1 Transnational activism during the Euromissile Crisis

As you saw in Session 2, the planned deployment of new American nuclear weapons in five Western European countries in the early 1980s prompted citizens to come together to protest against what many considered to be an escalation that would make nuclear war more likely. While groups emerged at local or national levels, they often worked together across national boundaries, sharing best practices, publications, and inviting speakers from different countries. The Dutch Inter-Church Peace Council, for example, produced materials intended to be used by activists in other European countries as well to oppose nuclear weapons. Innovations in one place – for example, the creation of a women’s peace camp in Greenham Common in Berkshire, England – inspired activists elsewhere, with peace camps springing up from Comiso, Sicily to Cold Lake, Alberta. This exchange of ideas across national boundaries has long been central to anti-nuclear activism.

Figure 1 Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, which inspired similar peace camps in many other countries.

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A photograph of a group of women standing hand in hand in front of a number of protest signs.

Figure 1 Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, which inspired similar peace camps in many other countries.

In the early 1980s, two of the most important anti-nuclear organisations were the UK-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and European Nuclear Disarmament (END). While the former was a well-established organisation that had worked for the elimination of nuclear weapons in Britain since 1958, END was launched in the UK in the early 1980s and advocated cross-border cooperation across all of Europe to rid the continent of nuclear weapons. Both groups reached out to activists in other NATO member states in Western Europe and also to interlocutors on the other side of the Iron Curtain in the Soviet bloc.

Activity 1

In this video, activists from CND and END, as well as historians of this period, discuss how these British-based organisations worked across national boundaries to promote nuclear disarmament. Watch the video and then answer the question below.

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Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

EIRINI KARAMOUZI

Britain was a huge part of this Pan-European phenomena. We have to remember, first of all, that in the 1980s, it was truly a transnational community of activists, because they were able to take advantage of the technological and media revolutions of the 60s and the 70s. But Britain was so vital in getting the message across the continent, because, first of all, it had these two big organisations. One of them was the CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which had a long history of peace mobilisation. But also, it had END. END was the European Nuclear Disarmament scheme that was created in 1981, partly from CND members, but also from prominent intellectuals, with the most popular one being E. P. Thompson. So END created these forums and different schemes that really elevated transnational activism across Western Europe, but also between East and West. So Britain was really at the forefront in terms of institutional and grassroots activism, but also it was exporting visual representations of nuclear anxiety. It was truly throughout British nuclear culture that activists led to emulate how to protest, how to think about, how to imagine nuclear annihilation.

KATE HUDSON

Well, we always-- and Bruce Kent is very interesting on this, because he actually did a number of peace walks across Europe, from West to East, or East to West, or whatever. So did a lot of sort of outreach to ordinary people on both sides of the divide. But CND was always open to talking to any organisation, including so-called official peace organisations. We never had the view that they’re not real, it’s just some propaganda thing from the East. We always wanted to talk with everybody, and that was the position we took. So the END initiative wasn’t a CND initiative, it was linked to CND. But it was an independent initiative, because it had a focus on linking human rights in Eastern Europe to the question of nuclear disarmament. And that’s not what CND was or is about. We are for nuclear disarmament, and that’s it. And once you start getting into no, but you also have to do this, that and the other, then it dilutes the message and the breadth of people that you can get involved.

MARY KALDOR

CND as a whole was much more reluctant to talk to dissidents, was much more interested in talking to peace committees. And a lot of them did behave as fellow travellers. And I think that’s another point to be aware of. We were under enormous pressure from the Soviet bloc. I was arrested in Prague. I was thrown out of East Germany. In 19-- I can’t remember which year it was --Andreas Papandreou of Greece invited all the peace committees and the peace movements to come together. And we were really threatened by the peace committees, who said, you’re encouraging our dissidents, we will do the same. And they had all sorts of Marxist, Leninist troublemakers who turned up at meetings and tried to destroy what we were doing.

BRUCE KENT

What was the END’s relationship with other organisations? Well, we tried to build them up. And we tried to build up, particularly make contacts with people in the Communist bloc. Because what’s the point? You can’t ever make peace without something the other side. But we had to. We were well aware that they were there largely because the governments concerned authorised them and supported them. And so we did quite a lot with some of the so-called dissidents in the Soviet Union and in East Germany. In fact, I did a walk once in 1986, I think, from Warsaw to Brussels. And I walked through all of Poland. And it was very interesting, because the Poles thought I was pro-Communist, and the Western lot thought I was anti-West. So we did our best to keep up relationship.

PIERS LUDLOW

Well, I think the British situation has a unique twist shared only with the French in so far as the British considered themselves as a nuclear state, a state with nuclear weapons of its own. Now, strictly speaking, those weapons were actually produced by the Americans and had to be bought. And therefore, it was somewhat different from the French who produced their own. But the British felt that the possession of nuclear power gave them a top table status that they might not otherwise have. And therefore, there is a British twist to this debate in as much as it’s also about Britain’s wider position in the world, etc. But having said that, the Euromissile debate, the debate about whether a new generation of weapons are necessary, about the morality or otherwise of nuclear deterrence, about the potential consequences of war, particularly in a highly-populated and crowded a continent as Europe, all of those debates were Pan-European debates, even global debates, not really specifically very British. And therefore, there was a great deal of intra-communication between the very transnational peace movements that really did operate between countries and across borders as much as they operated within national entities. So, yes, there are national specificities in the British case, so I wouldn’t want to say it’s exactly the same as the situation in Germany or whatever. But nevertheless, there are very, very clear connections, including the participation, for instance, of anti-nuclear activists in manifestations and demonstrations across borders, something like the European Movement for Nuclear Disarmament, END, its activists would go to a demonstration in Germany, and then they would march in the Netherlands, and then they would march in Britain, etc. So there really was a common campaign, particularly over the Euro missiles.

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1. How did anti-nuclear activists in Britain engage in dialogue with those in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War?

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Discussion

1. There were two main groups within the Soviet bloc with whom British anti-nuclear organisation engaged. On the one hand there were formal Peace Committees, which were effectively controlled by the ruling Communist Party in each country. On the other hand, there were dissidents, who were critical of the regimes in Eastern Europe. While these two groups were at odds with each other within the Eastern bloc, Western anti-nuclear activists engaged with both to work towards nuclear disarmament.

In the campaign against the ‘Euromissiles’, activists understood that working with partners in other countries was mutually beneficial and even essential to advance their cause. Despite the challenges in working with partners on the other side of the Iron Curtain, this dialogue proved to be vitally important, as you will see in Session 5.