CHNN 22, Spring 2008 - School of Social Sciences

Don’t forget that this was post-Stalingrad, uncle Joe and all that. The left was on the up and up at
that stage, and the Labour Party quite frankly looked a bit fuddy-duddy. It was just not for us: we
were young and eager. We thought possibly the revolution could come the week after the treaty was
signed. There weren’t really party activities to throw ourselves into. Don’t forget that most people
were away in the war. We were living on the coast where you weren’t (normally) allowed to live.
Sandwich is on the Dover coast and a lot of people had been evacuated. It was only the miners in
the pits and their families that were permitted to live there. The hinterland there is agricultural and
not exactly what you call progressive. We must have joined the branch, I think we must have joined
the Deal branch. But it wasn’t exactly a hotbed of activity. In London it was different. Because by
that time Dennis was applying for jobs with the BBC and so on we didn’t join the Hammersmith
branch, which we should have done, we joined the Fulham branch, and became semi-active with
them. But they weren’t exactly a hive of activity either. Within the NUT and within the teacher’s
group – there was a teachers’ advisory group in the party – I became active in that. I suppose my
main activity at that stage was in the teachers’ group. It was the time of the big controversy over
intelligence testing, Brian Simon’s books and things like that. Then Dennis and I split up and I
went to live in Fulham with Bill Wainwright and Molly and their family. They gave me a room and
it was while I was living with them, they went off on holiday to a caravan where there wasn’t room
for me; so I went on a party school down to Hastings, which is where I met Eddie. His marriage had
split, and he and Margory had decided to have separate holidays, and we discovered each other.
When I went to live with Wainwrights, Bill was secretary of the British Peace Committee and he got
me involved in. The way that he got me involved was that there were what you called the cultural
peace groups: Teachers for Peace; Medical Association for the Prevention of War; Science for
Peace; Musicians for Peace; Authors’ World Peace Appeal and so on. Bill wanted a sort of a
communist party liaison maintained between the party members in the groups and I was that
liaison. As a result I met a lot of very interesting people who’ve since become knighted and famous
and so on, like Dicky Doll, Sir Richard Doll, and one or two others like that. The communist
influence was quite strong, but the communist membership was very small. As in so many other
organisations, because the communists were organised and knew where they wanted to go, their
influence far exceeded their numbers. The same can be said of trade unions and anything else.
They had a very good influence, and because it was co-ordinated they were able to achieve quite a
lot.
T
he British Peace Committee at that time I think was a proscribed organisation. I don’t think
any of the groups were officially affiliated because of the proscription; I’m not certain of
that. I came into the peace committee work just after the big peace petition. I remember
once of the first things that happened when I came north was I met Norman Wilson of Liverpool
who’d got umpteen million signatures or whatever it was: ‘This is our prize collector’. It was
wonderful. I became national secretary of Teachers for Peace quite by accident, because my friend
(Mairie Philbert) had to have a hysterectomy all of a sudden. I was thrown in at the deep end,
because Teachers for Peace organised an international conference to which there was quite a
healthy response from different countries – this is documented too – and the government in its
wisdom refused to allow the delegates to land, so that they were arrested. You had eminent and
aged professors arriving at Heathrow and being put into a prison cell. It was a two-day wonder.
Mairie came out of hospital just before the conference. I did most of the organisation of the
conference which was very good and an experience for me; and Mairie’s house in Norwood was
besieged by the press. When we wouldn’t open the door they were climbing up the drainpipes. So
this was my first thorough introduction to the paparazzi. They were incredible, absolutely
incredible, even at that stage. During the Rosenberg campaign I had a quire of Daily Workers to
sell at Charing Cross, on the pavement outside across Charing Cross station, and an American
serviceman in uniform came and knocked them out of my hand, and before I knew where I was I
was surrounded by people picking them up and putting money in my – I sold a quire in about three
minutes and they were giving me notes and goodness knows what. Anti-Americanism, definitely,
and also resentment at treating a woman like that. This was late at night, it was getting on for
midnight. Then I got involved in this Kensington. I can remember very little about that. I was
reading a book very recently and it brought it back to me, I’d forgotten. I wasn’t part of the
squatting team, I was part of the supply team, rolling up with sandwiches and things like that. But I
met a lot of interesting people. The Fulham branch, of which I was a member, was vaguely active.
Of course, the party never has been violently active; active in a very genteel way.
Because I was doing the work for Bill Wainwright, dashing hither and thither around London,
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