DEMONSTRATORS: NEW STYLE
SIR.---Since Mr. Donnelly is MP for Pembroke he knows that the demonstrations in his constituency Were neither organised nor supported by the Com- mittee' of 100. (If he does not know this he must be neglecting his constituency.) While Committee of 100 supporters oppose NATO and all that goes with It they 'were as opposed as Mr. Donnelly (at least) to the nationalism inherent in picking out ,a foreign base for protest. Holy Loch is an entirely different case as it is the only nuclear submarine base, and
as such the supreme symbol of militarist policy; and the actions were done in conjunction with the American Polaris Action Group, with Americans taking part in Britain. Thus smear number one.
It is obvious to anyone with any modicum of intelli- gence that there is a fundamental difference between violently forcing others to do one's will, and non- violently obstructing the violence of others, so if they persist, one takes their violence on oneself hoping thereby to divert their violence from its present object. Mr. Donnelly not lacking that modicum; smear number two.
It is certainly disgusting that people should ring Mr. Donnelly, with abuse and threats. (An experience, incidentally, that most of the early direct actionists suffered.) Indeed this is almost as disgusting as Mr. Donnelly's implication that this was the work of the Committee of 100; smear number three.
The Committee of 100 was sparked off by the Directs Action Committee when small. groups, never more than eighty-two, invited prison, to the derision of Mr. Donnelly and his felloWs as cranks; now that others are prepared to take this very individual step (and if Mr. Donnelly had ever undergone the loneli- ness of fasting in prison as Pat Arrowsmith is now doing, he would know how individual) the crank criers yell herd mentality; smear number four.
Mr. Donnelly wrote the other day implying that Committee of 100 supporters are Communist; when that lie was nailed by our pointing to the San Francisco-Moscow Marchers and offers to do just what he suggested provided that he fulfilled his promise, he turns to an alternate lie and labels us Fascist. In the same article he talks airily of our philosophies or lack of philosophies, though it is only too obvious that he has not the faintest idea what the philosophy of Satyagraha is. Smears numbers five and six would also appear to be mutually contradictory.
Mr. Donnelly, of course, in the days when he was a Libertarian Socialist in Common Wealth did not consider the Labour Party—Left or Right— Socialist, and denounced it as such; a little later as a Bevanite he considered Right-wing revisionists were betraying the Socialist cause and said so, I do hope his present vilification of the Civil Diso- bedience Movement and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament generally does not presage another volte-face; for I fear that the Committee of 100 has got to the stage where politicians will flock to it as they did to Common Wealth in 1943.
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