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Peace march protesters reunited 40 years on
A group of protesters who took part in the 1983 London Hyde Park Peace March are reunited by Oxfam in Hyde Park to mark the march's 40th anniversary, October 19, 2023

A GROUP of protesters who took part in a 1983 march for peace in London were reunited by Oxfam today to commemorate one of the largest public demonstrations in British history.

The original event drew a 300,000-strong crowd to Hyde Park for a rally against the presence of nuclear missiles in London.

Among those present at the reunion were Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) general secretary Kate Hudson and Dave Wainwright, one of the original co-ordinators.

Ms Hudson said: “One of the amazing things about that demonstration that I remember so clearly was the intergenerational nature of it.

“There were people literally of every age group — tiny kids in buggies, people of my mum’s generation and then people, really senior people, within our society and our organisation.

“The peace movement has always been like that, embracing all walks of life, every background, every community and every age. That’s how we are now and going forward. Everyone has a role to play.

“Those kids have been able to grow up and are still part of the movement today and hopefully their kids will be onside now.

“We’re facing terrible dangers, nuclear dangers today, but the peace movement, the anti-nuclear movement, progressive people everywhere, we are standing together and standing firm to say: ‘We want a world of peace’.”

Mr Wainwright noted that the march, “without all the social media that we have today, was a very different sort of process than nowadays.

“I recognise the world is a more complicated place than perhaps I imagined when I was younger and the arguments are perhaps more complicated.

“But fundamentally, war is bad, nuclear weapons are bad, children are good.”

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