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NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT AFTER THE COLD WAR:

Part 1: Archives of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1989-1994

Part 2: Archives of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1994-2000

Archives Introduction by Bruce Kent

This extensive collection of documents may come as a surprise to those who thought that CND came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.  Certainly CND faded from media view as the immediate sense of nuclear crisis diminished.  CND’s national membership within a few years dropped to perhaps a quarter of its one-time 100,000 plus total.  Moreover CND was no longer politically popular.  ‘New’ Labour was embarrassed by its previous CND connections which it judged to be a political liability.  It fought the 1992 election on a platform which included the retention of British nuclear weapons.

CND - British, Welsh, Scottish, and all the various regional and specialist offshoots - did not in fact disappear.  Indeed, as we now face a new millennium, CND is showing a remarkable power of recovery and renewal.

Thanks to the diligent and painstaking work of Dr Sheila Jones, the CND archivist, and of Adam Matthew Publications, we now have this excellent seventeen-reel collection of CND archives covering the years 1989-2000.  Their range is very wide.  National Council minutes, annual conference reports, Scottish and Welsh documentation, and regional and local group newsletters, all give a vivid picture of the atmosphere of the time.

The 1990s were not a quiet decade.  They started with the first Gulf War and were dominated by numerous civil wars and the bombardment of a broken Yugoslavia.  Already CND was well into the world of one superpower whose military expenditure equalled that of the rest of the world put together.  Pax Americana, nuclear underpinned, was the new reality of the last decade of the twentieth century and will be for the foreseeable future.

1995 was a year of significant anniversaries - particularly for the peace movement.  1995 marked fifty years since the end of the Second World War, a chapter of cruelty culminating in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was also the year in which a new chapter of hope began with the signing of the United Nations charter in June 1945.

Many ex-service men and women from different parts of the world came in 1995 to the Rally for Reconciliation held in Central Hall, Westminster.  This was organised by the peace corporation, including CND, as their contribution to the national commemorations.

Perhaps the greatest international peace movement gathering of all time took place in The Hague in 1999.  This event commemorated Tzar Nicholas II’s private initiative of 1899 when the first government disarmament conference was held.  The overall theme was about de-legitimizing war itself: an ambitious project for the beginning of the new millennium.  CND took an active part both in the planning and the three day event itself which involved 10,000 participants from 100 countries, and was addressed by the United Nations General Secretary.

CND still lived on with vigour in substantial backbench parts of the New Labour.  It was also becoming more influential in church circles as the links between poverty and militarism, nuclear and non-nuclear were better understood.  The years covered by this collection were also years of considerable international activity as CND struggled with partners abroad both to save the nuclear non-proliferation treaty of 1968, and to develop arguments from international law in opposition to nuclear weapons.  Groups like Trident Ploughshares, which challenged the legality of nuclear weapons, had their claims greatly supported by the International Court of Justice advisory opinion of 1996.

These documents are an excellent record of twelve years in the life of CNDs long campaign for peace and genuine security.  Like previous and current campaigns ranging from anti-slavery to anti-arms trade, CND’s work, remembered in these archives, will encourage others in the future to stand up for their own convictions.

‘Another world is possible’ is the slogan of those who oppose today’s economic globalisation.  As these documents show, it is a slogan that could well be shared with CND.

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