Protesting and surviving – those who took a stand for nuclear disarmament

Mary Robinson recently recalled the heyday of CND more than 60 years ago when she and hundreds of thousands of others protested against nuclear weapons. At the peak of the CND phenomenon in Britain, in 1962, 150,000 marched to London. Robinson wondered why the grandchildren of those idealistic young people – with their placards, duffel coats, the odd guitar, or a babe in arms – do not follow their example.

Irish CND was established in the same year as its British parent, 1958, and women played a prominent role. Betty de Courcy Ireland defined CND’s demand for disarmament in simple terms: “All life is sacred, and any destruction of life is evil.” She also insisted on the right of Irish women to have their say in political affairs – the priority was the nightmare of a nuclear war and consequent world annihilation.

At Irish CND’s first public meeting, the Nobel laureate Ernest Walton called on the Irish government to continue to support all disarmament measures such as its initiative at the UN to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

In 1962, the possibility of Ireland joining the European Community boosted Irish CND’s campaign against “the Bomb”. Would Ireland now have to join a military alliance? Helen Chenevix, a longstanding women’s rights advocate, argued that the taoiseach, Seán Lemass, wanted to keep the public in the dark about any military commitment arising from EEC membership. “We have not been told whether membership of Nato, a likely political implication, will mean foreign bases again in Ireland, and nuclear bases at that.”

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Walton’s colleague at Trinity College, the Independent Senator WB Stanford, declared that those who opposed the possibility of Ireland joining a military alliance would “stand up and be counted”. Stanford contended that there were “many serious-minded, well-informed and anti-communist citizens” who would deplore Ireland entering a military bloc that involved “the acceptance of nuclear armament”.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when President John F Kennedy imposed a blockade to prevent Soviet ships landing in Cuba, the world come as close as it ever has to a nuclear war between the two cold war superpowers. In Dublin, Noël Browne, an Independent TD, and a small number of CND supporters, were brutally prevented from marching to the US embassy. The photograph of Browne and an aggressive Garda dog became an iconic image of the 1960s in Ireland.

Questioning Lemass on his bid to join the EEC, Browne accused him of attempting to involve the state in the Cold War by dumping “traditional neutrality”. Lemass stated that “99 per cent of the people” opposed the Soviet Union’s “communist empire” – Ireland was not “politically neutral” in the cold war and aligned itself with the West.

The question of Ireland joining a nuclear military alliance faded into the background when Ireland’s application to join the EEC fell along with Britain’s, in January 1963. However, in the late 1960s, Irish students joined their peers throughout the Western world and marched against America’s war in Vietnam.

A new generation of radical women came into the limelight. Bernadette Devlin became world famous following her election in the North as an MP. Máirín de Burca acquired a high media profile as a feminist and civil rights champion, not just because of her egg-throwing exploits during President Richard Nixon’s visit to Ireland, in October 1970. Moira Woods, dressed in wig and gown, conducted a mock trial of Nixon, accusing him of war crimes in Vietnam.

These left-wingers also campaigned against EEC membership, and, they feared, inevitable NATO membership. Prior to the referendum on the issue in 1972, the anti-EEC lobby highlighted the ability of the State to maintain its military neutrality. Commitments to Nato of some kind arose: “Ireland would soon be forced to join” and allow “bases to be established at Shannon, Cork and elsewhere”.

In the 1980s, as President Ronald Reagan stepped up the rhetoric against what he termed the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, American military spending increased dramatically on bomber aircraft and missile systems. The CND movement experienced a revival, and argued that the advances in Nato’s missile technology were designed to allow the US to fight a nuclear war in Europe.

The argument against nuclear weapons was articulated when Reagan visited Ireland in June 1984. This time the protestors had an unlikely ally – clergy, nuns in particular – to demonstrate against US foreign policy. Thirty-three women participating in a Women for Disarmament gathering, opposite the American ambassador’s residence, were arrested.

Reagan’s address to Ireland’s parliamentarians focused on East-West relations and US policies in Central America. More than 20 parliamentarians in total were absent for the speech, including three TDs who walked out, and a human rights lawyer and senator, Mary Robinson.

Five years later, in August 1989, commemorating the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the leading German Green Petra Kelly told her audience in Dublin that nuclear power claimed victims throughout the world. “Hiroshima is everywhere” – above all, at this point, in the vicinity of Chernobyl.

The deployment of even more missiles in Europe ceased, of course, when the cold war concluded shortly afterwards. And, in tandem with this, mass protest seeking global disarmament came to an end. But new security challenges, and wars, emerged.

It is ironic now that the leader of Russia – a country whose people suffered so much in the second World War – should threaten his neighbours with nuclear weapons. Hiroshima, to coin a phrase, still haunts us.