Committee of 100 – civil disobedience in the 1960s

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Phil Hearse

In light of the mass arrests of those supporting the Palestine Action Group, it is useful to compare a previous wave of mass non-violent civil disobedience – the Committee of 100 in the early 1960s.

The Committee was a spin-off from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), focusing public attention on the danger of nuclear war at a time when the Cold War nearly escalated into nuclear conflict over the Soviet Union’s siting of missiles in Cuba. Its founders were frustrated that CND’s large demonstrations were not producing rapid results.

The organised radical left – from the Communist Party leftwards – was not directly involved, but anarchists and pacifists became its main organisers. The Committee helped accelerate the radicalisation of activists, a process which, half a decade later, was inherited by the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign – whose main beneficiaries were the revolutionary left.

The chief organiser of the Committee of 100 was the late Ralph Schoenman, an exceptionally capable personal secretary of world-famous philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell became the movement’s figurehead and, despite being 89, participated in sit-down demonstrations.

The 100 people who pledged to take part in civil disobedience included a stellar list of cultural personalities. Playwrights included John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, and Arnold Wesker; visual artists encompassed Augustus John and Christopher Logue. Others included Marxist art critic and cultural theorist John Berger, film director Lindsay Anderson, jazz singer and all-round performer George Melly, and prominent CND campaigner Pat Arrowsmith.

Into Action

The Committee’s first action was a sit-down outside the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall in February 1961. They gathered 2,000 pledges to join the civil disobedience, and a still greater number took part, with hundreds more demonstrating nearby. Reflecting hesitation in Harold Macmillan’s Tory government over firm action, no arrests were made. A second sit-down in Parliament Square in April saw a change in tactics by the authorities, with over 800 people arrested and charged with obstruction of the highway and breach of the peace.

The third mobilisation took place in September 1961. Alongside a sit-down in Trafalgar Square, for the first time a nuclear base – the Holy Loch submarine base in Scotland – was targeted. This sent alarm bells ringing in government. Civil disobedience in and around nuclear bases shone a spotlight on the secret nuclear state and its preparations for war. Later demonstrations targeted US nuclear bases in Britain, generating international publicity and embarrassing the British government.

More than 1,300 people were arrested on these occasions, marking an escalation of confrontation between the state and the anti-nuclear movement. Thirty-seven people refused to be bound over to keep the peace and received one- or two-month prison sentences. Bertrand Russell was given only a token seven-day sentence.

Mass Sit-Downs and Repression

In December 1961, a further demonstration took place outside the American nuclear bomber base at Wethersfield in Essex. More than 800 arrests occurred. Six of the main organisers – Pat Pottle, Ian Dixon, Trevor Horton, Terry Chandler, Michael Randle, and Helen Allegranza – were charged with conspiracy and breach of the Official Secrets Act.

The men received 18-month jail terms, while Helen Allegranza was sentenced to 12 months. The significance of this trial was that the Committee had encouraged and planned a trespass at the base, interfering with its normal operations. This presents a specific parallel with the banning of Palestine Action by the Labour government today.

Modern Comparisons

If we compare the Committee of 100 with later direct action organisations like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, the numbers arrested and the charges they faced were broadly similar. Two things have changed, however: a) the passing of the Crime and Policing Act and b) the use of terrorism charges against demonstrators holding up placards in support of the Palestine Action Group.

These measures represent a much more all-round challenge to the right to protest than did the repression of the 100. The Committee of 100 experience showed how the dramatic effect of direct action can be used to spotlight issues. But it is only one tactic in the range that radical and anti-capitalist movements will need to use, none of which should be fetishised.

Crisis of Perspective

The Committee of 100 represented part of the radical wing of the anti-nuclear movement. It demonstrated the radicalisation of many prominent intellectuals and artists and deepened understanding of the role of the police and state repression.

However, the anti-nuclear movement was blindsided by the signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by the US, Britain, France, and the USSR in 1963. The Conservative Party used this against the movement, running a newspaper ad showing a man sitting with a “Ban the Bomb” placard, captioned: “Meanwhile, the Government has signed the Test Ban Treaty.”

No sooner had the Committee managed to pull off several days of mass civil disobedience (and mass arrests) than it faced the obvious question – “What next?” In February 1962 another demonstration was held at Wethersfield, and on April 9 a new round of demos and sit-ins was held nationwide. This resulted in a total of more than 1,000 arrests.

In a sense, this was the high point of the Committee’s activity. But it also highlighted an underlying stalemate: how could such a widespread mobilisation be bettered? How many people were prepared to be arrested? Even if most convictions did not result in imprisonment, the disruption caused to individual lives was significant. And non-custodial sentences generally involved being ‘bound over’ to keep the peace – i.e., not taking part in further demonstrations for a year.

It was in the context of these debates that Bertrand Russell resigned as the Committee’s chair. In November, a broad series of demonstrations during the Cuban Missile Crisis were organised – doubtless supported by 100 activists, but bypassing the Committee as an organisation. The 100’s objective of highlighting the role of US bases and the nuclear secret state had been achieved.

In November 1962 CND underwent an upsurge, protesting against the nuclear war danger over the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the anti-nuclear movement was again blindsided by the signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. The 1964 Aldermaston March was notably smaller. From the platform in Trafalgar Square, CND Vice-Chair Stuart Hall said: “If CND is dead, then I’m looking at 20,000 corpses” – although in reality there were closer to 10,000. Offstage, the first preparations were already underway for the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, which would briefly take CND’s place in mass anti-war mobilisation.

CND re-emerged spectacularly in the 1980s, leading the campaign against the siting of American Cruise and Pershing missiles in Britain and other European states. In 1984 it organised a demonstration of 400,000 in central London.

Legacy and Parallels

The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 damaged the United States’ image and fuelled hostility to American imperialism on the left, especially in universities and colleges. The new radicalism outflanked the Communist Party, which clung to its cautious “peace talks” line on Vietnam. By 1966, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign was overtaking the CP’s British Council for Peace in Vietnam.

The Committee of 100 was never banned, nor accused of terrorism. But the state, under Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Home Secretary R. A. Butler, used long-standing conspiracy laws to strike at its leadership.

By the late 1960s it was difficult for radical and democratic mass movements to avoid using defensive levels of force. The American Black liberation movement faced huge amounts of police and vigilante violence. The anti-war movement and student occupations often faced brutal police responses, leading to defensive violence. ‘Self-defence is no offence’ was a more influential slogan than strict adherence to total non-violence.

The Committee of 100’s repression took place in a Britain still governed by a residual liberal consensus. We now live in a different world – one where liberalism has lost much of its moral compass, and the state’s routine use of law and force to suppress dissent is entrenched. The recent branding of Palestinian solidarity marches as “hate marches” by Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman and others helped to set the stage for this repression.

Sequels

“Spies for Peace”
In 1963, during CND’s annual Aldermaston March, a group of anonymous activists – later known as the “Spies for Peace” – revealed the existence of a network of secret Regional Seats of Government (RSGs) underground bunkers, from where top army, police, and political personnel would administer Britain after a nuclear attack. One such RSG was at Warren Row near Reading, close to the Aldermaston March route. Hundreds of demonstrators split off to surround and expose the RSG, a huge embarrassment for the Conservative government.

The George Blake Escape
An unexpected outcome of the imprisonment of the six “conspirators” was that Pat Pottle and Michael Randle shared Wormwood Scrubs prison with George Blake, a British intelligence officer convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. Because of his position as an MI6 officer, Blake received an exceptionally severe sentence – 42 years. Randle and fellow activist Sean Burke, convinced of the injustice of this sentence, organised Blake’s escape. Randle transported him to the East German border, where he was met by KGB officers and smuggled into East Germany and then to Moscow.

A bizarre further sequel was the 1991 publication of a book by Michael Randle and Pat Pottle in which they openly described how they engineered their George Blake escape. Probably the state already knew of their involvement, but preferred to let sleeping dogs lie. But the publication of the book was a provocation they could not ignore, and they were tried at the Old Bailey. They admitted what they had done, but pleaded not guilty on the grounds that Blake’s sentence was unjust. The judge ordered the jury to find them guilty, but the jury refused and they were released – to widespread amazement.

Randle and Pottle outsdie Wormword scrubs prison showig where George Blake escapted

A detailed account of the Committee of 100, by key participant Michael Randle, can be found here

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Climate Collapse Threatens Slide to Fascism and War

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The 10 days beginning on 12 June saw the convergence of four things that might seem at first not to be connected – the statement by UN secretary general António Guterres that the world was headed towards 3 per cent global heating by the end of the century which would be a ‘catastrophe’; the news that Saudi Arabia was seeking to buy 2.2 million tons of carbon credits; the news that at least 1000 people in Uttar Pradesh and eastern Bihar have died because of the extreme heat of over 40 degrees; and the deaths of more than 500 refugees in a boat off the Greek coast.

The march of global heating. Note the way the Sahara Desert is travelling northwards. Climate change refugees will not just be from the Global South.

The connection of carbon ‘credits’ – a license to dump huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – to the statement by António Guterres and the deaths in India is pretty obvious. But how is the sinking of the overloaded refugees’ boat connected?

Revolution of the thirsty

More and more, desperate people seeking refuge in Europe are not just fleeing from economic disaster and war. Many are also refugees from climate collapse. A look at the map, where the average temperature has already risen to levels where water is scarce and human life is becoming unsustainable, tells its own story. In a swathe of Western and Central Asia summer temperatures routinely exceeding 40 degrees and the lack of water is causing more and more conflict. Some relief for the moment is available to the rich, with air-conditioned homes and offices. But for both the urban and rural poor living conditions are becoming atrocious.

This is not a new story. Largely unreported in the global North, the 2011 revolution that overthrew Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak was not just a democratic uprising, it was a ‘revolution of the thirsty’. The 60% of Cairo’s population that lives in informal settlements mainly lacks any regular access to water and many people are reduced to collecting it from polluted ditches. There are few water supply problems however in the affluent middle and upper class suburbs, many built over the last two decades with extensive facilities for the rich.

Fortress Europe is failing

If unliveable temperatures and water poverty are increasingly drivers of mass migration westwards and northwards, the response of the states of the Global North is disastrous and fuels the nationalistic and racist far right.

Just one day after the sinking of a refugee boat off the coast of Greece, with the loss of over 500 lives, a previously arranged meeting of EU interior ministers agreed a joint ‘plan’. This would see the European Union ‘work more closely with Tunisia, Libya and Egypt’ to try to stop undocumented migrants from boarding smuggler vessels. The thousands who are dying in the attempt to reach Europe by boat and the news of the drownings off the coast of Greece, did nothing to shift the Fortress Europe policy of the EU, it only strengthened it.

The figures for deaths in the Mediterranean are utterly shocking – more than 20,000 drowned or disappeared since 2014, more than 2,000 dead this year alone. The EU ‘plan’ is a joke, while the quotas confirmed for accepting refugees – a dozen countries accepting 8,000 each and France and Italy accepting 2,500 – are a pathetic gesture.

Historically mass migration of the desperate has never been completely stopped. The US border patrol has reported more than 7000 deaths at the Mexico/US border since 1998 – likely to be a big underestimate and not taking into account the many who have died in the Mexican desert or Central America during the journey from Colombia.

Mass death events

In an influential article Gaia Vince argues that by mid-century, because of the ageing population of the West, Global North cities will be crying out for more immigrants to sustain their workforce. But William I Robinson, author of Global Police State, thinks this is a ‘mechanical analysis’  and that right-wing nationalism and fascism in the Global North will likely lead the EU, Britain and the United States to tolerate mass death rather than admit hundreds of thousands of refugees[1]. The desperate will always come and they know that perilous journeys always carry the risk of death.

How do the global water crisis and global migrant crisis fuel fascism and war? Immigration has been the key political issue – combined with an ‘anti-woke’ discourse based on reactionary ideas about the family, religion and the nation – that has enabled the fascist and semi-fascist right to take power in Italy[2]. Long-time extreme right leader Marine Le Pen could win the next presidential election in France. And the mainstream right-wing Popular Party in Spain could form a governmental alliance with the fascist Vox party, currently polling around 15% in opinion polls, after the July 23 general election[3]. 

Climate change and the fascist right

Giorgia Meloni changes course on environment.

Like other far right leaders, Marine Le Pen has made a shift on climate change. Denial is hardly possible any more – although Donald Trump may persist in it. So Le Pen argues that only true patriots can defend the environment and the nation, and that ‘nomads’ have no interest in defending the environment. Le Pen’s denunciation of migrants as ‘rootless nomads’ parallels the Nazis’ attack on ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ – in other words Jewish people.

The claim that environmentalism is an issue for the right has also been made by Italian far right premier Giorgia Meloni. Last year she said:

“There is nothing more ‘right-wing’ than ecology. The right loves the environment because it loves the land, the identity, the homeland.”

Climate catastrophe will create the type of social dislocation and upheaval that can only be dealt with, from the viewpoint of the capitalist class, by authoritarian dictatorships basing themselves on military-police apparatuses, and attempting mass mobilisation on the basis of nationalism, ethnicity or racism. This is what we mean by ‘modern fascism.’ Such a regime need not necessarily abolish the trappings of capitalist democracy, only that it must empty them of real democratic content. This is the sense in which we mean that modern fascists are in power in India and Italy. Remember that Mussolini became prime minister in Italy in 1922 but did not declare himself dictator until 1925. The Communist Party newspaper was closed in 1924, and Mussolini did not get round to imprisoning Communist leader Antonio Gramsci until 1926.

Water wars 

In a moving testimony to the BBC’s Future series, Ali al-Sadr gave an account of how water degradation had led him to abandon Iraq and become a refugee in Amsterdam:

“Before the war, Basra was a beautiful place. They used to call us the Venice of the East. But by the time I left, they were pumping raw sewage into the waterways. We couldn’t wash, the smell [of the river] gave me migraines and, when I finally fell sick, I spent four days in bed.” 

According to al-Sadr, in the summer of 2018 contaminated water resulted in 120,000 Basrans being hospitalised – and police opened fire on those who protested.

Maps of the world’s hottest places consistently show a belt from India and Pakistan through Central Asia to the Middle East and North Africa. The same crisis affects sections of sub-Sahara Africa. As has been widely discussed, the building of the Ethiopian Renaissance dam will eventually take 40% of the waters of the Nile from countries downstream that depend on the river, Egypt in particular. It is difficult to imagine that the Egyptian dictatorship, armed to the teeth by the United States, will stand idly by and allow its lifeblood to be taken in the interests of Ethiopian electricity. 

In fact, Egypt is suffering a double whammy because rising sea levels are sinking the Delta, where most of Egypt’s agriculture is based. Over time the Delta will be reclaimed by the sea. The same process is likely to be the salination of the Nile tributaries, making them useless for agriculture. Sooner or later the Egyptian state is likely to take action to ensure its Nile waters.

A similar conflict is developing between Iran and Iraq, with the former building dams to take more water out of the Tigris and Euphrates. The largest impact will be in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Strategic debate

Nationalist and racist responses to immigration are the centrepiece of the ideology of the far right and fascists, as well as the Conservative government in the UK. Here the primary intervention of Labour leader Keir Starmer and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is to accuse the government of having ‘lost control’ of immigration, not to challenge the racist underpinnings of Suella Braverman’s plan to send thousands of immigrants to Rwanda. Indeed Yvette Cooper was explicit: dealing with asylum applications more quickly will boost the number of deportations.

Despite its limitations, the intervention of London mayor Sadiq Khan in this debate – saying that London needs more immigrants to sustain its workforce – is a welcome break from the anti-immigrant orthodoxy of Starmer and Yvette Cooper.

But the left must develop its own strategic analysis. The words of Paul Murphy, criticising Max Huber’s insightful book, are entirely relevant in this regard:

“Ours is a strategy to build an ecosocialist movement powerful enough that it could overturn and dismantle the existing capitalist state and replace it with a genuinely democratic and participative workers’ state. That doesn’t mean we don’t make demands for reforms on the existing state, but that out of the existing movements of the working class, we seek to develop a revolutionary movement capable of ending the rule of capitalists and overturning their state.”

footnotes

[1] Private communication to the author.

[2] But they were allowed to do this by the defeats of the workers’ movement and the capitulations of the centre left. See https://anticapitalistresistance.org/berlusconi-godfather-to-trump-and-johnson/

[3] In the local and regional elections in May, Vox scooted only 7% - but was still the third party after then Popular Party and the Socialists.