23 Facts About CND

CND began in November 1957 when a committee was formed, including Canon John Collins as chairman, Bertrand Russell as president and Peggy Duff as organising secretary.

Since then, CND has periodically been at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK.

In recent years CND has extended its campaigns to include opposition to US and British policy in the Middle East, rather as it broadened its anti-nuclear campaigns in the 1960s to include opposition to the Vietnam War.

In collaboration with the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain, CND has organised anti-war marches under the slogan "Don't Attack Iraq", including protests on 28 September 2002 and 15 February 2003.

CND is based in London and has national groups in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, regional groups in Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, the East Midlands, Kent, London, Manchester, Merseyside, Mid Somerset, Norwich, South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, Southern England, South West England, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands and Yorkshire, and local branches.

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Organisations that had previously opposed British nuclear weapons supported CND, including the British Peace Committee, the Direct Action Committee, the National Committee for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests and the Quakers.

Notable supporters of the Irish CND included Peadar O'Donnell, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington and Hubert Butler.

Formation of CND marked a significant change in the international peace movement, which from the late 1940s had been dominated by the World Peace Council, an anti-western organisation directed by the Soviet Communist Party.

CND represented the growth of the unaligned peace movement and its detachment from the WPC.

Symbol adopted by CND, designed for them in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, became the international peace symbol.

In 1958 CND had cautiously accepted direct action as a possible method of campaigning, but, largely under the influence of its chairman, Canon Collins, the CND leadership opposed any sort of unlawful protest.

CND resigned in 1964 and put his energies into the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace.

Support for CND dwindled somewhat after the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, one of the things for which it had been campaigning.

The nearest CND has come to having an electoral arm was the Independent Nuclear Disarmament Election Campaign which stood candidates in a few local elections during the 1960s.

The CND logo topped Glastonbury's pyramid stage, while publicity regularly proclaimed proudly: 'This Event is the most effective Anti-Nuclear Fund Raiser in Europe'.

An academic study of CND gives the following membership figures from 1967 onwards:.

CND's growing support in the 1980s provoked opposition from several sources, including Peace Through Nato, the British Atlantic Committee, Women and Families for Defence, the Conservative Party's Campaign for Defence and Multilateral Disarmament, the Coalition for Peace through Security, the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, and The 61, a private sector intelligence agency.

The activities of anti-CND organisations are said to have included research, publication, mobilising public opinion, counter-demonstrations, working within the Churches, smears against CND leaders and spying.

CPS claimed that Bruce Kent, the general secretary of CND and a Catholic priest, was a supporter of IRA terrorism.

Some of CND's opponents claimed that CND was a communist or Soviet-dominated organisation, a charge its supporters denied.

CND sued for defamation and the FCS settled on the second day of the trial, apologised and paid damages and costs.

CND's said that her work was determined more by the political importance of CND than by any security threat posed by subversive elements within it.

In 1990, it was discovered in the archive of the Stasi that a member of CND's governing council, Vic Allen, had passed information to them about CND.