Marjorie Thompson - Organised Opposition To CND

Organised Opposition To CND

CND's growing support in the 1980s provoked opposition from several sources, including Peace Through Nato, the British Atlantic Committee (which received government funding), Women and Families for Defence (set up by conservative journalist Lady Olga Maitland to oppose the Greenham Common Peace Camp), the Conservative Party's Campaign for Defence and Multilateral Disarmament, the Coalition for Peace through Security, the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, and The 61, a private sector intelligence agency. The British government also took direct steps to counter the influence of CND, Secretary of State for Defence Michael Heseltine setting up Defence Secretariat 19 "to explain to the public the facts about the Government's policy on deterrence and multilateral disarmament". The activities of anti-CND organisations are said to have included research, publication, mobilising public opinion, counter-demonstrations, working within the Churches, smears against CND leaders and spying.

In an article on anti-CND groups, Stephen Dorril reported that in 1982 Eugene V. Rostow, Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, became concerned about the growing unilateralist movement. According to Dorril, Rostow helped to initiate a propaganda exercise in Britain, "aimed at neutralising the efforts of CND. It would take three forms: mobilising public opinion, working within the Churches, and a 'dirty tricks' operation against the peace groups."

One of the groups set up to carry out this work was the Coalition for Peace through Security (CPS), modelled on the US Coalition for Peace through Strength. The CPS was founded in 1981. Its main activists were Julian Lewis, Edward Leigh and Francis Holihan. Amongst the activities of the CPS were commissioning Gallup polls which showed the levels of support for British possession of nuclear weapons, providing speakers at public meetings, highlighting the left-wing affiliations of leading CND figures and mounting counter-demonstrations against CND. These including haranguing CND marchers from the roof of the CPS's Whitehall office and flying a plane over a CND festival with a banner reading, "Help the Soviets, Support CND!" The CPS attracted criticism for refusing to say where its funding came from while alleging that the anti-nuclear movement was funded by the Soviet Union. Although the CPS called itself a grass-roots movement, it had no members and was financed by The 61, "a private sector operational intelligence agency" said by its founder, Brian Crozier, to be funded by "rich individuals and a few private companies". It is said to have also received funding from the Heritage Foundation.

The CPS claimed that Bruce Kent, the general secretary of CND and a Catholic priest, was a supporter of IRA terrorism. Kent alleged in his autobiography that Francis Holihan spied on CND. It was said that Holihan sent senior clerics in the Catholic Church material on Kent, that Holihan organised the aerial propaganda against CND, that he had entered CND offices under false pretences, and that CPS workers had joined CND in order to gain access to the Campaign's 1982 Annual Conference. It was said that when Kent went on a speaking tour of America, Holihan followed him, that offensive material on Kent was sent to newspapers and radio stations, and that demonstrations were organised against him.

Brian Crozier claimed in his book Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991 (Harper Collins, 1993) that The 61 infiltrated a mole into CND in 1979.

Gerald Vaughan, a government minister, tried to halve government funding for the Citizens Advice Bureau, apparently because Joan Ruddock, CND's chair, was employed part-time at his local bureau. Bruce Kent was warned by Cardinal Basil Hume not to become too involved in politics.

CND's opponents claimed that CND was a Communist or Soviet-dominated organisation. In 1981, the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, which shared an office with the CPS, was said by Sanity, the CND newspaper, to have published a booklet claiming that Russian money was being used by CND. In response to Lord Chalfont's claim in that the Soviet Union was giving the European peace movement £100 million a year, Bruce Kent said, "If they were, it was certainly not getting to our grotty little office in Finsbury Park." In the 1980s, the Federation of Conservative Students alleged Soviet funding of CND.

Ken Kolsbun in his "biography" of the peace symbol wrote that, "In an attempt to disredit the burgeoning anti-war movement, the John Birch Society published an attack on the peace symbol in its June 1970 issue of American Opinion", calling the symbol "a manifestation of a witch's foot or crow's foot", supposedly icons of the devil in the Middle Ages. A national Republican newsletter was reported to have "noted an ominous similarity to a symbol used by the Nazis in World War II".