E.P. Thompson: Scholar, Polemicist and Pacifist 69 Perry Anderson to revamp this journal because he was well-versed in Parisian fashions (of Marxists and Existentialists both),- was intellectually fertile and decisive. Infact, so decisive was Anderson that he kicked the founding board of editors and the transition was reportedly Very, very English'. Says EPT you could call it a gentlemanly and tolerant transition or a futile and manipulative one— depending on your viewpoint or depending on your fate (in conflict for control over New Left Review) ! STAUNCH PACIFIST The last fifteen years of EPT's life were spent and dedicated,to the peace movement. Averting the doomsday and quelling the nightmare of Armageddon became his life's sole passion. EPT almost took sanyas from all other engagements, other pursuits just became secondary items on his agenda. Of his own admission he considered it a privilege to be playing chauffeur (not just ideologue) to fellow peace activists. In a pamphlet, In Defence of Britain (1983), EPT says that 40,000 women gathered at Greenham Common's NATO base on December 12,1982, togherao (or form a life-affirming ring around) it. By then a celebrity among pacifists, EPT did not go to lecture to them but he went because they wanted someone who could drive them around on that chilly morning in the winter! In 1979, the British Ministry of Defence issued a do-it-yourself booklet for citizens to take precautions in case of nuclear war. It advised them to go down to the ground floor or cellar, make a clubby hole there with old doors and planks, cover it with sandbags, books and furniture. Then the citizen was supposed to creep into these holes with food and water for fourteen days, a portable radio, a portable latrine and, of course, a tin opener. The title of this do-it-yourself booklet was Protect and Survive. To this EPT wrote a rejoinder entitled Protest and Survive. The militarized governments are creating conditions for a nuclear holocaust but are also advising citizens about the ways of ducking these wars, of minimizing the damage. To this EPT said that prevention is better than cure and prevention of nuclear war is possible through loud protests by vigilant citizens. EPT's first protest related to USA. It was servile to Britain till its independence in 1776 but had now become the super-boss. It now treated the NATO alliance states as slaves. USA deploys nuclear weapons on their soil after "joint consultation", and not "joint decision", with them. EPT was alarmed that while major cities of the world could be destroyed by 200 nuclear missiles, the weapon powers had upwards of 50,000 such missiles in their arsenals as early as 1980. Even more than this destructive capability, EPT was painted at the deformation of culture. He said that the deformed mind was the ultimate doomsdaV weapon. And culture is deformed in language itself when rationality wilfully divorces itself from moral sensibility and realism clobbers human imaginatibn to death.On the other hand human beings can't bear too much of reality as they are its battered victims, not its proud masters. Human beings can lump in only as much reality as is necessary to preserve their self interest