Look back at Northern Ireland’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

An ordinary man begins an average day until something catches his eye in the newspaper. An urgent mission is thrust upon him by a mysterious voice on the phone. Politician, priest or protestor who will listen to his prophecy? 

In his short film, Seventh Angel, the filmmaker Archie Reid responded to the rising nuclear threat wrought by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the tense stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The apocalyptically-themed film provides a glimpse of Northern Ireland’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament movement. Polaris was the UK’s first submarine based nuclear weapons system, announced the same year this film was created. Protesters successfully campaigned against plans to build the nuclear submarines in the Belfast shipyards; instead construction took place in England. It was fully replaced by the equally controversial Trident system in 1996.