Cold War, Hot Jets TV - Bertrand Russell - Andrew Marr TV - What the Green Movement Got Wrong 2010 - Duncan Campbell - J B Priestley - John F Kennedy - J R R Tolkien - Niccolo Machiavelli - 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse TV - Steve Gibbons - Document: Radio 4 - Anti-Nuclear Slogans - Mothers, Missile and the American President TV -
The campaign for nuclear disarmament had begun. Cold War, Hot Jets II, BBC 2013
I support them [CND] because everything sane and sensible and quiet that we do is absolutely ignored by the press. And the only way we can get into the press is to do something that looks fanatical ... The worst possibility is that human life may be extinguished and it is a very real possibility. Very real ... Many hundreds of millions of people dying in agony, only and solely because the rulers of the world are stupid and wicked. I can’t bear it. Bertrand Russell, interview BBC 1959
Like every British leader since the Second World War Harold MacMillan was convinced that independent nuclear capacity was the only way to preserve Britain’s world power status ... In exchange for a new generation of missiles for Britain he agreed to offer a Scottish sea-base for American Polaris submarines ... The new Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was fuelling the anti-establishment across Britain. Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, BBC 2007
During the ’70s the Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons grew into a world-wide force. At the same time the new industry of nuclear power was growing. It was a carbon-dioxide free source of constant energy. But from the outset the industry was controversial. It was secretive. The extent of Britain’s worst nuclear accident in 1957 at Windscale in Cumbria was concealed, and subsequent leaks there and at other plants were covered up. What the Green Movement Got Wrong, 2010
The [secret anti-CND] coalition also produced leaflets distributed for them by the Conservative Party. Just part of a great volume of material flooding out from a variety of organisations. The biggest contribution of all came from the Ministry of Defence, which could draw on an annual information budget of £16,000,000. Duncan Campbell, Secret Society: The Secret Constitution, Secret Government Committees, 1987
In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare. J B Priestley
Freedom From War: The United States’ Program For General And Complete Disarmament In A Peaceful World. John F Kennedy’s policy presented to United Nations September 1961
The news today about ‘Atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men’s hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope ‘this will ensure peace’. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we’re in God’s hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders. J R R Tolkien, 1945
When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred. Niccolo Machiavelli
CND has its biggest rally ever: two hundred thousand marched in London; another six hundred thousand in Germany. 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse, Channel 4 2008
‘Nobody thought we were going to come out of it alive. Most kids of my age didn’t expect to make it through the sixties.’ Steve Gibbons, The Uglys’ vocalist
In the most famous anti-nuclear protest ever seen in Britain, thousands of women spent much of the 1980s and beyond protesting against the presence of American cruise missiles here at Greenham Common. What even they didn’t know along with the residents of nearby Newbury was that the British government’s own scientists had warned that this was the riskiest of eleven possible sites to put the weapons. Document: The Ghosts of Greenham, BBC Radio 4 2007
London would be very unlikely to escape such a disaster. ibid.
Ban the bomb. US anti-nuclear slogan from 1953
Better red than dead. 1950s nuclear disarmament campaign slogan
This place and these women have one heck of a history. 40 years ago these three Welsh sisters [Brinkworths] were making a real ruckus here. Hitting headlines around the globe. Taking on Reagan, Thatcher and anyone else who got in their way. This is the story of the housewives from the Rhonda who risked it all to change the world. Mothers, Missiles and the American President, BBC 2022