ABSTRACT
Principled antiwar activity has historically been strong in Britain: not only has Britain's political culture, conditioned by liberalism and Protestantism, been conducive to peace movements, but so has its "semidetached" strategic position. The fading of federalist hopes, and in particular the defeat of the proposed European Defence Community in 1954, forced the peace movement to focus on symptoms, such as nuclear weapons, instead of systemic change. In the space of little more than a year the situation was transformed and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament came into vigorous existence in January 1958. Anticipation of this British test stimulated those concerned about fallout, and in February 1957 the north London joint local committee against nuclear bomb tests was metamorphosed, following a meeting at the National Peace Council, into the National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapon Tests. The British nuclear-disarmament movement is having to end its years of splendid isolation.
