Operation Gandhi

Operation Gandhi was a pacifist group in the early 1950s in the United Kingdom that carried out the country’s first non-violent, direct action protests in 1952.

In 1949 the pacifist Peace Pledge Union (PPU) responded to its relative inertia and to calls for more action by establishing seven “Commissions” to explore the best ways of moving forward. One of these was the Non-violence Commission. Members of this commission took it upon themselves to explore the question of civil disobedience.^[1] Subsequently, at the beginning of 1952, many members of the commission who were dissatisfied with a lack of action formed a breakaway group, unaffiliated with the PPU, initially known as Operation Gandhi and then as the Non-violent Resistance Group.

The PPU had been interested in the teachings of Gandhi and the possibility of translating them into actions in the United Kingdom. Between 1936, when Peace News was founded, and 1957, it had almost 350 articles on related topics. ^[2] However, within the PPU there was significant opposition to the concept of civil disobedience.

At the end of 1951, Hugh Brock, who would subsequently become editor of Peace News, proposed the formation of Operation Gandhi, for which he had already drawn up a plan of action.^[3] Its activities included a sit-down outside the War Office at the end of January 1952. Eleven protestors squatted in front of the War Office having first notified the police. Following principals of non-violence, the protestors didn’t resist arrest, and pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction and obstructing the police. ^[4]

There were other protests at Aldermaston, Mildenhall, Porton Down and the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. The protest march to Aldermaston in 1952 involved just 35 people and paved the way for the much larger Aldermaston Marches of CND that began in 1958.^[5] Indeed Operation Gandhi can be said to have paved the way for all subsequent non-violent direct action in the UK, including protests against nuclear weapons by the Direct Action Committee against nuclear war, by the Committee of 100 and by others.

Operation Gandhi did not last long. It changed its name to the Non-violent Resistance Group and by 1954 had been re-absorbed into the PPU's Non-violence Commission.

References

1. ^ PPU Journal 44, December 1949
2. ^ Scalmer, Sean. 2002. 'The Labour of Diffusion: The Peace Pledge Union and the Adaptation of the Gandhian Repertoire', Mobilization: An International Journal, vol. 7: 269-86.
3. ^ Non-violence commission of the PPU, Minutes of 12 December 1951.
4. ^ Sean Scalmer ”Globalising Gandhi: Translation, Reinvention, Application, Transformation” Borderlands Vol 4 No 3, [1], quoting Peace News.
5. ^ Brock, Hugh, "Marching to Aldermaston - ten years ago!", Sanity, Good Friday, 1962