World Peace Council
The organization had the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty, independence, peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination.
[6][8] In accordance with this policy, a Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace was held in New York City in March 1949 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, sponsored by the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions.
[5] It established a World Committee of Partisans for Peace, led by a twelve-person Executive Bureau and chaired by Professor Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, High Commissioner for Atomic Energy and member of the French Institute.
[3][6] One delegate to the Congress, the Swedish artist Bo Beskow [sv], heard no spontaneous contributions or free discussions, only prepared speeches, and described the atmosphere there as "agitated", "aggressive" and "warlike".
"[6] Robeson's performance of "The March of the Volunteers" in Prague for the delegation from the incipient People's Republic of China was its earliest formal use as the country's national anthem.
[citation needed] Picasso's lithograph, La Colombe (The Dove) was chosen as the emblem for the Congress[12] and was subsequently adopted as the symbol of the WPC.
[3] It was originally scheduled for Sheffield but the British authorities, who wished to undermine the WPC,[13] refused visas to many delegates and the Congress was forced to move to Warsaw.
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee denounced the Congress as a "bogus forum of peace with the real aim of sabotaging national defence" and said there would be a "reasonable limit" on foreign delegates.
[6] The January 1952 World Congress of People in Vienna represented Joseph Stalin's strategy of peaceful coexistence,[23] resulting in a more broad-based conference.
[citation needed] In 1955, another WPC meeting in Vienna launched an "Appeal against the Preparations for Nuclear War", with grandiose claims about its success.
Opposition to the Vietnam War was widespread in the mid-1960s and most of the anti-war activity had nothing to do with the WPC, which decided, under the leadership of J. D. Bernal, to take a softer line with non-aligned peace groups in order to secure their co-operation.
The congresses and assemblies issued statements, appeals and resolutions that called for world peace in general terms and condemned US weapons policy, invasions and military actions.
Discussion usually is confined to the inequities of Western socioeconomic systems and attacks on the military and foreign policies of the United States and other imperialist, fascist nations.
Attempts by noncommunist delegates to discuss Soviet actions (such as the invasion of Afghanistan) are dismissed as interference in internal affairs or anti-Soviet propaganda.
"[17] The WPC was involved in demonstrations and protests especially in areas bordering US military installations in Western Europe believed to house nuclear weapons.
On 18 March 1950, the WPC launched its Stockholm Appeal at a meeting of the Permanent Committee of the World Peace Congress,[8] calling for the absolute prohibition of nuclear weapons.
[29] In accordance with the Comniform's 1950 resolution to draw into the peace movement trade unions, women's and youth organisations, scientists, writers and journalists, etc., several Communist mass organisations supported the WPC, for example: The WPC has been described as caught in contradictions as "it sought to become a broad world movement while being instrumentalized increasingly to serve foreign policy in the Soviet Union and nominally socialist countries.
[6] The formation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain in 1957 sparked a rapid growth in the unaligned peace movement and its detachment from the WPC.
[38] As the non-aligned peace movement "was constantly under threat of being tarnished by association with avowedly pro-Soviet groups", many individuals and organizations "studiously avoided contact with Communists and fellow-travellers.
[44] From about 1982, following the proclamation of martial law in Poland, the Soviet Union adopted a harder line with non-aligned groups, apparently because their failure to prevent the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles.
Zhukov denounced the West Berlin Working Group for a Nuclear-Free Europe, organizers of a May 1983 European disarmament conference in Berlin, for allegedly siding with NATO, attempting to split the peace movement, and distracting the peaceloving public from the main source of the deadly threat posed against the peoples of Europe-the plans for stationing a new generation of nuclear missiles in Europe in 1983.
"[45] The Hungarian student peace group, Dialogue,[46] also tried to attend the 1983 Assembly but were met with tear gas, arrests, and deportation to Hungary;[45] the following year the authorities banned it.
Especially difficult to digest, was that instead of criticising the Soviet Union's unilaterally resumed atmospheric nuclear testing in 1961, the WPC issued a statement rationalizing it.
"[6] Rob Prince, a former secretary of the WPC, suggested that it simply failed to connect with the western peace movement because it used most of its funds on international travel and lavish conferences.
Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Peace Committee developed bilateral international contacts "in which the WPC not only played no role, but was a liability.
[52][31] After the year 2000 and the shifting of the Head office to Athens, its current finances derive exclusively from Membership Fees and contributions/donations by members and friends, based on the rules and regulations adopted in 2008, during the 19th Assembly of the WPC held in Caracas/Venezuela.
[54] The WPC currently states its goals as: Actions against imperialist wars and occupation of sovereign countries and nations; prohibition of all weapons of mass destruction; abolition of foreign military bases; universal disarmament under effective international control; elimination of all forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination; respect for the right of peoples to sovereignty and independence, essential for the establishment of peace; non-interference in the internal affairs of nations; peaceful co-existence between states with different political systems; negotiations instead of use of force in the settlement of differences between nations.
Under its current rules, WPC members are national and international organizations that agree with its main principles and any of its objectives and pay membership fees.
