Unofficial teaser for the film "March to Aldermaston", made in Easter 1958 by Lindsay Anderson (director of the classic counter-culture movie "If?") and narrated by the great actor Richard Burton - "we look at the world, and we see madness"!
The march was the first of several organised by CND - the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, to protest against the building of nuclear bombs at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston near Reading, Berkshire, UK. The de-facto leader of the peace movement at that time was the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. This film is incredibly important, firstly as a document of social history, and secondly as a tribute to the early work of the UK anti-nuclear and anti-war movement, which went from relatively modest roots to staging some of the largest demonstrations in political history. Irrespective of whether you believe in total non-violence (which I don't), the long term objective of this movement is the practical realisation of an ideal that is still the most important that humanity has ever conceived - the total abolition of all war.
If this goal seems over-idealistic, so did the ideals of the Green movement in the 1960s, when ecological activists were largely regarded as social pariahs, before their ideas went on to occupy the centre stage of culture and to set the agenda for worldwide mainstream politics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. No matter how long it takes, if that objective is ever achieved, then "March to Aldermaston" will prove to have been one of the most important films in documentary history.
Check out the brilliant Black Eyed Peas / Justin Timberlake video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48op52MBKg
Apologies to the producers for editing their film. The full cut of "March to Aldermaston" is available on the excellent "Free Cinema" DVD compilation http://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Cinema/dp/B000E1P2XU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1210026503&sr=1-1
