European Nuclear Disarmament European Nuclear Disarmament ( END ) was a Europe - wide movement for a " nuclear - free Europe from Poland to Portugal ” that put on annual European Nuclear Disarmament conventions from 1982 to 1991 . Origins . The founding statement of END was the European Nuclear Disarmament Appeal issued in April 1980 and circulated by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation ( http : / / www . russfound . org ) . It was provoked by NATO ’ s decision in December 1979 to respond to a Soviet upgrading of intermediate - range nuclear missiles in Europe with its own nuclear modernisation – cruise and Pershing II missiles to be deployed in Britain , Germany , the Netherlands , Belgium and Italy . The appeal began : The document was notable for two things in particular . First , it resolutely refused to take sides in the Cold War : Secondly , it argued not just for disarmament ( a nuclear - free Europe " from Poland to Portugal ” ) but also for the destruction of the bloc system that had divided Europe since 1945 – a goal it envisaged being achieved by a novel strategy of “ détente from below ” : The main authors of the appeal were British – E . P . Thompson , Mary Kaldor , Dan Smith and Ken Coates – and it was launched at a press conference in the House of Commons . But their intention was to create a Europe - wide movement , and by summer 1980 it had been endorsed by an impressive list of supporters , mainly in western Europe but with a smattering from the Soviet bloc , among them former Hungarian prime minister Andras Hegedus and Russian dissident Roy Medvedev . Several other East European intellectuals signed later . The END Conventions . With movements for nuclear disarmament emerging throughout western Europe and gaining support from social democratic and Euro - communist parties , the Russell Foundation , centred on Ken Coates , consulted about organising a massive conference to bring together everyone involved . The first European Nuclear Disarmament Convention subsequently took place in Brussels , Belgium , in 1982 . According to historian Lawrence Wittner ( 1993 ) END was " the very heart and soul of the massive antinuclear campaign " ( p . 234 ) . Most participants considered the convention a success , and Coates ’ s ad hoc conference organising committee became a semi - permanent END Liaison Committee , with members from the main west European peace movement organisations and most west European social - democratic and Euro - communist parties , which organised further END Conventions in Berlin ( 1983 ) , Perugia , Italy ( 1984 ) , Amsterdam ( 1985 ) , Évry , France ( 1986 ) , Coventry , UK ( 1987 ) , Lund , Sweden ( 1988 ) , Vitoria - Gasteiz , Spain ( 1989 ) , Helsinki , Finland / Tallinn , Estonia ( 1990 ) and finally Moscow ( 1991 ) . During these conventions , especially in Perugia and Amsterdam , there was an intensive cooperation with the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council ( IKV ) and their secretary - general Mient Jan Faber and Wim Bartels . Bartels was also the president of the International Peace Coordination Centre ( IPCC ) , a cooperation of ' like - minded ' movements , which linked their commitment of the struggle against nuclear weapons and the support of independent , dissident peace - initiatives in Eastern - Europe . Despite this intensive cooperation there also existed some kind of rivalry between the END network and the IPCC . Since most peace movements were present in both , it seemed both networks were doing very similar work . END in the UK . Thompson , Kaldor and others in the END group in the UK disagreed with Coates ’ s interest in winning the support of political parties and trade union leaders , and in 1983 there was a parting of the ways : Coates and his Nottingham - based Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation concentrated on the Convention process , leaving Thompson and Kaldor as dominant figures in the UK END group . From then on , the UK END group was very much a separate entity from the conventions , although it took part in them and was represented on the Liaison Committee . Nationally , END only became a membership organisation in 1985 , when the nuclear disarmament movement was ebbing , when it recruited only 500 members . However when the nuclear disarmament first grew in 1980 and 1981 , in some localities local nuclear disarmament groups were founded as ' END groups ' : Hull END , for example , had hundreds of members throughout the first half of the 1980s . Nationally END played a major role in the British peace movement of the 1980s . END supporters , most notably Thompson and Kaldor , were the most prominent intellectuals of the movement , constantly in demand for public meetings and for opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines ( " The Guardian " , the " New Statesman " and " Tribune " were always particularly keen ) . END also provided the main peace movement organisation , the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , with much of its leadership : ( Bruce Kent , Joan Ruddock , Dan Smith and Meg Beresford were all END supporters ) . END ’ s insistence on criticising Soviet militarism made it highly controversial in CND , where communists and pro - Soviet Labour leftists were a vocal though small minority – but it meant that it was taken much more seriously by the Labour Party , which had adopted a non - nuclear defence policy in 1980 . More than 60 Labour MPs signed the END Appeal in 1980 , and END supporters , among them Kaldor and Smith , served on Labour advisory committees on defence . END also had significant support among Liberals opposed to nuclear arms ( although not among their allies in the Social Democratic Party ) as well as among members of the nascent Green party . Even a few daring dissident members of the Conservative and Communist parties lent their support . END also organised regular speaking tours and conferences on various disarmament - related themes . END Publications . The END Bulletin and ENDPapers series were published by the Russell Foundation , beginning in 1980 . Subsequently , British END published a series of pamphlets through Merlin Press and a bi - monthly magazine , " European Nuclear Disarmament Journal " , which was edited by Mary Kaldor . It was published from 1983 to 1988 . Détente from below . What END was probably best known for , however , was its work with dissidents in the Soviet Union and its east - central European satellite states . Although the END Appeal had won some support from dissidents in the Soviet bloc at its launch , most were hesitant about the western peace movements , which they felt were parroting Soviet slogans and had no sympathy for people living under communist dictatorship . Václav Havel expressed this view forcefully in his essay “ An Anatomy of a Reticence ” ( 1985 ) . Nevertheless , thanks largely to the persistence of END and like - minded activists from other countries , who kept up a constant stream of correspondence with dissidents in the Soviet bloc and visited them whenever they could , by the mid - 1980s a fruitful dialogue had been established . END had working group s for each Soviet bloc country . The Czechoslovakia group exchanged views with and visited Havel and his colleagues in Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia ; the Hungary group did the same with György Konrád , Miklos Haraszti and a small group of young peace activists in Hungary ; the Poland group the same with Adam Michnik , Jacek Kuron and many younger activists ; the East Germany group the same with Bärbel Bohley and others who were later to be the core of Neues Forum . The end of END . Both the END Conventions and the UK END group went into decline in the late 1980s after the 1987 Intermediate - range Nuclear Forces treaty removed the weapons that had given the European peace movement its raison d ’ etre – though the conventions continued until 1991 ( in Moscow ) and END in the UK turned itself in 1989 into European Dialogue , a pressure group for encouraging the development of democracy and civil society , which is still going .