CND's FUTURE
SIR,—Peggy Duff's letter in last week's Spectator deserves detailed answer. Mrs. Duff : You say I distort, first about CND's aloofness to the first Aldermaston march. Well, CND did support the mareh. But yott Must know that 'at least one member of the original executive council, J. B. Priestley, was opposed to having the march at all. And that CND support was only forthcoming after considerable pressure from the Direct Action group and their backers in CND (Arthur Goss, Sheila Jones). These are facts,... Mrs. Duff, and your implication that CND's support came simply and immediately distorts them more than my report did.
As for COmmunists not being concerned with the May Day, 1962, disturbances: Come, come, Mrs. Duff. Your flat denial is made a bit silly by the admission of a Glasgow YCL member, made publicly at the time, that Communists were not only concerned but very much involved.
CND hasn't really provided (your word, Mrs.' Duff) the facts about nuclear warfare which have led to a wider public understanding of and distaste for nuclear weapons. (Nor does it have a majority backing in Britain; 300,000 to 400,000—your own estimate given to me—is hardly a majority of the. British people.) The facts you refer to were published in the press and in books, and publicised in films, and TV before CND took them up. Note the first page of my piece. What CND did was plead with the public not to be so complacent about the facts. CND also undertook its share of distortion . . . like your implication that journalists ridiculed the facts 'for many years.' I'd like to see you back that assertion with chapter and verse, Mrs. Duff. I don't think you can. CND's more eccentric efforts to re-publicise the facts were indeed ridiculed, but that's not,quite the same thing, is it?
As for your snooty crack at my so-called complacency about the Cuba crisis: I. was writing about CND's reaction to that crisis, not about the crisis itself. I presented facts and 1 did not sneer at them. What sneers the press directed at the Arrow- smith-Butlin trip to' Ireland came out of the miserable- handling of it by the anti-nuclear people themselVes. For what it's worth, that crisis scared the hell out of me -just as it did nearly everyone else. And your organisation's wretched showing on the occasion makes your simper about complacency look like a grin full of very decayed teeth'. You've been chomping up too much candy froth of your own.
-My own attitude to your movement, aside from its . fringe of idiots, has been admiration for its guts, as you say. What I do not admire is the sort of two-bit messianic wool headedness which assumes that because I don't cheer you and give all your argu- ments in full, I am against you and welcome your failure.
You're revolutionaries? Well, revolutionariek, I believe, aim for results: in your case, the arousing of public opinion to such an extent that the Govern- ment is forced to abandon its present defence policy. Now, whatever might be the arguments about:that policy, your efforts have not affected it one way or the other. Thus on your own terms, revolutionary terms, Mrs. Duff, CND so far (this qualification appears in my original piece) can, in spite of all you say, be called a failure. Because that's just what it is.
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