As nuclear dangers gather momentum three decades after the cold war, a disarmament movement is rising to meet them, with a new generation of activists.
In the late 50s and early 60s, and then again in the early 80s, when the US and the Soviet Union were pointing their missiles at each other in Europe, there were mass street protests against governments making plans for global annihilation.
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The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was born in the UK and staged large-scale marches to the heart of the British nuclear weapons establishment at Aldermaston. More than four decades ago, a million Americans converged on New York’s Central Park to call a halt to the arms race and a nuclear freeze. At the end of 1982, more than 30,000 women formed a human chain around the Greenham Common air force base as an act of resistance to the deployment of US cruise missiles there. In October 1983, CND staged the biggest march through London the city had ever seen.
With Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and his repeated threats that he would use nuclear weapons if his regime felt in peril, the danger is every bit as real as it was during the Cuban missile crisis or the missile standoff in Europe. This time, there have not been any mass protests but there has been a popular response that has found other channels to express itself.
Thousands of women protesting at the RAF Greenham Common air base in 1982. The demonstrations continued until 1991 when the final American Cruise missiles were removed.
Thousands of women protesting at the RAF Greenham Common air base in 1982. The demonstrations continued until 1991 when the final American Cruise missiles were removed. Photograph: PA
At the vanguard of the new movement is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican), which successfully canvassed support for a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) at the UN general assembly, leading to its adoption in 2017.
Since then, more than 90 countries have signed the treaty and 68 have ratified it. It has not stopped the US and Russia from upgrading their arsenals and China from pursuing plans to become a third leading nuclear weapons power, but Beatrice Fihn, Ican’s executive director, said the ultimate aim was something more enduring: the delegitimization of nuclear weapons around the world.
“It makes it harder to see what is happening as you’re maybe not seeing so many people out on the streets,” said Fihn, who accepted the 2017 Nobel peace prize on Ican’s behalf. But she added: “The movement is very much here, and we’re definitely growing and building.”
While continuing the work of CND and the nuclear freeze movement, Ican and its 652 partner organisations around the world are seeking inspiration from other forms of civil society action, including the campaigns to ban landmines and cluster munitions, which sought to lay down new norms, and redraw the red lines of what is acceptable on the international stage.
“We’re trying to undo the brainwashing of accepting nuclear weapons as normal,” Fihn said. The movement’s greatest source of leverage, she argued, was the need of nuclear weapons for legitimacy.
“We see that with Russia right now. They’re fighting hard to re-establish legitimacy around the nuclear weapons and their security council seat and around the narrative of this war. And to me, it’s a sign that they are vulnerable.”
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Kate Hudson, CND’s general secretary, says new membership has surged since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine was unleashed.
“Activism is there in a big way, but it’s taking new forms, and it’s more fluid than previously: the way people understand and act on the links between issues, politically and in campaigning terms,” Hudson said.
The nuclear disarmament movement is no longer in a silo of its own, she argued, as it shares common concerns for those fighting to stop climate crisis, or to uphold social justice in a world where governments are spending huge amounts on nuclear stockpiles while the poorest people in their society are cold and hungry.
Protesters in London demonstrate against the US’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.