CND began in November 1957 when a committee was formed, including Canon John Collins as chairman, Bertrand Russell as president and Peggy Duff as organising secretary.

In collaboration with the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain, CND has organised anti-war marches under the slogan "Don't Attack Iraq", including protests on 28 September 2002 and 15 February 2003.

It was addressed by Labour MPs Jon Trickett, Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn who voted against the renewal of Trident, and Elfyn Llwyd of Plaid Cymru and Angus MacNeil of the Scottish National Party.

[5] CND is based in London and has national groups in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, regional groups in Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, the East Midlands, Kent, London, Manchester, Merseyside, Mid Somerset, Norwich, South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, Southern England, South West England, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands and Yorkshire, and local branches.

In it he said: In plain words: now that Britain has told the world she has the H-bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare.The article prompted many letters of support and at the end of the month the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin, chaired a meeting in the rooms of Canon John Collins in Amen Court to launch the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The other members of its executive committee were Martin, Priestley, Ritchie Calder, journalist James Cameron, Howard Davies, Michael Foot, Arthur Goss, and Joseph Rotblat.

The Campaign was launched at a public meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, on 17 February 1958, chaired by Collins and addressed by Michael Foot, Stephen King-Hall, J.

Its sponsors included John Arlott, Peggy Ashcroft, the Bishop of Birmingham Dr J. L. Wilson, Benjamin Britten, Viscount Chaplin, Michael de la Bédoyère, Bob Edwards, MP, Dame Edith Evans, A.S.Frere, Gerald Gardiner, QC, Victor Gollancz, Dr I. Grunfeld, E. M. Forster, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Rev.

[14] In Easter 1958, CND, after some initial reluctance, supported a march from London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston (a distance of 52 miles), that had been organised by a small pacifist group, the Direct Action Committee.

[25] In the event, Labour lost the 1959 election, but it voted at its 1960 Conference for unilateral nuclear disarmament, which represented CND's greatest influence and coincided with the highest level of public support for its programme.

[29] The sociologist Frank Parkin said that, for many supporters, the question of implementation was of secondary importance anyway because, for them, involvement in the campaign was "an expressive activity in which the defence of principles was felt to have higher priority than 'getting things done'.

"[16] He suggested CND's survival in the face of its failure was explained by the fact that it provided "a rallying point and symbol for radicals", which was more important for them than "its manifest function of attempting to change the government's nuclear weapons policy.

"[16] Despite setbacks, it retained the support of a significant minority of the population and became a mass movement, with a network of autonomous branches and specialist groups and an increased participation in demonstrations until about 1963.

Russell argued that direct action was necessary because the press was losing interest in CND and because the danger of nuclear war was so great that it was necessary to obstruct government preparations for it.

The executive committee's lack of authority made possible the inclusion within CND of a wide range of views, but it resulted in lengthy internal discussions and the adoption of contradictory resolutions at conferences.

However, six months after the crisis, a Gallup Poll found that public concern about nuclear weapons had fallen to its lowest point since 1957,[14] and there was a view (disputed by some CND supporters)[35] that US President John F. Kennedy's perceived success in facing down Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev turned the British public away from the idea of unilateral nuclear disarmament.

INDEC was never endorsed by CND nationally and candidates were generally put up by local branches as a means of raising the profile of the nuclear threat.

CND's demonstration on the eve of Cruise missile deployment in October 1983 was one of the largest in British history,[25] with 300,000 taking part in London as three million protested across Europe.

The CND logo topped Glastonbury's pyramid stage, while publicity regularly proclaimed proudly: 'This Event is the most effective Anti-Nuclear Fund Raiser in Europe'.

"[41] The re-election of a Conservative government in 1983 and the defeat of left-wing parties in continental Europe "made the deployment of Cruise missiles inevitable and the movement again began to lose steam.

[45] As it did not have a national membership until 1967, the strength of public support in its early days can be estimated only from the numbers of those attending demonstrations or expressing approval in opinion polls.

In an article on anti-CND groups, Stephen Dorril reported that in 1982 Eugene V. Rostow, Director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, became concerned about the growing unilateralist movement.

[53] Lord Chalfont claimed that the Soviet Union was giving the European peace movement £100 million a year, to which Bruce Kent responded, "If they were, it was certainly not getting to our grotty little office in Finsbury Park.

[61] The British journalist Charles Moore reported a conversation he had with the Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky after the death of leading Labour politician Michael Foot.

As editor of the newspaper Tribune, says Moore, Foot was regularly visited by KGB agents who identified themselves as diplomats and gave him money.

In return, the KGB gave him drafts of articles encouraging British disarmament which he could then edit and publish, unattributed to their real source, in Tribune.

[65] In 1985, Cathy Massiter, an MI5 officer who had been responsible for the surveillance of CND from 1981 to 1983, resigned and made disclosures to a Channel 4 20/20 Vision programme, "MI5's Official Secrets".

Speaking in the House of Commons, Dale Campbell-Savours, MP, said: ...it was felt within the service that officers were likely to be questioned about the true political affiliation of Mrs. Joan Ruddock, who became chair of CND in 1983.

In Joan Ruddock's file, MI5 recorded special branch references to her movements—usually public meetings—and kept press cuttings and the products of mail and telephone intercepts obtained through active investigation of other targets, such as the Communist party and John Cox.

[65] Anti-communist propagandist Brian Crozier, claimed in his book Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991 (Harper Collins, 1993) that one of his organizations, "The 61", infiltrated a mole into CND in 1979.