to another.
Tonight there is a faint glimmer of hope. Israel and Hamas are in direct talks about a permanent ceasefire. There are plans for an exchange of prisoners and hostages. Of course we’ve been here before. We have no guarantee that this will be a permanent ceasefire. In March this year Israel unilaterally abandoned the last ceasefire. We have no guarantee that this will lead to a just peace – the opposite seems more likely. But even this ceasefire is a necessary condition for something better, and we will go on fighting and work for that something, so that there is justice and equality for everyone who lives between the river and the sea.
As so as this glimmer of hope flickers, let’s remember our friend Karen alongside all the victims of the war and the genocide.
Who are Community Solidarity Stroud District?
Community Solidarity Stroud District exists to build community led solidarity in the Stroud district to oppose the hatred of minorities and oppressed people arising from false and harmful information.
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