Mass action the way forward for the peace movement The re-election of the Thatcher government in 1983, followed by the arrival of the first cruise missiles at the Greenham Common airbase at the end of that year, has witnessed the beginnings of a new debate within the British peace movement. Despite evidence to the cortrary, the Kinnockite Eurocommunist leadership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is convinced that the anti-missiles movement is on the wane. Lacking confidence in the movement's ability to mobilise to win its demands, peace movement leaders want to reorient the toward polite lobbying and cosy discussion among like minded expetest campaign away from disarmament and the politics of mass which offer little threat to the established order. So far this has not proved easy.
Britain towards nuclear disarmament. The drift is clear.
The point was made more forcibly in a paper presented to the autumn national council of CND. It said: 'Our over-riding goal is to convince the majority of the public by the next general election of the case for complete nuclear disarmament by Britain, and the adoption of a credible defence policy which does not rely on nuclear weapons. (our emphasis)
The same paper gave the first pointer about how this twin-track policy will be pursued. Recognising that CND is a 'broad church', with a wide variety of interests, it called on national CND to identify central campaigns for the movement, others can be supported 'where appropriate. That is, no head-on confrontations with the rank and file, just a gradual realignment of what CND is and does.
The idea of adopting a non-nuclear defence platform is more advanced at the level of the leadership. Last year saw the circulation (in secret, to the chosen few) of papers by prominent CND members on the formation of a non-nuclear alliance to take the peace movement into the next general election. So far the only such proposal to see the light of day was a resolution to annual conference on the formation of a 'national defence charter'. It didn't make the final agenda. Such proposals rest on the popular front positions of the Eurocommunists, retheorised for the 1980s as the 'antiTory alliance' Debate on NATO
The leadership of the British peace movement has not, of course, plucked this debate from thin air. The whole discussion has been given a massive boost by the publication last year of Labour's new defence policy, Defence and Security for Britain. The document argues that Labour will abandon all nuclear weapons (with a few clever let-out clauses for a future Labour government), but will firmly support continuing British membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation'. (NATO) Labour will defend Britain by non-nuclear means - strengthening the navy and increasing forces on the Central European Front (Germany) - and argue from the inside that NATO should relinquish its nukes. •i Pigs would fly first. If Labour were ever elected committed to such a platform there would be a simple choice: NATO or unilateralism. Since the new statement was overwhelmingly adopted at the 1984 conference, many party members have had time to reflect. There is evidence of growing concern with the knotty question of NATO membership.
This debate was fuelled recently by a discussion paper presented to the Labour Party national executive by members of parliament (MPs) Tony Benn and Eric Heffer, which argues for
International Viewpoint 1 July 1985 proved edsy• Annie BRADY The anti-missiles radicalisation which swept Western Europe at the end of the 1970s woke a slumbering Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from its 15-year doze. Hundreds of thousands of new activists poured onto the streets of Britain to protest America's project of forcing them to participate in a European theatre of limited' nuclear war.
The radicalisation found a direct reflection - and a ready response -among the ranks of the Labour Party. Campaigners believed Labour to be the only party capable of forming a government prepared to ban the nukes. They were further encouraged to throw their hat into Labour's ring by the accelerating leftward trend within the party.
The demand to rid Britain of nuclear weapons was equally strong among rank and file trade unionists. In 1981, with the support of the union bloc vote, the Labour Party's annual policymaking conference committed Labour to fighting the next election on a programme of unilateral abandonment of all nuclear weapons. That poliey has been confirmed at every subsequent conference.
Many activists expected Labour to enter the 1983 election campaigning hard on a unilateralist ticket. It would, they thought, be carried to power on an anti-Tory vote built from four years' built from experience of Thatcher's war-mongering policies. Such expectations were naive.
During the election, several prominent Labour spokespeople publicly attacked the party's unilateralist policy, while the Tories made hay with the threat of Russian hoards over-running Britain's shores. Labour was resoundingly defeated. The internal disarray of the party carried no assurances that Labour had - or, more importantly, would implementany alternative to the Tory hard line. 26
But neither was it the case that the Thatcher government was popular. Britain's quirky electoral system meant that Thatcher was returned, with a massive parliamentary majority, by only 43 per cent of all those who voted.
This defeat created a huge debate both within the peace movement and the party itself. The leadership of the peace movement gave a simplistic interpretation. They argued - and many believed them - that Labour lost because its unilateralist policies were profoundly unpopular. Now it was necessary to reorient the campaign, to take account of the 'British public's fear of defencelessness'
First they tried for a freeze policy, in counterposition to proposals for a mass mobilisation. Delegates to CND's annual conference at the end of 1983 threw the idea out. Chastened by that experience, during 1984 they have pursued a twin-track course of fighting for the ideological high-ground while simultaeously playing down mass actions.
First they have upped the ideological anti against the 'fundamentalists' - so labelled by the British peace movement's chief theorist Edward Thompson, who argues that the peace movement must reclaim 'defence' because it makes us think of various good things, like our "liberties' and our 'traditions' and our 'way of life. Now they are cautiously introducing the idea that the peace movement must adopt a policy in favour of non-nuclear defence, in order to persuade public opinion that getting rid of nuclear weapons will not leave this country bare in front of its so-called enemies.
At the last annual conference of CND, in November 1984, a resolution was adopted which, while saying CND would take no positions on specific non-nuclear defence policies, argued for a 'national security policy . This would be based on 'mutual East-West security' and would not exclude independent steps' by
a discussion in the ranks of the labour movement about whether Britain should withdraw from the American alliance. Commitment to NATO membership is a rather important cornerstone in making Labour safe to govern in an increasingly turbulent Britain. This paper has caused a storm of protest from Labour's leadership. As yet there is little support within the unions for NATO withdrawal. It is unlikely to become a party policy.
The discussion on non-nuclear defence has fired a similar debate on NATO within the peace movement. It is traditional that, in December, the women of the Greenham Common peace camp call a mass action to commemorate the anniversary of the date when NATO first announced its intention to site cruise in Britain. This year (1984) the CND leadership called for an action, at the same time, at the Warsaw Pact embassies. The movement gave its verdict: only a handful turned out at the Russian embassy. CND General Secretary Bruce Kent was forced to admit it was a complete flop. By the same token, a resolution to CND conference calling for a campaign against the Russian bomb was pushed off the agenda by delegates.
There is little prospect of the leadership being able to ditch the campaign's commitment to NATO withdrawal this way. These new debates within the British peace movement make it essential to up the profile on NATO at an educational and propagandistic level, but debates which have begun within sections of the peace movement about the need to centre the campaign on this question are thoroughly misguided. There is no possibility of mass demonstrations in Britain against the alliance. To pose NATO as the central question for the peace movement in Britain today would de facto play into the hands of the leadership.
The main question to be tackled is still that of mass mobilisations versus polite lobbying. In a recent interview (Marxism Today , February 1985) ominously entitled CND's new era CND chairperson Joan Ruddock argued the need for the peace campaign to become respectable. The emphasis should change, she argued, from cruise to Trident - where many believe there is more possibility for a popular front. This would be, she said, 'a different kind of campaign, it would involve a lot of intense lobbying, a tremendous amont of direct contact with MPs who are essentially very hostile to CND ... (but) it's not easy for a mass campaign that has focused very much on cruise, Greenham and direct action to make the adjustment.'
Such public announcements signal that the leadership of the peace movement fundamentally lacks confidence in the capacity of the activists to mobilise. This is especially difficult to argue, however, in Britain.
The membership of CND continues to grow rapidly. At the beginning of this year there were 110,000 recorded members, and registration for last December's annual conference was up 13 per cent on the previous year. If the number of people in local groups is taken into account, that puts CND's membership around the 400,000 mark.
The peace movement is still the single biggest social movement that Britain has seen for more than 50 years. Peace campaigners in Britain too have the shining example of Greenham Common - and every woman active in Britain calls herself a Greenham woman. Their determination to endure any hardship for the cause dearest to their hearts has been a constant source of strength and inspiration to the rest of the movement. More, they have conclusively shown that not only is the peace movement in business to challenge the status quo - but that it can be done.
There is still an absolute majority in the opinion polls for getting rid of cruise missiles from British territory.
Of course the arrival in Britain of the first flight of cruise has created confusion among the ranks of the peace movement. Many currents - radical feminists, proponents of civil disobedience, and so on - believed that it was entirely possible for the peace movement to stop their arrival. They failed to understand the significance of an alliance with the organised labour movement and the need for a solution at the level of government.
That debate must now be had again. Especially after the experience of the historic year-long miners' strike, it is apposite to explain that the institutions of the state are not neutral.
For the first time in many years the repressive role of the civil and military apparatus was experienced - directly and on a grand scale - on the British mainland. This matches the experiences of large sections of the peace movement who have already savoured the attentions of those same forces of "law and order'. It is for that reason that the Greenham women were among the first to line up with the miners.
Those who argue that the peace movement across Western Europe is in decline do not understand the modoe force that drives the current campaign. At the end of the 1950s CND was formed to campaign against the atom bomb and organised the now-famous Easter marches to Aldermaston. It declined im the mid 1960s and remained quiescent uncl the end of the 1970s in an atmosphere where nukes were remote and detende seemed the order of the day.
The new war-fighting strategies of NATO itself is the main motivator of today's campaign. The development of a sophisticated new generation of wan fighting nukes, together with tbe American idea that it will be possible to fight a 'little' nuclear war in Burope's to fiaht a "little' nuclear war in Room's backyard, will continue to provole new waves of fighters for disammamen NATO's new policies won't go away -and neither will the anti-missiles mone ment.
The debates in the British moremen are common across West Europe, only the themes are particular. In Spain Gonzales is redirecting the PSOE to 'softer' line on NATO. In the Netherlands the Christian Democrats are puttin strings on the commitment not to acog cruise in the Netherlands. In each case, the peace movement face the same fundamental question: continue the mas mobilisations or find a different counse??
The role of socialists within the mone ment is neither to stand aside from the partial developments within the an missiles campaign, nor to demand adopts a full-blown socialist strateg We must fight shoulder to shoulder wi the hundreds of thousands of campaign across West Europe who are as deter mined as ever to change the nuclear quo.
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London,
October 1981 - 200,000 people demonstrate on Labour Party-backed demonstration (DR)
NO
NO
CLAR FRE
NOW!
FISHT THE STOPS TO JERR
CRUISE
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STEPS 10
Mn CRUI
International Viewpoint 1 July 1985
WOMEN