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Okay, so I'm here with Deirdre Leask in her home. We're doing an oral history interview for the WILPF Heritage Lottery Fund project. It's the 1st of May 2015. So, Deirdre, maybe we should start by telling us about how you first became involved in WILPF, how you first I first heard about WILPF when I was at university and I was looking for opportunities in development

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work and I discovered in the careers office an advert for two internships in Geneva in the WILPF office and I'd never heard of WILPF before because I think one of WILPF's problems is that it's the organisation that has been so involved in so many enormous and important moments of the last century's history, but isn't generally very well known. Anyway, I

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applied for one of these internships and I didn't get it, but by the time I'd made the application and learned about WILPF, I realised I needed to find out more about it. So I did and I joined, in fact, I didn't do very much until I then went on to do a master's degree and moved down to Sussex where there was a WILPF group and I got to know various people

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in Brighton who were involved. You know, I think one of the things about being a member of WILPF is people, you find your own WILPF and people get involved in very different aspects of it and there were some direct action women down there who were out in wetsuits chasing naval ships in Portsmouth on weekends, doing a lot of actions around that, as well

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as obviously the whole Greenham and Menwith Hill, Aldermast and stuff like that. But there was also the WILPF group that was meeting on a regular basis with speakers and discussing issues around development and women's issues. And while I was part of that group, one of the direct, one of the women who was involved in direct action who now lives in New Zealand,

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I'd lost contact with her, I'd love to know what she's up to, she was a New Zealander, she was the international rep for the British section and she couldn't make a conference in Costa Rica, which was one of the WILPF international conferences. I hadn't done very much internationally, I was aware it was there but I hadn't thought about the international

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side all that much and she asked if I would go in her place one summer and it had to be approved obviously by the British section and it was approved and I managed to get some funding through my trade union because the subject of the, it was an international executive conference in Costa Rica and the subject, one of the key themes was women and work and

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privatisation and the rolling back of the public sector and I'm a social worker in the public sector and my union, Unison, gave me some funding which was really useful and I went to Costa Rica and I had the most amazing, mind-blowing time. But I think one of the most important things about Costa Rica was when I first arrived, we'd been delayed,

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detoured by Panama, which had just been invaded by the Americans at the time so we couldn't get out of the plane, it was all a bit tense although I was in an American plane. I arrived very, very late and there was nobody at the airport, I didn't really know where to go, I got a cab into the hotel where I knew I wasn't staying because it was quite a big

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hotel, I think I was in a hostel somewhere but I wasn't quite sure. I hadn't been to Central America before at that stage and I arrived at the hotel and I asked for, well for limpal as it is in Spanish, and at the hotel reception and this quite elderly woman came down and I said, look I don't know where I'm staying, I'm a bit worried about my

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arrangements and she said, oh it's alright, it's fine, I'll put you up in my room. And I went up to her room and there was a little meeting going on in one corner, there was her and a couple of other women and she said, just take the bed and just sleep there. And I was really tired and jet-lagged and went to sleep and I think she must have slept

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on a sofa. And it was only the next day when the meeting began that I realised she was the Secretary General of WILF, Edith Ballantyne, and it just summed her up so entirely that some scraggy wee youngster who'd appeared completely not knowing anything really and she kind of made sure that I was alright and gave up her bed for me. And Edith Ballantyne

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I think is one of the most inspirational women I've ever come across in my whole life. And it was amazing at the conference that I've just come back from yesterday, Edith, I missed the first day so she spoke briefly on the final day but she actually doesn't look any older. I do have a theory that women who are, the more active you are in WILF the less

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you age. You may get kind of grey hair and you may get a bit droopy and saggy but actually your face, none of the women, I haven't seen a whole lot of people for about 15, 20 years, none of them seem to have aged. That's true, looking at the pictures from Congress, Edith looks exactly the same as

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she did like 10 years ago when I first got involved in WILF. It's extraordinary, I can't, and I think the main reason I've aged is that I haven't been active enough with WILF in the last 15, 20 years. I think I'd better get very active very quickly and kind of try and keep ever young like most WILF women. But anyway, that

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meeting was so exciting because of the, getting a sense of the internationalism of it and the Latin American sections were just budding, they were just beginning to kind of grow and there were loads of issues, I remember loads of difficult moments. I confuse which conference these things happened but the Latin American women, for example, did serious partying

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after the sessions of work, talking about trade unions and the pressure on trade unions and the, actually Argentina, I think it was still going on, the disappearing of certain trade union leaders and some of the women there who were actually in really risky situations from various Latin American countries. But boy, in the evening, you know, they'd all

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storm down the street, you know, singing, venceremos and, you know, we will never be jamás, I can't remember the words of it, we were singing it yesterday, in fact, the kind of Latin American protest songs and then salsing for a large part of the night. And they always had a few men in tow, which was quite interesting, not always, but quite a

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few of them did. And there was a lot of awkwardness going on between the more, you know, the more, the very, very well-established American sections, there was, and the European sections, these kind of, these were women like myself, all a lot better off, who had spent a lot of time kind of thinking about issues like abortion rights and, you know, lesbian, lesbianism

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and gender, you know, gender sexuality politics. And suddenly we were with a bunch of women who were, you know, talking kind of revolution, but actually had a whole lot of very different ideas about things like abortion and, you know, lesbianism and issues that, that Wilps had to deal with massively over the years. And has really had to deal with in order to

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become a proper international organisation and to be able to pull together women from, you know, who have very, very different views about very different issues, but have enough in common to come together around that. And so it's been, you know, it's been a really big learning curve, I think for, you know, some of the Latin American women, not all

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of them, I'm lumping a whole lot together, I think that probably became a little bit more important at the next big Latin American conference I went to. I'm a linguist, which was really helpful. When I went back from that conference in Costa Rica, I then was lucky enough to be elected the international rep. Edwina, who had been it, came to the

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end of her term, and she was much more interested in incredibly brave acts around, you know, drawing pictures and war planes and stuff like that. I'm a bit too cowardly for that level of direct action. I think my involvement at Greenham was doing the night shift a few times at university to let other people sleep and, you know, going along, but being a bit

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a bit too scared to, you know, that direct action I really admire, but I'm not very comfortable with it. I get very nervous about it. I'd much rather stand up and speak to 1000 people really than do something like that. But I really support people who do that in any way. But the next one, which I was lucky enough to go to was the Earth Summit in Rio, which

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was an amazing experience. And there were a group of us from Wilp, from various sections of Wilp across the world who went to Rio. And then we had our Wilp Congress after that in Bolivia, in Santa Cruz in Bolivia. And I was able to take three months off work because I just, I realised it was such an important thing to do. And I was so lucky to be doing

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it. And I wanted to make some travel time afterwards because it was just too exciting to be there and not have any time or space. And I knew that from the IEC in Costa Rica that there wouldn't be any time apart from a little bit of salsa in the evening to see much and experience much of the country. So I'll talk a little bit about the Earth Summit

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and then I'll talk about the Congress in Bolivia, which was really significant. The Congress, the Earth Summit, we were involved in, and my particular role was to work on the NGO treaty on militarism, women and the environment. And it was the first time I think, although it probably wasn't the first time because I think in Wilp's history, the environment's always been bubbling

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there. All these issues have always been there, but it was very much putting, about putting the environment onto Wilp's agenda. And that was why we had delegates at the Earth Summit, but also trying to make the UN see that militarism has a massive impact on the environment. And it's so obvious, but it was, I think it was very, very hard. I remember the very small bits

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of lobbying I was involved in before, I think we met Ann Clewidge, who was kind of quite a Wilp fan anyway, but trying to get anything, any mention of militarism in the UN treaty was incredibly difficult. Because I think, you know, I think that generally speaking those climate treaties are trying so hard to be a bit vague and not put any, not, you know, put the military

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industrial complex under any major pressure. And, you know, I mean, I appreciate the role of the UN, but I, you know, it's a very difficult role to be playing, but it was very frustrating. But the NGO life was amazing and very, very hard work, spending all day in a kind of sweaty tent trying to argue even, you know, amongst a whole group of peace organisations. And quite a few of

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them actually, there were quite a few indigenous people's representatives, that was absolutely fascinating. Coming from a, yes, militarism has, they've already taken away most of our land, for a military base. And actually our whole culture is based on the environment and in ways that, you know, you can't even begin to understand. So it was, it was, it was absolutely,

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it was a real eye opener, it was absolutely fascinating. And some, I had some really lovely moments, but it was incredibly frustrating. It was the first big UN conference I'd ever been to. And we were, the nearest we ever got to the main conference was about kind of a mile down the road, we did a big demonstration. And it felt very frustrating. And it felt as if the voice

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of, as they kept saying at the conference this week, the UN Charter is about we, it starts we the people. And it was, it was a real eye opener for me about how many, how many levels there are of we the people. But there were some, you know, great moments, the kind of Dalai Lama opening the session in the morning and great moments on the beach. And it wasn't, it wasn't at Copacabana

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Beach, it was Flamingo Beach, but great moments with all these people from all these different NGOs. And, and it turned out there were loads of people I knew there, not just from WILP, I got to know WILP people, but, you know, a friend who was a writer in the Glasgow Herald, I'm Scottish, was there, she was the environment correspondent, she was there. So I went out with

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her for a bit and a friend who works for the Guardian was there. And, and that was all good networking with WILP as well. And then I had a wee break in Rio with another friend who was there with Friends of the Earth, one of the environment organisations, she and I went off for a week. And then I made my way up to Bolivia for the conference there. And I met up with Margaret Turner, who is

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the other person, I imagine you'll, if you haven't interviewed her already, you will be. And Margaret, Margaret was absolutely crucial to my experience of WILP throughout that time, you know, much, I mustn't say much older woman, a woman of a very different generation from my own. But we ended up, we were, and I can't remember where this had come from, I think it was in the

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planning, that's something I've always been very proud of the British section about that we were very uncomfortable about the even, you know, like where the Europeans and North Americans stayed at conferences. I was very, became very aware of that in Costa Rica. And a lot of other people, I think other people in the British sections had talked about that, my predecessors

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as international reps. And given that the Bolivian Congress had loads of Latin Americans, loads of indigenous women, Margaret and I decided we'd stay in a hostel with them, rather than in one of the European hotels. And I'm so glad we did. Because and it was a bit scary, because my Spanish was French and German are my main languages. I had been busily learning Spanish.

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And so happened that the boyfriend who is the guy upstairs at the moment, and my husband, we got married last year. He had lived in Spain for years, it was very handy. I just met him. And I'd done, he did a lot of kind of dual language books. So I'd been doing Spanish lessons, but meeting him was pretty handy as well. It really helped my Spanish at the time. But then

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I just met him. And then I went off to South America for three months. It wasn't wasn't great from that point of view. But anyway, my Spanish was a little bit better than it had been before, before I met him. And I, it was kind of just about good enough to get by in the hostel with all the Latin Americans, it got a lot better while we were there. But it was such a good thing to do,

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because we made so many friends, and it didn't really matter that we weren't linguistically brilliant. And I'm so glad we did that, because that conference for me was about trying to, will trying to, to get over being at the North South Divide. And that conference was focusing on indigenous women of the Americas, the indigenous movements, it was a very big,

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because of the Earth Summit, I think that was very crucial in indigenous timing. Interestingly, I think with most of the Latin American, or the indigenous groups, the Americas, I think possibly some of the Canadian First Nations and the Native Americans, I think they had some of the same calendars, really fascinating, as the old kind of Maya,

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Aztec calendars, which, which all came to an end and a new beginning around 1992. I think it was, dates are terrible. So it was an incredibly significant year. And WILPF, being WILPF and being a wonderful organisation, this, you know, realise this has to be the focus of it. And they did have a very, very powerful Maori woman who had had done a lot of the preparation work around

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the Congress. But it was so important that we worked on trying to get over the, you know, that North-South divide. And it was, it was, and I remember being very troubled by that at moments and feeling very rich and privileged and feeling that some of the other women there had kind of, you know, were only able to eat one meal a day and, you know, stuff like that.

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The differences between us was really, really disturbing. And Margaret and I were a little bit smug about being in a hostel, but you know, that's where our smugness had to end, because, you know, there was a whole lot more stuff. And it was where, I think the British section, I think already had that policy that would always fund a woman from a developing or a new area or

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a country or lower income country. And it's been a really, really strong, ongoing commitment from the UK WILPF section. And I'm really glad about that. I think, you know, there may be other sections that did that. And I think, you know, some of the Scandinavian sections have kind of financed, you know, whole projects in lots of other countries. But the UK sections always

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have that really strong commitment. I really appreciate that. Anyway, that conference, things really, really, really agonizing moments around the different, you know, the kind of abortion issue. A lot of very strongly Catholic women from the Latin American sections, Indigenous women with very traditional beliefs about, you know, you don't kill an unborn child.

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And then a very, very strong, well, it wasn't very strong, actually, because I think WILPF still had to do loads of work about its sexual politics. And it's a quite a small and very, very fed up group of lesbian women in the organisation who were trying to get a voice and trying to get space. But as usual, you know, I mean, it took me a long time, I think, to learn. And I think that's

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WILPF's greatest strength, the fact that it's got all this different stuff going on quite uncomfortably. And you kind of, you know, even just as a listener, you're sitting kind of cringing because there's such a difficult discussion. You know, I think particularly about some of the ongoing, endless Israel-Palestinian discussions going on, discussions, arguments, bitterness,

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sometimes going into kind of, you know, the hatreds that couldn't be undone, really, that couldn't be mediated. And yet WILPF's kind of ongoing commitment to try and work with conflict resolution. That's where I came across, I did a workshop on conflict resolution led by an amazing American woman, whose name I've forgotten at the moment. But she led this workshop on conflict

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resolution. That for me has been a kind of key moment in my life, because my work now is I'm a specialist in restorative justice and mediation. And I had, before that, I had, I had, yes, I'm thinking about my timings. I had come across mediation before, and I was involved in the development of restorative justice in, you know, various kind of, the Church of England actually

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was very involved in developing it. I had been involved in some of the kind of early victim offender mediation work, you know, work. But WILPF's conflict resolution has been so useful, and just seeing the link between, you know, the personal, local working between a young offender and a victim, and this, you know, this kind of global level, you know, national level mediating

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between Palestinians and Israelis and mediation, but, you know, trying to put, you know, put mediation into the whole kind of UN agenda as a way of trying to deal with, you know, to prevent violence and to prevent war. But yes, I remember that was definitely in Bolivia, and constantly, you know, coming back in these terribly, desperately difficult WILPF

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meetings with, you know, the Israelis and the Palestinians, or the North Americans and the indigenous, you know, some indigenous groups in Mexico or in Bolivia or Ecuador, you know, trying to find ways forward with, and get over the kind of, you know, particularly the women from the South, the kind of, it's very hard to love an American, even a, you know, even a WILPF American.

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And, you know, I felt some of that myself, that I found the American, some of the American women really annoying at times, because they're always there in large numbers, and, you know, so comfortable as, you know, I'm sure people have found me really annoying for exactly the same reasons, but you know, all my prejudices about Americans and wanting to kind of blame them,

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and yet, you know, like the Israeli women, the Israeli section, it's always been very difficult to love them, because they often seem to say the wrong thing, you know, as Black women will often find that I say the wrong thing. And it's very hard to like them, and yet you have to remember, as they were saying at the conference this week, you have to use your feminist self-awareness,

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your feminist analysis of the situation, and realize that it's, you know, stand back from it, and stand back from that kind of, it's so easy to be prejudiced against those people. These Israeli women are, you know, they're people who are getting stoned by other Israelis all the time, and their courage is enormous, and if they haven't, you know, there have been times when I

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really felt they were patronizing the Palestinians in their own section, and they were almost, you know, second-class citizens in Israel, and in the Wilp section, but actually seem to be quite second-class citizens even within the section. But there's, you know, it's just so complicated, and that complexity, I think, is something that Wilp has never been afraid to try

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and deal with, and to try and face it head on, and try and make something positive out of it. And I think it's possibly been one of Wilp's biggest problems, because when you're dealing with issues that are so complex, it's very hard to get a sandbite, it's very hard to come out with an issue that is going to change, you know, change the way people think, because, you know,

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as everybody kept saying this week, and it's so true, you can't deal with the position of women without dealing with, or you can't get rid of weapons without dealing with patriarchy, you can't get rid of patriarchy without dealing with, you know, without looking at kind of feminism and what that means, along with its limitations, as it's often seen as a kind of

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northern-western, you know, construct or whatever. You can't deal with any of these issues without thinking about the environment. You know, they're all so interrelated, and Wilp has traditionally been so complicatedly caught between grassroots activists and academics, and they will come from very different perspectives, they'll speak with very different voices, and it's very easy to kind

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of slightly, you know, not listen or respect the other, because they are so other. And actually the conference, actually, no, before I talk about this week's conference, I'll then talk about the other one that I felt quite involved with, and I'd been involved before going to that conference, Congress, and the Earth Summit, I'd been involved in doing a speaking tour around different

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organisations in Britain to try and get, you know, like United Nations Association, CND, various peace organisations, to try and get as much support and awareness. And after I came back, I also did speak, that's the only way you can ever justify getting a bit of money from Wilp, and I'm, you know, partially financed, but I did get money from Wilp that time. I think I might

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have got a little bit of money from Unison again, but it wasn't that much. But doing that kind of speaking, doing that awareness raising, doing that follow-up writing reports, doing stuff for and with Wilp. I was then involved in a, I went, I think, because I was still the international rep, I went to a conference in an international executive committee in Helsinki, and one in

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Switzerland, and then my time was over as the official elected member to go abroad. But I then, and I was still in, I was involved in Brighton, Wilp, when I was still living in Brighton, but when I left Brighton, I wasn't so involved. I was, you know, getting all the information, but I didn't, I wasn't doing very much. I'd go to the odd kind of demonstration, the odd action,

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but not very much. I think it was also coinciding with me having kids and working, getting in, you know, just having a really, really busy job, which is still a job that involves kind of evenings and weekends. And I also was qualifying as a community mediator, so my voluntary work was beginning then, as it is now, to be doing, you know, my conflict

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resolution in the neighbourhood, and that's quite time-consuming. And I'm also really involved in the organisation, the small charity that runs that, you know, in terms of helping out with training and trying to train others to fundraise and, you know, stuff like that. So the international Wilp stuff slightly went on the back burner, except we did a conference in London at London

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University, where the focus was, I think it might have been an international executive, I can't remember if it was a congress or not. The international executive is every, is, they have one every year, and they have a congress every four years, something like that. Somewhere between three and five.

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But the massive step forward with that one, because this big problem about Wilp not looking in itself, which can also be a problem because there's a, you know, there's a real issue about organisations that look in themselves too much. You know, I'm that generation where a lot of my friends and colleagues have ended up being so, you know, crystal gazing or whatever, and so inward-looking,

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they've kind of disappeared up their own bums and have ceased to be active in a political way at all. Really, you know, this is the kind of history of my feminist movement, really, my feminist experience. But Wilp needed to do a wee bit more of that because of the avert racism that came out in various moments through ignorance, through, you know, a whole lot of people, you know,

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particularly older generations, even, you know, people older than me, never really having dealt with those issues, and, you know, not having quite got beyond, oh, these women do look so lovely in their national costumes. So the one that we had here was about racism, and it was, um, it was where we managed to get a whole lot of very good speakers for it, and I like to think

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that the UK Wilp had quite a big impact on the way that Wilp is now from, you know, obviously the critical will was there to do that conference, but I think UK Wilp did quite a lot with that, and I do, I remember, you know, a terrible moment of a UK member of the UK section who isn't a member anymore, but standing up and just saying to the black speaker, and this is

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the level that it could have been a number of women from a number of different European countries, you've just got a chip on your shoulder, and so there were, you know, there were a lot of very active people in the peace movement who were working at that level in terms of, you know, diversity, basically. Very difficult, isn't it? Very, very difficult, very difficult. It was

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absolute agony that, um, fortunately she was a very strong woman who said, well, it's not the first time anyone said that to me, and it's not the last time, but anyway, the, I think the key thing is that those, you know, those issues come up live and real, um, and Wilp then deals with them, um, you know, it's prepared to deal with them, and it maybe doesn't deal with them very

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well at the time, but it then became, you know, it became integrated into the agenda, and it becomes part of its manifesto, part of its work, and part of its, its changing, and, um, you know, thank goodness, because it, well, going, I can now, I think I can now move on, because I, I'm ashamed to say I've, I've done very, very little with Wilp. I've joined the, um, the Wilp Trust,

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and I'm the secretary of the Wilp Trust, which is the, it's a funny place to be, because it's, the Trust, by nature of being a charity, has to be really careful about not being too political, and, and it's been a fascinating learning curve to be on the Trust, and it's very nice that there are, that we can kind of soak money out of, you know, slightly things that I don't feel very

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comfortable about, but actually it's quite nice seeing that every time I do internet shopping, I can get give as you live, and so the Trust has this little cushion of, you know, my shopping and various other people kind of, um, you know, shopping, um, but, but also being able to use gift aid and being able to, um, you know, get legacies, make the most of legacies, stuff like

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that is, is useful, um, but it's a, it's, it's not the most exciting place to be in with Wilp, but I think, and I know there's, it's quite difficult with the Wilp section and the Wilp Trust, because there's been a lot of mistrust of the Trust, um, and it's because we have to, we have to be independent of Wilp, so we have to be able to, we have to keep some money back for

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other organisations and be seen to be supporting other organisations that are working in the field of human rights, and specifically women's human rights, which is the brief of the, that's the object of the Trust, it's human rights, and specifically women's human rights, but that's as strong as it can get around women's issues, um, so we, we can't, you know, we don't, and also

00:31:03.240 - 00:31:24.620

it's, we, we don't really have the expertise or the members of the Trust who've got the time or energy to do massive fundraising, I'd love to think we could do more of that, and I, I just can't, and I, I don't, um, you know, my, my thing is, my thing is conflict resolution. I've once done a mediation between two members of International Wilp, that was one activity I did

00:31:24.620 - 00:31:46.700

get involved with, um, they will remain nameless, and they, they came, they both came over, one from Geneva, one from New York, we met in London, and we did a two-day kind of employment-based, employment-based mediation, um, which wasn't fantastically successful, I mean, I think it, I'd like to think we achieved something with it, but it was, I, I brought in a, an independent

00:31:46.700 - 00:32:10.280

colleague, um, and we, we did it, it, I think it aired a lot of stuff, um, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, it didn't have, sometimes a mediation can have that amazing kind of, um, you know, kiss-and-make-up moment, it's all, you know, it's so, everything's resolved, it didn't have that, there was, there was too much underlying stuff, but I think both parties, I hope both parties did

00:32:10.280 - 00:32:31.400

get the chance to kind of fully understand why the other had reacted as they did, um, but I think there is a, possibly a need for a permanent mediating function amongst, but then I think a lot of WILF women are, it's quite skilled at mediating. Yeah, and still, there are some difficult working relationships in WILF, definitely, it's a... Well, you know, it's, it's an

00:32:31.400 - 00:32:51.820

organisation full of incredibly headstrong women who are used to being difficult, and it's full of, you know, the most difficult women who've generally got hearts of gold, but, you know, hedgehogs on the outside, which is, which is fantastic. The other thing I didn't mention, which I think is so important, when I joined, I was so gobsmacked by how old people were,

00:32:52.180 - 00:33:11.700

and, you know, it's always, WILF's always agonised about how old the membership is, but actually, as a woman growing up from, you know, coming across WILF at 19, 20, and growing up through WILF, it is one of the most reassuring and inspiring things in my life, and it's one of the things that it's helped me deal with growing older myself,

00:33:12.000 - 00:33:39.520

is how amazing these old women are. You know, how extraordinary they are, the two people who, you know, travelled to The Hague and back with all kinds of problems, you know, people being left stranded on platforms because the connecting train didn't provide a wheelchair, and, you know, just the feistiness, and, you know, two women who were participating and active, and it's so

00:33:39.520 - 00:34:02.440

brilliant growing up as a, you know, these role models of actually, you can be old, but you can still be a character, and you can still get yourself heard, and you can still be, you know, people may laugh at the way you look because you're covered in WILF flags and bags, and, you know, you, and you're being a bit stroppy about something, but actually it's wonderful to

00:34:02.440 - 00:34:22.260

see. And I don't think WILF, you know, I think there are, the international WILF, there are plenty of younger people around, and there are plenty of, I think the, you know, another thing I think WILF is learning is that it's always worked with other organisations, but I think the fact that there are younger women in and out of different projects, different, you know,

00:34:22.260 - 00:34:47.780

like yourself involved in this project, I don't, I think WILF can be quite proud of the fact that it is chiefly older women, but as long as there are the older women, I think older women, I think women tend to join when they're a bit older anyway, as long as it can keep going with that, I think it's okay really. Yeah, absolutely. So shall I move on to? I wonder if we might go

00:34:47.780 - 00:35:17.020

back a little bit, and talk about the speaking tour that you did, and what was that like? What was the reaction? It was, well, most of the people I talked to were pretty sympathetic audiences. I'm just going to blow my nose. I don't, it was mainly, you know, other NGOs, other UN-based organisations, other, I'm trying to think back to any difficult moments. There was,

00:35:18.100 - 00:35:48.540

yeah, I can't remember very well. There was resistance. I can't remember much resistance. I think people were generally, maybe there was a bit of having to convince the peace movement that the climate debate, the whole climate debate, the environment was, you know, certain parts of the peace movement that actually it was really important to prioritise that along with

00:35:50.000 - 00:36:17.500

demilitarisation. And the moments, I mean, I think a lot of it, I think for a lot of people, a lot of the time, it's about prioritising. And maybe there were difficult moments around, you know, women or climate, and difficult moments within WILPF itself around climate. And, you know, women and militarism, but actually, let's push the women bit even further,

00:36:17.780 - 00:36:44.680

you know, so that it's, let's say that actually there's a whole women's feminist analysis of militarism that is, that actually is different from a CND, for example, a CND analysis of militarism. And maybe, I think, because things, that's all changed so much in the intervening years, I think maybe there was a bit more, was a bit more difficult than I kind of think,

00:36:44.860 - 00:37:11.740

than I can kind of remember. And also because, yes, because those organisations and those, you know, WILPF, I think there was a real need for a time in my own kind of feminist development, I was part of the kind of generation where we had women-only spaces, and that was really important. And WILPF now doesn't seem to need that quite so much. And I think, you know, I kind of

00:37:11.740 - 00:37:36.300

agonised about that over the last few days. I think it's, I think we're probably in a different place. I think, I don't think it's quite so important. I'd still be slightly wary about it, because, you know, my generation, I remember enormous debate, you know, I was, my brother's girlfriend gave me the female eunuch when I was 15. And, you know, I've been kind of fascinated

00:37:36.300 - 00:38:00.420

by feminism ever since, really, and ended up having one of the leading feminist critics as my French tutor at university. So lucky, who my daughter then, she was her, you know, when my daughter was studying feminist theory for A-level English, my tutor was the main, her main, the main writer she was reading. And so I've got a status for that, you know, it's very nice. But it, you

00:38:00.420 - 00:38:23.320

know, so integrated is her writing that it's there on an A-level syllabus. But actually, I'm going off on a tangent now. It's a good tangent though, it's interesting. But it was, but at university, and partly because I was at a college which was very male, you know, we'd only had women for kind of three, four years. And I had lots of very good male friends coming from an all girls school, I was

00:38:23.320 - 00:38:50.080

incredibly excited about, you know, I'm heterosexual, incredibly excited about being with all these boys. But I realised that the minute boys joined the women's group, we lost it. They, you know, they were so, it just got so, it was so difficult. And it became, it became a very difficult, you know, it was just, and actually, you know, I then felt it was very, very difficult. But then I really

00:38:50.080 - 00:39:08.740

didn't want even my close male friends in that, that was a different space, we needed that time and space without them, really didn't like them being there. And I was just thinking about that during the Congress, during the, I must not call it the Congress, the conference this week, that one of the slightly distracting things is that some of the kind of, you know, the young,

00:39:08.820 - 00:39:27.120

the young men, I'm going to sound like an old paedo now, but some of the young men within, extraordinarily attractive bunch of, and I was thinking, actually, do I really want this at a conference? You know, there's all kinds of issues about having men there. Because no, it was so clear that the men weren't interrupting, they weren't dominating, they were,

00:39:27.540 - 00:39:46.400

you know, comfortably standing up and saying something, but they weren't then speaking for half an hour, as you know, you used to think of kind of men standing up and then taking over the discussion. They weren't doing that at all. But it's, I think I got very used to a women's space that there wasn't the distraction of men being there. And also actually being at a girl's school,

00:39:46.500 - 00:40:07.140

things like being funny, it was so much easier being funny in an all girls environment. I think I've, you know, I've got beyond that now, I'm confident enough in myself, but I wasn't at university, I couldn't, I suddenly lost this part, you know, being the kind of, the one who'd make really rude jokes in the group. And I, you know, it took a while to get that back. But yes,

00:40:07.140 - 00:40:28.120

the whole, the whole, I can't, why did we get it? Why did I go off into that particular bit of the history of feminism? I'm not sure. Anyway, what was the question? We were talking about the speaking tour, but maybe we should talk... Yes, the speaking tour and difficulties in speaking tour. Which makes sense. So were there many men at the conference?

00:40:28.680 - 00:40:53.660

Last week? There were, there weren't many, but there was a significant minority. And there was a workshop that was four men and I think just one woman on the panel. And it was a workshop looking at men and masculinity. And it seemed, I didn't go to it and kind of in a way I wish I had, because I work with so many young men who are committing horrendous acts of violence. And a lot

00:40:53.660 - 00:41:12.440

of my job is about trying to get them to think about other things they could do rather than retaliate with horrendous violence. But I didn't want to, you know, it was a women's conference. I didn't really want to go to a workshop about men, but actually a woman I was talking to who'd been to it said it was fantastic. And, you know, she was a woman who'd been through, you know,

00:41:12.460 - 00:41:33.060

she was a Greenham woman and she said it was absolutely great. And it was really, really lovely to feel that there's, you know, that you can think about, you know, living with men, having sons, you know, that you can think about role models and different, different, different kinds of masculinities. And so I think it was a, you know, it was a really good thing.

00:41:33.160 - 00:41:55.440

And the, there was the young men, you know, who were, there's one, I think he was an intern with WILP. I may be wrong, but it may be wrong. But he came up and got a, got a present at the end as a thank you for helping to organise the conference. And a couple of other young men who, you know, kind of cool, glam, trendy, you know, hipster-y kind of, you know,

00:41:55.580 - 00:42:16.220

kind of young men my daughters would have, you know, kind of. And, you know, is that a, is that a distraction or is that a, I think it's a good thing. I actually think it's a good thing. And I am joking about, you know, but it, but it's, you know, about having kind of paedophile-like feelings about, about the young men. But it's just, you know, just,

00:42:16.220 - 00:42:36.680

it made me think, it made me really, really think in some of the sessions about the presence of men there. It was very noticeable, as it was very, very noticeable that there were so many black women, there were so many women, you know, you couldn't tell who all the Muslim women or women from kind of Islamic countries were, because some were wearing a

00:42:36.680 - 00:43:07.300

headscarf, some weren't wearing a headscarf. But it was so noticeable and so brilliant that, you know, the, the North was represented, but there was massive representation from the rest of the world. And the Japanese, new Japanese president, and one of the, a Nigerian vice president and a Nigerian vice president, a Pakistani vice president. And I think this

00:43:07.300 - 00:43:30.160

time there's, I can't remember who the two others are, the people who've been at Congress would know. I, I think it's an Australian and I think there's a North American, but she's, I think she might be of Hispanic origin, because the Americas have to elect one vice president. But it just felt that it felt so brilliantly diverse. It was, it was really lovely to see that the, I think a lot

00:43:30.160 - 00:43:53.020

of the issues around, I'm sure that, you know, issues around racism and, and, and, you know, there was a, there was a whole work, there was a, at least one workshop around, around sexuality and being, you know, lesbian within, being a lesbian within the, the peace movement campaigning, anti-militarism or whatever. I'm sure there still are issues. I'm sure there's still, people feel

00:43:53.020 - 00:44:12.180

that there are discriminations going on, but it just feels as if they're very much out there. And and, you know, there are enough, there's enough people around to make them, make those things be properly challenged and properly dealt with, those issues. It felt great. It sounds like you found it really inspiring.

00:44:12.200 - 00:44:35.380

Oh, it was just, it was absolutely wonderful. It was absolutely wonderful. It was, and I'm just so sad that I had to miss the first day. I just got the two days because, is it, Mairead Maguire, the Irish, she was speaking on the first day and she's a real kind of heroine for, for me in terms of, you know, peace and reconciliation and, you know, the whole restorative justice, a lot of

00:44:35.380 - 00:44:56.740

the learning that I've done in, you know, learning about mediation and restorative justice has come from work that's gone on in a lot of the theories around it come from Northern Ireland and work that's gone on there. But also just being part of the whole, the whole, the full three days, because it builds up a kind of whole group dynamic. But it was great. It was lovely,

00:44:56.740 - 00:45:23.840

lovely seeing some old friends, you know, people like one woman who came up to me and I realised she'd been the, she'd been President Secretary, Secretary General of WILPF, a woman called Babsie Lochbühler, who's now an MEP, a German MEP and has, you know, has helped WILPF massively and through the, you know, advice around grants and, you know, negotiating the European Parliament

00:45:24.760 - 00:45:45.900

and then some of the Swedish sections. And I didn't recognise any of the Latin Americans. I had some really good friends, one, but then I didn't know her that well. She was through Britain, through meeting her here. But I think some of the Latin Americans that I'd known, I think they probably, you know, they, well, they weren't there, but they probably got too old or, you know,

00:45:46.560 - 00:46:13.860

that's a long way to come to The Hague. But it was, it was, it was wonderful. It was fascinating. And the, I particularly wanted to go because of the whole ISIS and, you know, how we deal with the whole kind of Islamic fundamentalist issue. And that was, I didn't get an answer to that, but I didn't expect an answer to that. But it made me see it very,

00:46:14.000 - 00:46:35.740

very differently. And it made me look at it very differently. And I think one of the key, it was an Iraqi woman who was talking about, Syrian women had said the same, Yemeni, Yemeni women were saying something slightly different, but kind of vaguely similar. But it was the Iraqi woman who said, well, we have this lovely situation as we're all Iraqis,

00:46:35.820 - 00:46:59.200

and because we're women, and actually, because the government forces don't really do anything very differently from the Islamic front, doesn't really, you know, the levels of violence, of oppression of women, the levels of attitudes to women, pretty similar, really, on both sides. But they've got really good communication. So a lot of the women in, you know, the ISIL areas

00:46:59.200 - 00:47:23.780

have got mobile phones. So we are still able to organise around food and shelters and people being taken in when, you know, maybe their fighter husband has been killed or whatever, that they get refuge, or, you know, we still have communication. And if we were anybody else, we wouldn't even get access, we couldn't get any access, but we still communicate across those

00:47:23.780 - 00:47:47.800

areas. Because we're women and women, you know, we're not that funny mixture of not being seen as dangerous. And yet, this is a project about these dangerous, but being dangerous in a very kind of quiet way. The other big thing for me, and was the, and I think we'll just kind of come back to this massively, was the return to the idea that actually human rights are all we've got

00:47:47.800 - 00:48:15.540

in common. And all the women from the Muslim countries and the African countries saying, and the Asian countries saying, don't let anyone say to you that human rights are white, northern, western, European, North American, they're not. They are, you know, that they can apply across cultures and across faiths. And that I think, for me, is really

00:48:15.540 - 00:48:39.880

important, because I've, you know, I've always thought I was a bit more left than human rights before. And I'm probably not anymore. But thinking of that as the instrument to kind of use as a basis, and it's something that I can use in my daily work, I do use it in my daily, you know, I use human rights all the time, because we working with volunteers, and we have people are referred

00:48:39.880 - 00:49:00.240

from the courts to us, and we have to make sure that we're not a kangaroo court, and that we respect the rights to privacy of family life. As a social worker, you're constantly thinking about privacy, how far can I go? And, you know, the rights of the child. But also, you know, how many questions can I ask her? Is that becoming, is that actually breaching their right to privacy?

00:49:00.740 - 00:49:21.980

Or by committing this offence, and by endangering someone else, can we step over that one? But you know, we're at risk in Britain of having our, I know we've got a lot of our, I was just thinking about this in the train on the way home, a lot of the human rights agenda is in various acts and laws, and in the Race Discrimination Act, stuff like that. But there are some crucial bits that

00:49:21.980 - 00:49:43.160

aren't. And it's very, very frightening that, you know, as a country like Britain is thinking of rejecting the human rights instrument. It's a bit terrifying, isn't it? Absolutely terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. The one thing that I'm really frustrated by, and that we, I wasn't there for long enough. And again, it's that thing about not being there for long enough, and not feeling

00:49:43.760 - 00:50:11.340

that, you know, there are so many issues that, and I'm just floating in as a bit of a tourist for two days, but I was worried that the European sections didn't, when we had a meeting as a body, we were still all white. And we didn't talk about, and that wasn't really the purpose of that meeting. It was about working out what issues the Europeans have got on the agenda. The agenda was

00:50:11.340 - 00:50:35.120

kind of decided last week. But we cannot be a European unit within world without the whole question of migration and the people dying in the Mediterranean. And the fact that the new Europe, and I was really struck by this, I haven't been in the Netherlands or Belgium for years, really struck by them, looking, and this is just from the train, looking as diverse as London is.

00:50:35.720 - 00:50:56.300

And I know because I spend a lot of time in France and Germany and Spain, and I know that, and also I work with a lot of black colleagues, particularly black colleagues who actually feel really uncomfortable on holiday in most places in most of those three countries. But I don't think it's the same in the Netherlands. I think the Netherlands is

00:50:56.300 - 00:51:19.200

actually a very diverse place, and I think it's a much more comfortable diversity. Whereas, you know, friends who've gone to Spain have, you know, got really sick to death of people saying, oh, Bob Marley, you know, that kind of level of, and obviously being being Muslim in France has possibly been as difficult as it possibly is now

00:51:20.520 - 00:51:43.140

in Britain for a long time, and I don't think France has ever resolved that at all. And I think Germany's got, you know, I think there's fantastic things that happen in Germany, and there have been fantastic moments, but I've had the experience of being taken for, I was working in Germany with a, in a centre for kids with disabilities and, you know, studying German, and it was a summer when

00:51:43.140 - 00:52:05.680

I'd been working, I'd also been working before that in a quite well-paid job as a tourist guide in the south of France, and I was really tanned at the time, and I was working with quite a few Turkish kids or kids of Turkish origin in wheelchairs or, you know, severely disabled kids who were, you know, the bottom of the heap anyway, and I experienced twice people coming up to me and,

00:52:05.680 - 00:52:28.980

you know, saying things like, oh, it stinks here, or another time someone came up and spoke in that particular language that, you know, that certain, again, you know, older generation, whatever, I mean, I'm not going to make excuses for them, but apart from ignorance, but speaking in a kind of German that as a foreigner is impossible to understand because they don't use, they don't

00:52:28.980 - 00:52:48.900

put the verb in, the verb in German comes at the end of the sentence, and if you don't, if you speak in this kind of foreigner's kind of this, you, you know, we've got a version in English, you know, and you speak a bit louder and you don't, but in German, if you don't use it, you've got no idea what they're saying or what you're meant to do, and I said to this woman who'd come

00:52:48.900 - 00:53:11.680

up to us in the park, I was sitting, you know, we were doing something with the kids in the park, and I said to her, could you, could you, could you say that again? I really didn't understand what you were saying, and she said, oh my god, I'm so sorry, I thought you were Turkish, you know, that just kind of, you know, and I know things like that could happen in Britain, but I think, you know, I think

00:53:11.680 - 00:53:34.380

we're in, it's only in London, I think we're in a better place in terms of, you know, generating, well, British black people, but also migrant communities being able to get a foothold on, you know, in politics or on, you know, in positions of power, in positions of authority, position, you know, changing things, positions, and I know that's, you know, that's a tiny

00:53:34.380 - 00:53:55.100

minority and there are all kinds of issues, but I still think we're a few steps further ahead than, you know, than some other countries. Yeah, so how was that European world meeting? Were they able to decide on some concrete things to do? No, it was, no, it was a very, it was a rather frustrating meeting, it was a, it was basically just a bit of a feedback session of what the different

00:53:55.100 - 00:54:18.460

European section, it was a very, we only had an hour and it was the hour had been broken into, because there were other, you know, to take, something else had taken up more time, and I think most of the work had been done at the Congress the week before, but I'd like to think that, and I know the Swedish section is so involved in a whole lot of

00:54:18.460 - 00:54:41.980

organizations in the North African, in the Middle Eastern area, and the UK section is very involved with the voices of African women, and I guess those women had gone to the Africa section meeting, whereas they could equally well have been at the European section meeting, but I think, you know, I think that's something that I think we just need to be,

00:54:42.080 - 00:55:08.360

you know, we need to be aware of and work on, and I think the issue of the, you know, for me, the two big issues are the kind of endless horrible fighting and the position of women around faith, you know, the fundamentalist fighting, and, you know, as the Muslim women were saying, and there's that horrible religion-based hatred going on in lots of places,

00:55:08.480 - 00:55:30.360

you know, the kind of fundamental Christian kind of nutters in, you know, in the States as well, and there's, you know, it goes on at different levels, but there's a very big area for the Middle East where that's what, you know, I'm really frightened about what's going on there, but also about, you know, the effect of that, I guess, is the, you know, what Europe does with

00:55:30.360 - 00:55:56.860

thousands and thousands of people trying to get into Fortress Europe was the very, was the name last time I went to an international conference, and it's Fortress Europe, even more so now, really, and yet it is and it isn't. We got stranded by a very ropey Spanish tour guide. We went to Morocco for a day on a day trip from southern Spain, and I can't quite work out why,

00:55:57.000 - 00:56:20.440

but we kind of, it was a Spanish-run group, and I think we must have missed an instruction. We were the only non-Spanish-speaking, well, Adrian speaks very good Spanish, but in the group, but we got, they went off without us at Tangiers Harbour. They went and got on the ferry and went across the strait without us, and Tangiers was, for about a kilometre away from the port,

00:56:20.560 - 00:56:42.220

there were just thousands and thousands of people trying to get on the ferry. It was absolutely terrifying, and I've never felt such a vivid picture of Fortress Europe, and we, of course, we knew, you know, we'll get partly, you know, we're the four of us, and my daughter was kind of crying their eyes out, because they, we pushed through to get onto the pier,

00:56:42.360 - 00:57:02.060

because we're really big and strong, and we had a day visa, and you know, the security let us go through, and it was a real struggle, but my daughter said, but look, there's a woman back there with a baby, and there's somebody else, and it was absolutely horrible, and I felt really ashamed that we pushed, but it felt, that's what it feels like to be a European. You kind of,

00:57:02.060 - 00:57:25.480

we were absolutely outraged that, you know, as Europeans, we can't, we can't kind of walk straight through and get straight onto that ferry, and you know, we then had to kind of wait on the pier for another couple of hours, but we got on a boat, and you know, oh, it's such a vivid Fortress Europe, but it's, you know, we need to think about what we're prepared to give up,

00:57:26.620 - 00:57:46.400

and it is a question of, you know, share, and the sharing is possibly at a level where it's very uncomfortable kind of sharing that, you know, how many people am I prepared to kind of share my house with? You know, you kind of wonder about things like that, because actually in a world where, you know, where Europe and North America has kind of destroyed a lot of

00:57:46.400 - 00:58:13.260

what's going on in a lot of stability over hundreds of years, not just recently, it's very, very uncomfortable. It's very, it feels very unreconcilable at the moment. It's very, very, and you know, people coming to Lampedusa every day, and you know, I always think of Italy as being one of the most racist Italian, racist European nations, in a funny, not on a kind

00:58:13.260 - 00:58:36.600

of political level, not an individual level, because I think even during the Second World War, Italians were famously good at not delivering up Jewish Italians to the concentration camps, because they just refused to work with that kind of systematic, systematic way, but you know, Lampedusa, they're taking in all those migrants, and they are providing somewhere for them. So,

00:58:36.760 - 00:58:59.480

you know, what are the rest of us going to do? And there's, you know, we may have an election next week, where we elect people who are saying no more migrants, we can't do that. It's absolutely terrifying. Yeah. It's very, very scary. But yes, WILPF, and you know, WILPF European sections,

00:58:59.480 - 00:59:18.000

I think there's a massive issue. It's, you know, America, in a funny kind of way, America, because it's got such kind of, it's got such immigration controls. I mean, it's got its kind of border with Mexico, which is the big, and there was a workshop on that, which I'd love to have gone to, as you know, my sister-in-law's Mexican, I'm really, really passionately interested

00:59:18.000 - 00:59:42.440

in, but again, I wanted to go to the one on ISIS more, and they were at the same time, I think. But America, it's got its, you know, America doesn't have quite the same issue, because it's got its, you know, it's incredibly well set up border controls. But, you know, might become a time when America has to think about rejigging that, you know, or the other option. And I know

00:59:42.440 - 01:00:03.060

from friends in development that, you know, Cameron's made it very clear that the development grant has been cut far less than a lot of other grants. And that's great. And you know, he's right that he's saying I'm cutting it, because actually, the, it is a much better solution that every, that we are working, that people don't have to migrate in the first place. And that the

01:00:03.060 - 01:00:28.320

transfer of money and, you know, ideas and creativity and future and hope, you know, moves elsewhere, that people don't have to come to Europe as the be all and end all, because Europe isn't the be all and end all for everybody anyway. It's pretty horrible time being a new migrant in Europe anyway. But that has to be done a lot, presumably a lot. I'm not here in the field of development,

01:00:28.460 - 01:00:55.500

I imagine that, you know, there's an enormous task there in terms of a proper funding and a proper kind of sharing and a proper addressing of the kind of the conflicts that are and the environment that are leading to the massive loss of people's homes and stability and cultures and... Yeah, it's very difficult and very, very complex as well,

01:00:55.920 - 01:01:24.560

which sits well with WILPF's kind of thinking, I guess, around the interrelationships between all of these things and being able to see that. Yes. So have you been inspired to get back involved? Well, what I did do was, I did, I came back and sent an email to my, the guy I'm probably going to vote for about Trident because, you know, and actually I would be voting for Nicola Sturgeon

01:01:24.560 - 01:01:45.200

if I could, but I can't. But I think we, you know, with that going on in Scotland, we're nearer to getting, you know, to getting a shift for Trident than we've ever been for, well, than we have been for a very long time. And that's incredibly exciting. But, and there seems to be some suggestion that there's quite a few new Labour MPs who are quite, you know, think it's a good

01:01:45.200 - 01:02:13.800

idea as well. But, you know, I know that there's, you know, there's a whole lot of issues that Labour's going to have to deal with if it gets voted in. But it's, you know, the only hope, I think, is that Labour does get in and then there is very strong kind of, you know, pushing from SNPs and Greens and, you know, if we get another Tory government, I'm desperately worried about

01:02:13.800 - 01:02:36.780

what happens. But it doesn't look at all sure at the moment. It's, it feels like a very, very crucial election. Although I'm, I don't have massive hopes for Labour, you know, Labour will still carry on with the privatisations, but I'm hoping they will have to be more amenable to, to shifting and I think I might just need to move back to Scotland, to be honest. But I've, yeah, I just,

01:02:37.640 - 01:03:02.000

I don't, I'm really torn with this one because I really want to be more involved and I, it has really inspired me that, you know, the global situation is so important. It's really, it's really important, even if you're working locally, that you're still in touch with the global situation. But I don't think I will start going to every WILP meeting. But I think I'd like,

01:03:02.100 - 01:03:24.300

you know, I will, I will be reading more of what's coming out of WILP and I will be going to more actions, I hope. And obviously I will carry on with the trust. And when I don't do the trust, then I will still carry on being involved in some other form. I'd like to think, you know, I've always said to people in WILP, I'd be really happy to come and try and, you know, get involved

01:03:24.300 - 01:03:46.360

with the, you know, the executive or something, if anyone would have me when I retire. Maybe, you know, I'd quite like to think I'd do that before I retire, but it's time and it's, you know, it's that, WILP, I did think for a while that WILP wasn't very good at dealing with women in the middle years of their lives when they're at stages in their jobs, when they're,

01:03:46.360 - 01:04:07.160

they're actually often really, really busy. And, you know, I do do a career that I, got a career that I really believe in and I really care about and involves an awful lot of, in fact, I don't, I'm not, I do a job, a two thirds job so that I can do the voluntary work and fairly selfishly because actually I manage other people doing what I believe in at

01:04:07.160 - 01:04:23.960

work, but I get to do it myself, you know, that a lot of the neighbourhood justice panels, stuff like that, I can do more of that as a volunteer. Whereas I'm often, you know, I do get to do direct work at work, but a lot of the time I'm managing other people doing that, other, I'm teaching other people to do it or I'm managing other people doing it.

01:04:24.520 - 01:04:39.100

Um, but it's, it's quite time consuming and I've still got one daughter at home and, um, it's, you know, it's time and, you know, it's time. Yeah, it's energy as well. Energy.

01:04:39.360 - 01:04:56.040

For a lot of WILP women, WILP is quite personal isn't it? Because it's all of your issues about the world. It's very easy to get very involved in it, I've always found, and to take over a little bit if you left it. That's absolutely right and I think the people who have done that, I've seen people burn out

01:04:56.720 - 01:05:13.220

and I think there's a real problem with, I was talking to my other half about this, um, you know, it's funny, I keep calling him other half because I still hate the word husband, again it's that generation and I know all your generation, they all get married quite happily. My generation, we didn't, he didn't do marriage, you know, those, you know,

01:05:13.280 - 01:05:35.480

we really, really resented it and then of course I got married because I made this very clear at the registry office and the party we had afterwards that we got married because we couldn't get the, um, we couldn't get the tax situation, you know, we're in a house that suddenly got, you know, highly valuable and taxable and, um, and I really believe in paying

01:05:35.480 - 01:05:57.480

tax but I don't want my daughters to lose it twice because we're not married, whereas if we're married they pay their inheritance tax once on the house, I mean the house value may have dropped by the time we, you know, we pop our socks or whatever but it's such a dodgy reason for getting married, um, but anyway that, so I kind of come up with all these other words for him which I really

01:05:57.480 - 01:06:18.440

ought to just bite the bullet and call him my husband because he is and I'm very, you know, I love him dearly but I loved him dearly as a partner or as a compañero, that's the best way, um, that was a tangent as well but, uh, yes we were talking, we were talking about that, that burnout thing, that's what I was getting, getting away from, um, my, in my experience the

01:06:18.440 - 01:06:41.920

women who are doing and this Iraqi woman talking about the shelters in Iraq, I got the impression she is probably less likely to burn out because she's got, doing this very hands-on job that, you know, she may get really overwhelmed with that but she's seeing an end product of, you know, it may be very small, um, it may be that, you know, one woman is sheltered or

01:06:41.920 - 01:07:05.620

one woman gets food or, you know, it's brought to safety or brought to a safe place and I think with my job one of the things I was taught about in social work very early on is you have to learn to get immense pride and satisfaction from something that, for my example, was spending two days teaching a boy who would tear his own skin and everyone else's around him when he got,

01:07:05.880 - 01:07:24.820

couldn't quite work out what, hot because he couldn't speak, he couldn't, he was in a wheelchair, he was completely unable and this brilliant woman, this was when I was volunteering in Germany, this brilliant German social worker who was qualified, I wasn't qualified then, said to me, look Georgie, you, I'm going to just set you free for the rest of the week to work out first of all

01:07:24.820 - 01:07:45.660

what he needs, what he wants and then to try and find a solution to it and it took two days but he ended up being able to open the window himself to pull his wheelchair over and open the window himself and then she said afterwards, you know, if you're in social work you need to realise that that's probably the peak of your career, that's probably one of the most satisfying things you'll

01:07:45.660 - 01:08:04.920

ever do in your job and there are loads and loads of little satisfactions in social work that, you know, of course the media never talks about but, you know, client, you know, little client, you won't ever, you won't tend to get a thank you but just to something that is incredibly satisfying and so working at that level you can often get a satisfaction that I think slightly

01:08:04.920 - 01:08:29.420

protects you from burnout, whereas if you're working at the level of the WILPF Manisfesto we have to hope that there will be peace in our lifetime, it's a very, very difficult and dangerous place to be, that kind of hope and you've got to have that hope but I think having that hope without a daily satisfaction of small, you know, small achievements is probably the quickest route to

01:08:29.420 - 01:08:55.440

burnout. That's really interesting, so when you were an international board member did you find that more difficult working at that kind of higher, more kind of theoretical level? Well I was, I was only at the level of the UK rep for the British section and a lot of the other representatives from the other sections were kind of people who work at quite grassroots levels as

01:08:55.440 - 01:09:23.560

well, so in fact the mixture of the theoretical and the grassroots, the mixture of the kind of thought and action and also because the UK section always had this really strong direct action remit as well, although that again, you know, I've seen people going down that route and actually getting very burnt out, you know, breaking down fences at Greenham and

01:09:23.560 - 01:09:46.980

getting arrested and re-arrested and it's miraculous the women who manage to do that and don't get burnt out, it's possibly about individuals in the end. I know, I always found there was enough of a mixture but again, you know, anytime I was an international rep I was still also working as well and I'm quite good at having fun as well, you know, I'm quite good at, you know, rather selfishly

01:09:46.980 - 01:10:09.440

looking after myself, like in The Hague I was staying in an Airbnb which was incredibly cheap, it was cheaper than anywhere else I could find apart from a hostel where I'd have been sharing a room with 17 young people of mixed sexes, as hostels seem to all be now, you know, my daughter's in, she's in Peru at the moment working in an orphanage but, you know, she's staying in a hostel with kind

01:10:09.440 - 01:10:31.640

of 10 people of both sexes in one room and I'm too old for that, but no, so I had this lovely, lovely, you know, house to go back to in the evening and it was, you know, I'd found one really near the World Forum, I could walk there and back and I went off to see the sea on the last morning before I caught my train so, you know, I'm quite, quite good at looking after myself.

01:10:31.900 - 01:10:53.660

That's partly, you know, social work training is also a lot of the kind of psychotherapeutic element of it is about how you, how you preserve yourself, it doesn't, doesn't always work but, but WILF, you know, seeing the, you know, the amazing, in taking over and the amazing commitment of people and, you know, in some ways I think some of the people who have thrown

01:10:53.660 - 01:11:14.040

themselves so totally, I've been a real part-timer and tourist about it, but the people, some of the some of the women who've thrown themselves into it so wholeheartedly, they are the ones who've made a difference, you know, they've made a difference and actually in terms of meaning in life, you know, if you've done that and, you know, people like, well like the woman, the Libyan woman

01:11:14.040 - 01:11:42.020

who wasn't at the conference because she'd been shot for campaigning for democracy, unfortunately she placed her vote but as she came out after placing her vote she was shot and, you know, that's just, that's, you know, what kind of, what more life, you know, what more meaning is there in life than that but it's tragic that it has to end in that really and, you know, some of the,

01:11:42.020 - 01:12:04.580

the Green women who again and again and again were, you know, making, making their voice heard and making, making a difference. It's, I mean, it's in small and subtle ways it's changed a generation although it's a bit depressing the way that it's changed things, I think, in terms of what young women can expect but I think actually, interestingly, I think what it probably didn't do

01:12:04.580 - 01:12:25.560

was change, bring about change in men and masculinity which comes back to maybe Wilp's doing a very wise thing there, you know, in terms of the kind of students and rapey culture and my daughter says those rapey jokes have been coming up for the last few years. Yeah. The fact that you can say the word, that I could say the word rapey is, you know, it's really shocking.

01:12:28.240 - 01:12:53.760

Yeah, it's good, it's, it feels, it feels to me like this, it's quite a, it's a terrifying time kind of an interesting time as well, there's a bit more energy in the kind of feminist movement. Yes, yes. Than there has been around that whole, especially that sexual harassment kind of area with all the everyday sexism projects. That's right, yes, and the fact that as well,

01:12:53.900 - 01:13:13.140

that it's, I mean, my youngest is at an all-girls school, she's at an all-girls church school, we're not church but they have a few places for people who are really into languages and she's kind of good at that, and the everyday sexism project was in a church school but it was invited to come and talk at her school, that would never have happened at my school,

01:13:13.440 - 01:13:34.840

which was also an all-girls school, and that things like that is really good that they're, they're both mainstream but they're, you know, they're quite radical but they're radical in, you know, they're radical in ways that, you know, there's a general acceptance and welcoming of, of them, you know, even amongst Tory government. But then there's interest, I think there's also

01:13:34.840 - 01:13:58.400

interesting things going on there because I think the, you know, things like the, you know, the Tory kind of encourage, you know, active encouragement, I went to my first gay wedding in the autumn and it was just so lovely, it was just such a, it was such a fantastic development and change and, you know, lots of speeches about that. But the other side of that and the,

01:13:58.520 - 01:14:22.240

you know, the kind of, suddenly it's okay to be a feminist is, I often feel it's used as another way of hating Islam, of developing the, oh look at, look at the Muslims, you know, I mean they can't, they really, you know, it's, it doesn't bring that along with it, it leaves Muslim women behind, it leaves, you know, discussions, open discussions around Islam and different

01:14:22.240 - 01:14:42.320

interpretations of Islam behind and it obviously leaves the fundamentalist Christians behind as well but, but they are, I think they're quite a minority certainly in Britain. But no, you're right, I think there is, there is an energy which is where I think there's also, it's possibly a good time to take a few risks with, you know, like Nicola Sturgeon coming out

01:14:42.320 - 01:15:02.800

saying we will have no Trident, I mean actually she, it's the only way she's ever going to pay for stuff in Scotland now that the oil's gone through the, you know, lost its, lost its money but I think it is an exciting time and I think, you know, it's interesting with, with my own daughters, they both would say they were feminists without any hesitation,

01:15:02.880 - 01:15:27.840

would be really surprised that anyone would challenge it, whereas I think I spent a lot of my life feeling, you know, really embarrassed because it was really difficult to say yes I'm a feminist because you get, you know, the kind of dungaree wearing lesbian kind of stuff and that's, that's good. Definitely, yeah that's very interesting, it's interesting how

01:15:28.600 - 01:15:56.360

the sections have all changed over time and the developments definitely. Thinking about W.I.L.F. again, I don't know, is there any other experiences with W.I.L.F. that really stand out to you as something that was amazing to be involved in or that was terrible? I don't think there's, terrible I wouldn't, I wouldn't say, I think one point about W.I.L.F.

01:15:56.420 - 01:16:20.860

or the two points about W.I.L.F. where I can't imagine ever not being a W.I.L.F. member or being, you know, keeping up with W.I.L.F. is, one is that any time a new issue comes up in the world and I want to have a look for a kind of take on it, W.I.L.F. would be my first port of call. I could just, because I really trust where it's coming from and the second part of that is very

01:16:20.860 - 01:16:45.780

closely linked with that, but it's part of the same, is that I look to W.I.L.F. as an organisation where, and I was really struck by this in the early days, where ego doesn't come first. And there are lots of women with very big egos in W.I.L.F. and there are times when, you know, those egos will come to the front, to the fore, but the, you know, from Edith Ballantyne where, you know, I didn't know

01:16:45.780 - 01:17:07.020

who she was the night I arrived in Costa Rica, to the, the fact that, you know, that this conference in the last three days, most of the speakers, and there was one speaker, somebody said they felt was speaking from a point of view of pushing her own business, which is a very good business, you know, it's a very, very worthy thing to be doing, but that's, you know, a little bit of

01:17:07.020 - 01:17:33.020

kind of self-aggrandisement and marketing, promoting something that's about yourself and your own industry or whatever. I kind of trust W.I.L.F. not to do that and it's an amazingly unusual situation to get people standing up and speaking and speaking from, you know, we've all got vested interest in something, it'd be stupid to say we don't, but speaking from a, you know,

01:17:33.040 - 01:18:03.600

as genuine as I've ever seen in human beings, a genuine concern to make the world a better place, which is very, very moving and very impressive, but it's also a model of, I think for me it's also been a model of management's not quite the leadership and I'd like to think that some of the stuff that, and I suspect my team would say, oh no, that's absolutely wrong, you know,

01:18:03.680 - 01:18:28.660

that's not, but I'd like to think that my leadership style has been very, very influenced, you know, in my work as a, you know, team manager in social work or whatever, has been influenced by that, by W.I.L.F., by the, it's hard to put a finger on exactly what makes it like that, but it's something about listening to other people, about not being

01:18:29.940 - 01:18:53.480

afraid to, of people disagreeing and enabling that space for people to disagree and say uncomfortable things, difficult conversations. I'm actually in a workplace where my overall manager is very much, she could have come up through W.I.L.F. herself, she's very, she's got it from different roots, I think, but, which is really helpful working, you know,

01:18:53.500 - 01:19:12.860

it makes it a lot easier, but also leadership that's not about ego and obviously ego comes into it, you know, I like seeing my name on the end of an article that we've managed, you know, fighting to get a press release out at the moment and I, you know, I'd like my name to be down there along with the, you know, one of my team members' names, but that's not the first

01:19:12.860 - 01:19:37.220

and foremost thing, that the first and foremost thing is the people, is that the people that we're working with and the people who are doing that work are the ones who get the, you know, it's for them and that my, and this is the W.I.L.F. thing, that my joy and pleasure in my work will come from the fact that that's happened and I've enabled that to happen, but the joy will be kind

01:19:37.220 - 01:20:00.180

of seen, I mean, it's actually quite a kind of typical women's role though, isn't it, that you get the joy of being a person behind the scenes, you know, it's not, that's not quite, that's not quite, that doesn't quite put my finger on it either, but it's the fact that you're motivated by knowing that you would be happier in a world where there is less, you know, that your own

01:20:00.180 - 01:20:22.360

personal happiness marries up very well with the, you know, what you're working for, I guess, so you're not doing it because you want to be famous or because you want to be seen as special or because you want positions of power, but it's a very, very, it's a very, very difficult thing to, but W.I.L.F.'s definitely got, I've been

01:20:22.360 - 01:20:42.920

very struck that W.I.L.F.'s, a lot of W.I.L.F. people have got that, W.I.L.F. women have got that, a lot haven't, but a lot have and there's always, there's always enough around who have that to be inspirational in that, and again, I think that's something around the, I hope that's something that the, around the kind of working with men and masculinity, that's something that, you know,

01:20:42.940 - 01:21:05.460

the kind of boys, boys and men's groups are kind of able to take on board as well. I'm just trying to think about any other amazing things, and I'm constantly amazed by the, you know, things like Martin Luther King spoke, and I was just looking at the W.I.L.F. history book that we got at the conference, I didn't know he spoke at one of the W.I.L.F.

01:21:05.860 - 01:21:35.560

congresses, Alice Walker was a quite keen W.I.L.F., Einstein gave, Albert Einstein name-checked W.I.L.F. in, it's just extraordinary the people who have been involved with it. I think that's the dog patting, the door's shut so he can't come in. You know, this organisation that's kind of been so around for so long, and so many

01:21:35.560 - 01:21:59.520

amazing people have kind of crossed its path, and yet it's, that thing in the Guardian, the Guardian website, it's the biggest press, and it's not even in the main Guardian, I don't think there's any mention of the main Guardian, but it's the biggest press writing, written press stuff on W.I.L.F. I've ever seen. I'm really proud it was the Guardian that did it, but I'd like to think

01:21:59.520 - 01:22:22.940

all the other newspapers, you know, there must have been other journalists there this week. Laureate, yeah, four Nobel Peace Laureates were at the conference on them this week, I've got, there's a photo in the Guardian actually of the four of them together. No, it's just, it's an extraordinary organisation, and I really hope that it gets the

01:22:22.940 - 01:22:46.860

recognition it deserves, and I think the more widespread, one other thing that I've done since I got back is my family, or my husband said it, and kids are involved in a community theatre group, did I, have I talked about this already? No, I was talking to somebody else about it on the phone earlier, no, yes, on the phone earlier, they're involved in a community theatre group in Southwark

01:22:46.860 - 01:23:09.720

called the Bubble Theatre, and the Bubble this year is doing, what they do is they, it's professional actors and members of the community, and it's all ages, and they do, they do research, they do oral history, and then they do, on a particular theme, and then they draw, they make a play from it with professionals and local people, and then they perform it around

01:23:09.720 - 01:23:26.920

the London parks, and in public spaces around London, it's usually the kind of, they tend to arrange the whole South London parks, and they're, they're wonderful performances, they're usually ones when you, you follow them around the park, you know, they're, I can't remember the name for it, and they're very influenced by Teatro de Complicite, so it's very movement orientated,

01:23:27.900 - 01:23:49.300

with kind of song and chanting and scripts, but, and they, they're quite, they're fantastic, they're really, really good productions that they do, but they've got, you know, everybody from the 90 year old to the difficult kid who kept interrupting the rehearsal, so they ended up getting them to join in, but this year they're doing a play on the memories of Hiroshima,

01:23:50.900 - 01:24:09.300

and they're wanting to interview, as part of the oral history, a whole range of people who were, you know, who remember when the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, and I, I got, my daughter got the email, and you know, as I was eavesdropping on her emails, I saw it, and contacted them and said, look, I think I know quite a few people who were women peace activists at the time, and it'd be

01:24:09.300 - 01:24:34.540

probably really interesting to interview some of the WILPF members, and they've got back and said, I think Adrian might be wanting to come in, or is it the dog? I'll just go and have a look. Oh Adrian, sorry, were you wanting to come in? No, I was just checking who was in there. No, no, it's not me talking to them. Okay, all right, you don't, do you want anything from in

01:24:34.540 - 01:25:04.740

here? It's still Ella, it's all right, you're still the same Ella. Yeah, hello, do you want to have a walk? Exit one lame dog. But, but what, what I'm, and they, they, the bubble got back and said we'd absolutely love to interview some of the WILPF women, so I've just forwarded that to some of the, some of the UK WILPF women, I think that would be amazing to interview them,

01:25:04.780 - 01:25:24.600

because I suspect some of them would have been, I don't, well I don't know, that's what, I don't know what they were doing around, I don't think anybody knew before Hiroshima, but what happened when the bomb was dropped, and you know, were they, were there immediately demonstrations? Did people, you know, that, that's, it's so interesting, so you know, that's the kind of thing that, I mean,

01:25:24.600 - 01:25:47.360

it's a very, very small thing, but it's another way of WILPF spreading its tentacles, goddess-like, many-armed kind of, not octopus-like. That's a nice image, I like that. So I think the Brights and Brunch do something around Hiroshima Day each year. Yes, I think they do, yeah, there is, there's quite a lot of activity around Hiroshima Day, and so, I mean, I'm hoping when I,

01:25:47.460 - 01:26:02.940

you know, when I look at my emails again, there'll be, I hope I've contacted the right people who will tell me who the right people are, or just go straight back to the bubble, but it'd be, it'd be a lovely thing, because it would be, you know, it'd be children and kind of, you know, Southwark residents going out and then making a drama off it.

01:26:06.320 - 01:26:26.780

So that's, yeah, I just, it just, you know, probably, I mean, they won't be recognised probably as WILPF, although I guess they'll kind of mention it. They might get a banner in as a stage set or something like that. Bob loves the banner. But the banners are so beautiful, I mean, so beautiful. There was some very lovely merchandise at the conference. I've

01:26:26.780 - 01:26:50.040

got one of the African sections has made bags with it with, on one of those, I don't know whether it's Kenyan, maybe kind of other African countries, cloth. They made bags and cloths and shirts with all the different countries superimposed and the WILPF logo and the Women's Power to Stop War logo. I'll show you mine upstairs. I wasn't going to buy it and resist

01:26:50.040 - 01:27:13.860

it. And then there's an umbrella from the Colombian section with Liga Internacional de Mujeres por la Paz y la Libertad. And that's just so cool as well. So I will be wandering around London with my, my WILPF souvenirs. But I guess that's all good stuff about getting, you know, getting it. People are curious about, you know, where did you get that from? And what's that? And

01:27:13.860 - 01:27:40.020

it's good for the conversation, really. But no, my, you know, it's the very subtle ways that, you know, I feel that I've taken more from WILPF than I've given to it, to be honest, because I feel that the learning that I've taken from it in so many ways is what determines how I do my job. And, you know, obviously, I've got the kind of feminist perspective on how I do my

01:27:40.020 - 01:28:11.560

job and how I think you work with young offenders and you work with volunteers and you work across communities. It's a very, very diverse, very, very diverse team and area because Southwark's got the biggest African, West African population of any area outside of West Africa. Massive, Nigerian, Sierra Leonean, Ghanaian. And it's quite nice because I get to use my French sometimes.

01:28:11.820 - 01:28:35.520

But it's also quite nice because there's an incredibly strong culture amongst particularly Nigerian and Ghanaian people of voluntary work. And so, you know, I've got about 50 volunteers in my job at work and a lot of them are from those backgrounds. That's where we have some interesting conversations about Fortress Europe as well, because I'll be going on about some of

01:28:35.520 - 01:28:53.260

the European, you know, some of the European institutions, you know, employment rights and the women's rights. Aren't they just so important that we need to be holding on to them? And then Nigerian person might say, I remember one elderly woman saying, well, yeah, they would be quite nice if we had any sense that Europe ever wanted to share them with anyone else.

01:28:53.480 - 01:29:14.300

But we just get the sense that Europe just wants to hold everything to itself. That's really interesting. It's really interesting. Yeah. That's been really great. It's really interesting to reflect on how welfare has

01:29:14.300 - 01:29:39.080

affected your life. It sounds like in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways. I'm eternally grateful to it and I hope I will give back more to it because I think it needs people to give to it really as well. It can only give by, you know, that reciprocal arrangement really. But then again, I do, you know, I do feel that my job is work, you know,

01:29:39.220 - 01:30:08.080

it's the conflict resolution, it's peacemaking at the local level. And it's, yeah, it has its limitations. Interestingly as well. I mean, I actually think, I think one of Obama's biggest problems, he's got lots of problems. I think one of his biggest problems is he's a mediator. And as a mediator, you compromise. And mediation is all about compromise. And it's very,

01:30:08.840 - 01:30:30.700

it's great to compromise. It's some of the best mediations we have in this area are because it's a very, very big lesbian and gay area. And it's a very big Muslim and African areas, growing numbers of Muslim people. And a lot of the mediations, because they're all groups who don't greatly trust the police or the courts, they will come with neighbour disputes, they'll come to

01:30:30.700 - 01:30:56.000

mediation. And people on the whole, it works really, really well, because they're all people who will make compromises. But the people, this is a very crass generalisation, but the people who are much harder to make, who find it much harder to make compromises are the, you know, it's the owner of the very large house, very big garden, who expects to be able to pay

01:30:56.580 - 01:31:21.160

for perfection and privacy. And, you know, you can't force someone to come to the mediating table, you can't force, you know, the certain warring parties or certain powerful men to come and negotiate. And in a culture, you know, kind of patriarchal culture where, when compromise is seen as a kind of, you know, failure. Compromise and changing your mind. I mean, that's the way

01:31:21.160 - 01:31:44.740

the media hounds any male politician who changes their mind. You have to be able, you can't ever bring about change without changing your mind. And it shows you don't, you don't listen if you don't change your mind. And that's all stuff from, you know, from WILP. Yeah, no, it's a fantastic organisation. And I'm really glad they're doing this oral history project and I really hope it

01:31:44.740 - 01:32:14.060

gets lots of exposure as well. And I'm really, really honoured to be invited to, you know, really honoured to be invited to, well, to be interviewed, because it's very nice to sit and talk about myself. The ego is not so, so taught and tamed by WILP. It needs a space. I'd like to think it was WILP space more than me space, but, you know, you need a wee bit of

01:32:14.060 - 01:32:37.860

me space, but it, you know, then me space needs to be in the right place, I think. Absolutely. Great. Well, unless there's anything you want to add? I can't think of, I think actually you've given me the chance to say most of the stuff. I can't think of anything particularly more. No, I think I'm probably, I think I've probably said enough.

01:32:39.100 - 01:32:44.560

Brilliant. That's been so good. Well, thank you for letting me do it.