Three Protests against Nuclear Testing [1957]

THE FIRST OF these short messages (60a) was Russell’s earliest public act of support for the recently launched National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests. It was delivered in absentia to their meeting at Friends House, London, on 30 April 1957 and published in abridged form in Peace News, no. 1,088 (3 May 1957): 8 (B&R C57.17). Russell had hesitated to endorse the NCANWT when first asked, stating that he had “undertaken to do, in the near future, a careful discussion of the whole question 56 and, on the whole, I prefer to make no pronouncement meanwhile, although I expect I shall arrive at conclusions very similar to yours” (n.d., Jan. 1957; quoted in Taylor 1988, 9). By 27 March, however, he was “quite willing” to lend his name to the new pressure group. In conveying his whole-hearted support to the NCANWT’S honorary treasurer, Ianthe Carswell, Russell also elaborated his own position:

Although I am afraid that there is little hope of stopping the projected tests at Christmas Island, I think there is a very good chance of rousing such wide-spread protest that the Government will be forced to advocate an agreement to abolish tests. I think myself that the British Government ought to abstain from tests even if no general agreement can be reached, but this is a view for which there would be much less general support.