Recollections of the early days of Scottish CND

In February 1988 a number of activists gathered to remember the early years of Scottish CND: in Edinburgh, CHRISSIE and BOB MacWHIRTER, MAIRI and DOUGIE STEWART, CHRISTINE and DOUGLAS McLAGGAN, GEOFFRAY and ELIZABETH CARNALL, and RON MacKINTOSH; and in Glasgow, KEITH BOVEY and IAN DAVISON.

BEGINNINGS

MAIRI: The teachers and parents of the Edinburgh Rudolph Steiner School decided in 1957 to launch a protest at the plan to test the British H-bomb on Christmas Island. There was a good article in the Scotsman in April1957, which we reprinted and distributed. We called a meeting in the Royal Arch Hall,11 June 1957, and formed the Edinburgh Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapon Tests.

DOUGIE: I was in the chair, and somehow we only had two copies of the proposed constitution – I had one and the front row had the other. It was passed!

MAIRI: Our first public meeting was in the Usher Hall on 24 th April 1958. We’d paid for the meeting in advance by selling tickets, 6d each. It was just as well because there was a blizzard on that day. Even so we got a very good turnout, over 1,000 people.

CHRISSIE: This was before television. You couldn’t fill the Usher Hall with a public meeting today. Professor Nicholas Kemmer joined – he’d been on the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb. They never expected the bomb to be dropped, and a lot of the scientists were very shocked. We had scientists who new all about radiation, strontium-90, genetic damage, the food chain and so on.

SCOTTISH CND

RON: A Scottish Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapon Tests was formed at the meeting in Edinburgh in March 1958, with representatives from Glasgow, Ayrshire, West Lothian and Shetland as well as Edinburgh. I was Scottish treasurer during the time of rapid growth. There were groups in every town of any size.

MAIRI: In the early years, Scottish CND was more Edinburgh centred. I remember at a Scottish Council meeting, in Edinburgh, we were discussing going to Dunoon, and the Glasgow people said, ”What’ll we do if it rains?”, and we said, “Well we’re going anyway.” So off we went, some of the Glasgow people did come, and of course it poured.

CHRISSIE: We owe a great debt to George MacLeod, who put the moral case in the General Assembly year after year.

MAIRI: We used to have a silent vigil outside to support him. Once a minister came and shook his fists at us, and said, “Go to Moscow!” At that time I never thought I would be going to Moscow, but later I did, to say the same to the Russians as we’d said here.

GEOFFREY: I was involved in the Peace Pledge Union, and we were used to being a voice in the wilderness. But it became accepted that the nuclear issue was something that people would reasonably hold anti-war views on. Something like 25 percent of people in 1960 thought that Britain should give up nuclear weapons.

ALDERMASTON

RON: A Scottish contingent went down to the first Aldermaston march in 1958. Our contingent was recognized as being the most highly disciplined one, marching properly in fours with impressive banners, and every year after that the Scots were the leaders of the march, which we were very proud of. People would line the streets and cheer as we came into London. They would always clap when they saw the Isle of Sky banner. There were some heroic walkers. Many of them did not have the physique or the health but they still came. It was quite an endurance test - we did 21 miles one day. With the hardness of those school floors, we felt committed to martyrdom.

MAIRI: We left those places cleaner than we found them. The organization was superb, and the atmosphere was happy.

ELIZABETH: I went on my first Aldermaston march in 1961 with some trepidation because of what the press said about CND. But looking at the photographs now, what strikes me is how respectable everybody looks.

CHRISSIE: The significance of Aldermaston has got lost. It’s there that they made the bombs. We knew that this was a hazard in itself, but we could never get people to believe it. It’s awful to think that round all these places there are now leukemia cases.

POLARIS IN THE HOLY LOCH

RON: Town council after town council passed resolutions against Polaris coming to the Clyde, though it was unusual for town councils to pass political resolutions then. Councils, trade unions, churches, CND was really reaching out to the community at that time. Glasgow began to play a very big part.

MAIRI: Dunoon welcomed it. We warned them what would happen. A lot of the locals are regretting it now.

CHRISSIE: The direct action committee came up from London and tried to board the depot ship Proteus in March 1961. In September there was a big sit down by the Committee of 100 in London, when Bertrand Russell and Hugh MacDiarmid were arrested. There was a sit-down at the same time at the Holy Loch. We still don’t know the terms of the Nassau agreement to let the USA use the Holy Loch. Harold Wilson said he would renegotiate the agreement and get rid of Polaris, but he never did.

DECLINE

RON: The committee of 100 divided the organization. Pat Arrowsmith organized a march in Edinburgh without official permission, and got diverted from fighting Polaris on to fighting a city bye-law.

GEOFFREY: There was a proposal to put up an independent nuclear disarmament candidate, and there were strong supporters of the Labour Party in CND who were against this. Clyde Middleton and I came up with what we thought was a compromise, which was that the candidate should stand but be supported only by INDEC, not by Edinburgh CND. And that was carried at an Edinburgh CND meeting, but it still caused a big split.

MAIRI: Labour Party members came and joined on the spot to vote against INDEC. That was my first experience of that sort of politics.

CHRISSIE: We had got very disillusioned by 1967, when the first British Polaris submarine was launched. From 1965 until 1979, there wasn’t a single debate in the Commons on nuclear weapons. The press didn’t talk about it, but the arms race was going on. Anti-Vietnam War and anti-apartheid committees were springing up. CND lost impetus.

GLASGOW BEGINNINGS

KEITH: The first big Glasgow CND event was the march in May 1959. My son was born the day before.

IAN: Neil Carmichael told me that the idea of the march was suggested to him by Campbell Wilkie – who was thinking of about thirty people with banners on the pavement of Sauchiehall Street. But eventually it became a march of about 4,000 people.

KEITH: We spent all winter planning for something big. We had an elaborate route, hired the bandstand in Kelvingrove Park, and got a big platform party. R.E. Muirhead, the grand old man of Scottish radical thought at the turn of the century, was there, in his nineties. People drew on their experience of the 1930s and hunger marches. It was a beautiful spring day and I was proud of the turnout. Scottish CND was formed shortly after that.

IAN: There were bitter splits in the labour movement over CND. This was still the Cold War for many people, and we were Communist stooges to them. Ironically it was 1960 before the Communist Party agreed to support CND.

ANTI-POLARIS

KEITH: I found Aldermaston different from the Scottish demonstrations. For one thing, the sixties arrived earlier in England than in Scotland. Also the Scottish songs were much better. I regard Ian as the author of all these songs. He and his like did these irreverent ditties – ‘Ye canny spend a dollar when ye’re deid’ – which contrasted with the solemnity of the English songs like ‘The H-Bomb’s Thunder’.

IAN: Morris Blythman was the key organiser of the anti-Polaris singers. Hamish Henderson wrote ‘The Freedom Come-All-Ye’ looking across the Clyde on a CND demonstration.

KEITH: To get to the Holy Loch, we’d take a train to Gourock and cross on the ferry, then march from Dunoon to Ardnadam where the pier was for the US base. I remember once getting a ferry to Kilmun pier, which is the wrong side of the loch – only about four miles away. I hitched a lift, but when I asked for Ardnadam the driver realised I was a CND demonstrator and threw me out – against a mild protest on his other passenger’s part.