Skating around the issues

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Students in NOLS, now out, 10p plus postage from Andy Bennet, DSU, Dunelm House, New Elvet, Durham. Take a bulk order to sell! MAN WHAT perspectives does CND have as it goes into 1984?

CND executive member James Hinton (a well-known historian and former member of IS/ SWP) has drawn up a paper for the CND Council outlining two basic options for the disarmament movement.

'On the one hand... it is now realistic for CND to set itself the goal of winning majority support, by the time of the next General Election, tor the propositions:

• Nuclear weapons are no defence, • Britain can be defended without nuclear weapons.

''The goal would be to constitute a broad consensus in favour of an incoming government moving towards a non-nuclear, non-aggressive defence policy, even while the two super-powers continued to have nuclear weapons (on their own territories)"

The other perspectives on offer, according to Hinton, are these:

"Modest medium-term goals - the cancellation of particular weapons systems, consolidation of public support for an end to the escalation. We should promote education work around our long-term aims without expecting to win the whole argument before we have achieved any significant interim victories.

'It would be those victories themselves that opened the way for a major shift of public opinion away from reliance on nuclear weapons"

Interestingly, though both these options are constructed 'within' CND conference policy - that is, they incorporate some conference decisions — they are sharped in such a way as to ignore a large part of what conference had to say.

In particular, no mention is made of the two main fronts of activity against the missiles: Greenham and the movement. Yet CND conference passed resolutions supporting such action with massive majorities.

The new stress within CND on 'alternative defence' , although having the merit of being addressed to probably the most common objection to CND: 'You would leave us defenceless' ', has LAST WEEKEND the new CND council decided on CND campaign themes and actions from now to June. But the decisions made were often not really decisions to implement the priorities decided at the CND annual conference last month.

First, Council had to decide what type of action to organise for Easter. The. conference hao bound CND to hold a major demonstration before Easter, and to back Christian CND in a major Easter action.

The debate polarised between advocates of a nationally-backed action at all nuclear bases, versus those proposing a nationally coordinated action at American bases.

The debate also reflected attempts by some to evade the issue of 'Britain out of NATO' and to substitute advocacy of 'non-nuclear defence' without challenging NATO.

Roger Spiller, CND vice-chair and a leader of the right wing, summed up his opposition to demonstrating at all nuclear bases: "We don't need to bring in the British bases. We are not concerned as a campaign with lemonapatis all of the time nuc In this way certain CND leaders tend to let the British state off the hook and try to remain within it a dangerous political dynamic.

First, 'defence' is seen as an idea all on its own, with no reference to what is to be defended or why.

Secondly, formulations like 'moving towards a non-nuclear defence policy' fit in with the fudging now going in the Labour Party on the question of unilateralism.

ncil Judith Bonner, a newly elected member of the. Council of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, reports on its first meeting following CND's December conference 'patriotic' and popular by way of cheap anti-Americanism.

General secretary Bruce Kent proposed a compromise - to demonstration at NATO bases, which was accepted. We also decided that Trident would be a theme of the action, as well as Cruise.

Conference also decided that CND should hold a major demonstration around the Euro-elections in June, but left the details to Council.

Communist Party member Jon Bloomfield proposed that we focus activity at either Greenham or Molesworth base. But such a limited attitude towards a national event around the Euro-elections would in effect just continue the passive position CND held at the General Election last June.

An alternative proposal was for a European-wide co-ordinated demonstration, preferably on June 3, directed against Reagan's war drive.

Political opposition to this came from the same people who wanted only to demonstrate And thirdly, slogans like 'Nuclear weapons are no defence' are meant to replace CND's basic demands like unilateralism and withdrawal from NATO which are considered 'unpopular' So the CND leadership do have an overall perspective for the coming years and intend to shape the campaign actively around it.

against US bases here in Britain. One Council member observed that if CND were to hold such a demonstration, 'We'd have a hundred and one organisations who would oppose Reagan, groups in the Middle East, whatever... The argument was that CND should have nothing to do with such issues.

I tried to point out that CND should have quite a lot to do with them. Conference had agreed that 'Britain out of NATO' should be a theme of CND's election work. NATO is heavily involved in the Middle East.

The 'flexible response strategy', whereby nuclear weapons are carried by and can be used by the Rapid Deployment Force, is heavily concerned with the Middle East. The missiles at Comiso, in Sicily, are pointing at the Gulf!

But commitment to not alienating the 'freeze' movement (which argues for nuclear arsenals to be held at their present level, not for them to be scrapped) means that CND leaders don't want to challenge NATO.

In the end Council opted for another action similar to the preEaster one. It also voted for national support to the West Midlands CND initiative to call an international demonstration in Coventry in June.

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