NOW THE FIRST THING I'D LIKE TO LEAD OFF WITH, THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE YOU SAID THAT CND (CAMPAIGN FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT) SUDDENLY STARTED TO GROW AGAIN AT THE SAME TIME YOU BECAME ITS GENERAL SECRETARY IN 1980. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY WERE THE REASONS FOR THAT QUITE REMARKABLE MUSHROOMING OF GROWTH IN THAT YEAR?

I think about four or five things came together at once, one of them was certainly the cruise missile deployment, or the announcement of it in December of '79. Then there was the Javelin program; it was announced that we spent all this money on Javelin. Then, I think, Trident that we were going to spend £5 billion on Trident. I think that was January of '80. I think about January or February of '80, came out the "Protect and Survive," the civil defense nonsense. And I think, actually, that did as much as the cruise missiles to get things going. And, finally, there were a series of accidents, I think—American bombers were on full alert because of computer chips failing and so on. All those things came together very suddenly and I—actually one individual probably Edward Thompson, did more with a little pamphlet called "Protest and Survive," to focus all these together and take it off.

ROUGHLY, DURING THAT PERIOD, YOU AND E.P. THOMPSON WENT ON A SPEAKING TOUR OF ENGLAND. CAN YOU DESCRIBE FOR US THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE MOOD OF THOSE MEETINGS? WHAT WERE THEY LIKE?

Well they were electric, actually, they really were. M, we still have meetings, and they're good, but not—I don't think we've got the atmosphere that we had in those '80-'81 days. I remember going to St. George's Hall, Liverpool, that enormous place opposite Lime Street Station, that was packed, a thousand people down the stairs and probably as many upstairs, and it was just like that. People were really determined that this was their chance to stop this nonsense and they were not going to let Mrs. Thatcher get away with it and that they knew the cruise missiles were pointless and dangerous, and it was a very, very crusading, uplifting sort of spirit to be in those meetings.

WHAT WERE THE SORT OF PEOPLE THAT WERE GOING TO THEM?

Well, I think, all sorts, really. I mean people often ask me what the typical CND supporter would be and I'd say, probably more middle-class than working class; probably a Guardian reader rather than a Mirror reader and probably about thirty-five, married, with a couple of kids. That's, that's the sort of average. But we've got everything; we've got Pensioners for Peace, like Philip Noel-Baker was—he's dead now, and Fenner Brockway, age ninety-nine, and right the way through to—at one stage we had an organization called Babies Against the Bomb, which actually consisted of their mothers rather than the babies. It went through all ages.

ALL RIGHT. NOW, THE FIRST MAJOR RALLY OF THAT YEAR WAS INCREDIBLY LARGE. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE BUILD-UP TO THAT RALLY AND DID YOU EXPECT IT TO BE SO LARGE, AT THE TIME?

That, that—if you're talking about October, 1980, it was something that I will never forget. It's more impressive to me than anything subsequently. We had a debate in about March or April of '80 and I remember I said, don't let's have an outdoor rally, because we won't get enough people. The year before, in '79, we had 600 people. In 1980, I stood out there on the plinth of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square and people were still coming into the square from Hyde Park, three and a half or four hours after it'd begun. As the dusk was settling, these great banners were still coming down. And that was about 80,000 people and the atmosphere was marvelous. There was almost no trouble at all and so vast that people couldn't have imagined it. Bigger than the early days of CND in the '60s, actually, and all this in 12 months was an extraordinary thing for us.

BEING UP THERE AND SEEING 80,000 PEOPLE CONGREGATED IN THE CENTER OF LONDON, AT THAT TIME, CASTING YOUR MIND BACK TO THAT ACTUAL EVENT, WHAT DID YOU THINK? WHAT HORIZONS LAY BEFORE YOU?

Well, anything was possible. I expected short-term results and that we would actually—I certainly did not think that the '83 election would go to the Tories, anymore than I thought the '87 election would go to the Tories. I thought, you know, a year or two more of this and we're going to change this 'round. And you must remember that it wasn't just in London that we were getting sympathetic messages back. I think in '81, rather than '80, but in many other European capitols this was happening. In Holland, an enormous one in Amsterdam. And so, there was a great kind of across the world interest in the whole thing. It was in our terms, I don't think it actually faced the problem that we have here and that is the basic issue of a British independent nuclear weapon. The new interest was founded on other issues and when it came down to voting patterns, you still had this basic nationalism about Britain. But there was, it was a euphoric time, it was very encouraging.

NOW, MOVING ON FROM THAT PERIOD, SOME PEOPLE HAVE SUGGESTED THAT THERE WERE TWO MAJOR EVENTS THAT NOBODY'S SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED HOW THEY AFFECTED THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE GROWTH OF CND. ONE WAS INTIMATELY CONNECTED WITH THIS COUNTRY, WHICH WAS THE WAR OVER THE FALKLANDS, AND THE SECOND ONE WAS IN THE OTHER SIDE, THE SUPPRESSION OF SOLIDARITY IN POLAND. HOW WOULD YOU SUM UP THE IMPACT ON THE PEACE MOVEMENT OF THOSE TWO EVENTS? THE FALKLANDS WAR MUST HAVE HAD QUITE A MAJOR IMPACT, FOR SO LONG PEOPLE HAD SAID THEY DON'T MEAN ANYTHING AND NOW THEY WERE BEING USED IN ALL DEADLY EARNEST. DO YOU THINK THAT MADE AN EFFECT?

Funny, actually, in a way it almost passed us by. We had a major demonstration in June of 1982 in Hyde Park with 200,000 people present and the Falklands War was part of our focus of opposition, and yet we could get 200,000 people out. We had regular demonstrations every Sunday about the Falklands War, opposing the Falklands War, which were pathetic in terms of numbers, those people were not focusing on that. I think the impact of the Falklands War on us was not just the sense of incredulity, that we were actually sending a fleet to sort out a problem that could have been sorted out through the UN or whatever but the damage it did for us was that it prepared the grounds for Thatcher's victory in the '83 election, that on that she strode back to power as a the strong woman and we'd really forgotten how shallow is the, is the ground above nationalism in people's minds. And this brought her back. So, that was the effect of the Falklands War on us. On the other one, I'm not sure. I mean, the issue of independent activity in the eastern bloc has been a constantly unresolved problem within CND and the peace movements. We, we've always championed independent peace activists in the socialist countries if they're in conflict with their Peace Committees. The Solidarnosc thing was somewhat peculiar, I mean, there were elements around Solidarnosc who were actually urging more missiles in the west and of course we weren't partners with that at all. So there's always been a difficult kind of relationship which is now improving. I would have thought the eastern event that had most impact on us was actually Chernobyl, because Chernobyl, made people realize that a nuclear weapon is a gun that fires in two directions. How can you use one if you're going to get your lands in—affected by radiation a thousand miles away. And it gave you the idea of the instability of it all; an accident can happen. And that any country with a nuclear power station is actually already a hostage to someone else's attack with even conventional weapons on the power station. So I think Chernobyl did more to change us than reactions to Solidarnosc and the other peace groups.

BUT YOU WOULDN'T HAVE SAID THAT THE VERY FACT IT WASN'T RUSSIAN TANKS, BUT THERE WAS CLEARLY A RUSSIAN-BACKED, ALMOST THE FORM OF A MILITARY COUP IN POLAND. YOU DON'T THINK THAT THAT STRENGTHENED THE ARGUMENTS OF THE RIGHT?

No. I think Afghanistan did, I mean, there we heard endlessly about Afghanistan. This was the reason why we broke off negotiations and so on and so on and so on, Afghanistan. That, that dominated the whole thing. You had constantly to put yourself in a position of appearing to be indulgent to the Soviet Union if you gave any kind of an explanation that was at all rational for what happened in Afghanistan. But, but I don't think that the Solidarnosc thing had the same effect on the public thinking as Afghanistan did.

NOW, GOING ON FROM THAT. YOU'VE ALREADY MENTIONED THAT PERHAPS THE MOST CRUCIAL EVENT WAS THE ELECTION IN 1983. I SAW AN ARTICLE TWO YEARS AGO THAT WAS AN EXAMINATION OF PUBLIC OPINION POLLS OVER THE PERIOD OF THE '83 ELECTION, LOOKING AT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO SUPPORTED UNILATERALISM OR THOSE IN FAVOR OF DISARMAMENT. WHAT WAS THE MOST IMMEDIATE IMPACT ON YOU OF THAT ELECTION CAMPAIGN? NOT SO MUCH THE VICTORY AT THE END, BUT THE CAMPAIGN ITSELF AS YOU WERE SUDDENLY CONFRONTED WITH A SERIOUS DEBATE. THEY TOOK THE BATTLE BACK INTO YOUR OWN GROUND.

My most memorable reaction to all that was the way in which the media—saving your presence—in this country can turn things around. There was no debate at all. There was one phrase which the Conservatives invented, very damaging and very effective, "one-sided disarmament." I counted sometimes, people would produce that phrase 30 and 40 times in a, in a twenty-minute speech. This is what banged home— and it has nothing to do with argument, I mean, we're not one side in the world, we're a satellite of one of the superpowers. This is what was said endlessly, plus all the very damaging material which people like Michael Heseltine were quite improperly digging up and distorting about communist influence and so on. It's the time when Dr. Llewellyn said that we had received £6 million from the Russians in one year. I mean, I was quite naive up to that stage and I more or less thought, well, public debate is debate and you know, the best chap wins it on good arguments. And I suddenly realized when you come up to it against power will squash you if it possibly can, without any argument at all, and I think that's what I learned from these three elections. You've got to realize how unscrupulous people will be, discussing these things. I think it's changing a bit now, because we've, I think, kept our heads and got on with the arguments. I think the argument's beginning to move in our direction, but in '83, Falklands plus that kind of manipulation meant that we were off the map, as far as the election was concerned.

THE HESELTINE VIEW THAT WE HAD IS THAT WHAT HE DID WAS TO CHANGE THE AGENDA OF DEBATE, THAT INSTEAD OF THE ARGUMENT BEING ABOUT WHETHER CRUISE OR PERSHING WERE A GOOD IDEA, IT WAS ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THE BRITISH PEOPLE WANTED TO BELONG TO NATO. WHAT'S YOUR REACTION TO THAT?

I don't think that's true. Because in CND there's always been a division, which you know I've called fundamentalists and realists. I call myself a realist and Heseltine knows perfectly well that we've called for the unraveling of NATO and the Warsaw Pact in order to get the component parts out. It would clearly be illogical for us to say that we want to stay in NATO forever, but the idea of getting out of NATO tomorrow has never been serious politics in CND. I think Heseltine is justifying himself afterwards, not by the way, actually ahead of time. I mean, I remember, for instance, the famous attack that the Greenham Women were meant to have made on him. There was no attack at all on him, and he said so, the night of it at Greenham—or in Newbury where the thing was supposed to have taken place. The next day, he allowed every single paper to suggest these barbaric women had assaulted him and so forth. It was completely untrue. No, I think he prevented the argument; we never discussed flexible response, which is what cruise missiles are about, we never discussed the function of an independent British nuclear weapon. We never discussed Tory multilateralism, which doesn't exist in fact. So I think he kept away from the arguments by raising issues that were not the real issues of the time.

SOMETHING ELSE THAT THE CRITICS DID HURL AT YOU A GREAT DEAL, AND STILL DO, DIFFERENT SORTS OF CRITICS NOW. THEY SAY THAT THE HEYDAY, THAT PERIOD PRIOR TO THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE CRUISE MISSILE, IN '82 AND '83, YOU NEVER REALLY ADDRESSED THE PROBLEM OF THE SS-20S AS MUCH AS YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE. DO YOU THINK THAT'S A FAIR CRITICISM AND DO YOU REGRET THAT POSITION?

No, I don't think it's fair criticism. I think it's one other example of people who actually produced propaganda and then subsequently come rapidly to actually, honestly believe their own propaganda. I remember a peer of the realm, whose name I won't mention, saying that "You've never attacked the SS-20s." I took the photo front of our magazine, "Sanity," which was the '81 demonstration, on which everybody was carrying a sign saying No Cruise, No Pershing, No SS-20. Three like that. And I marked out on this thing about thirty-five references to the SS-20 and I sent him back the front of "Sanity," and said, you really think we never mention the SS-20. What we tried to do—and it never helps in these things, if you're in this sort of gut-fighting, is to tell them, a rather more detached tale. We tried to make clear that the SS-20 was actually a replacement for something, that no weapons system matches another weapons system after all, it takes ten years from the drawing board to the production, so there's no kind of equivalence. And that the search for parity is, anyway, a part of the fuel of the arms race. I think we were right, when people actually on both sides are now agreeing with that. Even Gorbachev is talking about sufficiency, not parity. But I don't think it's true we didn't mention the SS-20, but we didn't allow the argument based on the SS-20 to go ahead. We said that nothing matches and therefore, this kind of a, analogy of somehow the west has got to have something else is a numbers game which is a dead end.

ANYWAY, IN 1983, AFTER THE ELECTION, IT BECAME QUITE CLEAR THAT THE GOVERNMENT WAS STILL GOING TO BE COMMITTED AND HAD NOT CHANGED ONE IOTA FROM THE DEPLOYMENT THAT EVENTUALLY TOOK PLACE IN OCTOBER OR NOVEMBER THAT YEAR. YOU SAID, IN 1980 YOU SAW 80,000 PEOPLE COME INTO TRAFALGAR SQUARE, YOU HAD A PERSPECTIVE THAT EVERYTHING WAS POSSIBLE. CLEARLY THAT HAD SHIFTED. HOW WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT THAT PARTICULAR PERIOD? YOU KNEW THAT THE CRUISE MISSILES WERE GOING TO COME. DIDN'T THIS REALLY HAVE TO SEEM A DEFEAT?

Oh yes, of course a defeat. Every new deployment anywhere is a defeat. Certainly. But there's an enormous amount of stamina, actually. It wasn't going to fade away. I remember the Sunday Times saying, Sunset for CND, that was their title on the article after deployment, or after the election. But it hasn't been sunset, I mean, we've continued and we're a substantial force in this country, still. But I think most people in my position now would take a longer-term view of things and a more internationalist view of things. I mean, we take hope from New Zealand and we take hope from Norway, and we take hope from some of the things in Spain, and certainly, we take hope from Glasnost and all that. So, our perspective is perhaps wider, but I think, for a lot of people, it really is the long haul. I mean, that's when we started to use the phrase, "the long haul," after the '83 election. And it is the long haul, and it's a, it's comparative with changing the attitudes to slavery or to rights of women in society, it's something that you can't do in a very short time.

A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD ARGUE THAT, IN FACT, A DISARMAMENT POLICY WAS NEVER GOING TO ACHIEVE A MAJORITY SUPPORT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND AS LONG AS THE LABOUR PARTY, FOR EXAMPLE, HAS A POLICY OF NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, IT WILL NEVER BE ELECTED, AND TO SOME EXTENT, RECENT EXPERIENCE BEARS THAT OUT. WHAT WOULD BE YOUR VIEW ABOUT THAT?

I think public attitudes on anything change; they're always changing. I mean, if you'd asked me in 1930, whether we'd have an overseas aid program, I would have said don't be ridiculous—what's an overseas aid program? We send them missionaries, that's all they need we send them things. Now we have a very sophisticated overseas aid program. Things change all the time and quite rightly so, and I think that eventually, as cannibalism is now seen to be barbaric, people will actually think that making peace by threatening mass murder will be seen to be barbaric, and we will move into a more humane sort of world. I think the problem with the Labour Party's policy, which I don't think cost them the '87 election—it may have done in '83—but in '87 I don't think it did, when you see what happened in Scotland and Wales, and how North-South divide was the real issue. I think the Labour Party has got to put together a policy that is coherent and last time they didn't. They didn't do anything about the enemy—that perception continued. They didn't do anything about using the money from weapons and weaponry to spend on hospitals and schools and the real needs of people. They didn't do anything about pointing out how irrational is a British independent nuclear deterrent, because what does it stop the Russians from actually doing, if they wanted to do something? It didn't talk about flexible response which is at the Achilles heel of all the NATO business, that they, you can use nuclear weapons, and finally, it supported the NATO assumption of overwhelming conventional superiority, because it would have spent more money on tanks. So, in all sorts of ways, the NATO policy was flawed and the Tories ran around it, and quite rightly from their point of view. I think it was honestly defended by Kinnock and Co., but it wasn't a sensible package as a whole. I believe a peacemaking, an internationalist policy in this country, which diverts the products and the resources of war to peace, I think can be a winner, not a loser. I really do believe that, but we haven't had one yet.

YOU MENTIONED FLEXIBLE RESPONSE TWICE SO FAR, WHAT'S YOUR CRITIQUE OF IT AS A DOCTRINE? I MEAN HOW WOULD YOU SUM IT UP AS A DOCTRINE?

I think it's applying 1930s concepts to a weapons system that isn't a weapon. I mean, George Kennan said you can never use a nuclear weapon. Mountbatten said the idea that you can have a limited nuclear war is ridiculous. Olof Palme, and all the people on the Palme Commission, including David Owen, said exactly the same thing. With right through to now. Robert McNamara said the same thing. We're not talking about an artillery shell, ponk, you're talking about a cruise missile with a warhead 15 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. And the idea that there's a rational response at the other end, and a graduated series of steps, I know this is what they wanted to introduce in the '60s, to get away from the reality of MAD. That ultimately we're going to bash each other's society to pieces. They want to get away from that, and they invented flexible response and nobody actually believes in it. And I think that it's looking thinner and thinner. But it's quite a different strategy, than MAD, i.e., to have nuclear weapons to prevent nuclear attack. That's supposed to be the idea. It's actually using them as field pieces. Well that assumes a limited nuclear war, and I think that's ridiculous. But we're not—we in CND are trying, but people like the Labour Party and other groups aren't really hammering this one in a way I think they should.

CLEARLY WHEN YOU STARTED TO BECOME LEADER OF THE CND—NOT THE LEADER, BUT THE GENERAL SECRETARY—AND BECOME DEEPLY INVOLVED IN THE MOVEMENT, YOU HAD TO SOME EXTENT PROBABLY EDUCATE YOURSELF IN THAT WHOLE BODY OF NUCLEAR DOCTRINE AND WAR FIGHTING STRATEGY AND DETERRENCE THEORY, THERE'S AN ENORMOUS INDUSTRY OF NOW. WHAT WAS YOUR IMPRESSION AS YOU STARTED TO GET INTO THE LITERATURE AND INTO THE MINDS OF THE DETERRENT THEORISTS? HOW DO YOU PERCEIVE THAT? WHAT WAS YOUR VIEW OF THAT WHOLE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THOUGHT?

I thought it was extremely clever. But it was a kind of lunatic cleverness. And it assumes certain ground rules, and within that, you could play their kind of chess. But if you didn't accept the ground rules to begin with, there was no game. And I didn't accept the ground rules. What I found was odd. It was that so many informed people on the sort of qualities of weaponry and all that, didn't seem to me to have read quite basic documents, like the United Nations '78 report on disarmament, in their special session, or the '83...'82 one for that matter. Or the Palme Commission report. They haven't really read the theorists of the whole thing from the other side. And people who are not lightweights, I mean, serious people even Mountbatten was never taken seriously. I mean we had to, we had to publish his speech in this country, it was never published in any newspaper his Strasbourg speech of '79. So I felt really like a kind of like someone watching a game which I couldn't share because I wasn't going on that pitch. Well, once you've gone on that pitch, okay, you've got to, you can't touch the ball with your hand and you can't do this and not the other, but I'm not playing that game at all because it has no end, no purpose, and that's how I felt about it.

NOW, THE GROWTH OF CND IN 1980 AND 1979 WAS MARKED BY SOMETHING THAT WAS TO SOME EXTENT DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER PERIOD IN THE SIXTIES, AND IT WAS CLEARLY A EUROPEAN RESPONSE TO THE DECISIONS TO DEPLOY CRUISE AND PERSHING. HOW WOULD YOU SUM UP, OR SORT OF HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE RELATIONSHIPS THAT YOU HAD WITH THE OTHER PEACE MOVEMENTS IN EUROPE?

Very friendly. A bit structured. An organization was developing which meant and still means regular meetings between them. Was very much a family affair. I mean, if Petra Kelly was coming over here, you know, you knew Petra, you were all friends, or General Bastian or whoever happened to be, you knew who they were, Wim Bartels from the IKV, or Peter Peregallon from Belgium, they were all mates, they'd come and stay with you and so on, so it was a very much a kind of common team affair of people who were feeling very much the same way. It was very European, in fact, very Western European. It didn't really look out to the Pacific, or India, or Africa or whatever. It was this gang in Europe that had been affected by cruise missiles. But it was a great partnership. And to some extent it still exists. I mean, there have been various ruptures, but on the whole it still does exist.

WAS THERE ANY PROBLEMS ABOUT A VERY DIFFERENT SORT OF PERSPECTIVE BETWEEN, SAY, THE GERMAN PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE BRITISH PEACE MOVEMENT?

We were unusual in Britain because we were monolithic, in their terms, the CND, because of the '60s, they had this, we had this structure which swelled up to take the new CND, so, and we were annual conference, and memberships and all those things. Now that's unique in Europe, nobody else has got something like that. I'm not saying it's to be envied. It's just what we've got. I think the points of principal difference came over issues like attitudes to dissidents in the Eastern Bloc; attitudes to German nationalism, which was behind some of the German reactions; attitudes to conscientious objection, and pure pacifism, which many people in the CND don't share, some do. I mean, I would, I'm one of them, but many people aren't so concerned about those things. So, membership for instance in Ireland, where the whole issue of NATO is much more real than ours, their issues are quite different from ours in the Republic of Ireland. So there were definite emphases all the time. In Italy, where you found, in effect, the Communist Party was in effect taking NATO, but jibbing at Cruise missiles. And so we found it difficult to be in relationship even with radical parties in Italy. There were every country had its own kind of agenda...

COULD I JUST ASK YOU, MONSIGNOR KENT, COULD YOU ADJUST YOUR TIE, THE TWO PARTS OF WHICH HAVE...

...have parted. You'll have to reduce me to the lay state, I'm afraid I'm no longer Monsignor, but still here we are...

RIGHT. IT'S SUCH A NICE WORD...

I know... You're free to use it if you feel happier...

THERE'S TWO OTHER QUESTIONS THAT I WANT TO ASK YOU NOW. WE CAN DISCUSS WHAT WE MIGHT HAVE MISSED OUT. SOMEBODY HAS PUT TO US, IN FACT IT'S E.P. THOMPSON'S PUT TO US, THAT THERE IS ONLY, THAT IT'S ONLY UNILATERALISM THAT MAKES ANY SENSE, THAT THE ALTERNATIVE IS TO IMMEDIATELY BECOME ENGAGED IF YOU LIKE, IN THE FOOTBALL PITCH OF THE TWO POWER BLOCS. I MEAN, WOULD YOU AGREE WITH THAT? HOW WOULD YOU SUM THAT UP? IS THERE A DILEMMA THERE?

I don't know the context in which he said that. I mean, my position has always been that individuals, groups, countries, can and should take independent steps without waiting for permission, as part of the process of moving towards verifiable treaties which will be honored and respected and so on. And that's what, that's the U.N. position on the thing, and that, I think, is a sensible one. I've never maintained, and most of CND hasn't, that America should suddenly get rid of all of its nuclear weapons tomorrow. Or the Soviet Union. I mean, our national unilateral step is to get rid of British independent nuclear weapons. I mean, there's lots of other things we could do independently as well. So I'm not quite sure in what context he said that. I said, I think I invented once the expression that "a unilateralist is a multilateralist who means it." And, and I think that's coming out now. Because what we're getting post the '87 election, is clearly Mrs. Thatcher and David Owen don't actually intend to get rid of British nuclear weapons at all, full stop, as long as anybody else has got any. But the idea that there should be some kind of opposition between the two ideas, unilateralism and multilateralism, I've never accepted. And I think Edward Thompson is probably, I hope he's saying that he wants unilateralism to trigger off a, genuine changes in international attitudes and arrangements.

FINALLY, I MEAN, BY THE TIME THIS PROGRAM GOES OUT, THERE WILL PROBABLY HAVE BEEN AN INF TREATY SIGNED AND, PROBABLY BE A FEW TOKEN MISSILES ALREADY HAVE BEEN DESTROYED AS PART OF THE LONG TERM PROCESS OF THEIR ERADICATION. NOW, OBVIOUSLY, EVERYBODY'S SAYING, "LOOK, IT WORKS, YOU SEE, WE DID IT. WE PUT THEM, WE HAD THE CRUISE AND PERSHING, AND THEN WE GOT RID OF EVERYTHING, AND YOU SEE OUR STRATEGY IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT, YOU'RE MAD, IT DOESN'T WORK." WHAT WOULD BE YOUR RESPONSE?

I think that's very boring, not what you're saying, but I think the actual argument is very boring. And that people can swallow that kind of propaganda...is amazing. What actually happened, we had the SS-20s, the threats of Cruise and Pershing, the deployment of Cruise and Pershing. And what did the Russians do? What they exactly said they would do in '83 and '84, they produced a lot of other nuclear weapons and put them in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, so the nuclear arms race went up ratchet by ratchet as it always has. Strength is a childish way of approaching human relationships. What has actually happened is that ideas have changed, most manifestly in Gorbachev, who's now said that this balance doesn't matter. Sufficiency's all. That you can't win nuclear wars. You can take independent steps. And a whole series of other socially useful things he's said and done. On the Western side, you've got other ideas changing. I don't, I've never understood how President Reagan has changed, but clearly Reagan's position on weapons is now quite different, say, from Weinberger's. Weinberger was talking about being able to win nuclear wars on land and in space. Reagan now says you can't win a war of that sort, they must never be fought. The best convert on the West, I think, is Robert McNamara, the old Secretary of State, Defense under Kennedy and Johnson. He now says that nuclear policies are bankrupt. Now that's what's happened. New thinking has come in. And I don't think that we should say in CND, it's all us, but I do think that we've contributed to some serious rethinking of the basics of the whole business. And so when I say it's boring, I mean I do find it boring when these old gentlemen who've got power will find any explanation to cobble together a position that justifies them. It's not intellectually intelligent, and I think they ought to accept the fact that ideas about these things are changing and internationalism as it, as it were is now on the way up, and nationalism has to be on the way down. And we see that in many areas. The North Sea dumping conference going on now, environmental issues, acid rain, all those things are pushing an internationalist perspective and that of common security. And that's new thinking, and that's really useful.

ALL RIGHT. YES, A LOT OF PEOPLE NOW WOULD ARGUE THAT THE STRATEGY HAS BEEN PROVED CORRECT, OF DEPLOYING CRUISE AND PERSHING. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO OPPOSE THAT?

Well I just think that's a very dishonest way of looking at recent history, because what actually happened with threatening cruise missiles is the Russians produced a lot more missiles in '83 and '84, so up went the arms race in its usual fashion. I think what our contribution has been to help the changing of ideas and now people are negotiating on a different basis, because they're saying, Gorbachev first of all, but Reagan as well, that balance doesn't matter, which is what we said a long time ago. They're saying that everybody can take independent steps, which we've been saying. That you can't fight nuclear wars, which we've been saying, that independent steps are possible. So I think it's the change of framework, both in Gorbachev, in Robert McNamara, in many people in the world in positions of power that is important and I think we've played some part in bringing that about. I think, I wouldn't say it's all us; of course not. But some part of in bringing that about.

OKAY AND THIS OTHER ONE WAS — CND, AS YOU SAY, REALLY GREW ENORMOUSLY IN 1980 AND CONTINUED TO GROW THROUGHOUT THAT PERIOD, UP UNTIL — I CAN REMEMBER A DEMONSTRATION IN OCTOBER 1983 THAT WAS STILL EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE, LARGER THAN THE '80 ONE. HOW DIFFICULT IS IT FOR YOU SUSTAIN, AS A MOVEMENT, THAT SORT OF MOMENTUM ALL THE TIME?

When I started as General Secretary, I actually said in the Times, I think, that I thought demonstrations were about three percent of our activity. Our activity is public education, changing people's minds. You can't sustain outdoor demonstrations of great numbers. You come to a peak and you can't go on and it gets boring. Actually, I never want to go back to Hyde Park, I think that's all over. We've got to do something imaginative rather than just repeat the old thing. But the important thing for us is to remember is not the size on the streets; it's the numbers of individuals or groups on doorsteps, talking to people, and that is the way I think CND is now directing itself. So whether our national membership is going up or down—and it's marginally going down, at the moment—whatever is happening there, I think more people are beginning to see the common sense, in general, of what we've been saying, and that's our work, our best work.

DO YOU WANT TO SPECULATE ABOUT THE FUTURE AT ALL?

Yes, fine.

WE'RE ON THE THRESHOLD OF AN INF DEAL, WHICH WILL REMOVE THREE PERCENT OF THE WEAPONS OR THE WARHEADS CURRENTLY IN EXISTENCE. THERE'S TALK OF FIFTY PERCENT REDUCTIONS. DO YOU THINK WE ARE ON THE THRESHOLD OF SOME SORT OF IMPORTANT HISTORIC CHANGE IN ATTITUDES TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

I think this is really a high-water mark, and I think cynics are very wrong to be cynical, because here is an opportunity which hasn't existed since the war. Not just the destruction, but the change of ideas and moving on. There is a spirit of internationalism and I think that if the two superpowers are talking fifty percent cuts, we should be right behind them. We should be supporting the United Nations with its connection now between development and disarmament. There's a flood moving in a different kind of direction. And I think our particular problem in Britain, the political problem, is going to be the British independent nuclear weapon, and that is beginning to look more and more out-of-place in the world today. We're now seen to be obstructing the superpowers and as in a way, Chancellor Kohl was in Germany, with his Pershing Is. And we, who depend entirely on the Americans for this independent nuclear weapon, have got to ourselves what in the hell is it for? Are we actually helping world peace, or obstructing it? And I think that is the main thrust for CND in the next five years.