European Nuclear Disarmament
Encyclopedia
European Nuclear Disarmament (END) was a Europe-wide movement for a "nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal” that put on annual European Nuclear Disarmament conventions from 1982 to 1991.
The appeal began:
The document was notable for two things in particular. First, it resolutely refused to take sides in the Cold War:
Secondly, it argued not just for disarmament (a nuclear-free Europe "from Poland to Portugal”) but also for the destruction of the bloc system that had divided Europe since 1945 – a goal it envisaged being achieved by a novel strategy of “détente from below”:
The main authors of the appeal were British – E. P. Thompson
, Mary Kaldor
, Dan Smith
and Ken Coates
– and it was launched at a press conference in the House of Commons. But their intention was to create a Europe-wide movement, and by summer 1980 it had been endorsed by an impressive list of supporters, mainly in western Europe but with a smattering from the Soviet bloc, among them former Hungarian prime minister Andras Hegedus and Russian dissident Roy Medvedev. Several other East European intellectuals signed later.
(1993) END was "the very heart and soul of the massive antinuclear campaign" (p. 234).
Most participants considered the convention a success, and Coates’s ad hoc conference organising committee became a semi-permanent END Liaison Committee, with members from the main west European peace movement organisations and most west European social-democratic and Euro-communist parties, which organised further END Conventions in Berlin (1983), Perugia, Italy (1984), Amsterdam (1985), Evry, France (1986), Coventry, UK (1987), Lund, Sweden (1988), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (1989), Helsinki, Finland/Tallinn, Estonia (1990) and finally Moscow (1991).
During these conventions, especially in Perugia and Amsterdam, there was an intensive cooperation with the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) and their secretary-general Mient Jan Faber and Wim Bartels. Bartels was also the president of the International Peace Coordination Centre (IPCC), a cooperation of 'like-minded' movements, which linked their commitment of the struggle against nuclear weapons and the support of independent, dissident peace-initiatives in Eastern-Europe. Despite this intensive cooperation there also existed some kind of rivalry between the END network and the IPCC. Since most peace movements were present in both, it seemed both networks were doing very similar work.
concentrated on the Convention process, leaving Thompson and Kaldor as dominant figures in the UK END group. From then on, the UK END group was very much a separate entity from the conventions, although it took part in them and was represented on the Liaison Committee.
Nationally, END only became a membership organisation in 1985, when the nuclear disarmament movement was ebbing, when it recruited only 500 members. However when the nuclear disarmament first grew in 1980 and 1981, in some localities local nuclear disarmament groups were founded as 'END groups': Hull END, for example, had hundreds of members throughout the first half of the 1980s. Nationally END played a major role in the British peace movement of the 1980s. END supporters, most notably Thompson and Kaldor, were the most prominent intellectuals of the movement, constantly in demand for public meetings and for opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines (The Guardian
, the New Statesman
and Tribune
were always particularly keen). END also provided the main peace movement organisation, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
, with much of its leadership: (Bruce Kent
, Joan Ruddock
, Dan Smith and Meg Beresford
were all END supporters).
END’s insistence on criticising Soviet militarism made it highly controversial in CND, where communists and pro-Soviet Labour leftists were a vocal though small minority – but it meant that it was taken much more seriously by the Labour Party, which had adopted a non-nuclear defence policy in 1980. More than 60 Labour MPs signed the END Appeal in 1980, and END supporters, among them Kaldor and Smith, served on Labour advisory committees on defence. END also had significant support among Liberals opposed to nuclear arms (although not among their allies in the Social Democratic Party) as well as among members of the nascent Green party. Even a few daring dissident members of the Conservative and Communist parties lent their support.
END also organised regular speaking tours and conferences on various disarmament-related themes.
expressed this view forcefully in his essay “An Anatomy of a Reticence” (1985).
Nevertheless, thanks largely to the persistence of END and like-minded activists from other countries, who kept up a constant stream of correspondence with dissidents in the Soviet bloc and visited them whenever they could, by the mid-1980s a fruitful dialogue had been established. END had working group
s for each Soviet bloc country. The Czechoslovakia group exchanged views with and visited Havel and his colleagues in Charter 77
in Czechoslovakia; the Hungary group did the same with György Konrád
, Miklos Haraszti
and a small group of young peace activists in Hungary; the Poland group the same with Adam Michnik
, Jacek Kuron
and many younger activists; the East Germany group the same with Bärbel Bohley
and others who were later to be the core of Neues Forum.
removed the weapons that had given the European peace movement its raison d’etre – though the conventions continued until 1991 (in Moscow) and END in the UK turned itself in 1989 into European Dialogue, a pressure group for encouraging the development of democracy and civil society, which is still going.
Origins
The founding statement of END was the European Nuclear Disarmament Appeal issued in April 1980 and circulated by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (http://www.russfound.org). It was provoked by NATO’s decision in December 1979 to respond to a Soviet upgrading of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe with its own nuclear modernisation – cruise and Pershing II missiles to be deployed in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy.The appeal began:
- We are entering the most dangerous decade in human history. A third world war is not merely possible but increasingly likely . . . In Europe, the main geographical stage for the East-West confrontation, new generations of ever more deadly nuclear weapons are appearing.
The document was notable for two things in particular. First, it resolutely refused to take sides in the Cold War:
- We do not wish to apportion guilt between the military leaders of East and West. Guilt lies squarely upon both parties. Both parties have adopted menacing postures and committed aggressive actions in different parts of the world. . .
Secondly, it argued not just for disarmament (a nuclear-free Europe "from Poland to Portugal”) but also for the destruction of the bloc system that had divided Europe since 1945 – a goal it envisaged being achieved by a novel strategy of “détente from below”:
- The remedy lies in our own hands . . . We must commence to act as if a united, neutral and pacific Europe already exists. We must learn to be loyal, not to ‘East’ or ‘West’, but to each other, and we must disregard the prohibitions and limitations imposed by any national state . . . We must resist any attempt by the statesmen of East and west to manipulate this movement to their own advantage. . .
The main authors of the appeal were British – E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
, Mary Kaldor
Mary Kaldor
Mary Kaldor is a British academic, currently Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, where she is also the Director of its Centre for the Study of Global Governance. She has been a key figure in the development of cosmopolitan democracy...
, Dan Smith
Dan Smith
Dan Smith may refer to:* Dan Smith , retired American Army colonel and author* Dan Smith , illustrator and graphic artist* Dan Smith , Canadian ice hockey player...
and Ken Coates
Ken Coates
Kenneth Sidney Coates was a British politician and writer. He chaired the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and edited The Spokesman, the BRPF magazine launched in March 1970. He was a Labour Party Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1999...
– and it was launched at a press conference in the House of Commons. But their intention was to create a Europe-wide movement, and by summer 1980 it had been endorsed by an impressive list of supporters, mainly in western Europe but with a smattering from the Soviet bloc, among them former Hungarian prime minister Andras Hegedus and Russian dissident Roy Medvedev. Several other East European intellectuals signed later.
The END Conventions
With movements for nuclear disarmament emerging throughout western Europe and gaining support from social democratic and Euro-communist parties, the Russell Foundation, centred on Ken Coates, consulted about organising a massive conference to bring together everyone involved. The first European Nuclear Disarmament Convention subsequently took place in Brussels, Belgium, in 1982. According to historian Lawrence WittnerLawrence S. Wittner
Lawrence S. Wittner is an American historian who has written extensively on peace movements and foreign policy....
(1993) END was "the very heart and soul of the massive antinuclear campaign" (p. 234).
Most participants considered the convention a success, and Coates’s ad hoc conference organising committee became a semi-permanent END Liaison Committee, with members from the main west European peace movement organisations and most west European social-democratic and Euro-communist parties, which organised further END Conventions in Berlin (1983), Perugia, Italy (1984), Amsterdam (1985), Evry, France (1986), Coventry, UK (1987), Lund, Sweden (1988), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (1989), Helsinki, Finland/Tallinn, Estonia (1990) and finally Moscow (1991).
During these conventions, especially in Perugia and Amsterdam, there was an intensive cooperation with the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) and their secretary-general Mient Jan Faber and Wim Bartels. Bartels was also the president of the International Peace Coordination Centre (IPCC), a cooperation of 'like-minded' movements, which linked their commitment of the struggle against nuclear weapons and the support of independent, dissident peace-initiatives in Eastern-Europe. Despite this intensive cooperation there also existed some kind of rivalry between the END network and the IPCC. Since most peace movements were present in both, it seemed both networks were doing very similar work.
END in the UK
Thompson, Kaldor and others in the END group in the UK disagreed with Coates’s interest in winning the support of political parties and trade union leaders, and in 1983 there was a parting of the ways: Coates and his Nottingham-based Bertrand Russell Peace FoundationBertrand Russell Peace Foundation
The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation was established in 1963. The foundation aims to continue the work of the philosopher and activist Bertrand Russell in the areas of peace, social justice, and human rights, with a specific focus on the dangers of nuclear war...
concentrated on the Convention process, leaving Thompson and Kaldor as dominant figures in the UK END group. From then on, the UK END group was very much a separate entity from the conventions, although it took part in them and was represented on the Liaison Committee.
Nationally, END only became a membership organisation in 1985, when the nuclear disarmament movement was ebbing, when it recruited only 500 members. However when the nuclear disarmament first grew in 1980 and 1981, in some localities local nuclear disarmament groups were founded as 'END groups': Hull END, for example, had hundreds of members throughout the first half of the 1980s. Nationally END played a major role in the British peace movement of the 1980s. END supporters, most notably Thompson and Kaldor, were the most prominent intellectuals of the movement, constantly in demand for public meetings and for opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines (The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
and Tribune
Tribune (magazine)
Tribune is a democratic socialist weekly, founded in 1937 published in London. It is independent but supports the Labour Party from the left...
were always particularly keen). END also provided the main peace movement organisation, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
, with much of its leadership: (Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent
Bruce Kent is a British political activist and a former Roman Catholic priest. Active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , he was the organisation's general secretary from 1980 to 1985 and its chair from 1987 to 1990...
, Joan Ruddock
Joan Ruddock
Joan Mary Ruddock is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Lewisham Deptford since 1987. She is a feminist and is the wife of Frank Doran, the Labour MP for Aberdeen North...
, Dan Smith and Meg Beresford
Meg Beresford
Meg Beresford was a British campaigner against nuclear weapons and General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1985-1990....
were all END supporters).
END’s insistence on criticising Soviet militarism made it highly controversial in CND, where communists and pro-Soviet Labour leftists were a vocal though small minority – but it meant that it was taken much more seriously by the Labour Party, which had adopted a non-nuclear defence policy in 1980. More than 60 Labour MPs signed the END Appeal in 1980, and END supporters, among them Kaldor and Smith, served on Labour advisory committees on defence. END also had significant support among Liberals opposed to nuclear arms (although not among their allies in the Social Democratic Party) as well as among members of the nascent Green party. Even a few daring dissident members of the Conservative and Communist parties lent their support.
END also organised regular speaking tours and conferences on various disarmament-related themes.
END Publications
The END Bulletin and ENDPapers series were published by the Russell Foundation, beginning in 1980. Subsequently, British END published a series of pamphlets through Merlin Press and a bi-monthly magazine, European Nuclear Disarmament Journal, which was edited by Mary Kaldor. It was published from 1983 to 1988.Détente from below
What END was probably best known for, however, was its work with dissidents in the Soviet Union and its east-central European satellite states. Although the END Appeal had won some support from dissidents in the Soviet bloc at its launch, most were hesitant about the western peace movements, which they felt were parroting Soviet slogans and had no sympathy for people living under communist dictatorship. Václav HavelVáclav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
expressed this view forcefully in his essay “An Anatomy of a Reticence” (1985).
Nevertheless, thanks largely to the persistence of END and like-minded activists from other countries, who kept up a constant stream of correspondence with dissidents in the Soviet bloc and visited them whenever they could, by the mid-1980s a fruitful dialogue had been established. END had working group
Working group
A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...
s for each Soviet bloc country. The Czechoslovakia group exchanged views with and visited Havel and his colleagues in Charter 77
Charter 77
Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...
in Czechoslovakia; the Hungary group did the same with György Konrád
György Konrád
György Konrád is a Hungarian novelist and essayist, known as an advocate of individual freedom. He was a dissident under the communist regime.- Life :...
, Miklos Haraszti
Miklós Haraszti
Miklós Haraszti is a Hungarian writer, journalist, human rights advocate and university professor. He served the maximum of two terms as the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media from 2004 to 2010...
and a small group of young peace activists in Hungary; the Poland group the same with Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...
, Jacek Kuron
Jacek Kuron
Jacek Jan Kuroń was one of the democratic leaders of opposition in the People's Republic of Poland. Kuroń was a prominent Polish social and political figure; educator and historian; an activist of the Polish Scouting Association; co-founder of the Workers' Defence Committee; twice a Minister of...
and many younger activists; the East Germany group the same with Bärbel Bohley
Bärbel Bohley
Bärbel Bohley was an East German opposition figure and artist. In 1983 she was expelled from the GDR artists federation and was banned from travelling abroad or exhibiting her work in East Germany. She was accused of having contacts to the West German Green Party.In 1985 she was one of the...
and others who were later to be the core of Neues Forum.
The end of END
Both the END Conventions and the UK END group went into decline in the late 1980s after the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treatyIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Signed in Washington, D.C. by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8, 1987, it was ratified by the United States Senate on May 27, 1988 and...
removed the weapons that had given the European peace movement its raison d’etre – though the conventions continued until 1991 (in Moscow) and END in the UK turned itself in 1989 into European Dialogue, a pressure group for encouraging the development of democracy and civil society, which is still going.
See also
- United States missile defence Eastern European Campaign Against Missile Defence
- The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (http://www.russfound.org)
Archives
- Catalogue of the END papers at the Archives Division of the London School of EconomicsLondon School of EconomicsThe London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
.