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Michael Foot in Trafalgar Square on the Aldermaston march of 1964 with journalist James Cameron, and pushing along his step-grandson Jason Lehel |
If we forget about the bomb, it could yet blow up in our faces
Easter Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the first Aldermaston march against nuclear weapons. In a transcribed interview, Michael Foot tells how a new byelaw banning overnight camps is posing a threat to women who have protested on the same site since the early 1980s
RIGHT from 1957, when the whole thing started, and even before the marches, there were big meetings at the house of Canon Collins in St Paul’s.
That’s when we started on the whole programme on the abolition of the bomb. We knew we should embark on it because of their monstrous nature.
JB Priestley had written on the subject for the New Statesman, but his wife was stronger than he was. She became one of the chief organisers and right from the beginning played a big part in the whole thing. Women knew they would be affected more by the bombs than anyone else. My wife Jill was very strong on that, right from the beginning.
After they decided to have the meeting the arguments about the bomb became stronger. We had well-known speakers including philosopher Bertrand Russell and journalist James Cameron. But the chap who made the strongest speech and set the whole thing alight was historian AJP Taylor. His speech changed the mood in the country and led to the marches.
The marches caused great debate about whether we should oppose all bombs and whether we would agree to unilateral action as well.
Up here in Hampstead we had a very strong CND – one of the strongest in the country. We knew the destiny was Aldermaston, we did not know so much about what was going to happen along the way.
It turned out to be much stronger than we expected. People came from lots of different places. James Cameron was on the march. He had seen the explosion of the bomb in the Far East. He came to Aldermaston with us.
AJP Taylor was appealing to the young people all the time to back the campaign. He was appealing to them – and they were there on the march.
The women’s movement was particularly strong. Women believed that the explosions would affect women all over the world – in particular in childbirth. (The explosions in Chernobyl in 1986 also had a big effect). People saw the effect on women and said it would happen again, and that if we didn’t get the thing banned or stopped altogether the human race was under threat. Some of the women on the march were understanding that better than the others.
I remember the women’s camp well – Jill and I went there in 1983 during my general election campaign. It was done to stop the latest development weapons.
They were putting the message across very well – and the message went out right across the world.
I was leader of the Labour Party then. The two of us made a special visit to support them and had been back from time to time. Right from the start the Labour Party supported what the women were doing then.
The women were attacked in ways that were really odious. That bloody fellow (Michael) Heseltine, in (Margaret) Thatcher’s government, was defending the whole bomb business. But not only was he very rude to us he was also to those on the camp. He behaved very badly to his own civil servant, a woman, who came out in favour of the camp. He was against the whole campaign entirely. Heseltine was the worst offender of the lot. He was defence minister, but he didn’t have any great military reputation and when he came to the Commons I said the nearest thing he had to military experience was fighting the women on the camp.
We also mocked him as much as we possibly could. He tried to stop the camp but he could not stop them doing it because it was not illegal.
It’s quite wrong if they are now trying to ban the Aldermaston camp. The Labour Party went up to the camp in order to show our support for them. They shouldn’t be doing it. It is quite wrong. They have a right to protest.
The idea of breaking up women’s meetings there is absolutely outrageous. They have as much right to protest there about it as anybody else. It’s quite wrong that they should be making new rules, especially if they are trying to stop women doing what they are doing.
At the beginning of this Parliament the Labour government was elected and had a meeting of all the countries on Non-Proliferation Treaty. Some countries signed it and some went back promising to return. Britain especially made that undertaking that we would come back to it. Peter Hain was very strong in saying countries should not be going for weapons at all.
The only solution is to have that treaty carried out properly.
Britain has signed the obligation to come back again and see about the abolition. We have quite a number of countries that have signed it that have the capacity to make the bomb. It is still the only direction.
Unless the whole thing is put into reverse, sooner or later we will blow ourselves to pieces.
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