The Wellcome Library is delighted to announce that the archive of the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (MCANW), later Medact, has been catalogued (SA/MED) and is now available for research.
The Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (MCANW) was founded in 1980 to undermine the idea that nuclear war was survivable. The organisation was made up of doctors, nurses and other health professionals who used their professional expertise to campaign for nuclear disarmament. In 1992, Medact was formed by a merger between the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (MCANW) and the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW). In the early years of its formation, Medact was referred to as MedAct, or Medical Action for Global Security. In the UK, MCANW campaigns drew attention to the plight of the NHS, pointing out the discrepancy between defence and health spending at a time of severe pressure on front line healthcare. Campaigns like ‘Beds not Bombs’ (1987) and ‘Treatment not Trident’ (1985) argued that “for the cost of one Trident we could have a decent National Health Service”.
The Medact archive includes campaign material and administrative records (including those from MCANW’s special panels on topics such as civil defence, arms conversion and the psychosocial impact of war and nuclear strategy). The archive also includes papers concerning MCANW’s international links, including relations with other medical anti-nuclear groups.
We see the archive as having great research potential, as its contents relate to such broad topics as UK health policy, peace studies, atomic culture and activism within scientific professions in the late 20th century.
The Medact archive was launched with an international symposium, ‘Beds not Bombs: Exploring the archives of anti-nuclear medical campaigning and protest’ and the archive has featured in three online Guardian articles (click here and here) and in History Workshop Online.