British, Dutch March Against Nuclear Arms

At least 80,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators marched past the Soviet and U.S. embassies here Saturday in one of the largest European protests this year. The demonstrations seemed to be timed to show the strength of the European peace movement in the period leading up to next month’s Geneva summit meeting.

Protesters, carrying balloons and brightly colored flags and marching behind anti-nuclear banners, wound their way along a four-mile route through central London. Some of the signs read, “No Nuclear Weapons East or West.” Others said, “No to U.S. and Soviet Weapons.”

Police officially estimated the crowd at 80,000. The British Broadcasting Corp. said 80,000 to 100,000 people took part in the march and rally.

The demonstrators staged a brief “die-in” and a four-minute sit-down, and thousands formed a 100-yard-wide symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the umbrella group that sponsored the march, as it did a larger one in 1983 that attracted 250,000 people.

Saturday’s rally was the British peace movement’s biggest protest since U.S. cruise missiles arrived at the Greenham Common air base as well as one of the largest anti-nuclear demonstrations in Europe this year.

Support for the march came from a wide range of organizations, including church and professional groups. An ex-serviceman’s group took part, with many of those protesters wearing their military ribbons.

In the Netherlands on Saturday, about 15,000 anti-nuclear protesters massed in The Hague as Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers was handed a petition against deployment of U.S. cruise missiles. Activists said the petition was signed by nearly 4 million of the nation’s 14 million people.