Demonstrators for CND
Sir: No single spectator could produce a satisfactory report of a demonstration as large as the one organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament on 25 October, but I must correct some of the points in Richard Brent's account (31 October). He emphasises the religious flavour of the occasion, and mentions some of the many Christian groups which were present, but he didn't notice the humanist and secularist groups which were also present. On this, as on so many such issues, religious and nonreligious and anti-religious groups find themselves working together.
He claims that 'anarchy displayed itself in the guise of a lone, albeit drunken punk', but he didn't notice that there were dozens of anarchist groups with banners, and doesn't know that hundreds of copies of anarchist papers were sold. He says that 'there was scarcely any barracking during the meeting', but he didn't notice that virtually every party political speaker was barracked virtually continuously throughout the meeting.
He decides that the demonstration wasn't really subversive, which may be true now, but when it is ignored by the authorities (as its predecessors were 20 years ago) many of its supporters will turn to more obviously subversive activity (as their predecessors did 20 years ago). He concludes that the demonstration embodied the spirit of liberalism, which may also be true now, but a strong current of libertarianism is running in the new nuclear disarmament movement, as it did in the old, and it will certainly gather speed after the biggest single demonstration of the movement.
Nicolas Walter 134 Northumberland Road, Harrow, Middlesex
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