Post-material protest? Peace activism and the defence economy

Abstract

In the early 1970s the peace movement in Britain was a shadow of its former self. To ensure its own survival and adapt to the evolving climate of 1970s Britain, the peace movement gravitated towards political economy. Influenced by the Labour left and workers in the defence industry, disarmament activists focused on the military-industrial complex. CND and the Campaign against Arms Trade (CAAT) focused on the defence economy and on the everyday worker forced either to facilitate the arms industry or to join the dole queue. By the late 1970s there was a vibrant network of activists, politicians and workers who generated a vision for an alternative future free of military commitments. But the return of Cold War tensions, and with it the nuclear threat, restored much of the peace movement back to its more ‘traditional’ campaign issues of unilateral disarmament and opposition to American military influence in Western Europe, as the ‘single issue’ of banning ‘the bomb’ returned to the forefront of its narrative. Despite the deepening unemployment crisis, the peace movement was preoccupied with the placement of cruise missiles on British territory and the confrontational posturing on either side of the Iron Curtain. A unique opportunity to fuse materialist and moral arguments was lost.