EASTER 2019 is as late as the annual festival can be. It is more usually in late March or early April. That reminds us that it is 60 years since the first Aldermaston to London march organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) which took place from March 27-30, 1959.

There had been a march at Easter 1958 supported by the new CND but organised by local direct action groups. It had gone from London to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. The demand in 1959 however remained the same: ban the bomb.

The route from Aldermaston through Berkshire and west London to central London was 54 miles. By the third march in 1960 many thousands were involved in marching, but 1959 still had significant numbers.

The sheer logistics of organising the march are detailed in Left, Left, Left, the biography of CND organiser Peggy Duff. Church halls and community spaces had to be organised with the help of local churches, Labour Party branches and trade unions. People had rough and ready overnight accommodation and something to eat.

When the march arrived in Trafalgar Square for a rally on Easter Monday 1959 the supporting crowd had swelled to at least 60,000, although CND claimed 100,000. Whatever the reality it was the largest protest London had seen at that point in the 20th century. Larger protests were to come.

Tony Benn’s diary makes no mention of the first Easter CND march from London to Aldermaston in 1958. However when the march reversed direction in 1959 and went to London, Benn was there. Benn wrote in his diary for March 30 1959:

“Took the boys to watch the Aldermaston marchers as they came in. They were 1,500-strong at Trafalgar Square and had Frank Cousins amongst them. The movement is a force to be reckoned with. A representative of the White Defence League was there with some fascist propaganda. Mosley is standing in North Kensington at the next election.”

Benn was a mainstream Labour figure in the late 1950s and certainly not an active CND supporter. His presence is a reminder that CND represented a new form of protest and the rise of a left-wing protest culture which particularly gathered support among young people. It was estimated that 40 per cent of those on the early marches were under 21 years old, an echo perhaps of today’s climate protests.

The presence in 1959 of fascist protesters reminds us too that unfortunately the threat of such groups is nothing new.

It is interesting to compare the grassroots nature of the CND march of 1959 organised from below with the “Leave Means Leave” march from Sunderland to central London currently taking place. This of course is meant to echo in some twisted way the Jarrow March of 1936 and the claim that the voice of the north is forgotten at Westminster.

While there may be truth in that, it doesn’t seem that likely that a Surrey-born stockbroker in the shape of hard-right politician Nigel Farage is exactly the person to make the point. He of course made an appearance briefly on the first day of the march and then promptly cleared off. In 1959 leading figures of the left such as Michael Foot marched all the way from Aldermaston.

Moreover the number on the march, tens rather than hundreds, let alone thousands, underlines that far from being a grassroots protest about EU austerity, it is organised by wealthy neoliberals with little popular support or relationship with the masses. The marchers are not sleeping on floors in draughty halls but in hotels.

The contrast between a genuine popular movement and a bogus one created for reactionary ends could hardly be greater.

Keith Flett is a socialist historian.