Letter: The protests were for this

IT IS dismaying to read that Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who participated in the passionate protests against nuclear weapons in the late Fifties, should have adopted such a superior attitude towards peace movements ("This time it's for real", Section 2, 31 May). It was the tireless stand made by the Greenham women against Cruise missiles in the early Eighties which brought about the resurgence of consciousness of the dangers of nuclear weapons. The fact that CND and peace protests have had a low profile since that time is owing to the complacency of people like Mr Wheatcroft, who only seem to respond to a crisis. What has been happening in India and Pakistan, and what is almost certainly in the process of being developed in countries unknown, are the inevitable outcome of what Mr Wheatcroft erroneously supposes were "superpower deterrents". To bleat now about the proliferation of nuclear weapons may be compared to parents whingeing about their delinquent children while they themselves were in the pub getting drunk every night.

The responsibility is ours. Some people saw this coming.

Fiona Walker

London N19