The Peace Movement’s Nuclear Winter Silence

Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the prospect of a nuclear war, seemed more likely. Yet, to look at our international peace movement today, you could be forgiven for being unaware of the fact that Putin’s botched invasion of Ukraine has now put us on a terrifying trajectory towards the deployment of nuclear warheads. 

Indeed, quite a wee bit of effort is required to find any significant statement of solidarity with the Ukrainian people facing the very real possibility of a nuclear strike or any significant criticism of Russia on the official websites and social media accounts of a few prominent anti-war and anti-nuclear groups. 

 

In fact, a quick scan of some major peace organisations media suggests that we are campaigning on, and talking about, pretty much everything, apart from the prospect of a nuclear strike from Russia. To paraphrase Topol from Fiddler on the Roof: You may ask; where are the mass demonstrations and huge peace marches through our major capital cities? Where is the coordinated global campaign for de-escalation or the celebrity endorsed, high profile demands for peace talks? I'll tell you, I don't know? 

 

However, I do have a theory as to why many within our peace movement have said very little on Russia. A clue can perhaps be found in a recent Trident Ploughshares statement which suggests that ‘Instead of pointing the finger at the Russians or the Chinese let us put our own house in order’, which is of course entirely correct, we should indeed try and influence our own Governments first and foremost and acknowledge our own guilt and crimes, especially with regards to nuclear proliferation, as it says in the Gospels ‘first take the plank out of your own eye’.

 

Even so, we are also our ‘brother's keeper’ and I can’t help feeling that this highly anti-western approach, ignores the blatant war crimes and militarism of others and lets the likes of Putin entirely off the hook and in doing so, alienates us from the vast majority of the wider public, who identify Russia as the main aggressors in this conflict. The same Ploughshares article discussing Ukraine and the threat of Nuclear conflict then goes onto reference things like British colonial rule, low wages, the climate emergency, describing our Government as ‘bullying, autocratic and mendacious, drawing us into a more repressive and abusive system’.

 

Again, all of this may well be true and as peace activists, we acknowledge that there is such a thing as intersectionality, we know that war making and the culture of violence and militarism ultimately have their roots in imperialism, poverty, racism, injustice, exploitation, economic inequality and environmental destruction.

 

Therefore, these issues are very much the business of anti-nuclear campaigners, yet much like the Scottish Green Party, focusing on every single social issue under the sun, apart from our actual day job of trying to prevent nuclear war, subsequently leaves us wide open to those wild accusations of social engineering and so-called ‘Cultural Marxism’. And to be honest, some of this criticism is possibly justified, especially with regards to some within the wider peace movement applying, what many would describe as a ‘Marxist’ analysis, through endlessly identifying NATO as the true originator of the conflict or failing to ever describe Russia as an imperialist power. 

 

For me, this tactic is a failure and will never win people over to the cause of peace. In reality, there are no significant social conditions, western provocations or economic circumstances which could ever somehow justify Russia’s own chauvinism, ultra-nationalism and expansionism. 

You don’t have to be a cheerleader for Trident, US foreign policy and a fan of the British establishment or an apologist for the EU and NATO to accept the fact that the blame for the invasion and subsequent nuclear escalation rests squarely with Vladimir Putin, rather than Biden, Blair, Bush etc...

   

Fortunately, the Fellowship of Reconciliation explicitly condemned the invasion and CND continue to vocally support the Russian anti-war movement and strongly condemns North Korea’s pre-emptive nuclear strike policy, while still continuing to share a platform with the heavily criticised ‘Stop The War’ coalition, who mostly criticise only NATO and the West, and who were previously accused by critics of failing to organise or support protests against the Assad dictatorship and the regime’s massacre of peaceful democracy protesters in 2011.  

 

Put simply, we urgently require an open and inclusive, broad tent peace movement which can draw in and appeal to ALL people. A peace movement with the ability to criticise and condemn ALL militarism, war making and ALL threats of proliferation, with a proper sense of perspective and proportionality.

 

For example, shortly before he died, one of the veteran peace activist Bruce Kent’s final acts of peace activism, was to deliver a letter to the Russian ambassador in London, condemning the invasion of Ukraine and calling for the rights of Russian anti-war protestors to be upheld. 

Bruce chaired CND from 1980-1985 and said he was ‘dismayed by President Putin’s public warning of ‘consequences greater than any you have faced in history,’ which he widely interpreted to be a reference to the use of nuclear weapons’. Proving that it is possible for us to unequivocally condemn both our own Governments and also another country’s Governments too, in the strongest possible terms without being a ‘capitalist neoliberal stooge’. So yes, we must ‘put our own house in order’ but this should never prevent us from condemning the sins and crimes of other states.

 

Over the years, I was privileged enough to meet Bruce a couple of times, for me he represented the last of that distinctly English strain of radical peace activism - one which could potentially still exist within mainstream democratic politics and within mainstream political parties too. 

It was Bruce who introduced me to the life of George Lansbury and writing of Donald Soper, Bruce was very much the living embodiment of this very British Christian Socialist, Trade Union and Labour Movement and Peace Movement tradition and in many ways, being a Christian Socialist today, sometimes feels like belonging to a lost tribe, in Bruce Kent we’ve lost one of our great Prophets. 

Finally, a very distant relation of mine called Friedrich Ahlfeld was once the pastor at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig, where in 1886 Friedrich published a book of sermons and prayers. Almost 100 years later in the 1980’s at the height of the Cold War, Pastor Ahlfeld’s prayers were being used again for the weekly Friedensgebet (Friday prayers for peace) at the Nikolaikirche. If you go to the same church today, the faithful are still offering Friday prayers for peace, just as they did in the 80’s when Leipzig was part of the Soviet Union aligned DDR. 

This Friday, I’ll be praying for peace in Europe too, alongside the Fellowship Of Reconciliation and also with Glasgow Catholic Worker at their regular prayer vigils, because prospect of a nuclear war in Europe is fast becoming a reality. 

As such, we must urgently turn our focus outwards, beyond our own countries and beyond our little political cliques and bubbles, towards the wider public.  And also inwards too, towards our own churches, towards our fellow parishioners and mainstream congregations and encourage our all bishops, clergy and laity to organise and facilitate regular, high profile and large scale prayer vigils at our cathedrals, open to everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, a global mass movement,  joining together for peace on earth.