SpyCops and CND. When Bruce Kent & E P Thompson went on a speaking tour together
The very long running SpyCops Inquiry has this week reached the stage of discussing police infiltration of CND. That this took place has long been known. The extent of it revealed to the Inquiry is perhaps surprising particularly as Kate Hudson, current CND leader, has noted all the things being ‘spied’ on were in fact open and public events.
I’m not a pacifist, always a strong current in CND but I remain in favour of getting rid of nuclear weapons (but not defence). In that context Ive been on many CND activities over many decades.
One I missed (I think) is detailed below
E P Thompson the Marxist historian died aged 69 in August 1993. Bruce Kent, Catholic Priest and peace campaigner died almost 30 years later on 8th June 2022. I knew both although not closely.
In the early 1980s they found a unity based on opposition to a new generation of nuclear weapons deployed by the US and Britain. Kent told Socialist Review that he was impressed by Thompson’s anti-nuclear polemic Protest and Survive.
When Kent became CND General Secretary in Jan 1980 they went on a joint speaking tour across the UK attracting thousands at meetings to oppose nukes.
Despite different backgrounds and views (Thompson had a Methodist background before joining the Communist Party and then leaving it in 1956) they were united in promotion humanity over nuclear destruction.
MI5 had been investigating Thompson since the 1950s, and he was one of the activists in the first wave of CND and a powerful voice in subsequent waves. Whether MI5 were looking into what Bruce Kent perhaps the SpyCops Inquiry will reveal
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