THE CAMPAIGN for Nuclear Disarmament is today stronger than ever. Opinion polls show majority against missiles. The Challenge supporters - Jobs not Bombs - is taken up everywhere in the labour movement.
missiles was at least 80,000 strong.
nuclear weapons movement should not be the occasion for complacency, for a very obvious reson. one period of mass support, ago. It organised and the Labour Party conference, in 1960, voted for unilateral nuclear disarmament.
But CND, SOUTHALL and veterans of the last wave of the movement, argues that this defeat was a result of a lack of political analysis and strategy.
of the first wave have to be assimilated.
will be a vital reference point in the debates about the way forward for the movement CND never had a consistent strategy towards the labour movement. There was cellaimly no ongollig campaign aimed at the factones anu tie rank are me members of the and the Labour Partv. Instead there was the Labour This was set up in the autumn of 1958 and comprised left MPs and union leaders like Frank Beswick and John Horner. They were not used to the open mass campaigning style of CND.
To be less than kind, their political experience had involved politicking in TOORIS the Bevanite revolt and then getting thrashed by Gaitskell and the right.
Ian Mikardo expressed bunkered View much of the Labour left when, in an interview with Taylor and Pritchard he dismissed the importance of CND as a mass moveLOC strategy of winning key igures in the organised labour movement: Sketchy 10,000 or 20,000 50,000 political people don't compensate for those who can exert political pressure at the point of action.' CND's work in the unions was sketchy. Far more was done by the Direct Action Committee (DAC) whose main spokesperson was Pat Arrowsmith.
The aim of DAC, a few local trade union committees, and later the industrial sub-committee of the Committee of 100, was popularise and agitate for action against the bomb. In 1962 the CND conference passed such a resolution. It was opposed by Michael Foot and the rest of the exCruise and Trident slogan coined by Socialist Last autumn's demonstration against the But the immense support for the antiCND has already been through twenty years massive demonstrations despite its mass support, was JULIAN ATKINSON, If history is not to repeat itself, the lessons 'CND 1958-65 Lessons of the First Wave' Aldermaston auto Tady 12 noon FINAL MARCH: Hyde Pk Corner ecutive. It was never implemented Arrowsmith and Michael Scott resigned in protest.
The 1960 Scarborough conference should have been the greatest victory the Labour left had ever won. The union votes were there. The peech by Frank Cousin WaN lacklustre. The response of Labour leader Gaitskell was electric. He rejected unilateralism and would 'fight, fight and fight again to save the Party we love'.
Mers listened the left leaders eith sinking feeling. The issues were wider than mere nuclear annihilation - - the party could split and the next election be lost. worrying feature of the victory was CND 1958-65 LESSONS OF THE FIRST WAVE A Socialist Challenge Pamphlet DY TONY SOUTHALL AND 50p labour movement orientation.
on CND and the Labour left. ALDERMASTON TO LONDON EASTER 62 Easter Sunday 9.30am 9.30am RALLY HYDE PARK near Hyde PY Comer| 12. 30-3 PM that the constituency parties (CLPs) supported Gaitskell by 512,000 to 260,000. The right wing were prepared to wage a counter-attack to reverse this decision.
The problem was whether ine Labour lefts were prepared to seize on the victory that the Aldermaston marchers had put into their hands. Their proven specialism was ll gallantly losing and remaining a critica, but lova minority. Would the lefts have the will or political ability to fight again!
The unilateralist victory at the 1960 Labour Party conference left the CND leadership quite unprepared Jacquetta Hawkes was 'absolutely astonished' by ine VOte and had been 'quite of Wildl had Challenge pampniel 'CND 1958-65'.
Available from London N1 2XP, plus 20p p&p. against nuclear weapons, and in particular for Democratic Socialism, ON
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defeated last time round. A new 60 page pam- phlet by Socialist Challenge supporters TONY