Ymgyrchu! - War and Peace - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

The first atomic bomb was built in the United States during the Second World War. In August 1945 atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in an attempt to end the War in the Far East. 90,000 were killed when an uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and 120,000 people were killed when a plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
	Following the war the Soviet Union developed a nuclear bomb and there was great concern across the world for the future of mankind because of the threat of nuclear war. CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) was formed in Britain in 1958 and many branches were set up in Wales, the first being in Cardiff. The movement's first rally in Wales was held in Aberystwyth in 1961 following the establishment of the Welsh National CND Council.
CND's first policies were drafted by J. B. Priestley and others such as Bertrand Russell, Michael Foot, Canon John Collins, Sheila Jones and Arthur Goss. They all came together after deciding that a national movement should be set up to campaign against nuclear weapons. Many protest marches were arranged between 1958 and 1963 to Aldermaston, Berkshire, the site of an atomic arms research centre.
	In 1963 Britain, United States and the Soviet Union all agreed on the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. The agreement forbade nuclear experiments on land, sea and in space. In 1996 a more comprehensive treaty was signed by every nuclear power in the world apart from India.
In the 1980s CND grew under the leadership of Bruce Kent. It was a time when many people considered nuclear war to be a distinct possibility and when there was rising tension between the East and West.
	By 1982 all of the Welsh county councils had joined forces to ban nuclear arms from their territory, and in February of that year it was announced that Wales was the first nuclear free country in Europe.
Greenham Common in Berkshire was established as a base for United States cruise nuclear missiles. On 27 August 1981, 36 women started a protest march from Cardiff to the base with the intention of presenting a letter to the authorities there detailing their objections to the siting of American controlled 'tactical' nuclear missiles in southern England.
	Some of the women tied themselves to the fences that surrounded the site. From that day onwards, until the removal of the weapons in 1991, women camped outside the base as a protest against nuclear missiles.
Successive governments promoted the nuclear power industry in Britain as an alternative to fossil fuels for the production of electricity but also as a means of providing the raw materials for the production of nuclear weapons. A nuclear power station was built in Wylfa on Anglesey, and at Trawsfynydd, Gwynedd, but by the end of the twentieth century Trawsfynydd had been decommissioned.
	In 1986 there was an accident in the nuclear power station in Chernobyl in the Ukraine, a tragedy that brought the dangers of the nuclear industry to the world's attention. In Wales in the 1980s groups such as MADRYN (which opposed the burial of nuclear waste) and WANA (Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance) were set up to oppose the activities of the nuclear power industry.


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