The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) began in 1957 with a small group of public figures and grew into a mass movement that would resonate worldwide. Martin Shaw details CND's rise, the activists involved, the tensions around direct action, and the culture, radicalism and social groups that the campaign mobilized to "ban the bomb". He shows how CND's approach, as part of the Stop the War Coalition in response to the Iraq War, influenced the Labour Party and, indirectly, the Obama administration, when the Party opposed Cruise missile attacks in Syria in 2013, and when Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong CND supporter, was elected its leader in 2015.

The book shows CND to be a pioneering example of activism for peace whose style and ideas continue to reverberate in the wider protest movements of the twenty-first century, from Occupy to Extinction Rebellion.