Coalition for Peace through Security
The Coalition for Peace through Security (CPS) was active in opposing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s.[1]
According to Brian Crozier, the CPS was set up in imitation of the Coalition for Peace through Strength, active in the US during the Carter Administration:
- In Britain, a small group of young men, one of them an American, set up a matching 'Coalition for Peace through Security'. They included Edward Leigh, a young barrister who went on to become an enthusiastically Thatcherite MP, and a gifted young man named Julian Lewis. Introduced to me by Norris McWhirter, Dr Lewis became the 61's leading activist in Britain, notably as the scourge of Monsignor Bruce Kent and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.[2]
According to the Guardian the CPS admitted that some of its members had secretly joined CND in 1982 to attend its annual conference.[3]
The CPS and the Committee for the Free World jointly published The Peace Movement and the Soviet Union by Vladimir Bukovsky, with a foreword by Winston Churchill MP.[4]
An Economist report of February 1983 highlighted the CPS's links with the Conservative Government:
- For its part, Downing Street has mobilised a backbench group under the chairmanship of Mr Winston Churchill, called the Committee for Peace with Freedom. It includes under its umbrella a group known as the Coalition for Peace Through Security, which has among its leaders a Conservative candidate, Mr Edward Leigh. The group has been accused by CND of conducting dirty tricks operations against it--mostly alleging links with the Communist party. The group meets with Mr Blaker.[5]
During the 1983 general election, CPS activist Tony Kerpel designed a poster attacking Labour leader Michael Foot of appeasement. it was entitled "The Guilty Men" playing on Foot's 1940 book, attacking pre-World War Two appeasement.[6]
The CPS challenged the attendance figures at the CND rally in London 22 October 1983:
- How many actually marched? University papers, reporting the event, produced quite different sums. Sussex University's Speakeasy claimed 500,000. The Sun, of Aston University, put it at 250,000; C.N.D. itself claimed 400,000. The police estimated the figure at rather less than 200,000. The Coalition for Peace Through Security hired an aerial photography outfit, and expert photographic analysis showed a head count at 4 P.M. of 58,200 people at the Hyde Park rally, with a further 30,700 still marching toward it. So total attendance, this organization claims, seems to have been less than 90,000.[7]
In February 1985, the CPS attacked suggestions that MI5 had fed information to Michael Heseltine about CND:
- Why, they complain, it was THEY who infiltrated CND back in early 1983 and prepared a dossier on the leading lights which went to Defence Ministers. About 90 per cent of the information given out by defence spokesmen came from THIS dossier, they claim.
- Dr Julian Lewis, research director of the CPS, has a dim view of MI5's efficiency. 'It's a bit of a cheek to try and steal our thunder. Given the number of Communists in CND it would be disgraceful if their phones weren't being tapped.'[8]
Crozier briefed Mrs Thatcher on the work of the CPS at a meeting on 28 February 1985.[9]
The CPS briefed MPs and members of the House of Lords ahead of debates on defence and foreign affairs. After one such briefing on 23 April 1985, Lord Orr-Ewing named a number of Labour MPs and trade unionists linked to the World Peace Council under parliamentary privilege.[10]
People
- Julian Lewis
- Tony Kerpel
- Edward Leigh - Parliamentary Adviser[11]
Notes
- ↑ Richard Norton-Taylor, Think tank 'funding UK organizations', The Guardian, 29 May 1987.
- ↑ Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991, 1994, HarperCollinsPublishers, p.243.
- ↑ James lewis, Cardinal puts CND chief on spot, Guardian, 8 May 1983.
- ↑ Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991, 1994, HarperCollinsPublishers, p.246.
- ↑ The Subtle Art of Leak Management, The Economist, 5 February 1983.
- ↑ Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991, 1994, HarperCollinsPublishers, p.250.
- ↑ Paul Johnson, New York Times, 25 March 1984.
- ↑ Alan Rusbridger, Guardian Diary / Tap dancing, The Guardian, 22 February 1985.
- ↑ Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991, 1994, HarperCollinsPublishers, p.255.
- ↑ Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991, 1994, HarperCollinsPublishers, p.257.
- ↑ Andrew Rawnsley, Tory link with media monitors is revealed / Media Monitoring Unit's connection with the Conservative Party, The Guardian, 20 November 1986.
