Month: March 2011

I thought I’d list some of the memorable highlights in my sometimes rebellious life. Some of these actions I still fully approve of, others I don’t, but none do I really regret since life is a learning process, and we learn from our mistakes.

September 1961 – taking part in the Committee of 100’s mass civil disobedience sit-down demonstration in Trafalgar Square along with Bertrand Russell, Sheila Delaney, John Osborne and about 10,000 others. Too many for the police to arrest.

Easter 1962 – taking part in my first Aldermaston March, organized by CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Early Summer 1962 – taking a full-time job at CND’s head office. I was there six years.

Easter 1963 – Defying my boss at CND and joining the anarchists and Committee of 100 supporters to divert from the Aldermaston March route to visit the top-secret government bunker (Regional Seat of Govermment in the event of nuclear war) at Warren Row.

Early 1960s – joining other CND supporters to heckle Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at Luton Hoo where he spoke and the Luton Girls’ Choir sung ‘Land of Hope & Glory’, after which they all stood for the National Anthem ‘God Save The Queen’, but I joined the CND supporters in sitting down for this and refusing to sing, to the horror and disgust of Tory ladies in big hats.

Mid 1960s – trying to storm Buckingham Palace with other Committee of 100 supporters in a banned protest against the official State visit of the fascist Queen Frederika of Greece. I got halfway up the Palace garden walls on the backs of other demonstrators, but the spikes at the top stopped me getting over. One demonstrator did get over I believe, but the Monarchy survived!

Summer 1966 – taking my first visit abroad, with Youth CND’s Project 67, by train to Moscow and Leningrad via Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and the People’s Repubic of Poland, arriving at the Soviet border at Brest-Litovsk.

Summer 1966 – visiting Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow.

Mid-1960s – joining about 5,000 others standing up and giving the clenched-fisted salute while singing ‘The Internationale’ in the Albert Hall, led by Comrade John Gollan, General Secretary of the Communist Party. This was at the 33rd Anniversary gathering of the Daily Worker, later Morning Star,  newspaper.

1967 – taking part in a riot by Teddy boys which partly wrecked Brian Epstein’s Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue when they brought the Safety Curtain down in the middle of Chuck Berry’s act. I remember ripping out a whole row of seats and telling police as they arrived they were too late as we had wrecked the joint.

Late 1960s – writing to the Soviet government about the danger of the USSR being invaded by the United States across the frozen Bering Straits - I received a reply assuring me: ‘comrade, our northeastern frontiers are fully defended’.

Summer 1968 – hitch-hiking with a fellow CND employee, Sheila Cooper, to Berlin, Capital of the German Democratic Republic as guests of the GDR Peace Committee (Friedensrat der DDR). We caught a train the last leg from Hanover to West Berlin, where residents shook their fists at me for wearing a badge with the GDR emblem on it. We walked through Checkpoint Charlie and the British woman army officer on duty asked what time we were returning from the ‘Soviet sector’ of the city. I replied we weren’t returning! (Well not for another three weeks, but I didn’t tell her that initially.)

Summer 1968 – being in the GDR capital when its troops supported those of the Soviet Union and three other Warsaw Pact countries in the intervention in the neighboring Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic to crush Dubcek’s ‘Prague Spring’. I fully supported this intervention at the time. The British Communist Party leadership didn’t and their newspaper the ‘Morning Star’ was banned in East Berlin.

Summer 1968 – attending a rally in Marx-Engels Platz in the GDR capital and sitting on the visitors’ platform looking at thousands of people, including a sea of blue shirts (the Free German Youth) and white shirts/red neckscarves (the Young Pioneers). The rally speakers praised the intervention to halt counter-revolution in the CSSR, and at the time I fully approved. I was by then a hard-line member of the British Young Communist League.

Summer 1968 – Being taken by National People’s Army officers to the Western side of the Brandenburg Gate on a viewing platform to inspect and approve the ‘Anti-Fascist Wall/ ‘Wall of Peace’. West Berliners were looking back at us across the Wall from a similar viewing platform. We were shown a film and given pamphlets in the Brandenburg Gate giving the reasons why the Wall was built. I still  believe it was absolutely necessary, though not shooting people trying to cross illegally or mining the borders. A financial arrangement in the form of a returnable deposit should have allowed GDR citizens to visit the Western sectors of the city.

Summer 1968 – giving a farewell speech to our GDR hosts at the FDGB (GDR TUC) hotel in Kuehlungsborn thanking the hotel collective for their hospitality, saying I approved of the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia, but that I had observed bourgeois practices in the GDR itself and they might be next to face Soviet-led intervention to restore Socialist norms. This speech was not well received, our interpeter, Peter, called me an ‘idiot’. Sheila, my CND colleague, called me prospective ‘cannon fodder for fascism’ because of my gullibility in approving of the Soviet-led intervention.

Late 1960s – getting arrested in Grosvenor Square, London outside the U.S. Embassy in a mass protest against the war in Vietnam. I was not arrested for violence though, but for sitting down and obstructing the police.

Late 1960s – attending a Young Communist League Congress in Scarborough, where the Soviet delegate was booed by the YCL leadership for their intervention in Czechoslovakia. We hardliners, however, gave them a standing ovation for the intervention. We also gave a standing ovation to the delegates from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who presented a statuette of the Great Leader Kim Il-Sung to the YCL leadership. Later we hardliners had a conversation with the Bulgarian delegate about the revisionist nature of the British YCL leadership in condemning the intervention in Czechoslovakia.

Late 1960s/early 1970s – insisting on putting up a ‘Vote Gordon McLennan, Communist’ poster in our kitchen window in Camden Town, against my mother’s wishes. My bedroom at the time had an altar to atheistic Communism consisting of a Soviet red flag, a statue of Lenin in place of the Cross, and a volume of Lenin’s writings in place of The Bible. Also the room was festooned with Soviet/Maoist posters and two tapestries of Lenin and Stalin.

Summer 1970 – taking the Communist Party’s Lenin Centenary trip to the Soviet Union, this time by Aeroflot the Soviet airline, where we received VIP treatment (caviar, champagne and chocolates). I thanked the air stewardess in Russian with the words: ‘Thank you, Comrade!’

Early 1970s – having two articles published in the Communist Party’s Theoretical Journal ‘Marxism Today’ and its special supplements/discussion papers. I called for the rehabilitaton of Comrade Stalin as a Marxist-Leninist giant, and said giving democracy to the enemies of Socialism was ‘revisionist nonsense’ since the purpose of the Socialist state was to crush them. I also approved in these articles of the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia. I had similar letters published in favor of the intervention in various other leftwing papers, including CND’s paper ‘Sanity’.

1976 – my second visit to the GDR, this time touring the whole country with my life-partner, who pointed out the defects I preferred to ignore. On my return I resigned as Treasurer of the local Communist Party, and was told by the Secretary that I was a former comrade who once agreed with her Stalinist views, but had now proved to be ’emotionally unstable’, which I understood to be a code meaning ‘a gay man in a steady relationship with a non-Communist’.

Late 1970s/early 1980s – getting arrested with my life-partner outside Upper Heyford RAF/USAF base in protest against nuclear weapons.

Early 1980s - getting stopped by police with some CND supporters crossing a snow-covered field with a mattress, intending to use it to climb over the barbed wire-topped fence into Molesworth Cruise Missile base.  We weren’t arrested, but our mattress was confiscated.

1982 – staging a two-person demonstration with my life-partner in a City of London church where Defence Minister John Nott was speaking. The Falklands/Malvinas War was on at the time, and we held up banners calling him a murderer and reminding him of one of the Ten Commandments: ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’. Nott spoke briefly to my partner trying to justify the government’s policy.

1980s - three visits to the Federative Socialist Republic of Jugoslavia (FSRJ) which both my life-partner and myself felt was not only a beautiful country, but we approved of their economic system – Market Socialism consisting of competing cooperatives and publicly owned enterprises. To us this seemed the future economic system rather than the emphasis on vast and often inefficient State monopolies.

My life-partner lived to see the start of the tragic break-up of the Yugoslav federation and the Soviet Union. He thought the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were mad to leave the Soviet Union, and had similar thoughts about Slovenia and Croatia seeking to leave the Yugoslav federation. I still feel the break-up of these two Socialist unions was a tragedy, as was the annexing of the GDR by West Germany. They should have kept the good and thrown out the bad. They all seem to have done the complete opposite – kept all the corruption and thrown out the achievements of Socialism. Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union also suffered terrible wars, genocides and terrorism after their break-up.

1986 – getting arrested in Oxford Street for sitting-down in protest at the American bombing of Libya. My partner was with me, but was not arrested. I was later released from the police van without charge. This too was a demonstration supported by CND, and its leaders Joan Ruddock and Fr Bruce Kent also sat down outside the nearby American Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

1991 - making a comment on TV’s ‘Question Time’ hosted by Robin Day protesting at the Gulf War in Iraq. The following week my partner and I went on a march protesting against it, and someone recognized me from my brief TV appearance.

1991 – attending a meeting addressed by Tony Benn in a room at the Houses of Parliament calling for an end to the Monarchy. MPs and Peers of the Realm were there, and my partner gave a little speech condemning the royals as descended from a line of murders and crooks. I was proud of him for this speech in such an important place and gathering.

Early 1990s – protesting at the erection of a statue to ‘Bomber Harris’ in The Strand outside St Clement-Danes, the RAF church. A medaled old soldier tried to tear up my placard, and I grabbed at his medals. I later appeared on the pages of the Daily Record in Scotland, seen by my partner’s relatives (my partner had died in September 1991).

I don’t think I’ve done anything particularly outrageous since then, though I have been on several demonstrations, all quite legal. CND demos, the big 2,000,000 strong demo in 2003 against the War in Iraq, and the recent TUC demo against the Cuts as part of the CND contingent demanding we save £100 billion by scrapping the Trident nuclear missile system.

So I have come full-circle, and as I say it has been a learning experience, helped greatly by my life-partner George Miller. I remain a leftwing Socialist, but now realize all human political systems are prone to corruption and I am strongly Spiritualist believing we are here to learn lessons and progress spiritually. Till we do, all political systems will remain corrupt.

I have voted Liberal-Democrat in recent General Elections believing them to be the most progressive of the three main parties, but after the disgraceful Con-Dem coalition like many others I will be deserting the Lib-Dems for another party. Probably Ed Miliband’s Labour Party now it has distanced itself from New Labour.

I did nominally join the European Left, a collection of Communist and leftwing/ecological parties in the European Parliament as an individual supporter. I won’t consider joining most leftwing parties in Britain as they are so anti-EU, and as an internationalist I strongly favor the European Union as a way of stopping further wars in Europe. However I think it can be reformed and made more democratic, and hope future Socialist states might break away to form their own Socialist European Union one day, probably after I’m long gone to the Socialist utopia on the Other Side!

 

This evening I traveled by train and Tube (subway/metro) to Trafalgar Square. I came up the same steps into the Square I did 50 years ago to join the biggest civil disobedience (sit-down) demonstration ever held in this country against the insanity of nuclear weapons. This was in September 1961, and about 10,000 were in the Square that day including Sir Bertrand Russell, John Osborne, Sheila Delaney and many many others. We sat down for hours, a few were arrested, including Canon L. John Collins, Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. This was quite ironic as he wasn’t taking part in the demonstration, merely offering moral support as an onlooker. CND in those days didn’t believe in breaking the law – the demonstration was organized by Bertrand Russell’s break-away direct action group, the Committee of 100. I sat in the Square for hours, but the police couldn’t possibly arrest and process 10,000 people, there weren’t enough police vans, police cells, and the courts couldn’t have coped either. So eventually most of us got up and went home, knowing we’d beaten the State by blocking the Square for hours. There were more sit-down demonstrations in London and other cities, and also at bases and nuclear weapons establishments around the country. More recently CND has adopted the Committee of 100’s tactics, and in the 21st Century has organized sit-downs blocking the gates of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire.

February 1961, at the age of 15, was when I attended my first demonstration. I was then an onlooker, in that same Trafalgar Square where Bertrand Russell was addressing a crowd of Committee of 100 supporters, the first big demo by that organization. I followed as they marched up Whitehall to the Ministry of Defence, pinned a notice on the door, and then staged a sit-down demonstration outside.

Later that year I joined my first march with my local CND group (Welwyn Garden City) along Fleet Street to protest at the major national newspaper offices on the nuclear weapons issue (I can’t now remember the exact details).

So as I came up the steps from the Underground into the Square and saw the CND banner with its big symbol (known as the peace symbol in USA – it is in fact specifically for Nuclear Disarmament as it comprises the semaphore initials N and D enclosed in the circle of life) I was taken back 50 years to those Trafalgar Square demos in 1961. As I was handed a placard proclaiming ‘Scrap Trident’ and spend the money on health, education and public services I remarked to the young woman who gave it to me that it was 50 years ago I attended my first demo in that Square and Bertrand Russell was speaking from the plinth. I said I didn’t expect to still be demonstrating on the same issue of British nuclear weapons 50 years later. She said we’ll carry on for another 50 years if necessary. I hope it won’t be.

Tonight’s small demonstration was organized by an ad-hoc committee, including CND, to protest at the Budget and the cuts to all public services. The only thing escaping cuts being the Trident nuclear missile system, its planned replacement estimated to cost the British taxpayer a colossal 100 billion pounds. We marched down Whitehall, like Bertrand Russell over 50 years ago, this time to Downing Street where there was a demonstration with speakers from various organizations, including CND.

As one speaker said, this was just a small ‘calling card’ in advance of the main TUC (Trades Union Congress) organized demo against the cuts on Saturday. I shall be joining as part of the CND contingent with my current local CND group, Wimbledon (though I actually live in Battersea). The nuclear weapons issue is very relevant to the opposition to the cuts, as scrapping Trident replacement alone would make the cuts unnecessary. This weapons system of mass destruction (the bogus ‘justification’ for the war on Iraq) is not only illegal and useless militarily, we simply cannot afford it, and it is obscene to spend such vast sums when so many live in proverty or are dying from lack of food.

My name is also on an anti-Trident poster in the subway from Westminster Underground station to the Houses of Parliament, next to that of Andrew Papworth, a fellow-campaigner I knew and marched with back in the early 1960s. A few of us olduns are still around, still demonstrating.

I must admit after Tony Blair totally ignored the 2,000,000 strong march against a war in Iraq in 2003 I haven’t seen the point in the many demonstrations against the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now, of course, Libya. It seems, as today’s demo pointed out, while public services are cut there are endless funds for weapons of mass destruction and wars abroad.

However we mustn’t get despondent. Marches and demonstrations alone may not change governments or their policies, but public pressure can. There was talk of strikes tonight organized by the TUC against the cuts. Where we do want cuts is in the insane waste of money on useless and illegal weapons of mass destruction like Trident. Even Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he was against like-for-like replacement of Trident before the last General Election, and before he sold his soul and principles to the Con-Dem coalition.

The anti-nuclear weapons movement has had considerable successes worldwide in the last 50 years. First we had the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere. This would not have happened without public pressure. Then we had the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which also banned underground nuclear weapons tests. Cruise missiles with nuclear warheads were stationed at Molesworth and Greenham Common during the early Thatcher years, but they are now gone, Greenham reclaimed for the local people again. In fact all that is left of Britain’s nuclear arsenal (the Blue Streak missile failed and was scrapped, the Vulcan nuclear bombers are long-gone, Polaris was replaced by Trident) is the Trident submarine-based nuclear missile system, which depends on the Americans for much of its obscene technology. Other successes include the Nuclear Non-Ploriferation Treaty limiting the spread of nuclear weapons and committing all countries to ban them completely (no time limit unfortunately). Also South Africa gave up nuclear weapons having developed the technology and even tested them. It was not immediately invaded as a result!

I am confident Trident will be scrapped since the cost alone is so immense, and the thing is not only illegal and obscene since it indiscriminately targets civilians and would cause massive nuclear fallout/radiation, but it is totally and utterly useless. Nuclear weapons cannot be used, and therefore they cannot deter an aggressor or a terrorist, nor can they prevent or win wars.

They were used against civilians only twice, at the end of the Second World War on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was undoubtedly the Americans rushing to test and demonstrate their newly developed atomic bomb before the War ended. They wanted to demonstrate the effect on civilians and cities, not to end the War as so often proclaimed (the Japanese were already agreeing peace terms) but as the first blast in the Cold War with USA’s wartime ally, the Soviet Union. 

Those two bombs were dropped on Japan as a warning to Joseph Stalin, but all they did were to prompt his spies to make sure the USSR got the Bomb within a few years, and thus the insane nuclear arms race started, and nearly caused a nuclear catastrophe in 1962 with the Cuba Missile Crisis. Caused by nuclear weapons, and not just Soviet ones being shipped to Cuba, but American ones in Turkey bordering on the Soviet Union. The crisis was only defused and the world saved from nuclear war when Kruschov agreed to remove nuclear missile sites from Cuba off the coast of Florida if Kennedy agreed to remove his nuclear missiles from Turkey bordering the USSR. It was a very dangerous nuclear stalemate which nearly destroyed the world, caused by nuclear missiles themselves.

The Japanese, as I said, were already suing for peace before the two atomic bombs were dropped. Their kamikaze pilots proved that the Japanese were willing to die for their God-Emperor, so Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have ended the War. The Americans had to capitulate in order to get Japan to surrender. Yet another compromise, like in the Cuba Missile Crisis decades later. Instead of being arrested and tried for war crimes, Emperor Hirohito was allowed to stay on the Japanese Throne. Once they had secured the safety of their Emperor, the Japanese ended hostilities. Had Hiroshima and Nagasaki been decisive, the Americans would not have had to concede this humiliating concession. Of course they were as guilty of war crimes as Hirohito or Hitler – as were the RAF and the political leaders of the Allied powers. Bombing of civilians which occurred in cities across Europe and the Far East was most definitely a war crime. Cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the victims of Allied bombing raids, all totally illegal and targeting innocent men, women and children who died terrible deaths, many burnt alive, others blasted to bits, and many in Japan dying from cancers caused by the radiation. Even those not born at the time suffered deformities and cancers.

Since World War II the Americans considered using nuclear weapons in the Korean War, also in the Vietnam War, but they desisted because they knew public opinion would never tolerate it. So nuclear weapons have become useless, expensive and very dangerous status symbols. All they do is secure the original five nuclear powers (USA, USSR/Russia, Britain, France and China) a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, where they pass resolutions of doubtful legitimacy such as the recent one permitting intervention in Libya (Russia and a number of other countries abstained).

Nuclear weapons have not prevented wars, nor have they won any. Nuclear armed USA lost the Vietnam War, nuclear armed USSR had to pull out of Afghanistan. Nuclear armed Britain did not deter Galtieri from reclaiming the Malvinas/Falklands, nor did nuclear weapons reclaim them for British settlers. Nuclear armed France had to pull out of Algeria and its former colonies in North Africa. Nuclear armed USA and UK were still attacked on 9/11 and 7/7 by Al Quaida, so what bloody good is the so-called nuclear deterrent quite apart from the moral issue and the fact that such weapons of mass destruction are illegal?

Worse, by using the threat of nuclear annihilation against completely innocent civilians for political ends the nuclear weapons powers set a very bad example to terrorist organizations like Al Quaida, ETA, and the IRA who also used these tactics and targeted innocent civilians with bombs for political motives. The danger is terrorists will get hold of the materials for a nuclear device, and this remains a very real threat so long as these materials and warheads, etc. are produced and stockpiled. No terrorist organization could produce a nuclear device from scratch if the materials and elements were not already being manufactured.

As to military exercises by Nato countries in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, well this just encourages countries like Iran and North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons. Being regarded by Nato as extremist countries led by fanatical regimes, it is unpredictable whether or not they would use nuclear weapons if invaded. So the message being sent out by Nato interventions in extremist dictatorships is: ‘get a nuclear bomb and we’ll leave you well alone’. As they spread to more countries, many led by unstable or extremist regimes, then use of nuclear weapons becomes much more likely. The fact that India and Pakistan are now nuclear powers is very worrying given the wars and skirmishes that have occurred in the past between them, and the extremist and unstable elements in the area. But persuading such countries to give up The Bomb will not be very successful while the five big nuclear powers insist on holding on to theirs. A worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, carefully monitored, has to be implemented as suggested, though not enforced with a time limit, by the present Nuclear Non-Ploriferation Treaty.

While nuclear weapons held by the big 5 nuclear powers have not helped win any wars or deterred terrorist attacks this is partly because their use is just not credible in any conceivable situation. Did General Galtieri really believe if he occupied the Malvinas/Falklands the British would nuke Buenos Aires? The Americans thought about nuking Hanoi in Vietnam and Pyongyang in North Korea, but decided against it – public opinion would not tolerate another Hiroshima or Nagasaki. There was also the threat of Soviet nuclear retaliation of course, though this didn’t apply in the case of Argentina/Malvinas/Falklands or France/Algeria/Morocco.

Nuclear weapons must be scrapped. The Nuclear Non-Ploriferation Treaty commits nations not to acquire nuclear weapons, and those that already have them to get rid of them as soon as practicable. The nuclear powers have ignored this provision of the Treaty, as witnessed by UK planning to replace Trident. However nuclear weapons stocks have been vastly reduced but still there are enough to make the planet uninhabitable.

I predict Trident will be scrapped probably because of the enormous cost which our economy cannot afford, but possibly because the Americans will pull the plug on it. Barack Obama is keen, unlike his predecessors, on getting rid of all nuclear weapons worldwide, and should USA ever scrap Trident Britain can do little about it. So much for our so-called ‘independent nuclear deterrent’. It is neither ‘independent’ nor a ‘deterrent’. Just a nuclear membership card to the UN Security Council. This needs to be scrapped, and all UN decisions/resolutions passed by majority vote in the General Assembly with no nation having a veto.

Yes, I’m still marching against nuclear weapons 50 years on, and I will do so as long as they exist, certainly as long as Britain has them, and as long as I am able to. When I can no longer march, I’ll continue to campaign in other ways via the Internet, etc. We’ve achieved a lot in 50 years, and a world free of nuclear weapons cannot now be that far away since even military men are now admitting they are totally useless and a complete waste of money.