MASS DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST ATOMIC WEAPONS
Over Easter, the various organizations composing the lampaign for Nuclear Disarmament organized from Aldermaston (the main atomic research station) to
London. The march lasted four days, and over its 53-mile length never had less than 3,000 participants - who on the last lap swelled to 15,000. The marchers, together with at least 15,000 more demonstrators awaiting them in Tratalgar Square, made up what Tribune editor Michael
Foot called the greatest demonstration of the century.
The march's biggest weakness was in being predomin-
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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL antly middle class; in fact until the last day there was a complete absence of Trade Union banners, and very
Se Lip the great majority of he mire sids the there were very large student contingents. In of the youth are being brought into politics for the first time by this campaign.
The march was an arena of ideas: those who believed hould be non-political marched alongsid
"Out with the those shouting ory government! Out wit
The CP marchers with their slogans were greeted with shouts of bases!". The marchers readily bought the various publicaon sale, and there was continuous discussion.
British Trotskyists participated, and explained that the struggle against atomic weapons cannot from the struggle against all war, and that this means
71 the fight against capitalism. They furthermore explained the campaign could not be successful if it stopped at the stage of merely marching; the task is to disarm the capitalist class, not to appeal to its reason
Despite its middle-class and pacifist aspects in its present form, this movement has objectively progressive content that is capable of development in a revolutionary senolutionary Marxists. But, particularly in view and thus deserves the energetic critical support of causes for which the corresponding German Anti-AtomDeath movement fizzled out, it is essential and urgent țo inject into this still rather amorphous mass the crystalizing and purposive stiffening of and trade-union movements, to broaden mass actions, give them a class political direction, and guide them toward the only force that can really put an end to the dangel of the atomic destruction of humanity, worker's power.