I don’t know much about the UK “ban the bomb” movement but what I do know comes from my readings on the British underground/alternative press of the early-mid-60s that was there when Beats (beatniks) and rock and roll came into fashion.
IT (International Times), OZ, the Beats at Royal Albert Hall. Before those foundational events, there were the stirrings of the “ban the bomb” movement.
“I don’t know much about the UK “ban the bomb” movement but what I do know comes from my readings on the British underground/alternative press of the early-mid-60s that was there when Beats (beatniks) and rock and roll came into fashion.”
The Communist Soviet efforts to ban the Anglo-American possession and use of nuclear weapons but not the Soviet possession and use of nuclear weapons began concurrently with the American efforts to engineer the atomic bomb during the Second World War. It was Leo Szilard along with Albert Einstein who warned the U.S. Government and President Roosevelt about the need for the United States government to win the race to the atomic bomb before the Germans. Leo Szilard was a prior Communist activist and writer in addition to his work in nuclear physics. Along with Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard spied for the Soviet Union and kept the Soviet authorities informed about the atomic bomb research in the Manhattan Project.
Several television productions and motion pictures depict how Leo Szilard supposedly argued against the American use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese, because doing so would reveal to the Soviets and every other nation that the development and use of such nuclear weaponry was actually feasible and effective. What they fail to disclose is how Leo Szilard lied, and how they in turn have perpetuated and promoted Szilard’s lie to deceive their audience with a fake narrative. At the time when Leo Szilard argued the atomic bomb must not be used against the Japanese because doing so would reveal to the Soviets such a weapon was feasible, Leo Szilard had already been spying for the Soviets for years to report to the Soviets it actually was feasible and imminent. Having failed to stop the use of the atomic bomb by the U.S. Government, Leo Szilard and Robert Oppenheimer collaborated to publish a Communist publication urging unilateral U.S. disarmament even while they assisted the Soviets to construct a nuclear weapons arsenal. Their Communist publication heavily promoted the early and late band the bomb political movements in the West.
In other words, it would be fair to observe that the Soviets and their spies in the West worked to use the resources of the West to engineer nuclear weapons in the West and then steal the results of the Western research and development to construct the Communist Soviet nuclear arsenal. They then worked to deny the West the advantages of those nuclear weapons by also launching and nurturing political protest organizations who would collaborate to force the West to unilaterally disarm while the Soviets armed themselves with nuclear weapons.