Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament logo
In British politics, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has
been at the forefront of the peace movement in the United Kingdom and claims to be Europe's largest single-issue
peace campaign. The organisation is led by an elected "chair", currently
Kate Hudson.
As well as campaigning against military actions that may result in the use of nuclear,
chemical or biological weapons, they are
also in favour of nuclear disarmament by all countries and tighter international regulation through treaties such as the
NPT. They are also opposed to any new nuclear power stations being built in the United Kingdom. One of
the activities most strongly associated with CND is the Aldermaston March held over
the Easter weekend from Trafalgar Square, London to the Atomic Weapons Establishment near
Aldermaston, taking the whole four days to complete.
Although many of its members, including religious groups that make up a significant minority of the active membership, are
strict pacifists, the organisation itself is not.
The First Wave 1958-1963
Public opposition to nuclear weapons emerged in Britain in the mid-fifties when the government announced its decision to
manufacture a hydrogen bomb. Between 1955 and 1962 a significant minority (varying
from 19% to 33%) expressed disapproval of its manufacture.[1]
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was founded in 1958. J. B. Priestley had written
an article for the New Statesman, published on 2
November 1957, entitled Russia, the Atom and the West. Priestley's article was
heavily critical of Aneurin Bevan for abandoning his policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. The journal received numerous letters of support for Priestley's
article.
At the end of November, Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman, chaired
a meeting of fifty people in Canon John Collins's rooms to launch the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament. Canon Collins was chosen as its Chairman and Bertrand Russell as
its President. Its Executive Committee consisted of Richie Calder, James Cameron, Howard Davies, Michael Foot, Arthur
Goss, Kingsley Martin, J. B. Priestley,
Professor Joseph Rotblat, Sheila Jones and Peggy Duff
(Organising Secretary).
CND also had a number of sponsors: John Arlott, Peggy
Ashcroft, the Bishop of Birmingham Dr J. L. Wilson, Benjamin Britten, Viscount Chaplin, Michael de la
Bédoyère, Bob Edwards, MP, Dame Edith Evans, E.S.Frere, Gerald Gardiner, QC, Victor Gollancz, Dr
I.Grunfeld, E.M.Forster, Barbara Hepworth,
Patrick Heron, Rev. Trevor Huddleston, Sir
Julian Huxley, Edward Hyams, the Bishop of Llandaff Dr Glyn
Simon, Doris Lessing, Sir Compton
Mackenzie, the Very Rev George McLeod, Miles Malleson, Denis Matthews,
Sir Francis Meynell, Henry Moore, John Napper,
Ben Nicholson, Sir Herbert Read, Flora Robson, Michael Tippett, Vicky, Professor C. H. Waddington and Barbara Wootton.[2]
Other prominent founding members of CND were Fenner Brockway,
E. P. Thompson, A. J. P. Taylor,
Anthony Greenwood, Lord Simon, Eric Baker, and
Dora Russell.
CND held its inaugural public meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, on 17 February 1958. Five thousand people attended and
afterwards a few hundred marched to Downing Street.[3][4]
From the outset people from all sections of society got involved. There were scientists, more aware than anyone else of the
full extent of the dangers which nuclear weapons represented, along with religious leaders such as Canon John Collins of St
Paul's Cathedral, concerned to resist the moral evil which nuclear weapons represented. The Society of Friends (Quakers) was very supportive, as well as a wide range of academics,
journalists, writers, actors and musicians. Labour Party members and trade unionists were overwhelmingly sympathetic as were
people who had been involved in earlier anti-bomb campaigns organised by the British Peace
Committee, the Direct Action Committee[5] and the National Committee for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
Tests.[6]
CND organised many demonstrations and the Aldermaston march attracted tens of thousands of people. It had a national network
of branches, and specialist groups, such as Christian CND (founded in 1960), were formed
by supporters with common interests. It did not have formal membership at this time, so the strength of CND support can only be
estimated from the numbers attending demonstrations and expressing approval in opinion polls. The Aldermaston march, CND's logo
and its slogan "Ban the Bomb" became icons and part of the youth culture of the sixties.
About three-quarters of CND supporters were Labour voters[7] and many of the early Executive Committee were Labour Party members, hoping to persuade Labour to
adopt a unilateralist policy.[8] The Labour Party voted at
its 1960 Conference for unilateral nuclear disarmament and this is regarded as CND's high-point in this period. Hugh Gaitskell, the Party leader, received the vote with a promise to "fight, fight, and fight again"
against the decision and it was overturned at the 1961 Conference. CND's popular support began to decline from this point.
Its logo, designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom[9] became widespread outside of Britain during the
1960s as the "peace symbol". The peace symbol is based on
the international semaphore symbols for "N" and "D" (for Nuclear Disarmament) enclosed within
a circle. It may also be seen as a cross with lowered arms. There is a common misconception that Bertrand Russell designed the logo, stemming from his being president of the organisation at the
time.
In 1960 Bertrand Russell resigned from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in order to form
the Committee of 100. The Committee of 100, founded in reaction to what it regarded as
the tameness of CND, became, in effect, its direct-action wing. Its members (who included several of the original founders of CND
and covered a vast range of political opinion) became involved in numerous other political campaigns, ranging from Biafra to
Vietnam to housing and homelessness in the UK.
Many people who disapproved of the H-Bomb also disapproved of CND and public support for unilateralism tended to decline as
CND increased in prominence, particularly during the peak of the Committee of 100's civil disobedience campaign of the early
sixties.[10]
The Cuban Missile Crisis in the Autumn of 1962, in which the USA blockaded a
Soviet attempt to put nuclear missiles on Cuba, created some anxiety about the possibility of imminent nuclear war and CND
organised demonstrations on the issue. But six months after the crisis, a Gallup Poll found that public worry about nuclear
weapons had fallen back to its lowest point since 1957,[11] and there was a view, disputed by CND supporters,[12] that Kennedy's success in facing down Khrushchev turned the British public away from CND.
Support for CND dwindled rapidly after the 1963 Test Ban Treaty. From the
mid-sixties, the anti-war movement's preoccupation with the Vietnam War tended to eclipse
concern about nuclear weapons but CND continued to campaign against them.
The Second Wave (1980-89)
In the early 1980s the organisation underwent a major revival, as tensions between the
superpowers rose with the deployment of American Pershing II cruise missiles in Western Europe and SS20s in the Soviet Bloc
countries and the Thatcher government replacing the Polaris armed submarine fleet with Trident.
During this period CND established a number of "Specialist Sections" to add to Christian
CND and Labour CND (est. 1979), including: Ex-services
CND, Green CND, Liberal CND, Student CND, Trade Union CND, and Youth
CND.
Much of National CND's historical archive is at the Modern Records Centre University of Warwick and the London School of
Economics, although records of local and regional groups are spread throughout the country in public and private
collections.
Current CND
Today, CND has several priority campaigns, with recent campaigning opposing the replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons
system, and falls within their first priority campaign: Scrap Trident.
Its campaign to prevent the
replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system saw major opposition to the government's proposals, who had not allowed the
Labour Party to debate the issue at the conference preceding the House of Commons vote.
The vote which took place on 14 March 2007, saw 95 Labour MPs
support an amendment to delay the decision and 89 Labour MPs vote against the government motion - the largest Labour rebellion
since their election in 1997, other than on the decision to invade Iraq. The decision to replace Trident was passed by the Labour
and Conservative leaderships voting together.
CND organised a rally on Parliament Square attended by over 1000 people, which was addressed by Labour MPs Jon Trickett,
Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Diane
Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, as well
as Elfyn Llwyd of Plaid Cymru and Angus MacNeil of the SNP.
In an end to its single-issue focus on the nuclear issue, since 2001 it has become a focus for
organising resistance campaigns to U.S. and British policies on the Middle East. Along with
the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain, it organised several anti-war marches under the main slogan "Don't
Attack Iraq," including those on September 28, 2002
and February 15, 2003 in London, and also a Vigil for the Victims of the London bombings[1] on July 9, 2005 in London.
Structures
There exist several branches of CND to cover the British Isles, namely CND Cymru, Irish CND and Scottish CND, in addition to
" 'National' CND". For England there are Regional Groups covering Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, East Midlands, Kent, London,
Manchester, Merseyside, Mid Somerset, Norwich, South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, Southern, South West, Suffolk, Surrey,
Sussex, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and Yorkshire.
This is in addition to the several "Specialist Sections" listed above which have continued in some form and been joined by
Parliamentary CND. Note also that Youth and Student CND became
effectively a single conjoined group.
The CND Council is made up of the Chair, Treasurer, 3 Vice-Chairs, 15 Directly Elected Members, 1 representative of Christian
CND, 1 of Labour CND, 1 of Student CND, 3 of Youth and Student CND and 27 Members Representing 11 Regional Groups [2].
Chairs of CND since 1958
General Secretaries of CND since 1958
Membership
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Taken from Social Movements in Britain, Paul Byrne, Routledge, ISBN
0-415-07123-2 (1997), p.91.
References
- ^ W.P.Snyder, The Politics of British Defense Policy, 1945-1962, Ohio
University Press, 1964, p.59
- ^ Christopher Driver, The Disarmers: A Study in Protest, Hodder and
Stoughton, 1964, pp.42-46
- ^ John Minnion and Philip Bolsover (eds.) The CND Story, Alison and
Busby, 1983, p10. ISBN 0 85031 487 9
- ^ http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PREcnd.htm
- ^ http://www.cnduk.org/pages/binfo/hist.html
- ^ Driver, p.44
- ^ Frank Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the Campaign
for Nucealr Disarmament, Manchester University Press, 1968, p.39
- ^ Driver, p.66
- ^ Driver, p.58
- ^ Snyder, p.61
- ^ Driver, p.141
- ^ Nigel Young, "Cuba '62", in Minnion and Bolsover, p61
See also
Further reading
- CND - Now More Than Ever: The Story of a Peace Movement, Kate
Hudson, Vision Paperbacks, ISBN 1-904132-69-3 (2005)
- Holger Nehring (2001), 'From Gentleman's Club to Folk Festival: The Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament in Manchester, 1958-63', North West Labour History Journal, Number 26. pp. 18-28
- The Disarmers: A Study in Protest, Christopher Driver, Hodder and Stoughton (1964)
- Social Movements in Britain, Paul Byrne, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-07123-2
(1997)
- A commitment to Campaign: A Sociological Study of CND, John Mattausch,
Manchester University Press, ISBN 0-7190-2908-2 (1989)
- The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Paul Byrne, Routledge, ISBN
0-7099-3260-X (1988)
- The CND Story: The first 25 years of CND in the words of the people involved, John
Minnion and Philip Bolsover Ed., Allison & Busby, ISBN 0-85031-487-9 (1983)
- The Protest Makers: The British Nuclear Disarmament of 1958-1965, Twenty Years On, Richard
Taylor and Colin Pritchard, Pergamon Press, ISBN 0-08-025211-7 (1980)
- Left, Left, Left: A personal account of six protest campaigns 1945-65, Peggy
Duff, Allison and Busby, ISBN 0-85031-056-3 (1971)
- Middle class radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Frank Parkin, Manchester University Press (1968)
- From Protest to Resistance, A Peace News pamphlet, Mushroom Books (1981) ISBN 0-90712-302-3
External links
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