CND membership booms after nuclear U-turn

In the Eighties we all wore the badges and went on the marches. I was at Greenham Common on the historic day that 70,000 CND supporters joined hands forming a 14-mile human chain linking us to Burghfield and Aldermaston.

These were heady days in which Thatcher had agreed to allow Reagan to place cruise missiles on British soil at the height of the Cold War.

Since then the membership of CND has been on the wane. Membership slumped from a peak of 110,000 in the 1980's to 32,000 last year.

Until now.

However, Blair's recent comments that nuclear power was "back on the agenda with a vengeance", and the fact that he is considering recommissioning the Trident weapons system, has produced the impossible. CND have suddenly seen their membership rise by 300%.

"We've not experienced an explosion like this for a long time," said the organisation's chair, Ms Hudson. "We have been opening envelopes with £1,000 contributions and the local groups who have been out with our No Trident Replacement petition are reporting an extraordinary reception."

It says a lot about how far Labour has been taken from it's ideals by Tony Blair that CND should see such a rise in it's membership whilst a Labour government is in power.

In the 1980's membership of CND was almost mandatory for Labour Party card carriers.

But, such a rise in CND's membership with Blair in power says even more about how much Blair has rejected the idealism of younger days. It's hard to look at the present Premier as he calls for nuclear power stations to be built and the recommissoning of Trident and believe that he, himself, was ever a member of CND. And yet he was, indeed, a member.

At moments like this I am left wondering if Blair meant anything that he said in those early days. Certainly the longer he stays in power the more violently he appears to shift ever rightwards. But was it all an elaborate ruse?

He recently joked on the Michael Parkinson show that, "It's a long time since anyone called me a Socialist." But was he ever one?

He sometimes doesn't even sound like he's vaguely left wing. Recently, when talking about how to deal with criminal gangs, he outdid Michael Howard by declaring, "I would generally harry, hassle and hound them until they give up and leave the country."

That's a remark that could have come out of the mouth of Thatcher.

It's no wonder that young people in this country are becoming disillusioned with politics when this is what represents the left wing choice.

In the heady days of the eighties we at least had the advantage of knowing who the enemy were, for they clearly identified themselves and what they believed in. Much as I loathed Thatcher I always had a grudging admiration for the way she openly told you what she stood for.

With both Blair and Cameron it's all a game of smoke and mirrors as they both vie for the mythical "middle ground". The danger of this kind of subterfuge, as the case of the Labour Party and Blair amply demonstrates, is that you don't know what you are buying until it's too late to change it.

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Tags: Blair, Cameron, Thatcher, CND.