IN the last week of August this year, a 40th anniversary commemorative march began from Cardiff to the former site of Greenham Common airbase in Berkshire, marking the route taken in 1981 by Women for Life on Earth, against the placement of US nuclear missiles in Britain.

Peace camps established at the base became high profile in press and television reports, noted for their lasting resilience and activism.

A prominent figure in the peace movement at this time was Bruce Kent, now honorary vice-president of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), having been its general secretary and chair during the peak of media spotlight on Greenham.

Kent’s life as an acclaimed peace campaigner began quite differently. Before studying jurisprudence at Oxford, he was required to do national service, in the Royal Tank Regiment between 1947-49. Perhaps surprisingly, he recalls this time with some fondness.

“It wasn’t a problem at all — I had four tanks under me and I was a second lieutenant eventually. I had a troop of tanks, but they shifted me on to armoured cars, Dingo Daimlers. I had 10 of those to run for about a year, we went all round England it was quite fun. I had a very nice time in the army.”

Prior to being commissioned as an officer, Kent was deployed to Hollywood barracks, north of Belfast, spending six months in Northern Ireland at a time of relative calm.

“They didn’t even give us bullets for our sentry rifles, so we were unarmed. I remember a big sign on the railway bridge as you came into Belfast saying ‘prepare to meet your God’.”

As a practising Catholic, there was consternation among a Protestant family with whom Kent stayed, showing him an example of religious prejudice for the first time. After being dropped off by his hosts to attend mass one Sunday, he had the experience of visiting a Catholic church in attire that raised some eyebrows from the congregation.

“In I come, dressed as a Lance-Corporal in the British army and the entire church turned round to stare at me — so that was my first knowledge of religious division.”

In 1958 Kent was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest, an occupation he kept for almost 30 years. Yet his first encounter with CND was unexpected and chaotic, on their route from the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston to the capital.

“I was furious, because I was a priest in Kensington and on the Easter Monday when they were coming into London, they completely blocked the road of High Street Kensington and I had about four marriages to do in the church. All the brides were late, because of this CND lot — so I got really cross! I didn’t know who they were, but they were obstructing the traffic completely.

“I then got invited by Pax Christi, a little Catholic group, because I’d shown an interest in nuclear weapons. Then quite quickly I joined Christian CND, largely because of a man who is now forgotten, archbishop Thomas Roberts — who was outstanding for courage because he broke out of the ranks. He said to me: ‘do you think it’s a mortal sin to kill hundreds of thousands of people?’ I said ‘of course it is.’ He said: ‘Do you think it’s equally sinful to be willing to do this, in any circumstances?’ And I began to rethink.”

Subsequently Kent became active in the central CND organisation, retiring from ministry in 1987 and standing as a Labour candidate in the general election of ’92.

“I knew that I would be saying things that were not in line with the hierarchy of this country. I knew that Cardinal Hume would really prefer me to go back to parish life. The election was coming up and I was bound be speaking out of line as far as the church was concerned if I continued in CND.”

Although church teaching condemned the use of nuclear weapons there was ambivalence, especially under Pope John Paul II, about the possession of nuclear weapons for “deterrence.”

As the women who carried wire-cutters to the fence at Greenham Common airbase knew, there were significant risks involved in campaigning for that most placid of objectives, peace — Kent also faced such hazards, being arrested, charged and tried before a judge and jury.

“‘I’ve given all my legal arguments,’ the judge said to the jury. ‘Was this man equipped to cut wire and did he intend to cut wire?’ They had no choice but to say yes. I’d agreed that I had been, so then they said: ‘He’s guilty.’”

For sentencing, the judge decreed that Kent be bound over to keep the peace — a binding also imposed on women arrested at Greenham Common, the irony of which did not escape one activist Barbara Williams, who retorted: “Yes, peace was the idea.”

“I thought the women were very brave,” says Kent. “I soon realised there were different sections of opinion — there were some camps that welcomed men to visit. The camps were known as gates, yellow gate, green gate and so on. Each gate into the air force base had its own tents and they all had their own perspectives on the campaign. I got on quite well with them.”

In 1989, one year before Kent became chair of CND, then-Labour leader Neil Kinnock persuaded the party to abandon unilateral disarmament — a policy of abandoning nuclear weapons without seeking similar concessions from rivals, “Because he thought he’d have more chance getting elected,” says Kent.

“I remember Kinnock being on the platform in Trafalgar Square when I was organising CND demonstrations and he made a great speech about getting rid of nuclear weapons, he wasn’t distanced from CND at all — but then he moved into this new phase of supporting only multilateral disarmament. The Tories really latched on to this, because it could split the disarmament movement.”

Yet even that political party had members who were sympathetic to the Greenham women and the CND cause — forming their own group, Tories Against Cruise and Trident (TACT). Kent says he did encourage them to campaign — but that “it wasn’t part of CND, they kept their distance.” Within the parliamentary Conservative Party however, certain MPs were determined to harass Kent and the disarmament movement.

“I thought it was a scurrilous abuse of a democratic process to label your opponents friends of the national enemy, which is what they did, but I thought they had very little scrupulosity in all that. It was largely a Tory group who founded the Coalition for Peace through Security, Julian Lewis was the most prominent name, but Edward Leigh was another one.

“When I did my march from Glasgow to Newbury, they were constantly there at evening meetings saying ‘you are supporting the Soviet Union’ and all that stuff endlessly and letters to the press. There were people who disagreed with us on principle, which is fine, but Julian Lewis’s booklet he put out was headed ‘CND — Communists, Neutralists and Defeatists’. It was meant to portray us in the most unpatriotic terms, really.

“We knew of one bloke who had previously been at a college in Birmingham, he was known as a dissident there. He turned up one day at CND and said he’d like to be a volunteer. I said: ‘Why not?’

“So he was working downstairs in the postal room, but I noticed that every time I went upstairs he would always follow me and ask me some question. After a while I began to realise he wasn’t totally innocent. When he was finally exposed, he went off somewhere else and I discovered that he was an MI5 plant.”

It was later confirmed by whistleblower Cathy Massiter that a department within the MoD was responsible for the surveillance of CND from 1981-83. MI5 has said it was no longer concerned with CND, though a Counter Terrorism Policing document from the Home Office leaked in 2020 contained a range of symbols deemed to be indicative of “left-wing extremism” including CND, alongside Greenpeace and various anti-fascist groups.

For Kent, a visit to the USSR during the 1980s demonstrated the nature of its own peace and disarmament movement, differing from Britain in that there was both a government-sponsored organisation and an independent one — contact with the latter being deemed inappropriate.

“I was invited to Moscow by the Soviet Peace Committee, who were to all intents and purposes government agents as well, but on the other side.

“I also knew from Moscow a small group who were critical of the Soviet Union and much more sympathetic to the US and having met all the officials from the Soviet Peace Committee I said I’m delighted to have met you all, but I would like to spend some time with this other group — but to them, they were the enemy, they were anti-government.

“So I realised that the attitude the British government was expressing in various ways wasn’t unusual, it happened in other countries in the same way.”

For Kent, the most inspiring characters are those who stand against the conformity narrative of unjust war, yet he does not regard himself as an absolutist in the Quaker model.

“I’m not an absolute pacifist, because I can’t get pacifists to define what they mean by pacifism. I don’t like to use the word pacifist in an undefined sense — I’d like to be precise as to what it is I’m standing up to.

“When the bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, there was an Anglican, the Dean of St. Albans Cathedral, who refused to ring his bells in celebration for the end of the war. He said: ‘I’m not going to celebrate a war brought to an end by a massacre.’ Now that’s an incredibly brave thing to do, especially for the Church of England. Those are the people who really move me — or Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian who was called up but refused and was beheaded in 1943.”

Beatified and declared a martyr by the Catholic Church, Jagerstatter had been conscripted into the German army but after he had his offer to serve only as a medic declined, he refused to swear an oath to Hitler or serve as a soldier and was finally executed.

With a recently leaked report showing that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lifting of the cap on nuclear warheads potentially raises the stockpile from 180 to 260, the CND cause is ever pertinent and relevant and Kent is optimistic for future hopes of resistance.

“I’m just so impressed by the number of people who have a conviction on peace and war and stand up for the things they believe in. Whether they’re at Greenham Common or CND, that’s what moves me, to see how many good people there are around.”