The children of Aldermaston
Corinna Adam
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament brings out the worst in people. Not, let me hasten to say, in its supporters — but in its opponents. What one would expect to be mild contempt or even amused derision becomes extraordinary vituperation. Last Sunday, for example, on the day of the mass CND march to Hyde Park, Winston Churchill MP wrote in the Sunday Express of 'this sick charade that is masterminded from Moscow'. He added for good measure that 'no leader of either of the Super Powers has ever proposed more significant or more far-reaching proposals in the field of disarmament than the present President of the United States' — I think 'proposed' must be the exculpatory word here. He con- tinued, in a piece of rhetoric which is either puzzling or unbelievably tasteless: 'Possibly Mr [Ken] Livingstone has forgotten that the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also Nuclear-Free Zones?'
In The Mail on Sunday the headline `Whose hands on the CND banner?' was decorated with a hammer and sickle, in case anyone missed the point. The innuendo here, by one Derrick Hill, was even more poisonous at first glance. Mr Hill named the guilty men — the Communists sup- posedly manipulating 'ordinary peace- loving people'. Or rather, he tried to name them, and came up with eight unrecognisably obscure people, some of whom had only been CP members for a year or two some time back. It was pathetic journalism in any professional sense; to those named, nonetheless, it must have felt very like McCarthyite witch-hunting.
Witch-hunting is an appropriate term for the way dislike of the nuclear disarmers is expressed: both the campaign — especially in its mass gatherings like last Sunday's and the opposition to it have a quasi- religious feel. Really Messrs Churchill and Hill are spiritual brothers of the man who stood (to the ratepayers' delight) on the cor- ner of our street in Notting Hill as the mar- chers ambled past. He was dressed in an im- maculate winter-weight pin-stripe suit, with a bowler and neat umbrella (the tempera- ture was 81°) and carried a Bible. For two hours on end he explained, loudly, that Jesus had come with a sword. 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' the demonstrators shouted back. I asked the policemen if they wouldn't normally move someone like that on, this not being Speakers' Corner after all, and they said amiably no, because everyone was rather enjoying it.
This atmosphere of gentle Sabbath enjoyment continued in the park itself, where 200,000 people spread themselves, their banners and their children on the grass, took off their sandals and picnicked or fell asleep. Only the hard core of a few hundred enthusiasts, round the podium, stood and actually listened to the speeches. This is par for the course nowadays, accor- ding to the organisers. Although Tony Benn (who came on last, after a lot of peo- ple had gone home) is undoubtedly a starry orator, everyone knows what he is going to say. He is a hell-fire preacher and Dooms- day is terrifying, whether God- or man- made; but when you are with a few friends in the middle of thousands of like-minded
people, on a summer's day, it must be hard not to feel safe and happy and just. It wouldn't be the same, of course, without Michael Foot and Judith Hart, but their job is preaching, ours only to attend the ceremony. Yet the threat to this crowd, pre- dominantly in their twenties and thirties, IS immeasurably greater than it was to the parents, who marched in drab raincoats to Trafalgar Square a quarter of a century ago. At first sight this generation seemed quite different — partly because they were unscarred by war and dressed in slurny bright colours. (Ironically some of the brightest were the orange macs to be seen when the rain started — macs left over from the Right to Work march a year ago.).111 fact, the amiability is the same, the sharing of jam sandwiches and beer under an un)- brella is the same. People sometimes say contemptuously that the automatic British reaction to being shoved in the back Is t; say `Sorry'. Here, one felt, the emotiotia: low key was deliberate. No doubt this crowd, individually, could be just as evir tempered or foul-mouthed as anyone else. But it was tremendously important not tow damage the cause, not to give the enemy any ammunition, even though — once t".'t crowd had spread out and settled down "-I was obvious that there were dozens — even hundreds — of different 'tendencies', Peat pie who in other circumstances might be a each other's throats. I watched with s0 des apprehension when a group of skirthea4 went up to a self-proclaimed grout' "v Radical Feminist Lesbians. All wanted, though, was to admire the ladies'1 banner. As well they might; much the Prri• nest of all, it was embroidered in the sir ragette colours of purple and green, the le'd tering delicately picked out in pearls all white flowers. Hyde Park disperses people very effe„c; tively; there is always somewhere to 10.'0 (or be moved) to. So the demonstratl°, never became claustrophobic, like a meeting in Trafalgar Square or, for t11°. matter, a pop concert at Wembley: then was no incentive to heightened emoti,/; That said, however, it could have be" more fun. The Royal Park authorities be probably rightly — forbid anything t° sold, apart from disgusting hot-dogs , soapy ice-creams on the fringes. But the. are unaccountably mean about oltisicri despite a suggestion from a High 011ue judge last week that the Department of t"„ Environment should 'reconsider' its ban °" music last Sunday, the DoE decided not t. do anything of the sort. This is a muddle aged phobia dating from the days of II) a ; and-drugs and the Rolling Stones, an is truly kill-joy attitude when applied to well-mannered, pacific crowd. The 01°v f ment, after all, has 30 years' experience ° organising non-violent demonstrations. t What else they have achieved in all that time is harder to say. 'Nothing much Ili changed and you can quote ine,' CND Stanley Bonnett, editor-elect of the u", magazine, Sanity. People are more 'aware
it is said: though whether 'awareness' has grown in proportion with the risk is very doubtful; it is apathy and fatalism that the Movement now has to fight. But gentle peo- ple are not always harmless. All the people I spoke to on Sunday were absolutely delighted with the right-wing attacks on them I had read in the papers before going to the parks. They were right. If they are so hated and abused, they must matter.
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