Nuclear Free

I first took an interest in nuclear matters in the late 1950''s.

Reading English newspapers the march from Aldermaston struck me as a stroke of sanity in a world enamoured of the nuclear Bomb.

http://www.cnduk.org/

Arriving back from Europe to New Zealand in 1968 sporting my shiny CND badge everyone seemed to think it was the peace badge.

Well it was because in 1966 the hippies of San Francisco had appropriated it as the peace sign. Its original meaning was lost. The peace sign was against nuclear weapons not a fanciful wish for a peace. Not that peace would not be a wonderful thing.

But getting rid of nuclear weapons was the aim of the founders of CND.


(I did with a few mates drive a station waggon across America in 1967 from San Francisco to Washington with the "peace" sign on the side but that's another story.)

I was strongly supportive of Norm Kirk's sending a frigate to stop French testing in the pacific. A standing ovation at the conference for Big Norm was well deserved. But at the same time as a humble civil servant I served the notices in the early seventies for a putative nuclear power station at Waiau Pa near Waiuku.

By 1985 we were successful on all fronts.

New Zealand government policy was to be nuclear free.