I was a campaigner early on in life, but my faint heart was perceptible. One great injustice that exercised me back then was the ban on girls playing football at my primary school. I planned a variety of suffragette-inspired actions with my co-conspirators but we failed to carry them out. My letters and petitions were more successful, winning an important concession and a partial victory. The headmaster said we could play cricket, but nobody wanted to.
A week into her sentence, she wrote to my dad and asked him to come and get her. She felt guilty about this for the rest of her life. My mother was a duffle-coated Marxist in the 1960s and I have a precious picture of her on an Aldermaston march looking scary. I look like this when I’m nervous. Susan’s demeanour frightened everyone but she was ultimately insecure and fearful that she wouldn’t be up to manning the barricades when the time came. Maybe that’s where I get it from? On one demonstration, she lay down in the street in Trafalgar Square and got arrested. She refused to pay the fine and was sent to Holloway Prison. A week into her sentence she wrote to my dad and asked him to come and get her. She felt guilty about this for the rest of her life. Her best friend, a flamboyant anarchist, was arrested countless times. Richard spent large tranches of his life in prison, which he seemed to enjoy. He won many converts to the anti-nuclear cause and was clearly suited to civil disobedience, which made Susan feel even worse. In later life, she wrote letters to the powers that be protesting about miscarriages of justice and always received replies. I can go on demos as long as they proceed along the prescribed route and nothing spontaneous occurs. Now I have Huntington’s disease I need a demo buddy and I’m interviewing for the post. Next year, my plan is to link up with other activists to see if I can be transformed into a lionhearted participant in the coming feminist revolution. Watch this space. Fem T
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