"Freeze" is wrong!

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wrote an article criticising Kinnock.

CND leaders (according to the Guardian) rushed to see Kinnock and assure him that the criticism was not CND policy.

And CND chair Joan Ruddock blandly asserts that 'no-one is seriously proposing immediate and complete disarmament, but rather a unilateral approach towards that policy as helping to stimulate negotiations between the nations" (quoted in CND newsletter 2/83).

So will Neil Kinnock get rid of the Bomb? It depends on whether you believe that a stepby-step, half-unilateral/halfmultilateral policy will be effective.

All the evidence is that it won't. Back in January 1946 the 'FREEZE the Arms Race' will be one of the major slogans on the CND demonstration in London on October 22.

Yet it is a demand that has little to do with unilateralism, the basic policy of CND. In reality it adds up to little more than multilateralism.

However, the 'freeze' is becoming very important in CND. The leadership_ (Bruce Kent, Joan Ruddock, E.P.Thompson, etc.) want to see it become the movement's central campaigning slogan, as they try to redirect CND rightwards towards some 'centre ground' of British polities.

When the 'freeze' demand is given any precise formulation it can be seen to be multiiateralist. This is how Joan Ruddock put it: "Bilateral agreements between the superpowers to halt the further manufacture, deployment or testing of nuclear weapons" • In the run-up to the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles, many people are confusing the CND priority demands of 'No Cruise, No Trident, No Nuclear-Armed Tornado' with the call for a nuclear freeze.

Joan Ruddock has described the two slogans as 'identical' But the freeze slogan By written into its constitution.

It is very important that this unilateralism is defended against any move to drop it or play it down because it is less popular than opposition to Cruise and Trident alone.

Unilateralism, though it may cut down the movement's immediate appeal, provides a much firmer political basis to go out and build from.

In particular, unilateralism implies a refusal to 'fit in' with how the media, the government, and the military try to get us to think about nuclear weapons.

Even if there was a freeze in the next three years, it would leave the US with 13,000 more warheads than it had in 1981, hardly a major victory for disarmament.

If the CND leadership are successful, and the Campaign's ranks are purged (see page 2) and its policy revised, then this will give the green light to the right wing in the labour movement. They can then move in to drop the Labour Party's commitment to unilateralism.

Judging from his past record, Neil Kinnock will be prepared to go along with them.

It is vital that the left wing within CND and the labour movement organise to stop this happening.

US 'Freeze' lobby

see article, page 7