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CND in the News
CND in the News: 15-17 October 2005
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1 Whatever happened to CND?
The Independent, 15 October 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article319738.ece
Its name was on everyone's lips, its symbol at every demo. Then obscurity...
As the group meets in London, Michael McCarthy catches up with the 20th
century's most potent protest movement
Stick it on a 50ft poster, stick it on a penny-sized badge, it's as simple
and instantly recognisable as the crucifix of Christianity, or the swastika
of the Nazis; and once more, it is about to come into its own. For two
long periods in the past, the logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,
that unmistakable cross with drooping arms inside a circle, has seemed
to be everywhere, standing for the powerful pacifist streak in British
politics; yet twice it has faded out of the public consciousness like
a withering flower. Whatever happened to CND? you could justifiably have
asked in 1972, say, or 1995.
Now, however, the CND emblem is sprouting once again on lapels and in
car windows, and when CND's annual conference opens at the University
of Westminster in central London this morning, it will bring together
several hundred delegates once more assured of the relevance of their
group at the heart of the political process.
Twice before in its history CND has represented powerful tides in public
opinion, and swelled to prominence for several years, before falling back
into semi-obscurity; now it is on the rise once more. The invasion of
Iraq, with the running sore of the conflict ever since, is of course the
background for its renewed relevance; but two other forthcoming issues
will soon bring its founding concern, the use of nuclear energy, to the
forefront of Britain politics.
The first is the replacement of Trident, Britain's submarine-based nuclear
missile system; the second is the possibility of another generation of
civil nuclear power stations being authorised by the Government as part
of its strategy for countering climate change. Both of these issues, under
consideration at the heart of Whitehall, will arouse ferocious opposition,
and CND will be at the forefront of it. Appropriately, its activists will
feel, a new history of the movement written by the current chair, politics
lecturer Kate Hudson, is entitled CND: Now More Than Ever.
This opposition will be opposition of principle. But the movement's founding
impetus, it would be fair to say, was a very basic one - terror. Organised
anti-nuclear protest dates from a period when the unlocking by human beings
of the greatest power on earth seemed merely a prelude to their imminent
extinction. By the mid-1950s the United States and the Soviet Union faced
each other across the world, two systems implacably hostile to each other
and each possessing the first modern Weapons of Mass Destruction, hydrogen
bombs on the end of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
To anyone under 50 it is hard to convey the very real fear prevalent,
in the late Fifties and early Sixties, that thermonuclear war was coming,
and that it would destroy the world. It dominated life and thought like
a great dark cloud, and you need to go back to the literature of the period
to be reminded of how overarching it was. You can get a vivid sense of
it in Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain", one of his earliest and lengthiest
songs, a seemingly unending litany of nightmarish images about a nuclear
attack, or in a poem like Robert Lowell's "Fall 1961", which
is far cooler and more controlled but still captures the ubiquitous obsession
with Armageddon: "All autumn, the chafe and jar
Of nuclear war..."
This terror came to a height during the Cuban crisis of October 1962 when
the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in the Caribbean produced a
confrontation with the US which for about a week - until the Russian leader
Nikita Kruschev backed down - really did look as if it would lead to atomic
war. Had it done so, hundreds of millions of people would have died horribly
in Britain, the United States, Russia and elsewhere, in the greatest catastrophe
in human history - and people were under no illusions about that.
The world held its breath. We forget now. But at the time this dread was
so pervasive that when the first activists came together to form CND they
tapped into a well of public concern that quickly transformed their group
into a mass movement. One of the crucial early figures was Walter Wolfgang,
the veteran activist who earlier this month provided what will surely
become one of the defining images of the Blair administration when, at
the age of 82, he was unceremoniously ejected by burly stewards from the
Labour party conference in Brighton for having had the temerity to shout
"Nonsense!" at the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, during the
latter's platform speech about Iraq.
But he's been at it a long time, has Walter. In the summer of 1957, as
concern grew that Britain would follow America in developing the hydrogen
bomb, much more powerful than the original atomic weapons, Mr Wolfgang
(now a life vice-president of CND) organised the Labour H-bomb Campaign
Committee, made up of 30 anti-nuclear MPs. In September the group held
its first public meeting in Trafalgar Square: 4,000 people attended.
Much good did it do them. Later that month, at the Labour party conference,
the Shadow Foreign Secretary Aneurin Bevan brusquely threw out the idea
of unilateral nuclear disarmament for Britain, famously saying he did
not want to have to go "naked into the conference chamber".
Yet such was the anger on the Left at Labour's rejection of unilateralism
that voices clamoured for a new mass movement to oppose The Bomb. The
key figures in its founding were Kingsley Martin, then editor of New Statesman
magazine, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the writer JB Priestley, and
John Collins, radical Canon of St Paul's Cathedral. On 16 January 1958
Canon Collins hosted the meeting that set up CND; he chaired the organisation
for its first eight years.
It was put firmly on the political map three months later by the first
Aldermaston march: the four-day Easter walk by thousands of protesters
from London to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire,
where Britain's nuclear warheads were manufactured. This was when the
CND logo made its first appearance, and there is no doubt that having
such a recognisable symbol added enormously to the movement's attraction.
CND became the natural outlet for people's atomic fears and concerns,
and the protests, the Aldermaston marches in particular, became bigger
and bigger: the 1960 march saw 40,000 people walk from Berkshire to London,
and another 100,000 join the final rally in Trafalgar Square.
These were enormous crowds for radical causes, not really exceeded until
the spectacular London anti-Iraq-war march of February 2003. In a political
system where both the main parties accepted the need for nuclear weapons,
CND successfully enfranchised those who did not, and brought home to both
Tory Government and Labour opposition that they could by no means take
nuclear acceptance for granted.
However, the first nuclear terror, the dread of MAD - mutually assured
destruction - gradually passed, as the Russian Government turned away
from Kruschev's aggressive adventures, and began the process of détente
with the USA. Ten years after the Cuban crisis, nuclear war seemed a distant
prospect; and CND, while retaining its core of committed activists, could
not longer properly be called a mass movement.
Yet it became one again. In the late Seventies and early Eighties a new
round in the nuclear arms race began as the Russians deployed a new generation
of nuclear missiles, the SS20s, and Nato deployed its own American Cruise
and Pershing missiles in Western Europe. Nuclear nightmares started once
more, and CND, energetically directed by another cleric, Monsignor Bruce
Kent, was back at the forefront of a long public protest, whose most visible
symbol was the women's peace camp at the Greenham Common air base.
This second period of influence eventually passed in its turn, as the
Soviet Union collapsed and the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers were
substantially reduced. By the mid-Nineties CND was once again on the political
fringe.
It is the changed world after 11 September that has brought it back for
a third period of influence. CND has been at the heart of opposition to
the war in Iraq; it is at the heart of what it sees as American militaristic
expansionism under the guise of the "war on terror". In particular,
it is paying close interest to the latest US doctrine on nuclear weapons,
which, says chair Kate Hudson , now envisages their actual use, rather
than as hitherto, their deterrent value.
"We're not arguing against them as just a specialist form of weaponry,"
said Dr Hudson. "CND's role is moving more into a global political
sphere. Nuclear weapons have a very central role in global politics. They
have been used as the reasons for illegal wars, and - in the case of Iran
- may be again. And it is absolutely obvious that the Americans now see
them as weapons to be used, for domination of the Middle East or wherever."
Britain's replacement of Trident - a decision that will have to be taken
in the lifetime of this Parliament - will be "absolutely opposed,"
by CND, she says, as will any new generation of nuclear power stations,
another decision that is looming soon.
And as the quagmire in Iraq stretches on and on, it seems that distinctive
little logo is back with a vengeance.
"CND: Now More Than Ever, The Story of a Peace Movement", by
Kate Hudson, is published by Vision Paperbacks, price £10.99
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2 Iran on agenda for CND conference
Sat 15 Oct 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2092602005
The Iranian ambassador is due to address the annual conference of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as controversy continued
to rage over Iran's civil nuclear power programme. Dr Seyed Mohammed Hossein
Adeli will also answer questions from the 200 delegates at the London
conference.
Walter Wolfgang, the 82-year-old peace campaigner who was manhandled out
of the Labour Party Conference last month, will attend the event. He called
his treatment at the hands of stewards a "small issue" compared
with the invasion of Iraq and the forthcoming decision on replacing the
UK's Trident nuclear submarines. "Unlike the Labour Party Conference,
both of these issues will be debated in full at CND's
annual conference," said a spokeswoman.
Membership of CND has increased since the group joined
protests against the war in Iraq, and now stands at more than 32,000.
Chairwoman Kate Hudson said: "Britain faces big challenges on the
nuclear front in the year ahead. "The Government already seems set
on replacing Trident and developing a new generation of nuclear power
stations, even though the public and parliamentary debates have not yet
taken place. "The escalation of nuclear-based accusations against
Iran, as yet unproven, are also a source of great concern, while Britain
and other nuclear weapon states fail to comply with an obligation to disarm
under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
The delegates will debate emergency motions congratulating Mr Wolfgang
for speaking out at Labour's conference, and will attack the Government
over the exclusion zone now in place around Parliament which CND
warned would affect legitimate protests.
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3 Blair May Face Left-Wing Revolt Over Nuclear Weapons
October 19, 2005
http://www.cnsnews.com
With a decision due on replacing his nation's nuclear weapons fleet,
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing the possibility of a revolt
from the left wing of his party.
Three Labor lawmakers have demanded that Blair leave the final decision
on how to replace the aging Trident nuclear system up to a parliamentary
vote. While the prime minister has promised to "listen" to the
opinions in his party, he has stopped short of promising an actual ballot.
Currently, the United Kingdom has four Vanguard-class submarines, each
carrying up to 16 U.S.-built Trident missiles with nuclear warheads. Experts
estimate that this weapons system could last for another two decades,
but they also predict that it would take around 15 years to put a similar
one in place.
In the past, Blair has said he favors keeping an independent nuclear
weapons deterrent. He has also promised that a decision would be made
before the next general election, which does not have to be called until
mid-2010. Last week, Labor members of parliament were invited to make
appointments with Defense Secretary John Reid in the months ahead to express
their views.
However, Labor MP Paul Flynn told a London newspaper such a momentous
decision demanded more input. Along with two other party members, Flynn
has drawn up a resolution questioning the reason for maintaining the Trident
system for the next three years, at a cost the government puts at $3.5
billion. Flynn said that unless Blair allows Labor Party members to vote
on it before the end of the month, they would force a vote before the
entire House of Commons. "We haven't got any enemies that we could
possibly want to aim nuclear weapons at now," Flynn said. "The
case that John Reid has given for these weapons is that we might possibly
have the right sort of enemy in 15 years time." In the 1980s, Labor
leaders supported unilateral nuclear disarmament while in opposition.
However, this changed in the early 1990s as their policies shifted towards
the center.
Louise Edge, a spokeswoman for the British branch of Greenpeace, said
the government needed to explain why the country needed another generation
of nuclear weapons. The decision to build the current system had been
done in secret and the public only found out about it long afterwards,
she said. "Traditionally that's what's happened in the past,"
Edge said. "That's what we're trying to prevent this time around."
Though her group wasn't involved with the proposed resolution, she said
that there was still a lot of passion on the issue in the Labor Party.
She speculated that some members felt betrayed by Blair because he had
promised them more involvement than they were getting. "He said he
was going to kick off a full debate," Edge said. "He implied
that it was going to be a bit more than listening to some MPs."
While the government has not publicly disclosed how much it might cost
to install a system similar to Trident, informed experts have put it around
$26 billion. Kate Hudson of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND) -- a group with strong links to Labor in the past -- said
that Blair should return to his party's old policy on atomic weapons.
"[This money] should be spent on alleviating suffering and poverty
at home and abroad not on new sophisticated ways to kill," she said.
Tony Blair has the opportunity in this parliament to help make this a
reality and announce that Trident won't be replaced."
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