Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament    | |
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Origins
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was founded in 1957 in the wake of widespread fear of nuclear conflict and the effects of nuclear tests.
1980s
CND experienced a surge in popularity in the 1980s. This development appears to have been actively countered by the deep state. Opposition included illegal wiretapping of the leadership by MI5 and 'dirty tricks' organised by groups such as Winston Churchill II's Campaign for Peace Through Freedom.[1]
Related Quotation
| Page | Quote | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Marjorie Thompson | “Another Labour figure who has had an experience with the BAP is Emma Dent Coad who was the party’s first ever MP for Kensington, serving from 2017-19, and is now leader of the Labour Group on the borough’s council.
She told Declassified that a friend who was a senior official in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) tried to recruit her to the BAP in the 1980s. Coad later found out this person “worked with the CIA”. At the time, the US government had, according to an official memo leaked to the Washington Post, initiated a "propaganda exercise in Britain, aimed at neutralising the efforts of CND". “In the late 80s, I was a journalist working in design and architecture and very busy at the time, travelling around a lot and writing for various magazines,” Coad told us. “At the time, a local friend who was senior in CND started talking to me about this project that she was involved in." "She basically said that if I was able to go to Washington and give a talk about the work I was doing, I’d have a lovely dinner, it would all be paid for, and then I’d be part of this international group who were just trying to improve life," Coad added. “Then I would be part of that group forever and I’d be invited to things periodically, and it would give me a really good profile." Coad thought about it and discussed it with her then husband. "But I just felt there was something a bit smelly about it frankly,” she says. “It didn’t ring true, something so generous just for me being there, so I politely declined." “Later I found out what the British-American Project was all about," she adds. “Then I found out a couple of years later that this friend – who had by then moved out of the area and I’d lost contact with her – worked with the CIA, and I was absolutely appalled." Coad says she was good friends with the husband of the alleged CIA operative, and that he told her she was working for the agency as soon as he found out. "There was something not quite right. I was just a jobbing journalist really, in a faintly glamorous environment, why would I be of interest to this international group?" But Coad can understand why she was a target. "I’ve always been a socialist, I always had those values from school,” she says. “I was political at college, at university, I had roles in the unions, I’d always been political. So clearly she knew that." She adds: “I started writing a book on Spanish design architecture, so I was busy, and I think my stock was rising at the time. The recruiter was very prominent in CND, which I supported.” After Coad was told about the CIA connection "it began to drop into place," she says. Coad then looked up the recruiter who had moved on from CND to PR firm Saatchi & Saatchi, which has funded the BAP. “I thought, ‘that’s interesting, a bit of a leap from what they were doing before’. I thought it was very strange that they would go from CND to working for a right-wing advertising agency, so it rang true, and I believed it.”” | Marjorie Thompson Emma Dent Coad Matt Kennard |
Employee on Wikispooks
| Employee | Job | Appointed | End | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marjorie Thompson | Parliamentary officer & Vice chair and Chair | 1983 | 1993 | Suspected of working with the CIA |
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