The continuing success of CND and the Greenham Common women in capturing the public imagination should not blind us to the crucial inadequacies in the peace movement's strategy. Tony Southall argues that the Campaign must turn to the labour movement to find the decisive forces for its success.
In the past three or four years there has emerged throughout the states of the western alliance the single most significant international mass movement of modern history. It is undoubtably heterogeneous, including opportunist Democratic Party politicians in the USA, pacifists, church people of all denominations, people with no other political affiliations, and socialists, both reformist and revolutionary. It lacks any single theme or demand. There are those who merely call for a freeze on the development of further weapons or who are opposed to particular new ones, like Cruise or Trident; others who insist the main aim must be to build a movement crossing Cold War frontiers, and those who fight for unconditional nuclear disarmament by their own imperialism. Between them there is no common political analysis. Yet the entire movement is united in a shared conviction that in the 1980s the threat of nuclear war is graver than ever, necessitating an urgent political response.
The movement has not yet won any decisive victory through a real reversal of the capitalists' war drive. But it has forced the issue to the fore and won certain partial gains, and it also exercises a continuous restraint on further escalation of the arms race. Important changes have taken place in the way governments present their arguments. Whereas two years ago Reagan and his team were full of the Soviet threat, George Bush's latest trip to Europe in 1983 had the central objective of defusing the influence of the peace movement by proving the West's supposed seriousness about negotiations.
In 1983 it is no exaggeration to say that defeating this movement is critical for imperialism internationally in order to gain a free hand to impose real defeats on the working class and its allies. Conversely a substantial victory for the movement, such as the election in Britain of a Labour government committed to even a limited degree of unilateral disarmament, would open the road for pushing back the war drive throughout Europe. It would also make much more difficult military interventions aimed at combating socialist revolutions in Central America or elsewhere.
It is clear that in the past three years in CND in Britain has assembled the most significant and sizeable mass single-issue campaign since the Suffragettes. Its uninterrupted growth and influence was spectacularly underlined in June last year, when Falklands-induced chauvinism, especially in England, could not stop us assembling 250,000 people to protest at Ronald Reagan's visit. Every week tens of thousands of activists in virtually every town and village devote an enormous amount of time and energy to the movement that far outweighs that attracted by older, established political movements. It makes a thoroughly heterogenous, even at times chaotic movement, that nonetheless maintains as its basis opposition to the arms race.
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It is valuable to compare CND's second wave with the experiences of 25 years ago. In the late 1950s our movement was isolated internationally, Only in Japan was there anything comparable. Today we stand alongside similar movements in virtually every western state — some of them able to assemble forces even bigger than ours. The series of mass demonstrations in Europe — in Bonn, Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, London, — in autumn 1981 provided the clearest picture of this to date. It also resulted directly in one of our partial victories. Reagan had previously refused to open any East/West negotiations until the supposed imbalance in nuclear weapons had been righted through the deployment of Cruise and Pershing in Western Europe. The strength and influence of the European peace movement forced him to open the Geneva talks on intermediate missile control in January 1982. More recently it has caused his closest European allies to distance themselves from the zero option. And Reagan's own recent moves away from the zero option constituted an obvious attempt to reduce the scale and influence of our demonstration.
We should also note the extraordinary significance of the 'freeze movement' in the USA which assembled a demonstration of more than a million in New York in summer 1982. It is true that a large part of the impetus for this was provided by Democratic politicians seeking to make political capital before the mid-term elections. But neither the demonstration nor the massive vote for the pro-freeze candidates in these elections could be reduced to this. Both were genuine reactions among wide sections of the US population against their government's escalation of the arms race. The mass of people involved, as distinct from their leadership, were our fellow peace campaigners. The existence of these allies results from the entirely different political context in which we operate in the 1980s. The present world recession has challenged the myth that capitalism can guarantee an uninterupted rise in living standards. This has promoted a scepticism about government's willingness and even ability to come clean on their election pledges, including on disarmament talks, which has fuelled the peace movement.
The success of colonial and anti-capitalist revolutions in the 1960s and 1970s has also dented imperialism's myth of invulnerability. The US anti-war movement played a vital role in the victory of the NLF in South Vietnam and the memory of this continues to exercise a constraint on American governments. It helps to explain why even Reagan proceeds so gingerly in his present attempts to crush the Central American revolution. At least part of the reason for the latest US arms drive and increased anti-Soviet hysteria was to make it easier to intervene militarily against such revolutions. But quite the reverse has happened. the existence of a mass anti-war movement puts a brake on further adventures because Reagan and his allies fear they might develop this movement's political consciousness. To put it simply they fear that anti-nuclear feeling may become explicitly anti-imperialist.
Our movement has had another important effect. The imperialists hoped that the nuclear weapons drive would restrain the Soviet rulers from providing support for revolutions in the Third World. Certainly the Stalinist bureaucracy has continued to dole out aid with its traditional eye-dropper. But the emergence of a mass movement of unprecedented size in the West means that there is less excuse for the Andropov team to buckle to this blackmail.
A third feature that distinguishes our movement in the 1980s is its relatively greater political maturity and experience. There are many people in CND for whom this is their first experience of organised politics, but the campaign both nationally and locally has benefited from the participation of veterans of other attempts to build broad campaigns in the last twenty years: the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the Anti-Nazi League are the most prominent examples. CND has reinvolved many people who have been through such movements, many of them members of far left organisations. It is perhaps this political maturity that has enabled CND to steer clear of the kind of bitter factionalism that split the movement in the early 1960s between direct action and advocates of pressure group politics. No political party remains untouched by the anti-nuclear movement. There is every indication that it will be a crucial factor in the forthcoming General Election. Thatcher's appointment of Heseltine, one of the few personalities in the Tory cabinet, to the Defence Ministry at the beginning of the year clearly indicated her assessment of the government's weakest link.
CND and the labour movement
It is in the labour movement that CND has had its most profound effect. During recent years union after union has passed conference support for unilateralism. Some of the most convincing victories have been achieved in unions not affiliated to the Labour Party like NALGO, NATFHE and the NUT (although the position of the latter has just been reversed by a small majority), It is also noticeable that many unions with right wing leaderships, for instance USDAW and COHSE, have taken an anti-Bomb line, There is every possibility that the biggest union still not supporting CND, the AUEW, may join the ranks. The support for the Greenham Women's call for a women's disarmament day on 24 May from the organised union movement is testimony both to the popular support for the Greenham Peace Camp, as well as to the extent to which action against the missiles has become a legitimate issue inside the unions.
The swing in the unions reflects CND's countrywide influence. It was above all the large mass demonstrations between 1980 and 1982 that laid the ground for the overwhelming votes for disarmament at last year's TUC and Labour conferences. But it is necessary to sound a note of caution here. The unions' support for CND is by no means reflected in a day to day commitment to its aims. The publication of pro-disarmament articles in little read union journals is not sufficient. CND activists in the unions should be highly conscious of the fact that union policy rests on a knife edge until members are active in their support for CND's aims and initiatives.
it is therefore disturbing that CND nationally puts so little store on its work inside the unions, as evidenced by the fact that merely one out of CND's 26 fulltime workers is allocated to work on the unions (there is no one allocated to the Labour Party!) and that so few articles in CND's journal Sanity so far this year have been on the Labour Party or the unions. It is equally disturbing that CND's national trade union conference on 29 January 1983 had an attendance of only 200 (compared to more than 300 at Labour CND's similar event three weeks later). Furthermore the conference was far from representative. Worst of all it did nothing to carry out CND conference's commitment to the 6 August Day of Action. Nor was there much discussion about how to build CND's influence at the base of the unions, All experience shows that workplace or occupational branches can attract new members into activity who are not necessarily prepared to get involved in other aspects of union activity. The CND group organised in the Glasgow district NALGO branch for example gets a consistently higher attendance at its meetings than the union branch itself. Factory branches have been built successfully in the Glasgow area at Rolls Royce and Yarrow Shipbuilders, two plants that are heavily dependent on military contracts. A conference held last year jointly by Paisley CND with the Trades Council drew a significant rank and file attendance from local workplaces and presented a good example of the kind of grassroots activity that can turn CND's current paper support into practical action.
Rolls Royce and Yarrow raise a further issue of critical importance for our trade union work. Certain enterprises are heavily, even exclusively, dependent on military contracts. In some cases, for instance at the Faslane submarine depot, large numbers of civilian workers are directly employed by the military. Two things are important here. First, every encouragement and assistance needs to be given by CND to workers to produce concrete plans for alternative productive employment for their industries as happened at Lucas Aerospace. Such plans can have a powerful propaganda value among the workers involved. But secondly it is pure utopianism to believe that appeals to the conscience or good sense of armaments workers can lead them, acting alone, to terminate their work — a position that has been put forward by some peace camp members. Stuart MacLennan, Secretary of the CPSA branch that organises many of the Faslane workers explained this point at the Campaign Against Trident trade union conference last year. No way, he said, will we win the majority of these workers to opposition to Trident until we can show that there is a viable possibility of alternative employment. And that battle will not be won by armaments workers alone, Only when their fellow trade unionists are sufficiently convinced of the correctness of CND's case, will they get the support needed to oppose the government's military preparations. To that extent every initiative must become the property of trade [illegible]
The Labour Party
In the Labour Party CND's activities have had a profound political effect. The climax came in October 1982 when 72 per cent of the conference vote was cast in favour of Composite Resolution 51. Its main demands were: no cruise, no Trident; no British nuclear weapons anywhere; no nuclear bases on British territory or in British waters. Just as our support in the unions is unstable, so too it is in the Labour Party. Whilst the vast majority of constituency parties vote consistently for unilateralism, their organised links with CND are tenuous. There were for instance only a handful of party banners on the Easter March in Glasgow and only a quarter of Scotland's CLPs are affiliated to CND. Above all the party leadership at parliamentary and executive levels is firmly in the hands of opponents of CND.
The new Campaigns Document of the Labour Party is supposed to form the basis of the manifesto. It can still be changed and certain items prioritised and others downplayed. Its section on disarmament marks a clear step backwards from Composite 51. Nobody is any doubt why this has happened. It is the product of discussions involving a parliamentary leadership of which only 5 out of 18 are unilateralists and a national executive (NEC) also opposed by a majority to this policy.
The new document turns unilateralism on its head through its repetitious assertions that this is inseparable from multilateral disarmament. True, Composite 51 recognises that 'unilateral disarmament by Britain will be a vital initiative leading towards multilateral disarmament worldwide.' That is the position of CND too. It is a demand for unconditional unambiguous steps which it is hoped will 'break the logjam' internationally. It is justified by the fact that not once in 38 years of the nuclear arms race have international negotiations led to any significant halt in its escalation. But that is in marked contrast to the new document's insistence that 'unilateralism and multilateralism must go hand in hand' and its let-out clause that, 'all this cannot be done at once, and the way we do it must be designed to assist in the task to which we are committed — securing nuclear disarmament agreements with other countries and maintaining co-operation with our allies.' Thus the ground of the document is right away shifted to make unilateral initiatives relate to and ultimately depend on the success of the agreements: 'We want to see the Geneva talks on intermediate weapons succeed'. But what if they don't?
On the critical question of the British 'independent' deterrent, the document is plain. It will not accept Trident (something the party holds in common with the Alliance). It will however maintain Polaris — in complete contradiction to Composite 51 — and use this as a bargaining chip to get to Geneva. And suppose we can't bargain it away?
Then again on the bases: 'Labour's commitment is to establish a non-nuclear defence policy ... this means the rejection of any fresh nuclear weapons or bases ... and the removal of all existing bases and weapons ...'. But when is this to happen? It is no accident that this clause is followed by the catch-all let-out clause quoted above.
The document has been hailed as a masterly reconciliation of left and right in the party. In the wake of Darlington it is supposed to have created the necessary unity around which Labour can win the next election. Not untypically, The Economist, saw things a good deal more clearly in its four page special on 2 April, Labour and the Bomb. It seized on the document's continual qualifications about timing. It concluded that the let-out clause could enable Healey and his allies to drive a coach and horses through any unilateralist commitments. In this context it is critical that CND supporters in the Labour Party go all out to re-assert that Resolution 51 in its entirety be Labour's policy for this election. Labour CND has already issued a call that this be done: in particular through local parties insisting that their candidates stand clearly on this.
Campaigning for Composite 51
The tasks outlined above are onerous and time-consuming. But they represent the only way to consolidate CND's support in the unions, and to win to our side the strongest of our potential allies — the only force capable of mounting the direct action against the Bomb which can win.
There is unfortunately an increasingly influential tendency amongst party activists who identify themselves as unilateralists, including members of Labour CND, to play down the differences with the new document. They argue that what is important is to win the election, and any further debate is seen as destructive. Some people argue that if we can only get a Labour government elected, committed to no cruise or Trident, then a whole new state of play will be created. We shall be poised to take much bigger steps nationally and internationally as a result.
Two potentially disastrous errors are made here. First, it is quite wrong to say that playing down these differences is the key to winning the election. It is already rumoured that Healey, Hattersley and Shore are taking advantage of this mood to argue that in the final manifesto disarmament should feature low down the list of priorities, subordinated to plans for economic revival. This is not only a sell-out on Composite 51, It is a sell-out on Labour's chances of winning the election. Only a programme that puts Jobs Not Bombs up front rather than a new style Social Contract can win. Secondly, for CND supporters in the party to accept this line would have politically disastrous results on the mass of CND activists. We did not win Composite 51 because we argued endlessly in party and union branch meetings, although that was part of it. We won it essentially because CND's massive growth over the past three years has brought the issue to the forefront.
Surveys showed that out of the quarter of a million that marched in London last June only a minority saw themselves as Labour supporters and still less were active in the party. It's easy to surmise the reason for this, Labour in government has never kept a single one of its limited commitments to peace and disarmament. And these people see that the maneouvring around Composite 51 is designed to make sure it fails once again. In this situation any hesitancy by Labour CND supporters about demanding the implementation of Composite 51 will alienate us from the majority of the movement.
It is worth drawing some lessons from a previous experience of CND, In 1960 the Scarborough Labour Party conference voted, albeit narrowly, for unilateralism. The Right, led by the party leader Gaitskell and organised by Bill Rodgers (then Secretary of the Campaign for Democratic Socialism), campaigned and manoeuvred throughout the party to reverse the decision. Meantime the unilateralists in the party did nothing, and then under the leadership of Michael Foot, rallied to the flag of the 'Crossman-Padley compromise' cooked up by Dick Crossman and the shopworkers' leader, Walter Padley. This called for abandoning Britain's independent deterrent and negotiations towards a European nuclear free zone. This compromise was the means by which anti-unilateralist trade union leaders were able to shift their positions away from the clear CND policy that was eventually overturned at the 1961 conference.
Some 22 years later CND supporters are faced with not dissimilar manoeuvres and choices. On the one hand we have the Labour leadership backpedalling — by a strange quirk of history this time Michael Foot is able to play the compromiser from centre stage. On the other hand CND activists are less and less inclined to place any faith in the Labour Party as the possible means of achieving our ends. In 1961 Crossman and Padley led activists who had always been sceptical about the party, to turn their backs on it. Thousands of us who had taken out cards in the wake of Scarborough tore them up and threw ourselves into building what we mistakenly believed was a mass alternative to political action — the mass sit-downs of the Committee of 100.
The similarities with the past are uncanny. CND activists [illegible] way to defeat the missiles. Joan Ruddock and Bruce Kent's statements suggest that the leadership is bending that way too. Foot's fudging of the issue will drive more in that direction, But we should remember the lessons of 1961. Those of us who got ourselves arrested numerous times through civil disobedience, won a lot of front page space and paid a lot of fines but we achieved precisely nothing. By the end of that year our energy and enthusiasms were dissipated, our movement was defeated — in the party and on the streets.
That is why Labour CND supporters should campaign for Composite 51. It is certain there will be increasing numbers of actions of civil disobedience by campaigners over the coming period — especially if cruise missiles do arrive. The best of these will win us important publicity and be so big that no one will be arrested. But the argument that non-violent direct action does not provide a political strategy for winning disarmament will not carry any weight unless we can develop an effective fight in the Labour Party.
In its statement calling for action on Composite 51, Labour CND calls for continuing the fight in the party for a commitment to get out of NATO. It explains that much confusion results from a policy of non-nuclear defence while remaining in the NATO Alliance. The Right understands this and loses no opportunity to stress that everything must be done 'in collaboration with our allies'.
CND and the General Election
In the last issue of International Helen John tried to defend the idea of independent peace candidates in the next election. She saw this directed at the Right of the Labour Party. This is as misguided as attempting to commit CND to support for the Labour Party — both are divisive. Our movement will best advance in size and influence by conducting its own independent campaign that seeks, while not standing anyone ourselves, to make sure that every candidate has to confront the nuclear issue. A good example of this came during the Hillhead by-election last year when we mobilised as many supporters as any of the main political parties. Our main tactical mistake was to organise around the slogan Vote for Peace which enabled every candidate to say they stood for peace — it is just that in some cases they saw the best way to get peace as by having cruise and Trident! Our general election campaign should start from unilateralism, calling on voters to assess all candidates according to our programme. As a lead up to the election and conference the National Council have endorsed the idea of a Peace Canvass. This suggestion has certain virtues as long as it is not seen simply as getting a propaganda victory. It could be used most productively as a means of recruiting people into active support and membership of CND.
CND and the Left
The international movement against nuclear weapons poses the most important threat to the worldwide plans of imperialism. Its success or failure is critical for the stability of that system. Unfortunately this is far from being understood by the majority of British Marxists. The British Communist Party whose majority wing adheres to the explicitly reformist multi-class line of the Broad Democratic Alliance — has a leading influence in CND. Its politics lead it not just to defend CND as a broad single issue campaign but also to accommodate to all the most backward prejudices of its allies, Little real backing comes from the CP for initiatives to strengthen our work in the unions and the Labour Party.
There may be future developments which will pose a bigger problem from the CP. If some of the ideas in Marxism Today take the Broad Democratic Alliance against the Tories onto the party political level then we might in CND be asked to downplay some of our slogans in order to gain a 'broad unity' with the SDP.
The Socialist Workers Party, the biggest of the British far left organisations have analyses of the world (that the worker's states are state capitalist), of the present political situation (that the working class have been defeated), and the Labour Party (that it's irrelevant), that are all wrong. This leads it to view CND exclusively through its chosen means of preserving the 'heritage of the class' in a downturn — namely to build the SWP. While Socialist Worker generally gives good coverage to the escalation of the arms race and CND's protest actions, it does not build the movement — only those segments of it that show some promise of joining its own party. This opportunist and often sectarian attitude unfortunately tend to discredit Marxism. The SWP's hostile attitude to the independent women's actions that have been such a positive feature of the t last year have been negative and disruptive.
The Militant Tendency is unfortunately the most widely known standard bearer of Marxism in the party. Its attitude is a microcosm of its attitude to other single issue mass movement over the last twenty years: we agree with your aims; these will not be achieved this side of socialism; that will only be achieved through the election of a Labour government committed to nationalise the 200 monopolies; therefore you are wasting your time trying to build anything outside the party — come and join us! The circle is squared. Take it or leave it and above all don't expect us to do anything to build CND. This attitude is particularly disastrous because it comes from the tendency having the leadership of the Labour Party Young Socialists. It misses the biggest opportunity for years to build the LPYS by throwing its energies into Youth CND, To do that would in turn build its influence and weight inside the party.
Right now Marxism does not impress the majority of CND activists whose main perception of it is the negative one induced by the SWP and the Militant. Just as it is critical for CND supporters in the party to organise the fight to implement our policies, it is also essential that Marxists inside and outside the party do everything possible to present an alternative line of action that is firmly located in the traditions of Marxism.
Such a policy is not impossible to envisage. It needs to start from a recognition of which social forces can actually stop the missiles. For example there is no question that the Greenham women have made a tremendous contribution to the development and expansion of the peace movement. Their activities have progressed from the Peace Camps to increasingly mass actions, and now to the appeal for a women's day of action for disarmament on 24 May. This latter has been aimed to a large degree at the labour movement, including an appeal for industrial action on the day. The TUC and Labour Party are both committed to a Day of Action against the missiles on 6 August, Hiroshima Day. The Bakers Union has suggested a one-minute stoppage on that day, which while however tokenistic, nevertheless begins to point in the direction of mass collective labour movement action.
But recent statements by CND leaders point the movement in the opposite direction. Speaking in Glasgow before the Easter Sunday demonstration, CND chairperson Joan Ruddock, claimed CND now had a task force of between 3000 and 5000 prepared to, 'carry out uncomfortable and unpleasant tasks and prepared to run the risk of being arrested and going to prison'. In the Guardian the same day Martin Walker wrote up an interview with Bruce Kent under the title 'Preparing for the Politics of the Long Haul'. Its central theme was that despite CND's big public impact, preparations to deploy cruise and Trident were well in hand and official resolve strengthening: 'We have to be ready for a long haul, a very long haul indeed. For us to stake everything on the campaign, on the next election, on this year or the next, on cruise or on Trident would be a big mistake.' Preparations, he said, need to be made for direct action against cruise's likely deployment that were firmly based on a strong and stable disarmament movement that is 'cold eyed, implacable, determined and very, very brave'.
Such statements suggest that CND's leadership have opted to put non-violent direct action at the centre stage, while relegating work in the labour movement to the wings. Whilst is true that non-violent direct action was overwhelmingly supported as a central tactic at last year's CND conference, it also endorsed the priority of work directed at the labour movement, especially the Hiroshima Day action. And this emphasis on the one tactic over the other undermines the very successes which the Greenham women have had in encouraging labour movement action as the extension of their protest.
But such tendencies are not irreversible. CND is a very open and democratic organisation and the mass support for disarmament is still growing. The task for socialists in the coming months is a vital one: to campaign for a Labour government committed to unilateral disarmament as expressed in Composite 51; and to build every mass action of the peace movement — 24 May, Hiroshima Day, the October march and so on — as steps to consolidate growing support within the labour movement for concerted industrial action as the only way to stop the missiles and achieve disarmament.
TONY SOUTHALL was a full-time worker for the Committee of 100 in 1961. He is now secretary of Scottish Labour CND.