Photo: Cover artwork of 'The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament' by Martin Shaw.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
By Martin Shaw
At the book launch for this addition to Agenda Publishing’s ‘Short Histories’ series, the author Martin Shaw said that the reason he couldn’t use the abbreviation ‘CND’ rather than ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ in the title was that no one under the age of fifty knew what it stood for. But thankfully, at the event (which took place at the London School of Economics (LSE)), there were a number of students present. They mostly appeared to be under fifty, and were keenly taking notes.
LSE hosts the CND archives, and Shaw drew heavily on them for his research (he is an emeritus professor of International Relations and Politics at the University of Sussex, and a research professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals). The result is an excellent read, and the book covers a great deal of the turbulence that results when an organisation attempts to challenge the madness at the heart of nuclear weapons.
The launch of CND in 1958 heralded a modern protest movement in Britain. Since that time this movement has had wide-ranging influence, but has failed to stop the maintenance and ownership of nuclear weapons in Britain. None of us should be surprised at how hard it has been for campaigners to keep going.
‘While we Quakers might feel that we have read enough about nuclear weapons, there is a generation which hasn’t.’
The financial cost of nuclear weapons is jaw dropping, but the moral cost is almost beyond words. 2025 marks eighty years since the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we would be well served to understand better the many and varying attempts made by those who have opposed nuclear weapons, because it isn’t over and there is a lot to do.
It is particularly fascinating to read about the many tensions between different groupings in the wider peace movement, and the various approaches they each took to this hugely challenging aspect of social change. Shaw recounts the creativity, art and music that have been included in the numerous demonstrations over the decades.
While we Quakers might feel that we have read enough about nuclear weapons, there is a generation which hasn’t. I hope that Friends buy a copy of this publication for their personal and Meeting libraries, but I also hope they use it for book group discussions in their Meetings, so that we are reminded that the UK still hosts and maintains nuclear weapons. As a peace church, we must oppose them.
