Taylor / Pritchar The Protest Makers

The British Nuclear Disarmament Movement of 1958-1965, Twenty Years On
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4831-5059-8
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

The Protest Makers: The British Nuclear Disarmament Movement of 1958-1965, Twenty Years On discusses issues regarding the British nuclear disarmament movement. The book is comprised of four parts that covers specific topic related to the movement, such as the political and ideological aspects of the movement. The text discusses the problems faced by the movement that prevented it in making a significant change in modern Britain. The book also analyzes the future activities and attitude of the movement. The text will be of great interest to individuals who are concerned with the trends of anti-nuclear movements, particularly in Britain.

Richard Taylor is currently Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of York, where his research focuses on the development of novel synthetic methodology and the synthesis of natural products and related compounds of biological/medicinal interest. The methodology is concentrated primarily on organometallic, organosulfur and oxidation processes and the targets include, amino acids, carbohydrates, prostaglandins, and polyene and polyoxygenated natural products, particularly with activity as antibiotics and anti-cancer agents. Richard Taylor is a graduate and postgraduate of the University of Sheffield, and he then carried out postdoctoral research at Syntex, California (Dr. I. T. Harrison) and University College London (Professor F. Sondheimer). His first academic appointment was at the Open University in Milton Keynes. This post gave Professor Taylor the opportunity to contribute to Open University textbooks, radio programmes and television productions on various aspects of organic chemistry. Professor Taylor then moved to UEA, Norwich where he established his independent research programme,before taking up his present position in York in 1993. Richard Taylor is the current President of the Organic Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was awarded the 1999 RSC Tilden Lectureship and the 1999 RSC Heterocyclic Prize. He is currently the UK Regional Editor of the international journal Tetrahedron.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Taylor, Richard J K

Pritchar, Colin

Leseproben

PART II

“Where Have All the Marchers Gone?” The Protesters of 1958/65 and their Subsequent Development

Publisher Summary

The disarmament movement of the 1958–1965 period attracted diverse support. The popular media image of a campaign of eccentric, alienated, immature, and irresponsible young people, led by an assortment of naive clerics, impractical intellectuals, and political subversives, was given further credence by the leading politicians of the time. However, this perception is a gross distortion and over-simplification of an astonishingly varied and complex movement. This chapter discusses the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) movement that was carried out in the 1958–1965 period. Unlike all other previous British disarmament movements, CND was not fundamentally a pacifist body. Many pacifists were hostile to CND precisely because of this eclecticism. The eclecticism, the overlapping beliefs, the mutual tolerance, and the commitment to the central single issue on the part of the rank-and-file activists of the movement were sufficient to keep the movement united. The movement brought together diverse political groupings. One of the great strengths of CND was that it cut across political, religious, and age barriers because its central message was clear, simple, urgent, and couched in straight-forwardly moral terms.

THERE is no doubt that the Disarmament Movement of the 1958/65 period attracted very diverse support. The popular, media image of a campaign of eccentric, alienated, immature and irresponsible young people, led by an assortment of naive clerics, impractical intellectuals and political subversives, was given further credence by the leading politicians of the time. This perception, however, was, as might be expected, a gross distortion and over-simplification of an astonishingly varied and complex movement.

What follows here is an attempt to define and analyse the complexity of the Movement’s composition and to discuss the differing conceptions and motivations of activists between 1958 and 1965. Equally important, we shall discuss the subsequent activities and developments of the supporters over the following 20 years, and try to answer Peggy Duffs question “where have all the marchers gone?”1

In this Part, it is the ordinary supporters’ recollections and views which are examined collectively rather than those of the prominent leadership figures of the Campaign.

The only previous study of Disarmament Movement supporters was carried out in 1965 by Frank Parkin,2 who attended an Aldermaston March and questioned a sample of the marchers.3 His study is of crucial importance to any analysis of the Movement because it is the only work which attempted to explore empirically and in depth some of the sociological and political dimensions of the Movement. Parkin’s study measured only activities, attitudes, social backgrounds, etc., while our survey also measured activists’ development over the 20-year period from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. Nevertheless Parkin’s work is an essential baseline: it is only by comparison with his sample of the Aldermaston March in 1965 that any subsequent survey can determine its validity as a representative cross-section of the Movement.

The sample of activists we contacted was very similar to those analysed by Parkin on most of the appropriate variables: age, religion, education and social class (the latter based on the Hall-Jones scale4). The comparative details are given in the Methodological Appendix.5

Because of the similarity of our respondents to Parkin’s it seems reasonable to claim that the sample on which the present study is based is as representative of Disarmament Movement activists as is feasible. Brief mention must be made here of how our respondents were reached. Supporters of the Movement between 1958/65 were invited–via letters to the press and to professional journals, and appearances on local and national TV and radio–to complete a detailed questionnaire (the questionnaire is reproduced as Appendix II). The effective response rate was 93% (nineteen questionnaires were returned too late to be included in the statistical analysis). It is obvious that the sample was self-selected and highly motivated and still apparently interested in the anti-nuclear issue and/or Movement. Equally, the method of contact, and the way of collecting the data, i.e. via the written word, made it more likely to be attractive to middle-class than to traditional working-class movement activists. Nevertheless, this survey accurately represents, it will be argued, the activists of the Movement, and spans the whole range of diverse groups and perceptions present from the earliest years of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and the National Council Against Nuclear Weapons Tests which were the immediate forerunners of CND.6

To assist the reader handle the rather complex survey material which follows, it may be helpful to provide a short outline plan. The total sample is examined, in terms of age, sex and social class. The main thrust of our concern is to distinguish the differing ideological perspectives within the Movement and we have thus divided our sample as follows:

(a) the political protesters–those who saw the Movement in primarily political terms (i.e. Labour Party socialists, Liberals, Marxists, Anarchists, etc.);

(b) the moral protesters–those who had no particular political affiliation and whose protest was based on moral objections to nuclear weapons.

Over and above this basic division, we have also subdivided the total sample into those who pursued their objectives through extra-parliamentary and direct action campaigns, largely in the DAC and the Committee of 100, and compared their beliefs, attitudes and activities with others in the Movement. Similarly, we have compared those active in subsequent campaigns and activities of various sorts (e.g. the Anti-Vietnam War Movement; environmentalist campaigns, etc.) with others in the Movement. All these groups are compared with each other, changes within and between the groups are analysed over the 20-year period (i.e. 1958-65 compared to 1978).

General Response*

Of the 403 respondents, 65% were male and 35% female. They were predominantly middle class; 51% were aged 45 or less, and 49% were 46 or more. (The detailed age breakdown was: 20% aged 35 or less, 31 % aged 36 to 45, 20% aged 46 to 55, and 29% aged 56 or more.)

How strong was the respondents’ support for CND? The vast majority came to CND in the years 1958 and 1959 (75%) and, by 1961, 96% of the sample was active in the Movement. There were no significant differences in terms of age or sex in this pattern.

As would be expected, the younger respondents came relatively late to the campaign, although only 1% after 1964. The length of respondents’ commitment to the Movement was impressive, 97% being involved for at least 4 years, and 23% of the respondents being current members of CND. Interestingly, however, it was the older rather than the younger respondents who were involved for longer in the Movement. Such a general commitment to the Movement gives support to the contention that the respondents were very much core activists and representative of the keenest and most active sections of the Movement.

EDUCATION

By 1978, 73% of our respondents had either a degree or professional qualification: only 19% of the sample had ceased formal education at minimum school-leaving age. As would be expected, the original ‘youth group’ had, over the 20-year period, been significantly* more able to utilise the greater range of educational opportunities available than had those respondents currently aged 46 and over. By 1978 only 11 % of the whole sample had no educational qualifications. Women, as well as those from the working-class groups, did significantly less well in educational terms, reflecting the well-known discriminatory factors operating in the British educational system. It should also be pointed out that while the females were proportionately as ‘middle class’ as the men, they did not (either in 1958 or 20 years later) reach the higher social class groups 1 and 2 as often as their male counterparts.

Our study has also confirmed one of the findings of Parkin’s survey that caused some surprise–and certainly contradicted the prevalent media image of the Movement’s supporters. Parkin found that the youthful supporter in the 1960s was not alienated, anti-parent and anti-authority, but rather, on the contrary, generally well integrated and in fundamental accord with the radicalism of his (or her) parents.7 This finding was substantially supported by our study which showed that these people were now well established occupationally and educationally, less than 4% of the ex-‘youth group’ having no educational qualification.

RELIGIOUS BELIEF

In 1958-65 over 41% of our respondents had a Christian religious belief (Parkin’s study contained 40%). Our study contained similar proportions of the various Christian denominations to Parkin’s: the Anglicans being the highest represented group, 35%, followed by a particularly high proportion of...