Is it Ronald Reagan’s idea of an April Fools Day Joke to say he is going to reduce nuclear weapons?
This was my question on the 88th edition of Question Time on April 1st 1982 at the Greenwood Theatre in London.
I invented this question on the actual evening as I entered the building, due to a headline in the Evening Standard that day. We had already posed another question on the invitation weeks earlier. The minute I wrote down this question I felt it had a good chance of being selected, it was right on cue. Even then I knew it fulfilled the brief to be up to the minute.
My question was highly apposite, since our Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the American President Ronald Reagan had been spending many millions on installing Cruise missiles at Greenham Common, leading to widespread protests. Reagan would later declare Russia to be an “Evil Empire”, making the case for deploying NATO nuclear-armed intermediate–range ballistic missiles in Western Europe. Yet on this day an Evening Standard headline falsely claimed that Reagan would be reducing the deployment of nuclear weapons, which I believed merited some suspicion, if not downright disbelief.
Sir Robin Day, the host (see above), was magnificent and I was very impressed with the Tory Norman St John-Stevas. During the warm-up with test questions they were both hilarious, but a lot more circumspect when the show went live, to my disappointment. Little known to me at the time was John Smith, later to become Leader of the Labour Party in 1992. The other panel members were MP Mike Thomas, a founder member of the SDP, and Terry Marsland, a feminist member of the TUC.
I wore a very loud and gay pink shirt, so I certainly stood out, and I believe you had to stand up when suddenly you were told to ask your question. For many years, if not decades, people would tell me they had seen me on TV. I had already long forgotten about it, but it was a powerful lesson in the power of the media, since it had been seen by many millions of people.
Of course the response to my question was a lot of humming and hawing, no-one said that nuclear weapons were an insult to our culture, civilisation or even religion, as I wanted them to. No-one came out in direct support of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, though some expressed sympathy. I thought it was a poor response. Yes, I was a strong supporter of CND at the time and still am. I should point out here, that in 2020 the UK are still spending $6.2 billion every year ($72.6 billions spent worldwide) on nuclear weapons, which could destroy the world as we know it. While I was proud of my question, I gave an anodyne response when the question was referred back to me, which I had not been expecting. This was a very live show at the time. I simply said I agreed with John Smith. Always prepare a witty and cutting answer!
Refs:
Global Nuclear Weapons Spending 2020 https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ican/pages/2161/attachments/original/1623169371/Spending_Report_ExecutiveSummary.pdf?1623169371
The cost of the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent 2023
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8166/CBP-8166.pdf