Spectator's Notebook
T T is rather fascinating to note the way in which 'political movements run true to type. I should think that the rise and decline of CND is some- thing of a classic in the genre. First there was the gradually swelling number of hikers from Alder- maston, then the culminating achievement of Scarborough followed by disappointment - and bitterness as it became apparent Mr. Gait- skell was going to fight back and that the Labour Party had not been captured. And now? Division between the opportunists and the whole-hoggers never more lamentably demonstrated than at the recent gathering in Moscow, denunciations flung to and fro between the leaders of the movement, no motion put down by the Transport and General Workers' Union at the TUC con- ference, the Committee of 100 in financial diffi- culties. Of course, its lack of a firm programme and a solid organisation was always the strength and the weakness of CND. This it was that enabled the movement to escape proscription by the Labour Party, but that also prevented it from establishing any kind of control over the actions of its supporters or from launching into electoral politics itself. In fact, it is difficult to see how the pacifist wing embodied in the Committee of 100 could have swallowed the compromises to which some of CND's leaders were prepared increas- ingly to agree and, once deprived of this idealistic spearhead, the movement was bound to lose momentum. At the next Labour Party Con- ference the left wing will have the Common Market for its main talking-point, as a study of the resolutions reveals. We have come a long way since Scarborough, and a great deal of sincerity has run to waste in these two years. It would be hypocritical on my part to pretend that I am sorry at what has happened to CND, but I could have wished that some of its supporters had found a better cause.
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