Subcultural and social innovations in the campaign for nuclear disarmament

McKay, GA 2004, 'Subcultural and social innovations in the campaign for nuclear disarmament' , Peace Review: Journal of Social Justice, 16 (4) , pp. 429-438.

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Abstract

In times of war and rumours of peace, when ‘terrorism’ and ‘torture’ are being revisited and redefined, one of the things some of us should be doing is talking and writing about cultures of peace. In what follows, I ask questions about the place of culture in protest by considering the cluster of issues around the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from its founding in London in 1958. I look at instances of (sub)cultural innovation within the social and political spaces CND helped make available during its two high periods of activity and membership: the 1950s (campaigning against the hydrogen bomb) and the 1980s (campaigning against U.S.-controlled cruise missiles). What particularly interests me here is tracing the reticence and tensions within CND to the (sub)cultural practices with which it had varying degrees of involvement or complicity. It is not my wish to argue in any way that there was a kind of dead hand of CND stifling cultural innovation from within; rather I want to tease out ambivalences in some of its responses to the intriguing and energetic cultural practices it helped birth. CND was founded at a significant moment for emerging political cultures. Its energies and strategies contributed to the rise of the New Left, to new postcolonial identities and negotiations in Britain, and to the Anti-Apartheid Movement. In what ways did it attempt to police the ‘outlaw emotions’ it helped to release?

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The published version in the journal also contains a number of images: a jazz band on an Aldermaston CND march, Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp poster, Crass 'Nagasaki nightmare' record sleeve, Glastonbury CND Festival programme cover.
Themes:	Subjects / Themes > H Social Sciences > HX Socialism. Communism. Anarchism Subjects / Themes > M Music and Books on Music > M Music Subjects / Themes > D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain Memory, Text and Place Subjects outside of the University Themes
Schools:	Schools > School of Arts & Media Schools > School of Arts & Media > Arts, Media and Communication Research Centre
Journal or Publication Title:	Peace Review: Journal of Social Justice
Publisher:	Routledge
Refereed:	Yes
ISSN:	1040 2659
Related URLs:	Publisher
Depositing User:	Prof George McKay
Date Deposited:	15 Oct 2009 09:46
Last Modified:	16 Feb 2022 08:34
URI:	https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/2287

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