‘Russians fear a nuclear holocaust too’

Press, 8 January 1983, Page 7

‘Russians fear a nuclear holocaust too’

The peace movement in the Soviet Union was just as strong as any other country in the Western world, said a British peace campaigner. Mr L. A. Bird, in Christchurch.

“There is just as much fear, if not more, of a nuclear holocaust in the Soviet Union as there is. anywhere else.” he said. “It suffered so terribly in World War II and in other wars, so the people are more aware of the effects of war than the United States, who have had nothing like that." said Mr Bird.

Mr Bird, a Quaker, has been twice chairman of the Peace Pledge Union of the United Kingdom. He arrived in Christchurch yesterday from Australia for a Quaker conference in Waipara, and a peace lecture tour of New Zealand.

Mr Bird joined the Peace Pledge Union when it began in 1935. He became a Quaker in 1948 because “I was very impressed with their standard of life and their background." He gained an exemption from all military service in World War II and was imprisoned three times, a total of 17 months, for refusing to enlist in land work, hospital, ambulance, or civil defence during the war. “I did not accept them because I didn't consider that

any tribunal could rule my conscience.” said Mr Bird. He has visited the Soviet Union three times, twice meeting with the Soviet Peace Committee. He said that that committee was working at a “much higher level.” as 30 of its 400 members were in the Soviet Government.

“They are in a position to influence towards nuclear disarmament,” he said.

The policies of the Peace Pledge Union were not aimed directly at nuclear disarmament, but to “make people aware of the fact that we can do something about the need to work together for peace."

He is arranging for a deputation from the Soviet Peace Committee, and United States religious peace groups to meet in Britain later this year to establish a “working relationship." “We hope, first of all, to get the people of the United States to realise that there is a very deep-felt desire for peace in the Soviet Union." Mr Bird, aged 72, is from Yorkshire, and is a solicitor, but he does not practise.now. His love of tramping and athletics has taken him to every Olympic and Commonwealth Games since 1948.

His experiences at the Moscow Olympics led him to write one of the four lectures

he will deliver in New Zealand—on the Olympics and the need to understand other people. The other three lectures will be: A Quaker Looks at the United States; Costa Rica—a Country Without an Army (about which he has just completed a 60.000word book); and Searching for Peace.

He has just spent 3'2 months in Australia, lecturing and visiting relatives, of whom he had 85 there. Mr Bird will deliver bne lecture in Christchurch on January 13, then will walk the Milford Track. That will be an amble compared with the extensive trekking he has done in South America and in Nepal. He has climbed 20,000 ft up Mt Pumori (opposite Mount Everest) to the place where Sir Edmund Hillary went, to work out his route up Mount Everest. Plane crash

Two United States Air Force FISC fighters crashed into the Pacific Ocean about 150 km north-east of Okinawa, said the Kadena Air Force Base public affairs office. There were no details about the personnel on board or the cause of the twin crashes. But military officials in Tokyo said that it was believed the planes carried one person each. — Tokyo.