Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
UK unilateralist pressure group set up in 1958, at a time of public concern over the British Government's drive to maintain an independent nuclear capability, the doctrine of ‘massive retaliation’, and poor relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Although much of the support for CND came from the unaligned middle classes, politically its support came from the Labour left and the trade union movement. At the 1960 Labour Party Conference a motion calling for a unilateralist defence policy was passed, despite the fervent opposition of the leader, Hugh Gaitskell, who condemned CND as ‘pacifists, unilateralists, and fellow travellers’, and swore to ‘fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love’. The unilateralist vote was reversed in 1961. The divisions in the Labour Party were matched by schisms in CND, between the Committee of 100, which called for civil disobedience, and members who favoured constitutional campaigning. Internal disunity led to falling support, and by 1963 the organization was virtually moribund.
The resurgence of CND came with the escalation in nuclear tension between the superpowers at the end of the 1970s. The campaign in the 1980s centred on opposition to the Conservative government's agreement with the United States to replace the existing Polaris nuclear missiles with the Trident system, and to site American cruise missiles in Britain. This led to an upsurge in membership of CND, and demonstrations at the sites chosen as cruise missile bases. Again the growth of the unilateralist movement influenced the Labour Party, and again it led to splits in the party. Disagreement about the incorporation of a commitment to unilateral disarmament in the Labour Party programme in 1980 was one of the main reasons for the breakaway of the Social Democratic Party in 1981.
The association of CND with left-wing politics reduced the Labour Party's appeal, and contributed to its electoral failure throughout the 1980s. As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union improved, following the accession of President Gorbachev, concern about the risk from nuclear weapons diminished. A short-term consequence was a boost for the sister organization END (European Nuclear Disarmament), but by the end of the 1980s CND had, again, lost mass support.
