17.10.2001

CND complains

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was a joint sponsor, along with the Socialist Alliance, of the September 30 demonstration outside the Labour Party conference in Brighton. However, as the following e-mail to the SA makes clear, the CND is uncomfortable with its relationship with the SA, and particularly with the Socialist Workers Party. This is only to be expected, as the CND has long been wary of the revolutionary left - its preference historically being for the safer company of liberalistic pacifists, trade union bureaucrats and senile ?official communists?

I have just visited your website and was surprised to find that your report on the CND action on Saturday October 13 was billed and reported on as a ?Stop the War Coalition national demonstration?.

I am concerned to see that CND were given no credit whatsoever for the demo, which we organised, stewarded, and paid for! I am also concerned to read your comment that ?the high turnout was in large part due to the efforts of the Socialist Alliance and its component organisations?, with no reference whatsoever to the work of CND.

This does not bode well for future relations, and I would be very grateful if you would amend your website accordingly. I am forwarding this to all CND staff and officers for their consideration.

Kim Manning-Cooper
CND fundraising and marketing officer

The Alliance replies

The multiple complaints from various office-holders in CND about the post-demo website report seem over the top. Notification of the demo posted on the website for three weeks prior to the demo clearly stated it was called by CND. Nationally, the Socialist Alliance produced no leaflets or posters advertising the demo due to lack of funds, but if we had we would have made it abundantly clear who had called the demo.

Jim Gilbert is doing an excellent job with the website and got a report up very quickly on the demo. Reluctant to produce his own take, he lifted the report from a press release from the Stop the War Coalition, which was written by SA executive member Mike Marqusee (Stop the War Coalition also has prominent SA members sponsoring it and on its steering committee). In providing an abbreviated version, Jim quite accidentally left out reference to CND, which was a minor mistake easily rectified on the basis of a quick fraternal phone call.

For the rest of it, I think the Socialist Alliance and the Stop the War Coalition should take immense pride in the very substantial contribution we both made to the mobilisation for the demonstration, unrecognised unfortunately by the CND executive, at least as far as the Socialist Alliance was concerned, by the lack of any initial invitation to the Socialist Alliance to speak from the Trafalgar Square platform and a subsequent refusal to invite Dave Nellist onto the platform as chair of the Socialist Alliance when it was proposed to CND by both Dave and myself (following the resolution passed at the last Liaison meeting).

We should all now throw ourselves into building the next big national demonstration against the war called by the Stop the War Coalition for Central London on Sunday November 18. This can be even bigger than October 13 and shake the government even more.

Rob Hoveman
SA vice-chair