European Nuclear Disarmament - The END Conventions

The END Conventions

With movements for nuclear disarmament emerging throughout western Europe and gaining support from social democratic and Euro-communist parties, the Russell Foundation, centred on Ken Coates, consulted about organising a massive conference to bring together everyone involved. The first European Nuclear Disarmament Convention subsequently took place in Brussels, Belgium, in 1982. According to historian Lawrence Wittner (1993) END was "the very heart and soul of the massive antinuclear campaign" (p. 234).

Most participants considered the convention a success, and Coates’s ad hoc conference organising committee became a semi-permanent END Liaison Committee, with members from the main west European peace movement organisations and most west European social-democratic and Euro-communist parties, which organised further END Conventions in Berlin (1983), Perugia, Italy (1984), Amsterdam (1985), Évry, France (1986), Coventry, UK (1987), Lund, Sweden (1988), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (1989), Helsinki, Finland/Tallinn, Estonia (1990) and finally Moscow (1991).

During these conventions, especially in Perugia and Amsterdam, there was an intensive cooperation with the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) and their secretary-general Mient Jan Faber and Wim Bartels. Bartels was also the president of the International Peace Coordination Centre (IPCC), a cooperation of 'like-minded' movements, which linked their commitment of the struggle against nuclear weapons and the support of independent, dissident peace-initiatives in Eastern-Europe. Despite this intensive cooperation there also existed some kind of rivalry between the END network and the IPCC. Since most peace movements were present in both, it seemed both networks were doing very similar work.