Stuart Hall: his significance for CND

Stuart Hall was one of the most significant and active figures in the early years of CND. And by active I mean, really active. Even a relatively brief look at the archives – both CND’s at the LSE, and the Stuart Hall archive at Birmingham University, show an intense level of activity on his part: extensive public speaking and debating, producing papers and pamphlets that had a profound effect on CND’s policy and internal discussions, participating in the Campaign Caravan and Workshops in 1962 and 3, part of the editorial committee of the journal War and Peace, a member of the literature committee and the pressure group – which monitored and responded to the press and media, and no doubt much more. Archive documents show flyers for a big CND rally at the Royal Albert Hall entitled Signpost to a Sane World, at which Hall spoke alongside Michael Foot, AJP Taylor, JB Priestley and other great figures from CND’s early years. But it wasn’t just high-profile work. His level of in-depth engagement at all levels of CND is indicated by flyers and leaflets; one example lists him as speaking at a London Region CND weekend school in Hastings, on positive neutralism.

And at this exact same time, Stuart was also intensely active in the New Left as it emerged and developed at that same time. He was one of the first editors of Universities and Left Review, and from 1960 he was the founder editor of New Left Review. That’s quite an extraordinary level of output. And he was still in his 20s – 27 when the first issue of New Left Review came out.

It seems to me that the world at that time, when Stuart Hall was erupting onto the political stage, must have been an intensely dynamic and interesting period, an explosion of ideas and events. And of course massive change on the international level, with the end of empires and increasing decolonisation. Hall was part of the Windrush generation, travelling from Jamaica to Britain to take up a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford in 1951; while there he was no doubt part of the intellectual ferment that would contribute to the birth of both CND and the New Left.

This was the time when ‘youth culture’ emerged as a distinct social and cultural phenomenon, as education and wider opportunities created a more affluent and articulate generation of young people. Indeed, opportunities were improved across all economic classes and social mobility was better than it had ever been before. As Harold Macmillan said, ‘You’ve never had it so good’, and for many people this was genuinely the case.

Britain’s traditional self-identity was changing, and there were plenty of people in Britain who were eager to take part in shaping a new society with different values.

CND in its early years was inextricably linked to the social radicalisation of the time and it became a magnet and a focus for radical politics and ideas. The early Aldermaston Marches represented microcosms of the new Britain, articulating both widespread popular dissent and the social rebellion of the youth of the time. In many respects it was through the early mobilisations of the anti-nuclear movement that the radical politics of what were to become the new social movements were first expressed.

Of course the events of 1956, with the significant impact of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, the Hungarian Uprising and the Suez crisis, helped shape the movement at that time, not least Suez which reshaped for all time the US/UK relationship into one of clear UK subordination, including their nuclear relationship. The emergence and crystallization of the New Left in that context formed a strand within the early development of CND, albeit one amongst numerous political, religious, humanitarian and intellectual strands which constituted the diverse body of CND.

I would like to talk in a bit more depth about two of Hall’s contributions in particular: on NATO and on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1960, he wrote a discussion pamphlet for the London Regional Council entitled ‘NATO and the Alliances’. Central to his argument was that Britain was essentially a subset of the US in nuclear terms and while campaigning against British nukes and against US missile bases in Britain are both vital, CND had to get to the heart of the matter and oppose NATO. As he wrote:

“My point is that we have reached a stage in the nuclear crisis where CND must extend its protest against the whole strategy, or fail to come to grips with the source of the danger itself”. The whole strategy that he referred to, was the “overriding strategy” of the NATO nuclear alliance, to use nuclear weapons in the event of an attack.

His debunking of NATO is as relevant today as it was in 1960, as is his robust critique of Labour supporters of NATO:

“The Labour Party apologists for ten years of bipartisan support for NATO often argue that, so long as she remains within the alliance, Britain can at least exert a restraining influence on her less temperate allies. This case does not bear examination. On every important issue, Britain has capitulated to the strategic and military imperatives of a nuclear alliance.”

Hall also used the pamphlet to develop his argument for breaking out of the cold war bipolar divide:

“The point would be that Britain, disencumbered of both bomb and alliance, would then be free to act as a rallying point outside both nuclear alliances: a focus for all those other nations, within and without the alliances, which could be persuaded by the weight of international opinion, to join an offensive for disengagement and disarmament.”

Here, Hall was introducing the New Left idea, which Martin Shaw describes, in his new history of CND, as its “key international idea”, of “positive neutralism”. It was of course not an idea limited to the New Left, having various expressions, from the Bandung Conference in 1955, to the developing Non-Aligned Movement, founded in Yugoslavia in 1961 and very much based on the principles of Bandung.

At the CND conference in 1960, a NATO withdrawal motion submitted by London Region, on the basis of Hall’s arguments, was passed, thus ensuring a CND anti-NATO position that remains today. The resolution took CND beyond a solely anti-British nukes position to take a position which Hall said made it “more political than it has been before”, by challenging the whole framework of UK foreign policy. Indeed he argued that CND should hammer out the elements of a new foreign policy. Martin Shaw quotes the veteran CND organiser Peggy Duff as saying “CND was now asking for a revolution in the foreign and defence policy of Britain”, which likely increased establishment hostility towards CND but was fully embraced as the right approach for CND.

A subsequent and more difficult political intervention by Stuart Hall, came in late 1962, shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis that October. Published eventually as Steps Towards Peace, Hall’s analysis of the Cuban crisis and the tactics and strategy that should follow, were written initially for the leadership under the title ‘Ten Demands – A disarmament initiative in the light of the Cuban Crisis’. Hall’s view was that the Cuban crisis had come so close to the edge that there was a willingness in a ‘middle section of opinion’ to somewhat change track and back disarmament initiatives. These would not become campaigners but could become a pressure group. Hall believed they could be mobilised for a programme of concrete demands over a 12 month period. He saw this as a minimum programme for CND but a maximum programme for the middle ground.

The document went on to state:

“To say that CND should put forward a set of limited proposals does not mean that CND should become a campaign for limited ends.”

The proposals included the establishment of nuclear free zones, withdrawal of all nuclear weapons back to the US and Soviet Union, and the development of an independent foreign policy. In themselves they were all good proposals, although they led to some controversy within CND; some felt that they were incremental steps, and tactical in their approach, rather than the principled maximum demands on which CND’s campaigning was based. This debate has continued within CND on and off over the years, and we actually embrace both the incremental and the maximalist, we understand that they are not counterposed, which is of course what Hall was arguing.

During the few crucial and foundational years in which Hall was in the CND leadership, he was extremely productive and dynamic, making an outstanding contribution to the movement in both theoretical and activist terms. He exemplified the spirit of the age, breaking through and challenging both received wisdom and intellectual routinism, helping to build a mass movement that has had outstanding political impact for over six decades, shaping and giving rise to diverse protests, up to the present day. His words when writing on NATO strategy and the US/UK nuclear strategy are absolutely relevant today, whether we are campaigning on Gaza, Ukraine, Trident replacement or US nuclear weapons coming back to Britain: “we have reached a stage in the nuclear crisis where CND must extend its protest against the whole strategy, or fail to come to grips with the source of the danger itself”. That is Hall’s legacy for CND.

This paper was Kate Hudson’s contribution to the conference organised by the Stuart Hall Archive at Birmingham University, ‘Stuart Hall: Positions and Trajectories’. The conference is an opportunity to assess the lasting significance of Hall’s cultural, political and pedagogical interventions throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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