Bruce Kent

London-born Kent died at his home ion 8th June 2022, just two weeks shy of his 93rd birthday.

At the time of his death, he was vice-president of Pax Christi – a UK Christian peace organization – and emeritus president of the Movement for the Abolition of War.

In the 1980s Kent became a leading spokesman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a critic of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher's defense policy.

He is survived by his wife, Valerie Flessati and his sister Rosemary Meakins.

Bruce Kent is one of Britain’s most prominent and internationally acknowledged peace campaigners. For many years best-known to the British public as Monsignor Bruce Kent, he served as chair of CND from 1977-79 and 1987-90, and General Secretary of CND from 1979-85. During these years, he led CND through its most crucial phase – the struggle against cruise missiles – and steered it through tumultuous times. Commenting on the membership explosion of that time, he said: ‘By the end of 1980 we were in new offices, themselves soon becoming too small. New memberships poured in by the hundred every week. The graph which we had on the wall outgrew the wall and had to be taken across the ceiling.’

Eventually leaving the priesthood, Bruce continues to champion a range of progressive and humanitarian causes and is a tower of strength and wisdom across our movements.

He is now a vice-president of CND.

Bruce Kent is a British political activist and a former Roman Catholic priest. Active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, he was the organisation's general secretary from 1980 to 1985 and its chair from 1987 to 1990. He now holds the honorary title of vice-president.

In 1987, Kent left the priesthood rather than comply with an instruction from the late Cardinal Basil Hume to desist from involvement in the 1987 UK general election in accordance with the canon law of the Catholic Church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Kent

Passed/Failed: Bruce Kent

Bruce Kent, 69, once general-secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, retired as an active Catholic priest in 1987 and is now working on the centenary Hague Peace Conference to be held in May. The original was called by Czar Nicholas II

Interview by Jonathan Sale, 28 January 1999

On the beat: My father wasn't a Catholic but my mother was: the obligation was that the children should be brought up as Catholics. The headmaster of Wellbury in Hitchin [Hertfordshire] was a former Anglican priest who had converted to Catholicism. He was extremely strict and a great beater of little boys. Every lunchtime there would be queues outside his sitting-room, and when we were wearing the small swimming- costumes, you'd see blue bottoms. I got used to prep school life, but my brother didn't like it at all. Once he ran away and my father had to get him back.

Don't give up the day school: In 1940, when I was 11, we left to go to Canada with my mother (our parents were Canadian). In Montreal we went with our cousins to a Protestant school, Lower Canada College. As Catholics, we were now a minority and I remember winning the Scripture Prize because I was determined not to let the "other religion" win it. A day school was a complete revolution to me: home at 4pm and weekends off. We stayed there until the summer of 1943 - I was just 14 when we went back to England. My father had got us into Stonyhurst College, the Jesuit school in Lancashire, which was at first quite rough, tough and cold, but by the end I loved it. It was back to corporal punishment. The staff did their daily whacking with a "ferula", a leathery rubber strip like the bottom of a rather large shoe. There was also occasional beating of boys by boys; have you seen the film If? One of my most embarrassing memories is, as a member of the "Committee" (prefects), of taking part in a beating, with a cane. Paul Johnson was in the same class: skinny and red-headed, quite dynamic.

Compact desk: Your desk was portable. There were 200 boys in the big study room and at the end of each year you picked up your desk and carried it towards the back. On the front of your desk was a brass plaque with your name. When you left your brass plaque was moved to the rear of the desk; one of my predecessors on the desk was Charles Laughton. For us, drama was out: we had the mickey taken out of us because of our strong Canadian accents. My big dramatic moment was as Hamlet's father's ghost's double - a non-speaking role.

Lotus on the menu: When I left, with Higher Certificates in English, French and History, I went to a crammer and got the Latin requirement for Oxford. I was called up in 1947 and released from the army in September 1949, just in time to go to university. Someone had given me a biography of a great lawyer and that was it: at Brasenose I read law, a fascinating subject, and managed a Second. Oxford was a slack water time, my lotus- eating years. There was no radical side to me at all. I came out of a very Catholic school where the greatest possible evil was Communism. I remember someone saying about a student crossing the quad: "That's a Marxist!" I couldn't believe it. He looked so ordinary.

Ware now? Oxford had been a kind of truce with my father, who was unhappy about my wanting to be a Catholic priest. In my last term I decided to go into the Church and spent six years at St Edmund's College, the seminary in Ware [in Hertfordshire]. My father was generous about a career of which he disapproved. When I became a monsignor [a senior priest], he was very pleased: his boy was doing well!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/passedfailed-bru...

CV and Biographical Information

Biographical Information

Born: London, 22 June 1929

Education:
* Lower Canada College, Montreal, 1940-43

• Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, 1943-46
• Brasenose College, Oxford, (Law) 1949-52
• St Edmund's College, Ware, (Catholic seminary) 1952-58
• Manchester University, Honorary Doctorate of Laws, 1987
• Middlesex University, Honorary Doctorate, 2002

Military Service: 6th Royal Tank Regiment, 2nd Lt., 1947-49

Church Life:
* Ordained, Diocese of Westminster, 1958,

• Curate Kensington/Notting Hill, 1958-62
• Chair, Westminster Schools Commission, 1964-66
• Chaplain, London University, 1966-74
• Chaplain, Pax Christi, 1974-77
• Parish Priest, Euston, 1977-80
• Retired from active ministry, February 1987

Campaigns:
* Joined CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) 1960

• General Secretary and Chair, CND, 1980-90
• Chair, War on Want, 1974-76
• President, International Peace Bureau, 1985-92
• President, London Region United Nations Association,1990-91
• Secondary School Environment, Development, Disarmament Project 1993-95
• UK organiser, Hague Conference 1999

Current peace-related positions include:
* Vice-President, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

• Vice-President, Pax Christi
• Vice President, Movement for the Abolition of War

Publications:
* Innumerable articles on peace issues and regular book reviews, pamphlets include: Peace is Our Problem; Franz Jägerstätter: the man who said no to Hitler; The Nonviolence of Helder Camara

• books: Building the Global Village (HarperCollins 1991)
• Undiscovered Ends (HarperCollins, 1992)

Other Memberships:
* Amnesty International

• United Nations Association
• Campaign Against the Arms Trade
• Compassion in World Farming
• Progressing Prisoners Maintaining Innocence

Biographical Information

Peace work for over 50 years

Chaplain to Pax Christi UK (1958) Helped to promote annual youth meetings "Routes" in Europe each summer involving hundreds of young people (1959 onwards). In 1966 opened the first Pax Christi summer hostel in London to welcome young visitors to Britain and to promote international exchange and dialogue.

Joined Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (1960)

Launched a major correspondence in The Times (1967) about the morality of nuclear deterrence which produced much debate especially within the Churches.

Founded the Nigeria-Biafra Committee (1967) with the aim of ending arms supplies to both sides in a civil war. Flew to Biafra by night (1969) on a Joint Church Aid relief plane for a fact-finding mission.

Member of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace (1971).

Active in protesting about use of torture in Brazil.

Worked for Conscientious Objectors in Spain and Portugal (early 1970s). Set up COAT - Conscientious Objectors' Advisory Team to promote recognition of the rights of conscientious objectors in all countries.

Helped to set up the Justice for Rhodesia Campaign; the campaign against arms sales to South Africa; and Christian Concern for Southern Africa.

Involved with several initiatives in connection with Northern Ireland including a London (Camden)-Belfast scheme to raise funds for reconciliation projects and to educate the British public by bringing speakers over from different communities in Northern Ireland. Catholic and Methodist clergy were sent on a fact-finding tour of Northern Ireland and then travelled round England reporting on the situation there.

Served during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war as director of an emergency refugee hospital in Calcutta sponsored by the British relief charity War on Want.

Became chairperson of War on Want (1973) at the time when it launched the first Baby Foods campaign to highlight the health risks of commercial powdered milk promoted in Third World countries.

1974 became full time chaplain with Pax Christi's British section. Instrumental in setting up with other peace organisations the highly effective Campaign Against the Arms Trade which is still doing outstanding work today. Has persistently encouraged the development agencies to educate the public about links between arms trade and world poverty.

Also served on executive of International Pax Christi for 10 years and was international Vice-President in the 1970s.

Through Pax Christi he promoted Pope Paul VI's annual Peace Sunday in the churches from its inception in 1968. Met Homer Jack and attended the Nairobi Assembly of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. Subsequently established the British branch of WCRP.

Initiated in 1975 the Prisoners' Project which united organisations working for amnesty for prisoners of conscience and organisations working to improve conditions for other prisoners. This led to a Prisoners' Sunday in the church calendar and a prisoners' week which is still an annual event. From 1975-1995 he served as a Trustee of the Prisoner of Conscience Fund in Britain.

Invited by the Quaker Christian Fellowship Trust to visit Southern Africa in 1977, meeting community leaders and giving talks about the theory and practice nonviolence. Subsequently promoted investment pressure from churches on British companies with the aim of achieving economic justice for workers in South Africa.

Worked in an inner-city London parish 1977-80, making his church a place of welcome for people of many nations. Chilean political refugees conducted a fast in the church to draw attention to the situation in their country. Started the One World Shop next door to the church as an education centre where people could find literature from justice and peace organisations as well as Traidcraft products.

In 1980 he became General Secretary of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He took a leading part as spokesperson on radio and tv for disarmament and peace throughout the Cold War years of the 1980s. At the time of his leadership the Campaign grew from 2,000 to 100,000 national members and from about 30 active local groups to nearly 1000. As part of this work he visited the USSR, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the US and many other countries. In 1982 he organised a large party to lobby in New York the UN Second Special Session on Disarmament.

In 1988 he undertook a peace walk of 1000 miles from Warsaw to Brussels (NATO) calling for a united peaceful nuclear-free Europe. Actively involved throughout the 1980s in the European Nuclear Disarmament Campaign.

From 1985-1992 he succeeded the late Sean MacBride as President of the International Peace Bureau. Membership consistently increased and the campaign to declare nuclear weapons (possession and use) illegal was promoted. An active supporter of the World Court Project which has been so successful in getting the issue of nuclear illegality to the International Court in the Hague.

In the 1990s he served on the Executive of the United Nations Association and in that connection he established with others, a national forum called "Action for UN Renewal" to promote some of the ideas of the Global Governance Commission. He also completed a major programme of visits to about 150 secondary schools, speaking on international issues of peace and development.

In 1999 he was British co-ordinator for the Hague Appeal for Peace, a 10,000-strong international conference in The Hague, which initiated a number of major campaigns (e.g. against small arms, the use of child soldiers, and to promote peace education). In Delhi, in 2000, he addressed the first national meeting of the Indian anti-nuclear coalition.

One of Bruce Kent’s most recent initiatives is the Movement for the Abolition of War, inspired in the UK by the 1999 Hague Appeal for Peace conference. The aim of MAW is to convince people that wars are not inevitable. Everyone, pacifist and non-pacifist alike, can take the steps necessary to make the nonviolent settlement of international disputes the norm and not the exception.

Two other human rights issues have particularly occupied Bruce Kent. He became involved in the campaign for economic justice for pensioners and is a frequent speaker at pensioners’ meetings. More recently the human rights of prisoners who maintain their innocence, and of people detained without trial under control orders in Britain have been the focus of much work.

His work for global disarmament continues. In coming months Bruce Kent will be speaking in towns and cities all over the United Kingdom to raise interest in the cause of nuclear abolition at the forthcoming Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the UN in 2010.

http://bruce-kent.com/biography.htm