Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an anti-nuclear

Anti-nuclear

The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes the use of nuclear technologies. Many direct action groups, environmental groups, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, national, and international level...

organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament

Nuclear disarmament

Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated....

by the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is a landmark international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to...

. It opposes military action that may result in the use of nuclear

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

, chemical

Chemical warfare

Chemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical...

or biological weapons

Biological warfare

Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war...

and the building of nuclear power

Nuclear power

Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

stations in the UK.

CND was formed in 1957 and since that time has periodically been at the forefront of the peace movement

Peace movement

A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...

in the UK. It claims to be Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

's largest single-issue peace campaign

Single-issue politics

Single-issue politics involves political campaigning or political support based on one essential policy area or idea.-Political expression:...

. Since 1959, it has organised the Aldermaston March

Aldermaston Marches

The Aldermaston marches were protest demonstrations organised by the British anti-war Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1950s and 1960s. They took place on Easter weekend between the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and London, over a distance of...

, which is held over the Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

weekend from the Atomic Weapons Establishment

Atomic Weapons Establishment

The Atomic Weapons Establishment is responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent. AWE plc is responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE...

near Aldermaston

Aldermaston

Aldermaston is a rural village, civil parish and electoral ward in Berkshire, South-East England. In the 2001 United Kingdom Census, the parish had a population of 927. The village is on the southern edge of the River Kennet flood plain, near the Hampshire county boundary...

to Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

,. The first Aldermaston March in 1958 went the other way (from London to Aldermaston) and was organised by the Direct Action Committee.

The Campaign's General Secretary

General Secretary

The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...

is Kate Hudson

Kate Hudson (activist)

Katharine Jane Hudson is a UK academic and political activist.Kate Hudson is currently the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Prior to her appointment to the post, she had served as Chair of the organisation from 2003 to 2010...

Campaigns

CND's current strategic objectives are:

The elimination of British nuclear weapons and global abolition of nuclear weapons. It campaigns for the cancellation of Trident by the British government and against the deployment of nuclear weapons in Britain.
The abolition of weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

, in particular chemical and biological weapons. CND wants a ban on the manufacture, testing and use of depleted uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...

weapons
A nuclear-free, less militarised and more secure Europe. It supports the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It opposes US military bases and nuclear weapons in Europe and British membership of NATO.
The closure of the nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

industry.

In recent years CND has extended its campaigns to include opposition to U.S. and British policy in the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

, rather as it broadened its anti-nuclear campaigns in the 1960s to include opposition to the Vietnam War. In collaboration with the Stop the War Coalition

Stop the War Coalition

The Stop the War Coalition is a United Kingdom group set up on 21 September 2001 that campaigns against what it believes are unjust wars....

and the Muslim Association of Britain

Muslim Association of Britain

The Muslim Association of Britain is an Islamic organisation in the United Kingdom established in 1997.-Anti-war activities:Along with Stop the War Coalition and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, it has co-sponsored various demonstrations against the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq...

, CND has organised anti-war marches under the slogan "Don't Attack Iraq", including protests on September 28, 2002 and February 15, 2003

February 15, 2003 anti-war protest

The February 15, 2003 anti-war protest was a coordinated day of protests across the world expressing opposition to the then-imminent Iraq War. It was part of a series of protests and political events that had begun in 2002 and continued as the war took place....

. It also organised a vigil for the victims of the 2005 London bombings.

CND campaigns against the Trident missile

Trident missile

The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles . The Fleet Ballistic Missile is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines . Trident missiles are carried by fourteen...

. In March 2007 it organised a rally in Parliament Square to coincide with the Commons motion to renew the weapons system. The rally was attended by over 1,000 people. It was addressed by Labour MPs Jon Trickett

Jon Trickett

Jon Hedley Trickett is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Hemsworth in West Yorkshire since a 1996 by-election...

, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s53ZdD_WL6g Emily Thornberry

Emily Thornberry

Emily Anne Thornberry is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Islington South and Finsbury since 2005.-Before Parliament:...

], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqiOmkWTCmw John McDonnell

John McDonnell (politician)

John Martin McDonnell is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Hayes and Harlington since 1997; he serves as Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Labour Representation Committee, and the "Public Services Not Private Profit Group"...

], Michael Meacher

Michael Meacher

Michael Hugh Meacher is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Oldham West and Royton since 1997. Previously he had been the MP for Oldham West, first elected in 1970. On 22 February 2007 he declared that he would be standing for the Labour Leadership, challenging...

, Diane Abbott

Diane Abbott

Diane Julie Abbott is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987, when she became the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons...

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRMHcp4zkGU Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Bernard Corbyn is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Islington North since 1983.-Early and personal life:...

], and Elfyn Llwyd

Elfyn Llwyd

Elfyn Llwyd, PC is a Welsh barrister and politician. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, representing Meirionnydd Nant Conwy in the House of Commons from 1992 to 2010 and Dwyfor Meirionnydd since 2010...

of Plaid Cymru

Plaid Cymru

' is a political party in Wales. It advocates the establishment of an independent Welsh state within the European Union. was formed in 1925 and won its first seat in 1966...

and Angus MacNeil

Angus MacNeil

Angus Brendan MacNeil is the Scottish National Party Member of Parliament for Na h-Eileanan an Iar...

of the Scottish National Party

Scottish National Party

The Scottish National Party is a social-democratic political party in Scotland which campaigns for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom....

. In the House of Commons, 161 MPs (88 of them Labour) voted against the renewal of Trident and the Government motion was carried only with the support of Conservatives.

In 2006 CND launched a campaign against nuclear power. Its membership, which had fallen to 32,000, increased threefold after Prime Minister Tony Blair

Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

made a commitment to nuclear energy.

Structure

CND has a national organisation based in London, national groups in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, regional groups in Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, the East Midlands, Kent, London, Manchester, Merseyside, Mid Somerset, Norwich, South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, Southern England, South West England, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands and Yorkshire, and local branches.

There are four "specialist sections": Trade Union CND, Christian CND

Christian CND

Christian CND is a 'Specialist Section' of CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and has existed since 1960. CCND is made up of individual Christians of various denominations who oppose nuclear weapons and who campaign for peace. The organisation has an elected executive of ten members, has an...

, Labour CND

Labour CND

Labour CND is a 'Specialist Section' of CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, specifically relating to CND-supporting members the Labour Party....

and Ex-Services CND, which have rights of representation on the governing council. There are also parliamentary, youth and student groups.

The Council is made up of the chair of CND, the treasurer, 3 vice-chairs, 15 directly elected members, a representative of each of the specialist sections, 1 from Student CND, 3 from Youth CND and 27 from the regional groups. Employees sit on the Council but do not vote.

The First Wave 1958-1963

On 2 November 1957, the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....

magazine published an article by J. B. Priestley

J. B. Priestley

John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...

on "Britain and the Nuclear Bombs", which was critical of Aneurin Bevan

Aneurin Bevan

Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...

for changing his mind about nuclear weapons and ceasing to advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain. The journal received many letters of support, reflecting the growth in opposition to nuclear weapons following Britain's recent H-bomb tests

Operation Grapple

Operation Grapple, and operations Grapple X, Grapple Y and Grapple Z, were the names of British nuclear tests of the hydrogen bomb. They were held 1956—1958 at Malden Island and Christmas Island in the central Pacific Ocean. Nine nuclear detonations took place during the trials, resulting in...

. At the end of November, a meeting was held in the rooms of Canon John Collins

Canon John Collins

John Collins was an Anglican priest who was active in several radical political movements in the United Kingdom.Educated at Cranbrook School, Kent and the University of Cambridge, Collins served as a chaplain in the Royal Air Force during World War II and was radicalised by the experience...

, chaired by the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin

Kingsley Martin

Basil Kingsley Martin was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960....

, to launch the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Collins was chosen as its Chairman, Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

as its President and Peggy Duff

Peggy Duff

Peggy Duff was a British political activist who was principally known for her contribution to the peace movement as the organiser of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.-Background:...

as its organising secretary. The other members of its executive committee were Ritchie Calder

Peter Ritchie Calder

Peter Ritchie Ritchie-Calder, Baron Ritchie-Calder was a noted Scottish author, journalist and academic....

, journalist James Cameron

James Cameron (journalist)

Mark James Walter Cameron was a prominent British journalist, in whose memory the annual James Cameron Memorial Lecture is given.-Early life:...

, Howard Davies, Michael Foot

Michael Foot

Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...

, Arthur Goss, Kingsley Martin

Kingsley Martin

Basil Kingsley Martin was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960....

, J. B. Priestley

J. B. Priestley

and Joseph Rotblat

Joseph Rotblat

Sir Joseph Rotblat, KCMG, CBE, FRS , was a Polish-born, British-naturalised physicist.His work on nuclear fallout was a major contribution to the agreement of the Partial Test Ban Treaty...

.

CND held an inaugural public meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, on 17 February 1958, attended by five thousand people. After the meeting a few hundred left to demonstrate at Downing Street

Downing Street

Downing Street in London, England has for over two hundred years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an...

. The new organisation attracted considerable public interest and draw support from a range of interests, including scientists, religious leaders, academics, journalists, writers, actors and musicians. Its sponsors included John Arlott

John Arlott

Leslie Thomas John Arlott OBE was an English journalist, author and cricket commentator for the BBC's Test Match Special. He was also a poet, wine connoisseur and former police officer in Hampshire...

, Peggy Ashcroft

Peggy Ashcroft

Dame Peggy Ashcroft, DBE was an English actress.-Early years:Born as Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft in Croydon, Ashcroft attended the Woodford School, Croydon and the Central School of Speech and Drama...

, the Bishop of Birmingham Dr J. L. Wilson, Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

, Viscount Chaplin, Michael de la Bédoyère

Michael de la Bédoyère

Count Michael Anthony Maurice de la Bédoyère was an author, editor and journalist.-Life:He was educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, and took a first in Modern Greats at Campion Hall, Oxford University. His initial plans to become a Jesuit priest were abandoned. In 1930-1931 he lectured at...

, Bob Edwards, MP, Dame Edith Evans

Edith Evans

Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.Evans was particularly effective at portraying haughty...

, A.S.Frere, Gerald Gardiner, QC, Victor Gollancz

Victor Gollancz

Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking...

, Dr I.Grunfeld, E.M.Forster, Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...

, Patrick Heron

Patrick Heron

Patrick Heron , was an English painter, writer and designer, based in St. Ives, Cornwall.- Early life :...

, Rev. Trevor Huddleston

Trevor Huddleston

Ernest Urban Trevor Huddleston CR, KCMG was an English Anglican bishop. He was most well known for his anti-apartheid activism and his 'Prayer for Africa'...

, Sir Julian Huxley

Julian Huxley

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...

, Edward Hyams, the Bishop of Llandaff Dr Glyn Simon

Glyn Simon

William Glyn Hughes Simon was the Anglican Archbishop of Wales from 1968 to 1971.Simon was born in Swansea, where his father was curate at St Gabriel's church. He was baptised by David Lewis Prosser, later to become the third Archbishop of Wales....

, Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....

, Sir Compton Mackenzie

Compton Mackenzie

Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...

, the Very Rev George McLeod, Miles Malleson

Miles Malleson

William Miles Malleson was an English actor and dramatist, particularly known for his appearances in British comedy films of the 1930s to 1960s. Towards the end of his career he also appeared in cameo roles in several Hammer horror films, with a fairly large role in The Brides of Dracula as the...

, Denis Matthews

Denis Matthews

Denis Matthews was an English pianist and musicologist.Denis James Matthews was born in Coventry, the son of a motor salesman. He attended Arnold Lodge School, Leamington Spa, from 1927 to 1932 and Warwick School from October 1932 to the summer of 1936, when he left to study at the Royal Academy...

, Sir Francis Meynell

Francis Meynell

Sir Francis Meredith Wilfrid Meynell was a British poet and printer at The Nonesuch Press.He was son of the writer Alice Meynell, a suffragist and prominent Roman Catholic convert. Francis Meynell was brought in by George Lansbury to be business manager of the Daily Herald in 1913. He was...

, Henry Moore

Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....

, John Napper, Ben Nicholson

Ben Nicholson

Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions , landscape and still-life.-Background and Training:...

, Sir Herbert Read

Herbert Read

Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....

, Flora Robson

Flora Robson

Dame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...

, Michael Tippett

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...

, the cartoonist 'Vicky

Victor Weisz

Victor Weisz was a German-British political cartoonist, drawing under the name of Vicky.- Biography :...

', Professor C. H. Waddington and Barbara Wootton. Other prominent founding members of CND were Fenner Brockway, E. P. Thompson

E. P. Thompson

Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...

, A. J. P. Taylor

A. J. P. Taylor

Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...

, Anthony Greenwood, Lord Simon

Roger Simon, 2nd Baron Simon of Wythenshawe

Roger Simon, 2nd Baron Simon of Wythenshawe was a British solicitor and left wing journalist and political activist. He was one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament....

, D. H. Pennington

D. H. Pennington

D. H. Pennington was an historian of 17th century England, which he taught at Manchester and Oxford universities. He was also a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament . His works include Europe in the Seventeenth Century, Members of the Long Parliament D. H. Pennington (1919-2007)...

, Eric Baker

Eric Baker (activist)

Eric Baker was a British activist and one of the founders of the human rights group Amnesty International, and the second general secretary of the organization...

and Dora Russell

Dora Russell

Dora Black, Lady Russell was a British author, a feminist and socialist campaigner, and the second wife of the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell....

. Organisations that had previously opposed British nuclear weapons supported CND, including the British Peace Committee, the Direct Action Committee

Direct Action Committee

The Direct Action Committee against nuclear war was a pacifist organization formed "to assist the conducting of non-violent direct action to obtain the total renunciation of nuclear war and its weapons by Britain and all other countries as a first step in disarmament"...

, the National Committee for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests and the Quakers. In the same year, a branch of CND was also set in the Republic of Ireland

Republic of Ireland

Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

by
John de Courcy Ireland

John de Courcy Ireland

John de Courcy Ireland was an Irish maritime historian and political activist.-Biography:Born in Lucknow, India, where his County Kildare native father served in the British Army, he was educated at Marlborough College, Oxford University and Trinity College Dublin, where he was awarded a PhD in 1951...

, and his wife Beatrice, aiming to campaign for the Irish government to support international efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament and to keep Ireland free of nuclear power.
Notable supporters of the Irish CND included Peadar O'Donnell

Peadar O'Donnell

Peadar O'Donnell was an Irish republican and socialist activist and writer.-Early life:Peadar O'Donnell was born into an Irish speaking family in Dungloe, County Donegal in northwest Ireland, in 1893. He attended St. Patrick's College, Dublin, where he trained as a teacher...

, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington

Owen Sheehy-Skeffington

Dr. Owen Lancelot Sheehy-Skeffington was an Irish university lecturer and Senator.- Early life :Sheehy-Skeffington was brought up in Dublin, Ireland. His father, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, was a pacifist and nationalist whose murder by Captain J.C. Bowen-Colthurst in 1916 during the week of the...

and Hubert Butler

Hubert Butler

Hubert Marshal Butler was an Irish essayist who wrote on a wide-range of topics, from local history and archaeology to the political and religious affairs of eastern Europe before and during World War II.-Early life:...

.

CND's declared policies were the unconditional renunciation of the use, production of or dependence upon nuclear weapons by Britain and the bringing about of a general disarmament convention. In the meantime, Britain should halt the flight of planes armed with nuclear weapons, end nuclear testing, not proceed with missile bases and not provide nuclear weapons to any other country.

The symbol adopted by CND was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom

Gerald Holtom

Gerald Herbert Holtom was a British professional designer and artist. In 1958 he designed the logo of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , which became an international peace symbol....

and in the following decade became an international peace symbol

Peace symbol

A number of peace symbols have been used in various cultures and contexts, one of the most ancient being the olive branch. The dove and olive branch was used by early Christians and was later adopted as a secular symbol. It was popularised by Pablo Picasso in 1949 and became widely used in the...

. It is based on the semaphore

Flag semaphore

Semaphore Flags is the system for conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Information is encoded by the position of the flags; it is read when the flag is in a fixed position...

symbols for "N" (two flags held 45 degrees down on both sides, forming the triangle at the botton) and "D" (two flags, one above the head and one at the feet, forming the vertical line) (for Nuclear Disarmament) within a circle. Holtom later said that it also represented "an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad

The Third of May 1808

The Third of May 1808 is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808...

."

In Easter 1958, a 52-mile march

Aldermaston Marches

from London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment

Atomic Weapons Establishment

at Aldermaston

Aldermaston

was organised by the Direct Action Committee, supported by CND after some initial reluctance. The march was the subject of a documentary by Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...

, March to Aldermaston. Thereafter, CND organised annual Easter marches starting at Aldermaston and ending in London. 60,000 people participated in the 1959 march and 150,000 in the 1961 and 1962 marches.

CND supporters were generally left of centre in politics. About three-quarters of CND supporters were Labour voters and many of the early executive committee were Labour Party members. Its founders envisaged CND as a campaign by eminent individuals who would work through the Labour Party and lobby government for a change in defence policy. The Labour Party voted at its 1960 Conference for unilateral nuclear disarmament, representing CND's greatest influence on national politics and coinciding with the highest level of public support for its policy of unilateralism. Hugh Gaitskell

Hugh Gaitskell

Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell CBE was a British Labour politician, who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955, until his death in 1963.-Early life:He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest...

, the Labour 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. Labour's failure to win the General election of 1959 and its rejection of unilateralism in 1961 upset the plans of the CND leadership and, although CND retained the support of a significant minority of the population, from this point onwards its prospects of success began to fade.

CND rapidly became a mass movement and attendance at CND demonstrations increased until about 1963. A network of autonomous branches and specialist groups (such as Christian CND

Christian CND

) sprang up. The Aldermaston march, the CND symbol and its slogan "Ban the Bomb" became icons and part of the youth culture of the sixties. The different conceptions of CND - campaign by eminent individuals or mass movement - caused friction between leaders and supporters. Until the formation of a national council in 1961, supporters and local groups had no formal voice in the national organisation, which until then had been led by the self-appointed executive committee.

In 1960 Bertrand Russell resigned from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in order to form the Committee of 100, which became, in effect, the direct action wing of CND. Russell argued that direct action was necessary because the press was losing interest in CND and because the danger of nuclear war was so great that it was necessary to obstruct government preparations for it. In 1958 CND had cautiously accepted direct action as a possible method of campaigning, but, largely under the influence of Canon John Collins

Canon John Collins

, the CND chairman, the CND leadership opposed any sort of unlawful protest. The Committee of 100 was created as a separate organisation partly for that reason and partly because of personal animosity between Collins and Russell. Although the Committee was supported by many in CND, it has been suggested that the campaign against nuclear weapons was weakened by the friction between the two organisations. The Committee organised large sit-down demonstrations in London and at military bases. It later became involved in other political campaigns, including Biafra

Biafra

Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria that existed from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970, taking its name from the Bight of Biafra . The inhabitants were mostly the Igbo people who led the secession due to economic, ethnic, cultural and religious...

, the Vietnam war

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

and housing in the UK. It was dissolved in 1968. When direct action came to the fore again in the 1980s, it was generally accepted by the peace movement as a normal part of protest.

On the 1963 Aldermaston march, a clandestine group calling itself Spies for Peace

Spies for Peace

The Spies for Peace was a group of anti-war activists associated with the Committee of 100 who publicized government preparations for rule after a nuclear war. In 1963 they broke into a secret government bunker, Regional Seat of Government Number 6 at Warren Row, near Reading, where they...

distributed leaflets about a secret government establishment, RSG 6

Regional Seat of Government

Regional Seats of Government or RSGs were the best known aspect of Britain's Civil Defence preparations against Nuclear War. In fact, however, naming conventions changed over the years as strategies in Whitehall changed....

, that the march was passing. The leaflet said that RSG 6 was to be the local HQ for a military dictatorship after nuclear war. A large group left the march, much against the wishes of the CND leadership, to demonstrate at RSG 6. Later, when the march reached London, there were disorderly demonstrations in which anarchists

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

were prominent, quickly deprecated in the press and in parliament. In 1964 there was only a one-day march, partly because of the events of 1963 and partly because the logistics of the march, which had grown beyond all expectation, had exhausted the organisers. The Aldermaston March was resumed in 1965.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

in the Autumn of 1962, in which the United States 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, and there was a view, disputed by CND supporters, that U.S. President John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

's success in facing down Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

turned the British public away from CND.

John Collins helped to form the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace

International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace

The International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace was an organisation formed by peace groups from western and non-aligned nations in 1963....

in 1963 and resigned as chairman of CND in 1964. He had been unpopular with many CND supporters and he found himself out of sympathy with the direction the movement was taking.

Support for CND dwindled after the 1963 Test Ban Treaty

Partial Test Ban Treaty

The treaty banning nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water, often abbreviated as the Partial Test Ban Treaty , Limited Test Ban Treaty , or Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is a treaty prohibiting all test detonations of nuclear weapons...

. From the mid-sixties, the anti-war movement's preoccupation with the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

tended to eclipse concern about nuclear weapons but CND continued to campaign against them.

CND has never allied itself to any political party and has never sought to form itself into a election campaigning body. However, several CND members and supporters have stood for election at various times as Independent Nuclear Disarmament candidates. The nearest CND has come to having an electoral arm was the Independent Nuclear Disarmament Election Campaign (INDEC) which stood candidates in a few local elections during the 1960s. Although never formally endorsed by CND nationally, INDEC candidates were generally put up by local CND groups as a means of raising the profile of this issue in public politics.

The Second Wave 1980-89

In the 1980s, CND underwent a major revival, its membership increasing from 4,000 to 100,000 between 1979 and 1984. This was a response to increasing tension between the superpowers following the deployment of American Pershing missiles

Medium-range ballistic missile

A medium-range ballistic missile , is a type of ballistic missile with medium range, this last classification depending on the standards of certain organizations. Within the U.S. Department of Defense, a medium range missile is defined by having a maximum range of between 1,000 and 3,000 km1...

in Western Europe, SS20s in the Soviet Bloc countries and Britain's replacement of the Polaris armed submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

fleet with Trident missile

Trident missile

s in 1982. The NATO exercise Able Archer 83

Able Archer 83

Able Archer 83 was a ten-day NATO command post exercise starting on November 2, 1983 that spanned Western Europe, centred on the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Headquarters situated at Casteau, north of the Belgian city of Mons. Able Archer exercises simulated a period of conflict...

also added to international tension. CND attracted supporters who opposed the Government’s civil defence plans as outlined in an official booklet, Protect and Survive
Protect and Survive
Protect and Survive was a public information series on civil defence produced by the British government during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was intended to inform British citizens on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack, and consisted of a mixture of pamphlets, radio broadcasts,...

. This publication was ridiculed in a popular pamphlet, Protest and Survive, by E.P.Thompson, a leading anti-nuclear campaigner of the period. Public support for unilateralism reached its highest level since the 1960s. More women than men supported it.

At its 1982 conference, the Labour Party adopted a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. It lost the 1983 general election

United Kingdom general election, 1983

The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945...

"in which, following the Falklands war

Falklands War

The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...

, foreign policy was high on the agenda. Election defeats under, first, Michael Foot, then Neil Kinnock, led Labour to abandon the policy in the late 1980s."

The British anti-nuclear movement at this time differed from the movement of the 1960s. Many groups sprang up independently of CND, some affiliating later. CND's previous objection to civil disobedience was dropped and it became a normal part of anti-nuclear protest. The women's movement had a strong influence, much of it emanating from the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp

Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp

Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was a peace camp established to protest at nuclear weapons being sited at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, England. The camp began in September 1981 after a Welsh group, Women for Life on Earth, arrived at Greenham to protest against the decision of the British...

.

New CND sections were formed, including Ex-services CND, Green CND, Student CND, Tories Against Cruise and Trident (TACT), Trade Union CND, and Youth CND. A network of protesters, calling itself Cruise Watch, tracked and harassed Cruise missile

Cruise missile

A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards a land-based or sea-based target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy...

s whenever they were carried on public roads. After a while, the missiles traveled only at night under police escort. The peace movement of early 80s was the largest in modern history. In October 1981, 250,000 people joined an anti-nuclear demonstration in London. In October 1983, three million people took part in simultaneous demonstrations across Europe, 300,000 of them in London.

Extent of public support for CND policies

As CND did not have a national membership until 1966, the strength of public support in its early days can be estimated only from the numbers of those attending demonstrations or expressing approval in opinion polls. Between 1955 and 1962, between 19% to 33% of people in Britain expressed disapproval of the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Public support for unilateralism in September 1982 was 31%, falling to 21% in January 1983, but it is hard to say whether this decline was a result of the contemporary propaganda campaign against CND or not. Support for CND fell after the end of the Cold war. It had not succeeded in converting the British public to unilateralism and even after the collapse of the Soviet Union British nuclear weapons still have majority support. "Unilateral disarmament has always been opposed by a majority of the British public, with the level of support for unilateralism remaining steady at around one in four of the population."

In 2005, MORI

MORI

Ipsos MORI is the second largest market research organisation in the United Kingdom, formed by a merger of Ipsos UK and MORI, two of the Britain's leading survey companies in October 2005...

conducted an opinion poll which asked about attitudes to Trident and the use of nuclear weapons. When asked whether the UK should replace Trident, without being told of the cost, 44% of respondents said "Yes" and 46% said "No". When asked the same question and told of the cost, 33% said "Yes" and 54% said "No".

When asked "Would you approve or disapprove of the UK using nuclear weapons against a country we are at war with?"

9% would approve if that country does not have nuclear weapons, and 84% would disapprove.
16% would approve if that country has nuclear weapons but has never used them, and 72% would disapprove,
53% would approve if that country uses nuclear weapons against the UK, and 37% would disapprove.

CND's policy of opposing American nuclear bases is said to be in tune with public opinion.

Organised opposition to CND

CND's growing support in the 1980s provoked opposition from several sources, including Peace Through Nato, the British Atlantic Committee (which received government funding), Women and Families for Defence (set up by conservative journalist Lady Olga Maitland

Lady Olga Maitland

Lady Helen Olga Hay , better known as Lady Olga Maitland, is a former British Conservative politician.-Family and education:The daughter of Patrick Maitland, 17th Earl of Lauderdale, she was educated at St. Mary and St...

to oppose the Greenham Common Peace Camp), the Conservative Party's Campaign for Defence and Multilateral Disarmament, the Coalition for Peace through Security

Coalition for Peace through Security

The Coalition for Peace Through Security was a campaigning group founded in September 1981 and active in the UK throughout the early and mid-1980s...

, the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, and The 61, a private sector intelligence agency. The British government also took direct steps to counter the influence of CND, Secretary of State for Defence

Secretary of State for Defence

The Secretary of State for Defence, popularly known as the Defence Secretary, is the senior Government of the United Kingdom minister in charge of the Ministry of Defence, chairing the Defence Council. It is a Cabinet position...

Michael Heseltine

Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, CH, PC is a British businessman, Conservative politician and patron of the Tory Reform Group. He was a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001 and was a prominent figure in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major...

setting up Defence Secretariat 19 "to explain to the public the facts about the Government's policy on deterrence and multilateral disarmament". The activities of anti-CND organisations are said to have included research, publication, mobilising public opinion, counter-demonstrations, working within the Churches, smears against CND leaders and spying.

In an article on anti-CND groups, Steve Dorril reported that in 1982 Eugene V. Rostow

Eugene V. Rostow

Eugene V. Rostow , influential legal scholar and public servant, was Dean of Yale Law School, and served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Lyndon B...

, Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, became concerned about the growing unilateralist movement. According to Dorril, Rostow helped to initiate a propaganda exercise in Britain, "aimed at neutralising the efforts of CND. It would take three forms: mobilising public opinion, working within the Churches, and a 'dirty tricks' operation against the peace groups."

One of the groups set up to carry out this work was the Coalition for Peace through Security (CPS), modelled on the US Coalition for Peace through Strength. The CPS was founded in 1981. Its main activists were Julian Lewis

Julian Lewis

Dr. Julian Murray Lewis is a British Conservative Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for New Forest East in Hampshire since the 1997 general election.-Education:Born on 26 September 1951 in Swansea, Dr...

, Edward Leigh

Edward Leigh

Edward Julian Egerton Leigh is a British Conservative politician. He has sat in the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Gainsborough in Lincolnshire since 1997, and for its predecessor constituency of Gainsborough and Horncastle between 1983 and 1997...

and Francis Holihan.

Amongst the activities of the CPS were commissioning Gallup polls which showed the levels of support for British possession of nuclear weapons, providing speakers at public meetings, highlighting the left-wing affiliations of leading CND figures and mounting counter-demonstrations

Demonstration (people)

A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...

against CND. These including haranguing CND marchers from the roof of its Whitehall offices flying a plane over a CND festival with a banner reading, "Help the Soviets, Support CND!" It also denounced Bruce Kent

Bruce Kent

Bruce Kent is a British political activist and a former Roman Catholic priest. Active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , he was the organisation's general secretary from 1980 to 1985 and its chair from 1987 to 1990...

, the general secretary of CND, as a supporter of IRA terrorism.

The CPS attracted criticism for refusing to say where its funding came from while alleging that the anti-nuclear movement was funded by the Soviet Union. Although the CPS called itself a grass-roots movement, it had no members and was financed by The 61, "a private sector operational intelligence agency" said by its founder, Brian Crozier

Brian Crozier

Brian Rossiter Crozier is a British-based historian, strategist and journalist.Crozier was born in Australia, although he was raised in France, learning French. Thereafter his family moved to England where he would receive a scholarship to study piano and musical composition at the Trinity College...

, to be funded by "rich individuals and a few private companies". It is said to have also received funding from the Heritage Foundation

Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...

.

Bruce Kent alleged in his autobiography that Francis Holihan spied on CND. It was said that Holihan sent senior clerics in the Catholic Church material on Kent (Kent was a catholic priest), that Holihan organised the aerial propaganda against CND, that he had entered CND offices under false pretences, and that CPS workers had joined CND in order to gain access to the Campaign's 1982 Annual Conference. It was said that when Kent went on a speaking tour of America, Holihan followed him, that offensive material on Kent was sent to newspapers and radio stations, and that demonstrations were organised against him.

Brian Crozier claimed in his book Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991 (Harper Collins, 1993) that The 61 infiltrated a mole into CND in 1979.

Gerald Vaughan, a government minister, tried to halve government funding for the Citizens Advice Bureau

Citizens Advice Bureau

A Citizens Advice Bureau is one of a network of independent charities throughout the UK that give free, confidential information and advice to help people with their money, legal, consumer and other problems....

, apparently because Joan Ruddock

Joan Ruddock

Joan Mary Ruddock is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Lewisham Deptford since 1987. She is a feminist and is the wife of Frank Doran, the Labour MP for Aberdeen North...

, CND's chair, was employed part-time at his local bureau. Bruce Kent was warned by Cardinal Basil Hume not to become too involved in politics.

CND's opponents claimed that CND was a Communist or Soviet-dominated organisation. In 1981, the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, which shared an office with the CPS, was said by Sanity, the CND newspaper, to have published a booklet claiming that Russian money was being used by CND. In response to Lord Chalfont's claim in that the Soviet Union was giving the European peace movement £100 million a year, Bruce Kent said, "If they were, it was certainly not getting to our grotty little office in Finsbury Park." In the 1980s, the Federation of Conservative Students

Federation of Conservative Students

The Federation of Conservative Students was the student organisation of the British Conservative Party from the late 1940s to 1986. It was created to act as a bridge between the student movement and the Conservative Party....

alleged Soviet funding of CND.

Intelligence operations against CND

The security service (MI5

MI5

The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

) has carried out surveillance of CND members it considered to be subversive. From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, MI5 designated CND as subversive by virtue of its being "communist controlled". Communists have played an active role in the organisation, and John Cox, its chairman from 1971 to 1977, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain

Communist Party of Great Britain

The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...

. From the late 1970s, MI5 downgraded CND to "communist-penetrated". MI5 says it has no current investigations in this area.

In 1985, Cathy Massiter, an MI5 officer who had been responsible for the surveillance of CND from 1981 to 1983, resigned and made disclosures to a Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

20/20 Vision programme, "MI5's Official Secrets". She said that her work was determined more by the political importance of CND than by any security threat posed by subversive elements within it. In 1983, she analysed telephone intercepts on John Cox that gave her access to conversations with Joan Ruddock and Bruce Kent. MI5 also placed a spy, Harry Newton, in the CND office. According to Massiter, Newton believed that CND was controlled by extreme left-wing activists and that Bruce Kent might be a crypto-communist, but Massiter found no evidence to support either opinion. On the basis of Ruddock's contacts, MI5 suspected her of being a communist sympathiser. Speaking in the House of Commons, Dale Campbell-Savours, MP, said,

"it was felt within the service that officers were likely to be questioned about the true political affiliation of Mrs. Joan Ruddock, who became chair of CND in 1983. It was fully recognised by the service that she had no subversive affiliations and therefore should not be recorded under any of the usual subversive categories. In fact, she was recorded as a contact of a hostile intelligence service after giving an interview to a Soviet journalist based in London who was suspected of being a KGB intelligence officer. In Joan Ruddock's file, MI5 recorded special branch references to her movements—usually public meetings—and kept press cuttings and the products of mail and telephone intercepts obtained through active investigation of other targets, such as the Communist party and John Cox. There were police reports recording her appearances at demonstrations or public meetings. There were references to her also in reports from agents working, for example, in the Communist party. These would also appear in her file."

According to Stephen Dorril, at about the same time, Special Branch

Special Branch

Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...

officers recruited an informant within CND, Stanley Bonnett, on the instructions of MI5. MI5 is also said to have suspected CND's treasurer, Cathy Ashton, of being a communist sympathiser because she shared a house with a communist. When Michael Heseltine became Secretary of State for Defence, Massiter prepared a report on CND for him. She was asked to provide information for Defence Secretariat 19 about leading CND personnel but was instructed to include only information from published sources. Ruddock claims that DS19 released distorted information regarding her political party affiliations to the media and Conservative Party candidates.

In 1990, it was discovered in the archive of the Stasi

Stasi

The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...

(the state security service of the former German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

) that a member of CND's governing council, Vic Allen

Vic Allen

Vic Allen is a British academic who is a former Professor of Economics at Leeds University who was revealed to have been an "agent of influence" for the East German Stasi secret police....

, had passed information to them about CND. This discovery was made public in a BBC TV programme in 1999, reviving debate about Soviet links to CND. Allen stood against Joan Ruddock

Joan Ruddock

for the leadership of CND in 1985, but was defeated. Ruddock responded to the Stasi revelations with "[Allen] certainly had no influence on national CND, and as a pro-Soviet could never have succeeded to the chair. CND was as opposed to Soviet nuclear weapons as Western ones."

Chairs of CND since 1958

Canon John Collins
Canon John Collins
John Collins was an Anglican priest who was active in several radical political movements in the United Kingdom.Educated at Cranbrook School, Kent and the University of Cambridge, Collins served as a chaplain in the Royal Air Force during World War II and was radicalised by the experience...

1958–1964
Olive Gibbs
Olive Gibbs
Olive Frances Gibbs, née Cox, DL was a British Labour politician and anti-nuclear weapons campaigner.Gibbs entered Oxfordshire politics in 1953 and was Lord Mayor of Oxford twice in 1974/5 and 1981/2, stepping in the second time to replace a colleague who had died halfway through his term...

1964–1967
Sheila Oakes 1967–1968
Malcolm Caldwell
Malcolm Caldwell
James Alexander Malcolm Caldwell was a British academic and a prolific Marxist writer. He was a consistent critic of American imperialism, a campaigner for Asian communist liberation and socialist movements, and a strong supporter of Pol Pot...

1968–1970
April Carter
April Carter
April Carter has lectured in politics at the universities of Lancaster, Oxford and Queensland, and was a Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute from 1985 to 1987...

1970–1971
John Cox 1971–1977
Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent is a British political activist and a former Roman Catholic priest. Active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , he was the organisation's general secretary from 1980 to 1985 and its chair from 1987 to 1990...

1977–1979
Hugh Jenkins 1979–1981
Joan Ruddock
Joan Ruddock
Joan Mary Ruddock is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Lewisham Deptford since 1987. She is a feminist and is the wife of Frank Doran, the Labour MP for Aberdeen North...

1981–1985
Paul Johns
Paul Johns (CND chair)
Paul Johns was chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament between 1985 and 1987.Johns has had a varied career. He worked for many years as a management consultant for a different companies, big and small. In the 1980s he was active in the peace movement, becoming Chair of first Christian CND...

1985 – 1987
Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent is a British political activist and a former Roman Catholic priest. Active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , he was the organisation's general secretary from 1980 to 1985 and its chair from 1987 to 1990...

1987 –1990
Marjorie Thompson
Marjorie Thompson
Marjorie Thompson was vice-chair and chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament between 1983 and 1993.-References:Marjorie Thompson was vice-chair and chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament between 1983 and 1993....

1990–1993
Janet Bloomfield
Janet Bloomfield
Janet Bloomfield was a peace and disarmament campaigner who was chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1993 to 1996....

1993–1996
David Knight 1996–2001
Carol Naughton 2001–2003
Kate Hudson
Kate Hudson (activist)
Katharine Jane Hudson is a UK academic and political activist.Kate Hudson is currently the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Prior to her appointment to the post, she had served as Chair of the organisation from 2003 to 2010...

2003– 2010
Dave Webb 2010– present

General Secretaries of CND since 1958

Peggy Duff
Peggy Duff
Peggy Duff was a British political activist who was principally known for her contribution to the peace movement as the organiser of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.-Background:...

1958–1967
Dick Nettleton 1967–1973
Dan Smith 1974–1975
Duncan Rees 1976–1979
Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent is a British political activist and a former Roman Catholic priest. Active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , he was the organisation's general secretary from 1980 to 1985 and its chair from 1987 to 1990...

1979–1985
Meg Beresford
Meg Beresford
Meg Beresford was a British campaigner against nuclear weapons and General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1985-1990....

1985–1990
Gary Lefley
Gary Lefley
Gary Lefley succeeded Meg Beresford as general secretary for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1990. Lefley belonged to the Straight Left faction within the Communist Party of Great Britain. Lefley remained general secretary of CND until 1994 when the post was abolished, and the...

, 1990–1994

The post was abolished in 1994, and reclaimed in 2010.

Kate Hudson
Kate Hudson (activist)
Katharine Jane Hudson is a UK academic and political activist.Kate Hudson is currently the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Prior to her appointment to the post, she had served as Chair of the organisation from 2003 to 2010...

, 2010–

Membership

1970-1995 taken from Social Movements in Britain, Paul Byrne

Paul Byrne

Paul Byrne may refer to:*Paul Byrne , Irish footballer*Paul Byrne , Irish footballer, former Celtic and Southend United player*Paul Byrne , South African footballer, former Port Vale player...

, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-07123-2 (1997), p. 91.

Year	Members	Year	Members
1970	2,120	1986	84,000
1971	2,047	1987	75,000
1972	2,389	1988	72,000
1973	2,367	1989	62,000
1974	2,350	1990	62,000
1975	2,536	1991	60,000
1976	3,220	1992	57,000
1977	4,287	1993	52,000
1978	3,220	1994	47,000
1979	4,287	1995	47,700
1980	9,000	1996
1981	20,000	1997
1982	50,000	1998
1983	75,000	1999
1984	100,000	2000
1985	92,000	2001

External links

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