Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), founded in 1958, is a British pacifist organisation that calls for the United Kingdom to unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons, for international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Britain's internal security services, MI5, closely monitored the CND and considered it a subversive group with communist links.^[1] In 1985, an MI5 officer involved in the monitoring of the CND resigned and released information to Channel 4 about her investigations. She alleged that the investigation was more politically-motivated than related to any actual subversive threat.^[2] The CND treasurer was believed by MI5 to be a 'communist sympathiser'. John Cox, its chairman from 1971 to 1977, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.^[3]

In the spring of 1959, as interest in, and membership of, the CND was growing, they were approached by the communist-led British Peace Committee, with the aim of joining forces and supporting each other's initiatives. CND, however, rejected these overtures.^[4]

In an attempt to squash allegations of Kremlin support, Bruce Kent, the then-general secretary of CND and a Roman Catholic priest, offered a £100 award to anyone who prove a link between the CND and Moscow existed. The award was never claimed.^[5]

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