Antinuclear Protest Movements

Antinuclear Protest Movements. After the U.S. government's atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, a recognition of the dangers that nuclear war posed to human survival sparked the development of an antinuclear movement in the United States and abroad. Manhattan Project scientists—some of whom had opposed the use of nuclear weapons during World War II—organized the Federation of Atomic Scientists (which later became the Federation of American Scientists) and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, with Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Rabinowitch playing leading roles in a crusade for nuclear disarmament. A burgeoning world government movement also warned of the menace of nuclear war, as did pacifist groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. A communist‐led antinuclear campaign, focused on the Stockholm peace petition, surfaced as well. With the deepening of the Cold War, however, American attitudes grew more hawkish and the protest movement dwindled.

In 1954, though, another wave of protest began, stimulated by the terrible destructiveness of the newly developed hydrogen bomb and by the atmospheric testing of this weapon, which showered the planet with radioactive fallout. Joining with British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein issued a dramatic appeal to world leaders to halt the nuclear arms race. Subsequently, meeting in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, scientists launched the periodic Pugwash conferences of scientists from East and West to discuss nuclear issues, while chemist Linus Pauling began a scientists' petition calling for an end to nuclear testing. In 1957, Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, and other nuclear critics organized the National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE), a group that placed antinuclear ads in newspapers, held public meetings and demonstrations, initiated petition drives, and soon had 25,000 members. Established in 1959, the Student Peace Union mobilized college students against the nuclear menace and introduced Britain's nuclear disarmament symbol in America. Two years later, Women Strike for Peace, founded by Dagmar Wilson and other concerned mothers, brought thousands of women into the streets, demonstrating for an end to nuclear testing and the nuclear arms race. These dramatic protests played an important role in convincing previously reluctant governments to negotiate the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), banning atmospheric tests. Reassured, many concerned citizens turned to other issues.

Nevertheless, the revival of the Cold War in the early 1980s—symbolized by the advent of the hawkish administration of President Ronald Reagan and the deployment of a new generation of nuclear missiles in Europe—led to a new and more powerful wave of popular protest. Organizations like SANE, Mobilization for Survival, and Physicians for Social Responsibility organized a mammoth antinuclear effort, with the largest political demonstrations in American history. The Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign garnered the support of the major churches, unions, the Democratic party, and—according to polls—70 percent or more of the public. This movement, too, ebbed in subsequent years, as national political leaders responded to popular antinuclear sentiment and negotiated significant arms control and disarmament agreements. But nuclear dangers remained, raising the possibility of future antinuclear protest campaigns.
See also Antiwar Movements; Nuclear Strategy; Nuclear Weapons; Pacifism; Peace Movements; Science: Since 1945.

Bibliography

Lawrence S. Wittner , The Struggle Against the Bomb, vol. 1, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement through 1953, 1993; vol. 2, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970, 1998; vol. 3, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 2003.

Lawrence S. Wittner