Subcultural and social innovations in the campaign for nuclear disarmament

McKay, GA

Abstract

In times of war and rumours of peace, when ‘terrorism’ and ‘torture’ are being revisited and redefined, one of the things some of us should be doing is talking and writing about cultures of peace. In what follows, I ask questions about the place of culture in protest by considering the cluster of issues around the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from its founding in London in 1958. I look at instances of (sub)cultural innovation within the social and political spaces CND helped make available during its two high periods of activity and membership: the 1950s (campaigning against the hydrogen bomb) and the 1980s (campaigning against U.S.-controlled cruise missiles). What particularly interests me here is tracing the reticence and tensions within CND to the (sub)cultural practices with which it had varying degrees of involvement or complicity. It is not my wish to argue in any way that there was a kind of dead hand of CND stifling cultural innovation from within; rather I want to tease out ambivalences in some of its responses to the intriguing and energetic cultural practices it helped birth. CND was founded at a significant moment for emerging political cultures. Its energies and strategies contributed to the rise of the New Left, to new postcolonial identities and negotiations in Britain, and to the Anti-Apartheid Movement. In what ways did it attempt to police the ‘outlaw emotions’ it helped to release?

Citation

McKay, G. (2004). Subcultural and social innovations in the campaign for nuclear disarmament. Peace Review, 16(4), 429-438

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2004
• Deposit Date: Oct 15, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 15, 2009
• Journal: Peace Review: Journal of Social Justice
• Print ISSN: 1040-2659
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 429-438
• Keywords: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; cultural resistance; Aldermaston march; anarcho-punk; Greenham Common; Glastonbury Festival
• Related Public URLs: http://www.routledge.com/
• Additional Information: Additional Information : The published version in the journal also contains a number of images: a jazz band on an Aldermaston CND march, Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp poster, Crass 'Nagasaki nightmare' record sleeve, Glastonbury CND Festival programme cover.