An account of the 2016 CND march in London and the geographical political and emotional links to previous movements for peace and social justice

McQueen, David

Bournemouth University Research Online

4Memory and history on the 2016CND march in LondonDavid McQueen, Bournemouth UniversityThe Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) rally in London onFebruary 27th 2016 was described in the media as ‘the biggest anti-nuclear weapons rally in a generation’,attracting tens of thousands whomarched from Speaker’s Corner to Trafalgar Square. Memories of theenormous 1981 and ‘83 demonstrations in London, when at least a quarterof a million people poured into Hyde Park,haunted the day. That was atthe height of tensions between the US and NATO allies and the SovietBloc over medium range ‘cruise missiles’. These tensions, declassifieddocuments show, almost led to a pre-emptive nuclear strike in1983,triggered by a large-scale U.S. military exercise in Eastern Europecalled Able Archer. The events were recently fictionalised in the Germantelevision series Deutschland 83, which continues to promote the ColdWar myth that members of the peace movement were naive stooges ofthe Soviet Union, heavily infiltrated by Warsaw Pact spies (gay spies atthat).Some things never change – and history tends to repeat itself whenit comes to protest movements and how they are represented (when theyare represented at all) in the media.18Credit: © David and Isobel McQueenEmerging from Paddington Station on a grey wintry Saturday with mydaughter, Isobel, who was going on her first political rally, we spoke totwo elderly protestors, a husband and wife from Wales. We could tellfrom their badges that they were also heading to join the march whichbegan at Marble Arch. From their conversation it was clear these weretrue veterans of the peace movement. They recalled the historic marchesof the early 1980s and their first march from Aldermaston in 1959, nowthe stuff of black and white photographs in history books. As we walkedalong North Carriage Drive at the top of Hyde Park, they explainedto Isobel where Aldermaston was and why they had marched the fifty-three miles from there to Trafalgar Square in London more than halfa century ago. It had taken four days and they had slept on the floorsof church halls and community centres, before arriving with anothersixty thousand protestors at Trafalgar Square to hear speakers call for theBritish government to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction. As weapproached Cumberland Gate, there was little sign at first that this marchmight be that large. We drifted amongst protestors arriving by coach andon foot, admiring the banners, costumes, masks and signs, and the rangeof young and old from across the country, unaware that tens of thousandswere gathering nearby.Politics, Protest, Emotion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives19Credit: © David and IsobelMcQueenThe plan was to meet up with my daughter’s friends from school, andshe found them by Speaker’s Corner, next to a demonstration welcomingrefugees. This was the corner of London where free speech has beenfought for since the huge working class Chartist movement of the 1830sand 1840s, followed by the Hyde Park riots of 1855 and the ReformLeague demonstrations of 1866 and 1867. The speakers there are areminder that the right to speak and be heard by government was foughtfor, sometimes violently,over decades. Indeed the right to speak can betraced back to the tradition of condemned prisoners addressing their finalwords to the thousands of people who used to gather at Tyburngallows(now a traffic island by Marble Arch), perhaps as long ago as the 12thCentury. Tyburn was originally a village which stood at the west endof present day Oxford Street, along which prisoners, including religiousmartyrs, would arrive by cart to be executed. The ‘Tyburn Tree’ allowedthe authorities to execute a dozen or more people at once and was afearsome symbol of the power of the King, and later of Parliament. OliverCromwell’s rotten body was disinterred and hung from Tyburn gallowsin 1661 on the orders of the Restoration Parliament.Credit: © David and Isobel McQueenPaul Reilly, Anastasia Veneti and Dimitrinka Atanasova (eds)20History is all around us then, as we set off on the march from HydePark sometime after noon. We had not gone far when we were heldfor half-an-hour half way down Park Lane, two blocks from the USEmbassy – scene of a fierce anti-Vietnam protests in March 1968. Musicfrom around the world was being played from sound systems, and aBrazilian group played Samba beats on large drums as we set off again pastthe Animals in War memorial. This site commemorates the millions ofhorses, mules, donkeys and other animals that perished alongside countlessmillions of humans in the wars of the 20th century.Across Britain there arehundreds of memorials to the soldiers of these wars, but, unsurprisingly,no memorials to anti-war protestors, including the 6,000 Britishconscientious objectors who went to prison or the Russian and thenGerman protestors, who, some argue, really brought the First World Warto an end.The politics of dissent soaks the ground of Speaker’s Corner,andKarl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and George Orwell are amongst the roll callof famous non-conformists who have spoken or listened at Speaker’sCorner. Hyde Park was the scene of Suffragette meetings, including amassive rally of 250,000 women to hear different speakers from twentyplatforms in 1908. It was also the final destination for 100,000 unemployedmen who marched there from cities across Britain in 1931 and 1932 andwere violently repressed by police.Credit: © David and Isobel McQueenAs the crowd turned from Park Lane onto Piccadilly, the size of thedemonstration came as a shock. It stretched a mile ahead to PiccadillyCircus and then beyond to Trafalgar Square. Some well-dressed shoppersstopped outside Fortnum and Masons to take photographs, others staredas if the colourful crowd had emerged from a space ship. We stopped byPolitics, Protest, Emotion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives21Piccadilly Circus to watch the crowd go by and then followed them downRegent Street and Pall Mall into Trafalgar Square. I’ve lost count of howmany times I and thousands of others have marched along this route, andmany wonder if such marches achieve anything, or are just a chance togather with like-minded dissenters. CND General Secretary Kate Hudsonintroduced Bruce Kent, former General Secretary at the height of CND’spower in the early 1980s saying how she was a young girl when sheattended the giant protests in Hyde Park. Will she too pass on the batonof ridding the world of nuclear weapons to another generation?The peace rally on August 2nd 1914 in Trafalgar Square, on the eve ofthe First World War, failed to halt the calamity that engulfed Europe. Therally of over a million in Hyde Park in 2003 failed to halt the invasion ofIraq. Was this demonstration to join the list of protests that governmentsin Britain have ignored? Yet without those protests we would not havethe vote for working class men, women’s suffrage, or a welfare state toprotect the unemployed. From the Chartist rally of 1848 to anti-apartheidprotests, poll tax protests, climate change protests and peace protests,Trafalgar Square has been a crucible for social and political change.And the 2016 CND gathering in the square, despite the usual, minimalbroadcast coverage,also suggested there is real hope for change overnuclear weapons. Unlike the 1983 rally in Hyde Park, this wasn’taddressed by a Labour leader (Neil Kinnock) arguing for some half-measure. This huge march was addressed by the leader of the largestScottish Party, Nicola Sturgeon, the Green Party’s Caroline LucasMP, Plaid Cymru’s leader, Leanne Wood and the leader of Labour,Jeremy Corbyn, who all gave full and unstinting support toCND’sdisarmament aims. Only the Conservative Party and a rump ofLiberal-Democrats remain wedded to Trident, although the fight in theLabour Party remains divisive. Nevertheless, we are no longer facedwith a nuclear-armed Soviet Union and so the age-old argument forupgrading a hugely expensive weapons system at a cost of £100 billionhas disappeared. With the collapse of that argument, and with austeritybearing down on every remaining welfare service, the case for Tridentcan only be made by appealing to irrational fears of invasion or nuclearPaul Reilly, Anastasia Veneti and Dimitrinka Atanasova (eds)22blackmail. The reality, as Noam Chomsky reminds us, is that nuclearweapons, along with climate change, represent the greatest threat tomankind, and accidental nuclear war remains as much a reality as it wasin 1983. Seeing Isobel enthusiastically take part in the march and listen tosome of the same speakers that I did at the same age thirty-five years agoin 1981, was moving. Tony Benn and many others are no longer withus, but my daughter and her friends grasp that we cannot wait anothergeneration for their demand for a nuclear-free world to be realised.David McQueen is a Lecturer in Politics, Media andPR at Bournemouth University. His researchinterests include public relations, news and currentaffairs, political communications and mediamanagement. He is currently researching variouslobbying and ‘greenwashing’ campaigns by thefossil fuel industry and the presentation of frackingin the news.Politics, Protest, Emotion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives23

Memory and history on the 2016 CND march in London

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