TOL' PHD ýkt 10(u)kJJ cctu4v EUROPEAN NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT A study of transnational social movement strategy Patrick D. M. Burke A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degreeof Doctor of Philosophy June 2004 Abstract This thesis is a study of an attempt to help createa transnational.movement againstthe nuclear arms race and the Cold War in the 1980s.The attempt began with the drafting and launch of the Appeal for EuropeanNuclear Disarmamentin early 1980. The thesis describesand analysesthe work of the British group, EuropeanNuclear Disarmament,or END, which was founded in order to further the aims outlined in the Appeal. The thesis examinesEND's work in three, overlapping, geographical areas:Britain, where END actedmainly as a pressuregroup on and/or ginger group within CND in an attempt to internationalize - END-ize - its work; in WesternEurope (including Britain), where END (with other Westernpeace groups) was trying to createand sustainenduring ties amongstWestern peace groups; and acrossthe East-West divide, where END was one of a number of groups that engagedin dialogue with independentforces in the Soviet bloc - while maintaining relations with the regimes- with the aim of creating some kind of pan-Europeanalliance that would bring together above all theseforces and Westernpeace groups. The study is conductedin terms of an explanatoryframework that emphasizesthe pre-existing networks out of which END emerged;the distinctive END worldview or 'frame' and the ways in which END supporterscampaigned in its terms, tried to persuadeothers to adopt it, and/or adaptedit - above all in dialogue with independentgroups in the Soviet bloc; the resourcesand structure that helped determinethe work END activists could do; the way in which this campaigningwas shapedby END's relationship with other peacegroups, in Britain above all CND; and the political opportunities and constraintsthat END activists faced. To date there has been no full-length study of END nor one that analyses the various dimensionsof its campaignand how they shapedeach other. This thesis thus aims to be a contribution to our knowledge of the West European peacemovements of the 1980s;it also hopesto add to our understandingof transnational social-movementcampaigning. CONTENTS Acknowledgments Abbreviations Chapter 1: END: a Transnational Initiative in the Western Peace Movement 1 Explanatory Framework 8 The Argument of this Thesis 26 Sources and Method 32 Outline of This Study 33 Chapter 2: Beginnings 35 Peace Movements Emerge 35 The Founding of END 39 The END Frame 48 Chapter 3: Resources and Organization 62 END's Supporters/Members 62 'We are not an organisation, but an idea' 67 Finances 73 END's Structure 74 Disputes over Structure and Resources 81 Resources (Partly) Outside the Peace Movement 87 CND as a Resource for END 88 Chapter 4: END in the British Peace Movement 90 CND: Members, Structure, Frame 90 END: Intertwined with CND 94 Influencing CND 100 Chapter 5: Campaigning across Western Europe 118 Peace Researcher Conferences 118 Activists' Meetings 119 First Steps towards a European Conference 121 The Convention 'Process' 124 Frame Disputes in British END 137 Chapter 6: East-West Dialogue 144 Part T British END's East-West Relations 144 Political Opportunities and Constraints 144 A Twin-Track Policy 156 Part IT British END, the END Convention 'Process' and the European Network for East-West Dialogue 184 East-West Strategies in the END Convention Process 184 The European Network for East-West Dialogue 197 Frame Disputes in British END over East-West Relations 199 Chapter 7: Success or Failure? 206 Creating an Organization 206 Building a Movement 208 Interviews conducted 218 Bibliography 220 Appendix: Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament 242 Chapter 1 A Transnational Initiative in the Western Peace Movement In the 1980s,in Western Europe, tens, sometimeshundreds, of thousands- occasionally millions - of people campaignedagainst the nuclear arms race, the Cold War, and the nuclear weaponspolicies of the superpowersand their alliances (though above all againstthe USA and NATO). These 'peace movements9- to use shorthand' - emerged between 1979 and 1981 and began to go into decline from the middle of the decade. Simultaneously, similar cmovements' were active in many other countries around the world, including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and various small countries in the Pacific. There was also peace campaigning in some countries in the Soviet bloc. Maguire has argued that the INF crisis was international in scope but 2 fought the level' -) The in Western Europe was out on national . mobilizations were national in the sense that each movement was mostly made up of people living within the borders of the particular country; and these people directed most of their campaigning at their own national government since this had taken, or was threatening to take, the particular policy decision with which the campaigners disagreed. The organizations or coalitions that dominated the mobilizations were national: for example, in Norway, Nei til Atomvapen;0 in ' Movement activists and many observers called them 'peace movements'. However, the term was contested in the West: some opponents of the peace mobilizations challenged the latter's claim that the movements promoted peace and that their opponents (for example, governments) by implication favoured war. In addition, some of the Western peace campaigners' interlocutors in the East were at pains to point out that 'peace' had to include peace within states, that is, respect for human rights (see Chapter 6). However, unless otherwise indicated, I use the terms 'peace activist' and 'peace movement' neutrally, that is, as alternatives to 'anti- nuclear weapons activist', 'anti-nuclear weapons movement' and similar terms. For a discussion of 'movement', see below, 'Assessing Successand Failure'. 2 Diarmuld John Maguire, 'New Social Movements and Old Political Institutions: the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1979-1989', PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1990, 25. ('INF': Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces.) 2 West Germany, the Koordinationsausschussand its (in 1983-84) 30 member organizations;3 in Britain, the Campaign for Nuclear Disan-nament;and in the Netherlands,the Inter-Church PeaceCouncil (IKV). The publicly visible high points of the peacecampaigns were the huge national demonstrationsin many West Europeancapitals in the autumn of 1981 and 1983. Many of the studies in English of the peacemobilizations of the 1980shave thus, understandably, 4 focused on national movements. They have tendedto analysethe domestic conditions facilitating or hindering peacecampaigning; the demandsmade on national governments;and the allies at home national movementshave or have not been able to find. Yet thesemovements, as some scholarshave shown, also had a strong 5 'transnational' element. That is - in a very simple definition - the movements, or parts of them, were regularly linked with each other across national borders. On the one hand, the national movements had been brought into being above all by NATO's 12 December 1979 decision to deploy cruise and Pershing 11 missiles as well as by the deterioration of East-West relations and the perceived growing bellicosity of the United States government (see Chapter 2). As a result - despite having additional national priorities - the movements had a central concern in common: opposing the deployments of these weapons systems. On the other hand, the movements were connected with regard to actions and organization. Examples of campaigners crossing borders to participate in peace campaigning in the 1980s include activists from northern Europe taking part in the peace camp at Comiso in Sicily; women from West Germany, Holland and Sweden making up the 30,000 who 'embraced' Greenham Common air base on 12 December 1982; activists from Italy, 3 Steve Breyman, Movement Genesis: Social Movement Theory and the 1980s West German Peace Movement, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998,203-4. 4 See note 12 for some examples. ' Studies of this transnationalism include Chapter 5 of April Carter, Peace Movements: International Protest and World Politics since 1945, LondoniNew York, Longman, 1992 and Thomas Rochon, Mobilizingfor Peace: The Antinuclear Movements in WesternEurope, London, Adamantine Press, 1988. 3 Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweden, West Germany, in and Ireland joining Belgian campaigners Brussels at Easter 1981 to demonstrate for a nuclear-free Europe; and the peace march from Copenhagen to Paris in summer 1981, inspired by the Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament, which passed through five countries, picking up support on the 6 way. The more institutionalized, longer-term transnational networks of, and links between,national movementsincluded the International Peace Coordination and Communication Centre (IPCC), under whose auspicesof representativesof non-aligned peacegroups in Western Europe and the USA met regularly to plan tactics and strategies;and the annual END Conventionsat which non-aligned movements,political parties, trade unions, churchesand other institutions came together to exchangeideas and plan strategy.7 The Western peacemovement also containedanother a kind of transnational element. From the early 1980s, some groups - motivated by the desire to create some kind of "trans-continental movement" against the anns race and the Cold War - engaged in dialogue, and