Interview with British peace activist Walter Wolfgang

This video from Britain says about iself:

19 November 2006

Walter Wolfgang – a Jewish refugee from Nazi anti-semitism in Germany speaks out against the wave of anti-Muslim racism unleashed by the military disasters in Iraq & Afghanistan.

From British daily The Independent:

Walter Wolfgang: ‘We saved the world’

He was there at CND’s birth 50 years ago. As Russia warns of a new arms race, the world needs him more than ever

Interview by Cole Moreton

Sunday, 10 February 2008

Walter Wolfgang is an awkward customer – so awkward he should get an awkwardly shaped gold watch from the Awkward Squad for half a century’s loyal service. You may remember him as the old boy thrown – forcibly – out of the Labour conference two years ago for responding to a Jack Straw speech with the shout, “Nonsense!”.

The sight of party goons hauling an obviously frail man out on to the street for daring to dissent said a great deal about the dying days of the Blair administration. “I didn’t want to protest at all,” says the 84-year-old gruffly. “I was just sitting there listening. But Straw talked a lot of complete rubbish, then he went on to Iraq and said, ‘Well, we are only there for one reason, and that is to bring democracy to the country.’ So I burst out.”

The awkwardness of Walter Julius Wolfgang goes back a lot further than that, though – all the way back to bothering Hugh Gaitskell in the Fifties and being a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which held its first ever public event 50 years ago this week. A conference in London on Saturday will mark the occasion, with a reception for surviving originals. “We wanted the speedy removal of British nuclear weapons,” recalls Mr Wolfgang. “It is taking a bit longer than we thought, eh?”

Quite. The little black-and-white badge on his lapel carries an iconic image, also taken up as a symbol of resistance to wars from Vietnam to the Gulf. At times the badge has been compulsory for the young and the dissident, with mass CND protests in the Sixties and Eighties expressing the national mood. But Polaris and Cruise missiles arrived anyway. The invasion of Iraq happened despite more than a million people taking part in an anti-war march jointly organised by CND. Now the Government plans to replace the Trident missile system. “There is no reason to give up,” insists Mr Wolfgang, despite this evidence. “We have helped to change the world for the better, in our way.” …

There were 5,000 people at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster for the first big meeting on 17 February 1958, and Walter Wolfgang was one of them. Born in Germany, he had been sent ahead to this country by his Jewish parents as a 14-year-old in 1937.

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