Long March of the Protesters Who Tried to Save the World

[marmar]

from the Yorkshire (UK) Post, via CommonDreams:



Published on Monday, February 25, 2008 by the Yorkshire Post (UK)
Long March of the Protesters Who Tried to Save the World
by Chris Bond


Critics often dismiss Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament supporters as a bunch of tub-thumping zealots. They remember the news footage of women chained to fences at Greenham Common during the mid 1980s, when the nuclear disarmament campaign was at its peak, arguing that such behaviour merely undermined national security.

But half a century ago when the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was launched in front of 5,000 people at Westminster’s Central Hall, in February 1958, its leaders included respected writers and intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, JB Priestley and AJP Taylor.

This was followed a few weeks later by an historic march to a little known Berkshire village called Aldermaston, home to an atomic weapons research centre. That march cemented the anti-nuclear movement in the public consciousness.

Michael Randle was a 24-year-old activist working for Peace News at the time and a member of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War that organised the march.

“There was a real feeling that the CND launch was going to mobilise people, and we wanted to take things forward,” he says.

Although there had been previous demonstrations at Aldermaston, they were tiny by comparison and Randle was among a four-man committee, which also included Hugh Brock, Labour MP Frank Allaun and Walter Wolfgang, charged with galvanising support. But although the Direct Action Committee would later join CND, not everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/25/7272/