(1958)

MANY ORDINARY PEOPLE became very alarmed at the Cold War arms race. It looked as if the stockpiling of nuclear weapons could only lead to the outbreak of a catastrophic world war. In a meeting at Westminster’s Central Hall on 17 February 1958, British protestors formed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). It was created out of the National Council for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests, which was formed only the previous year but proved to be extremely popular, attracting thousands of people who wanted to see an end to nuclear bomb tests.

. See also Short Essay: The Start of The ‘Cold War’

The new CND was led by a steering committee consisting of the Labour MP Michael Foot, the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell, the author J B Priestly and the journalist James Cameron. It was given free office space in Fleet Street. Russell, who often spoke at protest rallies, introduced a distinctive logo for CND, a downward-pointing trident inside a circle. It was a very simple emblem, easy to draw and instantly recognisable. The CND marches also had a simple and effective slogan: ‘Ban the bomb!’

On 4 April 1958, 3,000 anti-nuclear protesters gathered in London to give a send-off to 600 ‘hard core’ marches who started a three-day march to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston. They arrived to the sound of a skiffle group – music genre with jazz, blues, folk and American folk influences, usually using a combination of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments – playing When the Saints Go Marching In. Altogether, some 12,000 protesters rallied and assembled at the gates of the Establishment. There were speeches and a pledge was passed urging Britain, Russia and the United States to stop making, testing and storing nuclear weapons. A loudspeaker car intercepted the marches at one point, to tell them that they were ‘playing Khrushchev’s game’ (Nikita Khrushchev was a Russian revolutionary leader who ripped aside the propaganda image of the former dictator Joseph Stalin). The marches duly set about the van, but that was the only violence involved.

The demonstrations and the marches continued, year after year. In September 1958, the cleric Donald Soper, later Lord Soper, addressed the crowd at Aldermaston. In December of that year, violence broke out as the police clashed with demonstrators at the Swaffham missile base. 21 protesters were arrested.

In October 1960, Bertrand Russell resigned as leader of CND.

It is hard to tell what effect if any this campaign had on politicians. Certainly, all the politicians of the day appeared to be unaffected by it. The campaign itself seemed to run itself out of steam. Bertrand Russell was undoubtedly committed to it, but he was ageing fast and had to curtail his activities. In the late 1960s, the campaign was in danger of being overtaken by another campaign, the campaign to stop the war in Vietnam. Like CND, this was a pro-peace cause, but not related to nuclear weapons in any way.

But CND went on, its support undiminished. On 24 October 1981, a huge rally in Hyde Park was the biggest anti-nuclear rally in 20 years. Over 150,000 people protested at the siting of American Cruise missiles in Britain – not least because they automatically made Britain a target for Russian missiles. The procession of marchers walking to Hyde Park was so long that many reached the park long after the speeches by Michael Foot and Bruce Kent were over.

Similar large-scale demonstrations against nuclear weapons were mounted in other European cities. The campaign was now international in scale.

In March 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act. This imposed new controls on the export of American nuclear technology. The idea was to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology to other countries. This was, though, a long way short of nuclear disarmament. That was not to materialise until the Gorbachev-Reagan era: then the issue was one of cost. The Soviet Union was not strong economically to maintain its nuclear weaponry. So, in the end the nuclear disarmament had no ethical or moral basis – only a financial one.

The campaign did have the positive effect of nudging politicians towards negotiating. One month after the huge rally in Hyde Park in 1981, the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries started talks in Geneva on limiting medium-range missiles. That, with hindsight, reputedly marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War?