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Their concerns included the popular opposition to Trident replacement and to the US siting of cruise missiles at Greenham Common.

Though Labour was tearing itself apart over the break-away faction that formed a new Social Democratic Party (SDP), some 700,000 more people voted for the disarmament-oriented Labour Party of 1983 than in the 1979 election when the Party was led by Prime Minister James Callaghan, who took the first steps towards Trident replacement and the deployment of cruise missiles in 1979. Callaghan lost that election, and Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. Labour’s defeat in 1983 had far more to do with the SDP factor in a two-party system, economic reconstruction, and innovative use of media and advertising techniques by the Tories………

Before the other political parties adopted sophisticated marketing and media strategies, the Conservatives had learnt the value of controlling the narrative. Thatcher showed off in tanks or standing shoulder to shoulder with US President Ronald Reagan, talking tough after winning the Falklands War. She largely avoided the burnt and badly wounded victims, and left little room for anyone to question the mistakes that had led to the showdown with Argentina over these South Atlantic islands. The Americans kept a low profile for the first half of 1983, but made up for it once Thatcher had been re-elected. When the weapons were flown into Greenham in November 1983, protesters pulled down over half of the 9 mile perimeter fence of the US Airforce Base…..

Labour and CND were tarred as Communist sympathisers or stooges. Greenham women were projected as naïve (coupled in some narratives with the condescending qualification “well-meaning mothers and grandmothers”, and in others with “squalid” and “dangerous feminists”). The Conservative line was “If you knew what we know, you wouldn’t question the need for Trident and Cruise”. History has confirmed that the peace movement understood much more than we were given credit for. Perhaps that is why Thatcher’s government refused to engage in an intelligent debate over nuclear policy, finding it easier to belittle their opposition while asserting their status quo decisions and preferences as if they were factual, evidence-based necessities. ……….

Labour’s challenges to Cold War nuclear escalation by the United States and the replacement of Polaris with a larger, US-dependent Trident missile system were sufficiently popular to cause the Conservatives doubts and anxiety, especially concerning US controls over nuclear decisions. The Tory spin doctors made a lot of hay over the term “unilateral” in the policy adopted by Labour in the early 1980s. This policy was adopted at a time when “multilateral disarmament” was primarily used by those who did not want disarmament at all. So advocating multilateral disarmament was an excuse for doing nothing, confident that no steps would get the support of all the other nuclear-weapon states (and if it did, then participation by India and Israel could be made into an insurmountable precondition for disarmament negotiations). All that the Labour policymakers meant when they referred to “unilateral nuclear disarmament” was that someone – and the UK was well placed – needed to take the first step towards halting nuclear escalation. They argued that it was in the UK’s interests to take these first steps down the nuclear ladder without waiting for all the rest, and that if Britain could take the first practical steps it would help the US and Soviet Union to draw back from the brink and begin the necessary changes to stop their arms race spiralling into nuclear war. This was right and sensible, especially the predictions of the beneficial effects of taking the first steps down the nuclear ladder.

As it turned out, the first courageous step was not taken by the UK or US governments, but by a new Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev. Recognising the need to pull back from the nuclear brink and emboldened – according to Gorbachev’s own recollections – by the actions and arguments of European disarmament activists and US and Russian scientists, he took the initiative to accept NATO’s “zero option” and invite President Reagan to negotiate on disarmament. Thatcher was extremely concerned about the Reykjavik talks and did not want the US Airforce to leave Greenham Common, as the 1986-88 Cabinet papers will no doubt reveal. All in all, her government could not have been more wrong in its assumptions about international relations, its nuclear and security projections, US intentions, costs and the utility of the Trident system we’ve been lumbered with since then.

By contrast, the peace movement, which applied Gandhi’s dictum “Be the change you wish to see in the world” was far less surprised to see the changes that ended the Cold War. These were the transformations we had worked for, recognising that the first step can lead to many more. By 1986, just five years after the Women’s Peace Camp had been set up at Greenham Common, the US and Russian presidents, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, met in Reykjavik to talk about pulling back from the nuclear brink. They started with Cruise, Pershing and SS20s, known in military parlance as INF, standing for intermediate-range nuclear forces. One year later, they had concluded the INF Treaty which banned these weapons. Though resisted by Mrs Thatcher, these nuclear disarmament negotiations ushered in profound – and positive – changes in East-West relations. By the time the first of the very expensive Vanguard submarines rolled out of Barrow in 1994, the Cold War had been consigned to the trashcan of history. Sadly its nuclear assumptions and doctrines live on in the minds of those responsible for the 2013 Trident Alternatives Review…………..  http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rebecca-johnson/pro-nuclear-propaganda-in-1983-lessons-for-2013