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manded considerable attention among a variety of individuals and circlesimportant in the nation. And the ?rst meeting went o? with great éclatand success. Moreover, interest in the ??? quickly spread. Soon there werecommittees formed in di?erent parts of the country and then RegionalCommittees. Many meetings were held, at some of which I spoke. I remem-ber, in particular, one at Manchester in 1959 at which Lord Simon ofWythenshawe was in the chair.I saw much of Lord Simon in those days and until his death in October,1960, as he was greatly concerned by the nuclear peril and worked hard tomake the dangers known. He arranged a debate on the subject in the Houseof Lords and held a great number of meetings and press conferences at hisLondon ?at. He was a member of the executive committee of the ??? and wesaw eye to eye in most matters to do with it. He became, as I already was, anupholder of the activities of the Direct Action Committee. We both believedthat the dangers must be called to the attention of the public in as many waysas possible and that if we stuck to merely meetings and even marches, nomatter how admirable they might be, we should end by preaching only to thealready converted. The chairman of the ??? did not approve of civil dis-obedience and so, though nominally the Direct Action Committee was to betolerated, it could not be aided openly by the ???. The latter did not, forinstance, take part in the Aldermaston March, as it was staged by the DirectAction Committee in 1958. The march proved a success, and the ??? took itover lock, stock and barrel the following year and made, of course, a muchlarger and more important thing of it. I was not able to attend the 1959march or the subsequent meeting in Trafalgar Square, but the following year Ispoke in the Square at the end of the march. I wished, in these years, that Ithe autobiography of bertrand russell 576had been young enough to take part in the marches. Later, they seemed to meto be degenerating into something of a yearly picnic. Though individualmarchers were as sincere as ever in their endeavours and as admirable, themarch was quite ine?ective in achieving their aim, which was to call seriousattention to and spread the movement. For the most part, the march became asubject of boredom or distress or hilarity, and converted very few of thosehitherto unconverted. It was useful, nevertheless, as I think it still is, incontinuing, if not enlarging, the movement. New and fresh forms of oppo-sition to dangerous nuclear policies must be sought constantly in order toobtain converts and to catch and hold the interest of people of very diverseoutlook.Shortly after this 1960 Aldermaston March, the Summit Meeting betweenEisenhower and Khrushchev took place – and crashed. We had all had highhopes of it and its break-up following the U2 incident was a blow to us. Themore we learned of the skulduggery behind it the greater its forebodingquality became. It augured ill for progress towards co-operation, let alonetowards disarmament. It seemed more than ever as if new methods must besought to impress upon the public the increasingly precarious state of inter-national a?airs before people relapsed into frustrated apathy. But what thisnew means could be I did not see.The ??? had been working for unilateral disarmament, believing that ifGreat Britain gave up her part in the nuclear race and even demanded thedeparture of United States bases from her soil, other nations might followsuit. It was a slim hope, and still is, but none-the-less it was, and is, a hope. Assuch, it seemed worth following up. The Campaign also hoped to persuadenot only the general public to this way of thinking but also the Government.As most of its upholders were drawn from the Labour Party, it went to workupon the Parliamentary Labour Party. My own view was that the matter wasone that transcends Party politics and even national boundaries. As this rea-sonable view, as it seemed to me, failed to grip the public imagination, I waswilling to uphold the Campaign in its e?orts. The means towards the end thatwe both desired mattered less than its achievement. Perhaps, I thought, if theLabour Party could be persuaded to support the Campaign, we might be ashort step towards the goal.I had put my point of view clearly in the introduction to my book CommonSense and Nuclear Warfare which I wrote during the summer of 1958, and pub-lished early in 1959. I had been encouraged during 1958 by receiving theKalinga Prize, at Unesco in Paris as I could not travel to India. (To be surethe French physicist who was deputed to bear-lead me on that occasionremarked comfortingly to his wife after I had been expounding my views:‘Never mind, my dear, by next year France will be able to explode her ownbomb.’) And the continued and growing success of the Pugwash movement,trafalgar square 577as well as the interest shown in the open correspondence with Khrushchevand Eisenhower (Dulles) were encouraging. I continued my search, as I havedone since, to ?nd fresh approaches through which to try to sway publicopinion, including governmental opinion. All that I had succeeded in doingin 1958 touched only this or that relatively small circle of people. The ??? atthat time gave hope that a more general public could be reached. It seemed tome then as it does today that governmental policies must be regarded in thelight of common sense. They must be shorn of red tape and ‘tradition’ andgeneral mystique. They would be seen then to be leading, as they are, only toprobable general destruction.The policies that were needed were those dictated by common sense. If thepublic could be shown this clearly, I had a faint hope that they might insistupon governmental policies being brought into accord with common sense. Iwrote my Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare in his hope. The book was fairlywidely read, I believe, and commended. But it did not tackle the question asto exactly how each individual could make his opinion known and in?uencepolicy-making, a fact that left some readers dissatis?ed. I had one moment ofhigh hope when the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, wrote commend-ing the book and saying that he would like to talk with me about it. He was aConservative, and a policy-maker in a national Government, and had col-laborated in a pamphlet on the subject himself. But when I went to see him,he said, ‘It is a good book, but what is needed is not only nuclear disarma-ment but the banning of war itself ’. In vain I pointed out the passage in mybook in which I had said that the only way to ensure the world againstnuclear war was to end war. He continued to believe that I could not have saidanything so intelligent. He cast my other arguments aside. I came away dis-couraged. I realised that most of the already informed people who readmy book would read it with a bias so strong that they would take in onlywhat they wished to take in. For the following months, therefore, I returnedto the piecemeal business of speaking at meetings, ??? and other, andbroadcasting, and to the pleasures of my own life.To celebrate my eighty-seventh birthday, we drove down through Bath andWells and Glastonbury to Dorset. We visited the swannery and gardens atAbbotsbury where, by chance, we witnessed a peacock’s nuptial dance, pre-cisely articulated, one of the most enchanting and beautiful ballets that I haveever seen. We made a sentimental pilgrimage to the small Italianate eight-eenth century Kingston Russell House which I had not seen before. I thoughtit most perfect and most perfectly set in its garden and valley. I wishedimmensely that I could myself live in it. I seldom feel this kind of envy, butKingston Russell House touched me deeply. And I was interested in huntingout the old farm buildings and the village where my family had begun itsmore notable career. It was an altogether satisfactory expedition, but for somethe autobiography of bertrand russell 578reason that I have now forgotten had to be cut short. So, to complete ourallotted holiday, we went another extended drive after my birthday, this timein the Peak District. This, however, from the point of view of enjoyment was acomplete failure. Places that should have been lonely and quiet were teemingwith holiday-makers like ourselves; places that should have seemed full of lifeeven though quiet, like Jane Austen’s Bakewell, were tarnished by conventionmeetings. Perhaps it all seemed dreary because we struck the wrong note inthe beginning by visiting Alderley where my Stanley grandparents had had anestate. The house had been destroyed. Only the gardens remained, in derelictstate. The Government had taken it over for some unholy project. I have asmall table, made for my mother and a larger one made for my father by theestate carpenter, from the Alderley Doomsday Oak when it had to be cutdown. But the whole place made me melancholy. It was very desolate.Early in 1960 we went to Copenhagen for a short time for me to receivethe Sonning Prize for contribution to European Culture, bestowed by theUniversity of Copenhagen. The speech of acceptance gave me a chance tooutline my attitude towards present cultural di?erences, based upon thehistory of past changes in cultures. If this were re?ected upon and adoptedas being valid, as I think it is, it would change for the better presentco-operation between nations and would increase the possibility of furtherand e?ective co-operation. My speech was published later under the title ‘Oldand New Cultures’ in my book Fact and Fiction.The occasion of the prize-giving was a pleasant one with a reception and a?ne State dinner following it. My wife was seated between the Minister ofEducation, who declared himself to be unable to speak English, and ProfessorNiels Bohr, upon whom the burden of conversation therefore fell. He took hisduties seriously and talked steadily through the banquet. He was very di?cultto understand, we were told, even when speaking his native Danish to Danes;and, in English, I had always found it extremely hard to follow him as hespoke very quickly. My wife found it impossible. That was exasperatingenough, since he was clearly talking of things that she would have wished tohear about. But, far worse on such an occasion, as he talked, he leaned furtherand further towards her, absorbed in his own words. Finally, he was eatingthe delicious confections from her plate and drinking her wine whilst thenotable company of diners looked on, smiling and entranced. It was a tributeto his charm that she continued to like him, as I did.I have seldom enjoyed my many speeches and articles during these years asthey usually concerned nuclear matters. But now and again I have made apleasurable excursion into other matters as I did at Copenhagen. I even ven-tured, a little later, into Shakespearean exigesis in a letter to The Times. Forsome weeks there had raged a discreet and venomous correspondence con-cerning the probable person to whom the printed sonnets were dedicated.trafalgar square 579The initials W. H. were interpreted this way and that by great stretches ofimagination and with much learning. It seemed to me that, like Melchisedek,Mr W. H. was a clerical error for Mr W. S. who was, in truth, ‘the onliebegetter’ of the sonnets. I ventured, hesitantly and half in fun, to put this viewforward. No one took it up and no further letters appeared on the subject. Ifear that I spoiled the scholarly fun.One evening I broadcast over the Asian service in company with a numberof Asian students. As I walked down the corridor in the hotel where theoccasion took place, a small, bird-like lady leapt from one of the huge red plushthrones placed at intervals along the wall, stood before me and declaimed,‘And I saw Shelley plain’, and sat down. I tottered on, shattered, but delighted.I did a series of ?? interviews with Woodrow Wyatt as interlocutor thatcame out in book form as Bertrand Russell Speaks his Mind. It gave me a chance tosay a good deal that I wanted to say about international a?airs as well as muchelse to a wide audience in various parts of the world. In February, 1960, I hada debate with the Indian scientist Bhabha and Teller, the Father of the Bomb,at which Ed Murrow was the interlocutor on ???. I found it a most distressingoccasion. The debate was di?cult, since we were each speaking from ourown country and could not follow the facial expression or reaction of eachother as we talked. Still more disconcerting, I was inhibited by my intensedislike of Teller and by what I felt to be disingenuous ?attery. I came awayfrom the ??? studio feeling that I had let down all those who agreed with mypoint of view by not putting up the better show that the facts of our casewarranted. Another disappointing ?? occasion was a ??? discussion ofnuclear matters by Mrs Roosevelt, Lord Boothby, Mr Gaitskell, and myself. Iwas horri?ed to hear Mrs Roosevelt enunciate the belief that it would bebetter, and that she would prefer, to have the human race destroyed than tohave it succumb to Communism. I came away thinking that I could not haveheard aright. Upon reading her remarks in the next morning’s papers I had toface that fact that she really had expressed this dangerous view.I had a controversy with an American philosopher named Sidney Hook atthis time that was one which both of us found di?cult to conduct on logicallines. He was a Menshevic who had become apprehensive of Russia ruling theworld. He thought this so dreadful that it would be better the human raceshould cease to exist. I combated this view on the ground that we do notknow the future, which, so long as Man survives, may be immensely betterthan the past. I instanced the times of Genghiz Khan and Kublai Khan, separ-ated by only a generation, but one horrible, the other admirable. But therewere plenty of contrary instances that he could have adduced, in view ofwhich a de?nite decision was impossible. I maintained, however, that anychance of a better world depended upon hope, and was on this account to bepreferred. This was not a logical argument, but I thought that most peoplethe autobiography of bertrand russell 580would ?nd it convincing. Several years later, Hook again attacked me publicly,but this time in such a manner that no comment from me was necessary. Itamused me, however, that for his defence of ‘freedom’ and his attack on myviews on Vietnam, he chose as his vehicle a journal later admitted to be?nanced by the Central Intelligence Agency.1The attitude of most of humanity towards its own destruction surprisedme. In December, 1959, I had read Neville Shute’s On the Beach and I attended aprivate viewing of its ?lm. I was cast down by the deliberate turning away itdisplayed from the horrible, harsh facts entailed by nuclear war – the diseaseand su?ering caused by poisoned air and water and soil, the looting andmurder likely among a population in anarchy with no means of communica-tion, and all the probable evils and pain. It was like the pretti?ed stories thatwere sometimes told about trench warfare during the First World War. Yet the?lm was put out and praised by people who meant to make the situationclear, not to belittle the horror. I was particularly distressed by the fact that Imyself had praised the ?lm directly after seeing it in what I came to think themistaken opinion that a little was better than nothing. All that sort of thingdoes, I came to think, is to make familiar and rob of its true value whatshould carry a shock of revulsion. Irony such as that in Dr Strangelove or Oh, Whata Lovely War is a di?erent matter. That does cause people to think, at least for ashort time.By the summer of 1960 it seemed to me as if Pugwash and ??? and theother methods that we had tried of informing the public had reached thelimit of their e?ectiveness. It might be possible to so move the general publicthat it would demand en masse, and therefore irresistibly, the remaking ofpresent governmental policies, here in Britain ?rst and then elsewhere in theworld. For a time, however, I had to put my bothers behind me, especially asthey were so shapeless and amorphous, as my daughter and her husband andtheir children came to visit me. I had not seen them for a long time, not sinceI was last in the United States. Since that time my son-in-law had become afull ?edged Minister in the Episcopal Church – he had been a layman and inthe State Department – and he was taking his whole family to Uganda wherehe had been called as a missionary. My daughter had also become veryreligious and was whole-heartedly in sympathy with his aspirations. I myself,naturally, had little sympathy with either of them on this score. When I hadwished to send a sum of money to them shortly before they came to England,and had to go to the Bank of England to arrange the transfer, my request wasgreeted with smiles and sometimes laughter at so old and con?rmed anatheist wishing to help someone to become a Minister of the Gospel. Butabout many things we agreed, especially in liberal politics, and I loved mydaughter dearly and was fond of her family. They were to stay in England fortwo years to prepare for their mission work, and each July they came totrafalgar square 581North Wales where they were put up in one of the Portmeirion Hotel cot-tages and we saw them daily. This, with other smaller happenings, absorbedmost of my time during these two months.Towards the end of July, 1960, I received my ?rst visit from a youngAmerican called Ralph Schoenman. I had heard of some of his activities inrelation to ??? so I was rather curious to see him. I found him bursting withenergy and teeming with ideas, and intelligent, if inexperienced and a littledoctrinaire, about politics. Also, I liked in him, what I found lamentablylacking in many workers in the causes which I espoused, a sense of irony andthe capability of seeing the humour in what was essentially very seriousbusiness. I saw that he was quickly sympathetic, and that he was impetuous.What I came only gradually to appreciate, what could only emerge with thepassage of time, was his di?culty in putting up with opposition, and hisastonishingly complete, untouchable self-con?dence. I believed that intelli-gence working on experience would enforce the needed discipline. I did notat ?rst fully understand him but I happened to be approved of by him and, inturn, to approve of what he was then working for. And for his continuedgenerosity towards me personally I was, and can still only be, deeply grateful.His mind moved very quickly and ?rmly and his energy appeared to beinexhaustible. It was a temptation to turn to him to get things done. At theparticular time of our ?rst meetings he acted as a catalyst for my gropings asto what could be done to give our work in the ??? new life. He was verykeen to start a movement of civil disobedience that might grow into a massmovement of general opposition to governmental nuclear policies so strongas to force its opinions upon the Government directly. It was to be a massmovement, no matter from how small beginnings. In this it was new, di?er-ing from the old Direct Action Committee’s aspirations in that theirs were toooften concerned with individual testimony by way of salving individualconsciences.The scheme seemed to me to have great possibilities and the more I talkedwith Schoenman the more favourable to it I became. I was aware that thechairman of the ??? did not approve of civil disobedience and had littlesympathy with even the Direct Action Committee. I also knew that the ???tolerated and was coming more and more to support in words if not in actionits activities. I discussed the matter with the chairman. He did not dispute thepossible e?ciency of civil disobedience or oppose my upholding such a newmovement. He only urged me not to make any announcement about thisfresh e?ort till after the Conference of the Labour Party when he hoped thatthe Party might ‘go unilateral’ and take up at least some of our doctrines. Tothis I readily agreed.Knowing that the chairman would neither oppose nor aid the newmovement, it did not occur to me to consult him about our day to daythe autobiography of bertrand russell 582preparations. I went to work with Schoenman to prepare a list of people whomight be approached to uphold such a movement. Letters went out to themover my name. I was very insistent that letters should go to no one who wasnot known to us as being sympathetic, but, unfortunately, mistakes weremade. One letter was sent to someone with a name similar to the intendedrecipient but with a di?erent address and entirely, unhappily, di?erent views.He at once sent our letter to the Evening Standard with a scathing letter of hisown about our activities and intentions. This was published considerablybefore our plans were thoroughly formed or the participants gathered, andworse still, before the chariman thought the project should be revealed. Therewas a big meeting in Trafalgar Square on September 24th at which I spoke.Before it took place, I suggested to the chairman that I speak of the proposednew mass movement of civil disobedience within the ???. He replied that itmight injure ???’s chances of in?uencing the Labour Conference. I said thatI would consult Frank Cousins, the head of the Transport Workers’ Union,and if he felt it in any way dangerous to the desires of ???, I would not touchupon the subject. Frank Cousins replied to my letter brie?y, saying that it didnot matter one way or the other what I did or said. I informed the chairmanof Cousins’s letter and of my consequent intention to speak of the newmovement. He accepted this, and I spoke of the new movement in TrafalgarSquare.After the announcement in the Evening Standard of the proposed mass move-ment of civil disobedience, it was necessary to hurry through our plans. Butthe event caused a great uproar. The chairman of ??? made statements to hisfriends and to the Executive Committee and to the press which, in e?ect,charged me with starting a new movement behind his back and one notpermissible within the rulings of ???. During the ?rst week of October, Imet with him daily for many hours at my house in Hasker Street to try towork out some modus vivendi. He brought with him to these meetings a friendwho was not an upholder of methods of civil disobedience, to put it mildly,so I asked a member of the ??? Executive Committee who professed then tobe in sympathy with me, to come as balance. At my insistence, because therehad been so many allegations as to what I had said and not said, a taperecording was taken of these meetings, a copy of which was sent to the ???o?ces for the chairman and the original of which I kept.By October 7th we had come to an agreement which would permit us tocontinue to work together and gave a statement to that e?ect to the press. Butwithin a short time it became evident to me that I could not continue in myposition of president of the ???, which necessitated work with its chairman,and that, if only to preserve the harmonious working of the ??? itself, I mustresign. This I did in a letter to the press, following a letter to the chairman.The result of all this was, for me, a shower – a storm – of letters and visitstrafalgar square 583from upholders of the ??? throughout the country, expostulating with meand, most of them, accusing me of causing a split in the ???. This surprisedme, as I had no intention of doing so. Nor do I think that I did. Moreover, Iobserved no weakening in its work owing to my action. It seemed to me thatthe ??? would get on better if it had o?cers who saw, at least broadly, eye toeye than it would do under the leadership of those who patently did not trusteach other. I had no intention, as I said and continued repeatedly to say, ofwithdrawing my support of much ??? work. I sent statements to the variousbranches of the ??? explaining this and the reasons for my actions. So far as Iknow, these statements went unread. At the ??? Executive Meeting onNovember 5th, my resignation was accepted. One member, I was told,wished me to be sued for libel because of something I had said or written. Hewas persuaded not to proceed – which was perhaps, for my personal reputa-tion, a pity. I continued to speak at meetings of the ??? at which I was askedto speak, and I remained at the head of the Welsh ???. I withdrew only myinterest in ??? policy-making and any responsibility that, as its president, Ihad for the actions of its o?cers.Meantime, the new movement towards mass civil disobedience had cometo be called the Committee of 100. I had been in frequent touch with thesmall company of young people who were its early upholders. Inspiredlargely by the enthusiasm of Ralph Schoenman, this company had grown intoa fairly large and steadily expanding group. Early in September he hadbrought the Rev. Michael Scott to see me. Scott was an active member of theDirect Action Committee and became one of the most stalwart members ofthe Committee of 100. I saw him as well as Schoenman almost daily, and he,and I published under our joint names a lea?et entitled ‘Act or Perish’ whichpresents the nucleus of the policy of the Committee.The early members of the Committee of 100 were for the most part drawnfrom the ??? and the ranks of the Direct Action Committee. There was muchactivity and there were daily meetings, most of which I could not, and wasnot expected to, attend. I spoke for the Committee, I think, only at a meetingin Friends House, Euston, in October, 1960, and, again, at a press conferenceheld in Kingsway Hall in December. Gradually, adherents were drawn fromoutside the fold, a process greatly accelerated both by the opposition widelyfelt to the establishment of the ?? Polaris Base at Holy Loch, and especially, bythe announcement of the ?rst proposed demonstration of civil disobedience.This was to be a ‘sit-down’ – of at least two thousand people, it was hoped –outside the Ministry of Defence on February 18th, 1961. It was planned thateach succeeding demonstration would demand the participation of morepeople, the number increasing at each fresh demonstration until a really massmovement was achieved. To ensure a good beginning it was decided topledge as many as possible to take part in the ?rst sit-down.the autobiography of bertrand russell 584The activity of the Committee was intense during the days precedingFebruary 18th. Posters went up (and were torn down), people were stoppedin the street and approached in pubs and cafés and were argued with till theywere converted to the need of the coming demonstration. But of all this I onlyheard. I took part only in endless discussions.I hope that no one who reads these pages will think that I am attempting towrite a history of the Committee of 100 or of the ??? or, indeed, of anyother movement or public event. I am trying only to recount what I remem-ber that a?ected my own life.My enthusiasm was high for the work and preparations that were beingmade for February 18th, and I was in complete agreement with the plans andwith the aspirations of the Committee. I have already written in this volumeof my views of civil disobedience, and I stated them publicly in speeches andarticles at this time, notably in an article in the New Statesman for February 17th.My sole misgivings were connected with the hurried and piece-meal way inwhich our policies had been worked out owing to their premature publica-tion and with the dread lest it might be too di?cult – impossible, perhaps –to avoid violence in such a crowd, considering the opposition that might beencountered. Passive resistance, it seemed to me, might be very di?cult toinculcate amid such enthusiasm. In the event, it posed no di?culty.The morning of February 18th was dark and drizzly and cold, and ourspirits plummeted. If it rained, the numbers participating in the demonstra-tion would undoubtedly dwindle in spite of the large nucleus alreadypledged to take part. But when we assembled in Trafalgar Square there was agreat crowd. Precisely how great it was, it is impossible to say. The mediannumber as reckoned by the press and the police and the Committee made itabout 20,000. The speeches went well and quickly. Then began the march upWhitehall preceded by a large banner and managed with great skill by theCommittee’s marshals. It comprised a surging but calm and serious crowd ofsomewhat over 5,000 of those who had been in the Square. At one point wewere held up by the police who tried to stop the march on the ground that itwas obstructing tra?c. The objection, however, manifestly did not hold, andthe march proceeded. Finally, over 5,000 people were sitting or lying on thepavements surrounding the Ministry. And there we sat for about two hourstill darkness had fallen, a very solid and quiet, if not entirely mute, protestagainst governmental nuclear policies. A good many people joined us duringthis time, and more came to have a look at us, and, of course, the press and ??