PEACE

Gov'ts in retreat
on n-arms policies,

WPC leaders report

Conservative governments may prevail
in Europe, but the burgeoning peace
movements are placing those governments
on the defensive and forcing them to reverse
their policies on the arms race, two visiting
European peace activists said Nov. 26.

James Lamond, British Labor member
of Parliament for Oldham said the quarter-
million strong Campaign for Nuclear Dis-
armament has forced Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher to appoint a “propa-
gandist” as defence minister.
~ And Dr. Hans Krysmanski of the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany predicted the
Christian Democratic government will have
to speak out against the deployment of
cruise missiles in Europe if it hopes to be
re-elected in 1986.

The two, on a brief tour of Canadian
cities following their participation in ‘the
World Dialogue for Peace and Disarma-
ment: Against Nuclear War in Toronto
Nov. 23-25, talked tq reporters in Van-
couver city hall, and addressed a meeting
sponsored by the Vancouver Peace Assem-
bly and B.C. Peace Council.

Both are leading members of the B.C.
council’s parent group, the World Peace
Council, sponsor of the Toronto dialogue.

‘Krysmanski, a sociology professor at the
University of Munster, said the West Ger-
man peace movement has grown to encom-
pass the labor movement as well as doctors,
scientists and other members of the “profes-
sional class.”

“T can say that the strength of our peace
movement has remained, even after the
failure to prevent the beginning of deploy-
ment of the Pershing 2 missiles in my coun-
try,” he said.

Krysmanski noted such victories as the
“complete reversal” in the arms policies
held by the opposition Social Democratic
Party, the continuing of detente policies by

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the ruling Christian Democrats, and the
successful Easter peace marches in which
hundreds of thousands demonstrated their
support for the peace referendum held dur-
ing the elections for the European Parlia-
ment. :
_ Praising the Canadian peace movement’s
“Refuse the Cruise,” slogan, the member of
the World Peace Council’s presidential
committee noted “this has special meaning
for my country too.”

The cruise is slated for deployment in the

‘ federal republic in 1986 “but I think it will

be quite difficult for my government to pro-
ceed along those lines,” he predicted.

“We achieved basic stability. . there isn’t
a town, or a village, even that doesn’t have
(a peace) group well organized,” he added.

Krysmanski said both the Social Demo-
crats and the Green Party, which may form
a coalition government after the next elec-
tion, support the peace movement’s basic
aims.

Lamond said the nuclear disarmament
campaign has swelled its ranks in recent
months, but gaining numbers in the peace
movement isn’t an end in itself. The objec-
tive, the former Lord Mayor of Aberdeen
contended, is in influencing governments.

“Mrs. Thatcher had to make an
appointment of a man as defence minister,
not someone who’s an expert on defence,
but someone good at propaganda. We take
that as a compliment.”

The Labor MP acknowledged that the
Soviet “bogey man” image exploited by
western powers kept people from raising
“much more sharply” the issue of Britain’s
defence budget, the only fiscal area to
expand “in real terms” — 22 per cent —
under Thatcher’s rule.

The Labor Party has found support for
most of its peace policies, but must work
hard to promote others, he said.

“The Labor Party’s position with regard
to (refusing) cruise missiles was very popu-
lar...with regard to cancelling the Trident
missile (it) was very popular. . .with regard
to unilateral disarmament — for Britain
alone, incidentally — it was not popular. It
cost us a lot of votes in the election.

“We have a big job on our hands to get
the British public to support that policy. But
the components of it are ‘already shown in
opinion polls to have a lot of support,” said
Lamond.

The former president of the Aberdeen
Trades Council said the danger of a nuclear

lia

holocaust comes not so much from a possi-
ble direct confrontation between the United
States and the Soviet Union, but as a result
of development “in some other area.”

“For instance, if the United States goes
on throwing its wéight about, and suggest-
ing that Central America is its back yard,
and if the Nicaraguan government wants to
buy arms and that cannot be accepted by
the United States, and (the U.S.) starts to do
something about it, perhaps intervenes in
Cuba in some way, I can’t really say that the
Soviet Union could stand aside and do
nothing about it...”.

Lamond said he once objected, at a peace
council meeting, to the stationing of Soviet
missiles in the German Democratic Repub-
lic and Czechoslovakia in response to the
deployment of Pershing 2 missiles in West-
ern Europe. But when he did so, “it wasn’t
the Soviet Union that jumped up and said,
‘you’re mistaken.’

“It was the smaller countries which said,
‘You know, if the Soviet Union doesn’t
keep up to the United States, we are the
ones who will suffer. Because if the United
States feels it can take any action it likes,
then what happened in Grenada (which the
U.S. invaded last year) will be duplicated
elsewhere.” ”

Lamond acknowledged that the World
Peace Council is sometimes accused of
being “one-sided” in its approach to the
balance of nuclear forces. “But what can we
do. . should we distort the facts in order to
get people to try and believe us by saying
things we don’t really believe ourselves? I
think that the fault lies in the West, and I'd
be dishonest to myself if I said otherwise.”

Lamond said he was once asked if he had
anything good to say about U.S. President
Ronald Reagan.

“T’ll say this: that when he began to speak
of peace and the need for talks with the

‘the lines he set out then, and there appears _

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HANS KRYSMANSKI, JAMES LAMOND. . .World Peace Council leaders say western _
nations should match Soviet peace declarations.

Soviet Union, I was inclined to dismiss it as :
pre-election talk...But I have been plea
santly surprised that he has continued along |

to be a genuine desire on his part. . .to have -
talks with the Soviet Union and I welcome
that.” E

The western media often plays up S0o-
called ‘“un-official” or “dissident” peace
groups in Eastern European countries as |
being totally at odds with their govern- |
ments. 7

But Lamond noted that a chief partici- |
pant at the 10th conference of the peace |
movement in Hungary three weeks ago was _
“Dialogue”, Hungary’s “unofficial” peace |
organization. An open conference work- |
shop on Youth and Peace — in which an |
overflow crowd discussed problems suchas |
pacificism and conscientious objection — |
elected Dialogue’s chairman to give the |
report to the conference plenary. .

“He said he welcomed this opportunity, |
but he really did hope that observers in the
West would not use Dialogue and the real |
discussions they were having...as anti-|
Soviet propaganda. The differences that}
there are in the Eastern bloc over matters Oo! |
this kind are treated as propaganda against
the regime and the economic system rather
than something that should be corrected
with proper discussion, which is what I}
believe,” said Lamond. a

“Those who dismiss the peace movement |
in Eastern Europe as being nothing more}
than an officially backed government body |
don’t know what they’re talking about,” he}
asserted. {

Lamond said western nations such as the |
U.S. and Britain should respond to the}
Soviet Union’s peace initiatives — parti- |
cularly the no-first-use of nuclear weapons |
pledge of 1982 — with the same declara-
tions. 4

“If we think a declaration of that kind |
.. helps them (the USSR) feel more conil-
dent, we should make it. Isn’t that the object |
of the exercise, to make them feel that we
really mean what we say?” 2

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10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 5, 1984