CND rally: ‘Paul Robeson sang and the busses stopped’

How’s this for a blinder of a memory for CND at 60? Paul Robeson, pictured here in June 1959, at a CND rally in Trafalgar Square. In a recent letter to the New York Review of Books an American recalled attending a meeting at the School of Oriental and African Studies to mark the 30th anniversary of Robeson’s death in 2006: ‘Most memorably, a speaker from the audience described a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally in Trafalgar Square in 1959… As London traffic rumbled around the square, the speaker recalled, a succession of notables addressed the crowd from the steps of Nelson’s Column. Then, he concluded, Paul Robeson sang – and the buses stopped.

Robeson was internationally acclaimed as an actor and civil rights campaigner. He admonished President Truman, telling him that ‘Negroes will defend themselves’ if he didn’t enact anti-lynching legislation.  And in 1951 Robeson presented an anti-lynching petition to the UN, which asserted that the US was guilty of genocide by its failure to act against lynching.

He was also a socialist and an advocate of trade union rights during the McCarthy era. Robeson was denounced as a communist sympathiser and blacklisted by J Edgar Hoover’s House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951, after a speech at the 1949 Paris Peace Congress, in which Robeson said: ‘We in America do not forget that it was on the backs of the white workers from Europe and on the backs of millions of Blacks that the wealth of America was built. And we are resolved to share it equally. We reject any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on anyone. Our will to fight for peace is strong.’

• Visit 60 Faces of CND, the Campaign’s online exhibition here

• Read the New York Review of Books correspondence here

"This is a first strike weapon": report from our March public meeting

On Tuesday evening 60 London CND members crowded into a meeting room at SOAS for a talk on the explosive theme ‘are we heading for nuclear war?’

Ted Seay addressing the meeting on Tuesday

We had two excellent speakers. The first was Ted Seay, tactical nuclear weapons expert and former arms control advisor with the US Mission to NATO.

Ted talked us through the recent US Nuclear Posture Review, which you can read about on our website here. The key problem with the review, he explained, is the move away from reducing nuclear stockpiles towards developing smaller nuclear weapons - or even fitting non-nuclear warheads onto Trident missiles. As he pointed out, this is not the greatest idea in a world of heightened global tensions, where the slightest provocation - let alone the firing of a Trident missile! - risks provoking nuclear war.

Ted also spoke about NATO, giving us the benefit of his many years’ experience working with the organisation. All NATO states are signed up to eradicate nuclear weapons - “but don’t hold your breath!” Under the Obama administration, there was an opportunity for the US to withdraw its nuclear weapons from European soil - a key first step towards denuclearisation. But that chance was missed and it’s unlikely to happen under Trump. Not only this but the development of new nuclear weapons like the B61-12 (more on that later!) explicitly violates the commitment not to develop new nuclear capabilities.

As Ted pointed out, NATO’s raison d’etre - the USSR - was dissolved in 1991. The US has a responsibility to lead the way in de-nuclearising the alliance. So far it’s failing miserably.

Our second speaker was Professor Dave Webb, CND chair. He took us in more detail through the new nuclear weapons currently being developed - including the B61-12. The B61-12 is designed to be more ‘precise’ than the current generation of nuclear missiles, increasing accuracy to within 10 metres - which, as our speakers pointed out, is patently absurd when you’re talking about a weapon with such far-reaching and devastating effects as a nuclear bomb. These developments are already being seen as dangerous and provocative both inside and outside the US.

Professor Dave Webb talking us through the new "super-fuze" 

Professor Webb left us with a chilling final question. “If these weapons are for deterrence, why do they need to be precise? This is a first strike weapon.”

You can read our live Twitter updates from the meeting here.

Walter Wolfgang wins Ron Todd Peace Prize

Walter Wolfgang receiving his award at the Marx Memorial Library

London CND executive committee member Walter Wolfgang was awarded the 2018 Ron Todd Peace Prize at a ceremony on 10 March. A life-long campaigner for nuclear disarmament and an organiser of the first Aldermaston march, Walter would whole-heartedly approve of the Ron Todd Foundation’s motto: you don’t have power if you surrender your principles – you have office.

Ron Todd was a London lad who left school at 14. He joined the Transport and General Workers Union, the predecessor of today’s Unite union, when he worked at the Walthamstow Ford factory and became the union’s general secretary in 1985 until he retired in1992.

The TGWU was one of the earliest affiliate of CND, and continued to promote nuclear disarmament under his leadership.  Ron became a Vice President of CND until his death in 2005.