“Science was digging its own grave”: the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the campaign against chemical and biological warfare

Abstract

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is the oldest active women’s peace organization in the world. Although their overall aim is the abolition of all war, from the outset they voiced particular opposition to chemical warfare. Later, this became a call against both chemical and biological warfare (CBW). This article draws on archival documents to trace this history, concentrating on the early days of WILPF and then on revived interest in the topic during the late 1960s and early 1970s. While early WILPF did not define CBW as an issue with any special gendered relevance for women, the historical record shows WILPF placed emphasis on its leading role in organizing opposition. It also shows a consistency of approach, WILPF often acting in an educational capacity as an informer of public opinion about the horrors of CBW. Over time, WILPF’s role changed in that the leaders of the key campaigns against CBW came to regard their role as distinct from those of scientists.

KEYWORDS:

• Biological warfare
• Chemical warfare
• Disarmament
• History
• Gender

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant Award Number: AH/K003496/1, “Understanding Biological Disarmament: The Historical Context of the Biological Weapons Convention.” I am grateful to WILPF historian Helen Kay, as well as the late Julian-Perry Robinson, Kathleen Vogel, and the journal reviewers and editors for feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1 For example, Volume 1 of the seminal SIPRI study of CBW, which covers their history, contains ten specific mentions of women among the unintended victims of chemical warfare, some quoting from eyewitness testimony and most relating to the Vietnam War. SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare. Volume 1. The Rise of CB Weapons (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1971) pp. 144, 168, 187, 188, 194, 206, 209, 210, 233.

2 Gertrude Bussey and Margaret Tims, Pioneers for Peace: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 1915–1965 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965); Carrie A. Foster, The Women and the Warriors: The U.S. Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1946. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995); Catherine Foster, Women for All Seasons: The Story of the Women’s League for International Peace and Freedom (Athens, GA: Georgia University Press, 1989); Linda Schott, Reconstructing Women’s Thoughts: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Before World War II (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).

3 All histories are limited by their primary sources. This article is based on sources reproduced online in Allison Sobek, How Did the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare, 1915–1930? (Binghamton: State University of New York at Binghamton, 2001); the rich source of mainly UK-focused WILPF records at the Womens’ Library, London School of Economics; and the Harvard–Sussex information bank archive on CBW at the University of Sussex. These are rich sources but may also have skewed the focus of the article toward the United States and chemical weapons in the earlier history and toward the United Kingdom and biological weapons in the latter part of the article.

4 WILPF, Generations of Courage: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, from the Twentieth Century into the New Millennium (Philadelphia, 2015).

5 Schott, Reconstructing Women’s Thoughts, p. 39.

6 Bussey and Tims, Pioneers for Peace.

7 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/10, Danger to Mankind (n.d. 1968).

8 Bussey and Tims, Pioneers for Peace, p. 47.

9 Jill Liddington, The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-militarism in Britain Since 1820 (London: Verso, 1989), p. 175; Lawrence Wittner, “Gender Roles and Nuclear Disarmament, 1954–1965,” Gender & History, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2000), pp. 197–222.

10 Maria Grazia Suriano, “‘Will this terrible possibility become a fact?’ Il progresso scientifico applicato alla guerra nella riflessione di Gertrude Woker e Kathleen Lonsdale,” Deportate, esuli, profughe, No. 35 (2017), pp. 26–41.

11 Foster, The Women and the Warriors, p. 36.

12 Joan M. Jensen, “All Pink Sisters: The War Department and the Feminist Movement in the 1920s,” in Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen, eds., Decades of Discontent: The Women's Movement, 1920–1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 199–222.

13 Foster, The Women and the Warriors.

14 Excerpts from “Statement of Mrs. Harriet Connor Brown, Representing the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,” in World Disarmament: Extract from Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representatives, January 11, 1921 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1921); The Records of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section, 1919–59, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (Microfilm, reel 33, frames 649–57), by Harriet Connor Brown. Primary sources collected in Allison Sobek, How Did the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare, 1915–1930? (Binghamton: State University of New York at Binghamton, 2001), <https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1000671881>.

15 Foster, Women for All Seasons, p. 127.

16 Jensen, “All Pink Sisters,” pp. 199–222.

17 Foster, The Women and the Warriors, pp. 47–49.

18 Ibid., p. 78.

19 Edward M. Spiers, “Gas Disarmament in the 1920s: Hopes Confounded,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2, (2006), pp. 281–300.

20 WILPF Resolutions, Fourth Triennial Congress, Washington, DC, May 1–7, 1924, <https://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1924.pdf>.

21 Sobek, How Did the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare?

22 Suriano, “‘Will This Terrible Possibility Become a Fact?’” pp. 26–41; “Woker, Gertrud Jan,” in Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, Vol. 2 (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 1391–93.

23 “Woker, Gertrud Jan.”

24 Ibid.

25 Woker published a book alongside the pamphlet, The Coming Poison Gas War or The Coming War of Poison and Fire, which went through six editions but was banned in Germany and copies were burnt by the National Socialist Student Association. “Woker, Gertrud Jan”; Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London, Anna Vreland, “In Memory of Gertrud Woker, 1878–1968,” in WILPF, New Perversions of Science, WILPF Australian Section, 1969.

26 Gertrud Woker, The Next War, a War of Poison Gas (Washington, DC: WILPF, before 1927); WILPF Collection, IV-7-14, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries, WILPF Papers, 1915–78 (Microfilm, Reel 112, frames 1133–36), by Gertrud Woker. In Sobek, How Did the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare?

27 “Report on the Work of the Committee Against Scientific Warfare of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,” May 4, 1925, WILPF Collection, IV-7-13, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries, WILPF Papers, 1915–78 (Microfilm, Reel 103, frames 1741–44), by Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–. Primary sources collected in Sobek, How Did the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare?

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Gertrude Bussey and Margaret Tims, Pioneers for Peace: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 1915–1965 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965), p. 66.

31 For the wider context of slight, but significant, wider concern about bacteriological warfare at this time see John Walker, The 1925 Geneva Protocol: Export Controls, Britain, Poland and Why the Protocol Came to Include ‘Bacteriological’ Warfare (Brighton: University of Sussex, 2016), <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/spru/hsp/occasional%20papers/HSPOP_5.pdf>.

32 Letter from Naima Sahlbom to National Sections, November 25, 1929, WILPF Collection, II-7-29, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries, WILPF Papers, 1915–78 (Microfilm, Reel 45, frame 875), by Naima Sahlbom. In Sobek, How Did the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare?

33 Paul Langevin, “Declaration: For Signature by Scientific Men and Women,” 1929, WILPF Collection, IV-7-21, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries, WILPF Papers, 1915–78 (Microfilm, Reel 104, frame 222), by Paul Langevin. In Sobek, How Did the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare?

34 Ibid.

35 George W. Merck, “Official Report on Biological Warfare,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 2, Nos. 7–8 (1946), pp.16–18.

36 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/9, Gertrud Woker, “Der Biologische Krieg,” in Eleventh International Congress of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Copenhagen, August 15–19, 1949, pp. 198–208. English translation by Tizzy Mann, UCL Translation and Media Accessibility Services (TraMAS).

37 Ibid.

38 Woker continued to campaign on science and disarmament issues until her death in 1968. See The Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London, Anna Vreland, “In Memory of Gertrud Woker, 1878–1968,” in WILPF, New Perversions of Science, WILPF Australian Section, 1969.

39 WILPF Resolutions, Eleventh Triennial Congress, Copenhagen, August 15–19, 1949, <https://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1949.pdf>.

40 WILPF Resolutions, Fourtheent Triennial Congress, Stockholm, July 30–31, 1959, <https://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1959.pdf>.

41 Wittner, “Gender Roles and Nuclear Disarmament, 1954–1965,” pp. 197–222.

42 Holger Nehring, Politics of Security: British and West German Protest Movements and the Early Cold War, 1945–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Lawrence Wittner, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Disarmament Movement (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

43 WILPF Resolutions, Sixteetn Triennial Congress, the Hague, July 26–31, 1965, <https://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WILPF_triennial_congress_1965.pdf>.

44 Julian Perry-Robinson, “The Impact of Pugwash on the Debates over Chemical and Biological Weapons,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 866 (December 1998), pp. 224–252.

45 Michael Mandelbaum, “Vietnam: The Television War,” Daedalus, Vol. 111 (1982), pp. 157–69; Sarah Bridger, Scientists at War: The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015) pp. 115–54.

46 Marie Chevrier, “The Politics of Biological Disarmament,” in Mark Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm Dando, eds., Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945 (Cambrdige, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 304–28; Susan Wright, “The Geopolitical Origins of the Biological Weapons Convention,” in Susan Wright, ed., Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 313–42.

47 See <https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/2162(XXI)>.

48 TNA CAB 130/389, Working Group on Chemical and Biological Warfare: Meetings 1–2, Papers 1–2, ENDC UK Working Paper on BWC (ENDC/231), August 6, 1968.

49 Brian Balmer, Secrecy and Science: A Historical Sociology of Chemical and Biological Warfare (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 91–114; William King, “The British Nerve Agent Debate: Acquisition, Deterrence and Disarmament, 1945–1976,” PhD diss., London School of Economics, 2019, pp. 180–91. In addition, the Bernal Peace Library educational trust had organized a conference on CBW in early 1968.

50 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/15, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, British Section Report to Congress.

51 Bridger, Scientists at War, p. 94.

52 University of Sussex, Harvard Sussex Program, Sussex Harvard Information Bank (HSP SHIB), F2.2.1.7, WILPF, Biographical Information Evelyn S. Murray (possibly 1988).

53 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/10, Danger to Mankind (n.d. 1968).

54 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/15, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, Congress Programme.

55 John Cookson and Judith Nottingham, A Survey of Chemical and Biological Weapons (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). An earlier version of the book existed as a report from the authors and was published by a group of students. It is not clear if Nottingham was a guest or part of the British Section delegation; she is not listed on a list of British delegates dated June 6, 1968 (LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/15, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, List of Delegates to Conference from British Section).

56 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/15, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, Session X, New Ways of Working in the International WILPF.

57 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, Nyborg Strand, August 8–24, 1968, Background Paper on Chemical and Biological Warfare for Committee on Chemical and Bacteriological Warfare, by Judith Nottingham.

58 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/15, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, Proposed Resolution from the British Section.

59 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/15, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, Statement issued by WILPF.

60 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, Report by Sybil Cookson and Margaret Curwen, January 17, 1970.

61 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, Liaison Committee for Women’s Peace Groups, Action Committee, Conference, October 26, 1968. On the open day, see Brian Balmer, “An Open Day for Secrets: Biological Warfare, Steganography and Hiding Things in Plain Sight,” in Brian Rappert and Brian Balmer, eds., Absence in Science, Security and Policy: From Research Agendas to Global Strategy (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 34–54.

62 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, Report by Sybil Cookson and Margaret Curwen, January 17, 1970.

63 The minutes of the organizing committee are held in the LSE Special Collections. They do not always list the affiliation of those present or those who sent apologies. Some organizations listed include: British Humanists, Co-op Guilds, IRC (possibly International Rescue Committee), P.A. (probably Peace Action), Young Liberals, United Nations Association. The treasurer was Rev. Canon Edward Charles.

64 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, possibly at Cambridge in early December 1969, n.d. April 1969.

65 Ibid.

66 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, International Conference on Chemical and Biological Weapons, personal report, Margaret Curwen.

67 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/1, letter from Ritchie Calder to Sybil Cookson, June 6, 1969.

68 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/1, letter from Selwyn Lloyd MP to Sybil Cookson, August 1, 1969.

69 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/1, letter from Philip Noel-Baker MP to Sybil Cookson, June 23, 1969.

70 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/1, International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, November 21–23, 1969, Programme.

71 Balmer, Secrecy and Science, pp 94–96.

72 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, International Conference on CBW Meeting of Organising Committee, Minutes, October 15, 1969; International Conference Organizing Committee Meeting, Minutes, July 29, 1969.

73 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, A Short Historical Account of WILPF’s Opposition to Scientific Warfare for Mass Destruction, Margaret Tims and Cornelia Weiss in connection with the International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, London, November 21–23, 1969.

74 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/1, International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, November 21–23, Programme.

75 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, The Supreme Folly: Chemical and Biological Weapons.

76 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/1, International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, November 21–23, Programme; LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, The Supreme Folly.

77 The title “Swedish Institute of National Defence” was used in the conference literature but the correct title was “Swedish National Defence Research Institute” Försvarets forskningsanstalt (FOA).

78 For Meselson’s own account of his role see Jeanne Guillemin, Matthew Meselson, Julian Perry-Robinson, and Nicholas Sims, “Witness Seminar: Origins of the Biological Weapons Convention,” in Filippa Lentzos, ed., Biological Threats in the Twenty-First Century (London: Imperial College Press, 2016), pp. 357–84.

79 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, The Supreme Folly. On McCarthy’s opposition to CBW see Los Angeles Times, “Horrified Wife Started Drive on Gas Warfare: Rep. McCarthy’s Mate Inspired Campaign to Ban Germ and Chemical Weapons,” December 5, 1969, p. A4.

80 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, The Supreme Folly.

81 Ibid.

82 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/1 DSCN2608, Minutes of Organising Committee Meeting, December 17, 1969

83 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, The Supreme Folly.

84 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, letter Margaret Curwen, Continuing Committee of the International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, n.d. probably November/December 1969.

85 The WILPF Australian Section set up a similar committee, which produced an Australian version of the Danger to Mankind pamphlet, mentioned earlier, entitled New Perversions of Science. The Scandinavian Section campaigned for a CBW-free zone. The Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London, WILPF, New Perversions of Science, WILPF Australian Section, 1969; Foster, Women for All Seasons, p. 61.

86 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, International Conference on Chemical and Biological Warfare, Report by Sybil Cookson and Margaret Curwen, January 17, 1970.

87 It is difficult to build a picture of the gender composition of Pugwash meetings, as the participants are largely listed with the title “Dr” or “Professor.” A list of Pugwash members who died between 1997 and 2007 lists one hundred men and five women (seven names were indeterminate). Pugwash Newsletter, “Remembering Pugwashites Who Have Died, 1997–2007,” Vol. 44, No. 2 (2007), pp. 24–25.

88 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 2, Committee on Chemical and Biological Warfare, Minutes of Meeting, July 8, 1970. The member organizations were listed here as: Anglican Peace Fellowship, Bristol Standing Conference on Disarmament, British Association for World Government, British Humanist Association, British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, Chemical and Biological Warfare Action Group, Christian Action, Church of England, London Co-operative Society Political Committee, DATA, Federation of University Women, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Society of Friends, Methodist Church, National Peace Council, National Union of Students, National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds, Roman Catholic Church, United Nations Association, UNA Youth, UN Student Association, Voice of Women, Women for Disarmament, Women’s Advisory Council of UNA, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Women’s Liberal Federation, Young Liberals.

89 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/18/15, Seventeenth WILPF International Congress, British Section Report to Congress.

90 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, Committee of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Minutes of Meeting, January 19, 1972.

91 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, invitation from CCBW, free showing of the film A Plague on Your Children on May 17, 1971, Panel Q&A Session chaired by Bruce Kent.

92 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, Copy of Petition on CBW; Committee on Chemical and Biological Warfare, Minutes of Meeting, May 3, 1971.

93 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, Committee on Chemical and Biological Warfare, Minutes of Meeting, March 29, 1971. On the CS decision see Alex Spelling, “‘Driven to Tears’: Britain, CS Tear Gas, and the Geneva Protocol, 1969–1975,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 27, No. 4, (2016), pp. 701–25.

94 LSE Special Collections, NPC 10/15, Leaflet from Committee on Chemical and Biological Warfare “A Warning About Chemical and Biological Warfare”; WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, Committee of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Minutes of Plenary Meeting, July 4, 1972.

95 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/21/8 Folder 1, Committee of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Minutes of Plenary Meeting, July 4, 1972. On science and environmental thinking in this period see Jon Agar, Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2012).

96 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/20/11, WILPF British Section, Fifty-Fifth Annual Report 1970–71.

97 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/20/11, WILPF British Section, Fifty-Sixth Annual Report 1971–72.

98 LSE Special Collections, WILPF/20/11, WILPF British Section, Annual Report 1975–76.

99 University of Sussex, HSP SHIB, F2.2.1.7, WILPF, Nerve Gas Task Force. Binary weapons are filled with chemical precursors of nerve agents in separate compartments. They then combine while the missile is in flight to create the chemical weapon.

100 University of Sussex, HSP SHIB, F2.2.1.7, WILPF.

101 University of Sussex, HSP SHIB, F2.2.1.7, WILPF, Nerve Gas Task Force Alert, 1990.

102 University of Sussex, HSP SHIB, F2.2.1.7, WILPF, post by Carol Umer, WILPF to Listserve [email protected], September 25, 2006.

103 Balmer, Secrecy and Science, pp. 91–114; Brian Balmer, “Keeping Nothing Secret: UK Chemical Warfare Policy in the 1960s,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 33, No. 6 (2010), pp. 1–23.

104 King, The British Nerve Agent Debate, pp. 180–91.

105 Liddington, The Long Road to Greenham, p.175.

106 More recently, in 2019, WILPF co-authored a joint NGO statement to the UN BWC Meeting of States Parties in which biological-weapons disarmament is framed explicitly in terms of gender: <https://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/BBF5EA58E635441AC12584C6005873E9/$file/MSP+2019+statement+with+endorsements.pdf>.