Daily Telegraph – 17 December 1984

Anyone comparing the detailed points made by Mr Edward Leigh MP (December 6), showing recently resigned Communist Party members in key positions in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and quoting CND's claim that British withdrawal from NATO would lessen the supposed military inferiority of the Warsaw Pact, cannot fail to be disappointed by the response of Miss Margaret Morton (December 12).

Declining to answer these points, she just generally condemns "the sport of Communist-baiting" and claims that a movement dominated by the hard Left would not attract as many members as does CND.

In reality, this is precisely what happens. Of the six national officers elected at the recent CND conference, every one was a Labour or "Socialist" activist.

They included two former Left-wing Labour parliamentary candidates (one involved with the Trotskyist Socialist Organiser Alliance faction), one full-time trade union official and one former participant in activities organised by the Soviet-run World Peace Council.

Of the 20 CND council members elected, at least eight were Labour activists; two were in the Communist Party (including a leading member of the British-Soviet Friendship Society); at least four more were "Socialists" or otherwise active on the Left; and there was one declared Liberal, one Ecologist, and one Christian (who has written for the Communist Morning Star newspaper).

Thus, at least 20 out of the 26 were clearly on the Left – not including the two conference organisers, both of whom have in recent times belonged to the British Communist Party.

This hardly conforms to the broad-based image of the CND Miss Morton wants us to entertain. Nor does the reality behind CND's demonstration of December 8 against Soviet nuclear missiles, to which she refers.

Whereas the June 1984 CND demonstration against President Reagan produced a turnout of over 50,000 protestors, that mounted against Soviet nuclear weapons only six months later produced a mere 300 of CND's thousands of purportedly even-handed members.

Dr JULIAN LEWIS
Director
The Coalition for Peace Through Security
London SW1