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Hello, this is Jane Grant interviewing Diane Brace at 4.10pm on Friday, November 7th, 2014. And I'm going to start by asking Diane if she could tell me, if you could tell me Diane, about your life in activism before you came to WILPF. I was a member of the Labour Party from 1945 onwards, very active in the Labour Party, still am.

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Were you involved in anything else other than the Labour Party? No, I don't think so. What did you do for the Labour Party? The usual, canvassing, leafleting and speaking.

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So you haven't been involved in a women's organisation before WILPF? That's right. So tell me then, how did you get involved in WILPF, how did you join? One of my friends from when I was a child became president of United States WILPF.

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And she came to Europe to the Swedish conference and I went with her. And I got to know WILPF through attending the Swedish conference. I thought I would join. And once you joined, how would you describe your life in WILPF?

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Well I became president of United Kingdom WILPF for a short while. I was fairly active. I started the London branch, worked on the London branch and as I said became national president. And I went to the United States to attend the United States conference when I was president of British WILPF.

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And what did you feel about it? What were your feelings about WILPF? Mixed I guess. I don't really favour single gender organisations. I think the population is made of men and women and organisations seem to me to work best when they're like that.

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But no, it was interesting. And when and why did you leave WILPF? I haven't left WILPF. I'm still a member and I still do occasional things for them. The annual party is held in my garden and I organise the anniversary party in a bookshop in Islington.

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So I'm still vaguely around but I don't attend meetings. Do you miss it in any way? No. What recommendations would you make to improve the running, the governance of WILPF to make it more welcoming or whatever?

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It's a difficult question. One of the reasons I left WILPF was that it didn't seem to me to be doing anything. And it seems to me important to try and make a difference even if you can't. And in fact to have an ambition of world peace is too large.

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It's unlikely we're going to achieve it, at least in my lifetime. And I would have thought for them to have much more modest ambitions would have been easier. I also found it competitive. I thought there were people within WILPF who were ambitious and competitive and that was a problem for me. This is all very familiar to many organisations. How can one prevent such things happening?

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Very difficult indeed. I suppose having members who dislike it and therefore work against it. And in WILPF it seemed to me that people went along with the competitiveness and sort of put up with it. And if you put up with things...

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I went to a show the other day and they said to get change you must challenge things. And I don't think we did challenge that particular development. Do you think a lot of people invested a lot of themselves, we seem to be implying that, in WILPF? Which in one way is a good thing actually but can become a bad thing.

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I'm not understanding the question. I think what I'm implying is that you said people were competitive. Does this mean that women in WILPF were investing in a way too much in it so that it became incredibly important to be important in WILPF? Yes. I hadn't thought of it in those terms that you're describing.

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People like achievement, they like role status and you who have done so much research of women's organisations will know that it's not particular to you in WILPF. I think more people had to challenge it. Do you think it would have been easier if WILPF could have afforded to have paid staff? Oh absolutely. I much admire the Fawcett Society which does have paid staff but then in fact they make the money, they don't get given it.

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I don't even remember the time I ran round Hyde Park to raise money for WILPF and the Fawcett Society ran round as well but they made a great deal more money. And then it was objected that I ran round it because the organisation sponsoring it was a commercial organisation and so I haven't done it since. Sorry that isn't very clear. It's almost as if you're saying that they are their own worst enemy isn't it?

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Well I suppose that's a bit too strong. This particular episode which perhaps illustrates it, I wanted to raise money for WILPF and I raised £300 or £400 and I ran round Hyde Park with it when all the women's organisations were running round Hyde Park. My granddaughter ran with me but I was the only person doing it and when it was all over I was so impressed that the Fawcett Society had got £4,500 whereas I'd only got £300. And then people in WILPF criticised my doing it because the organisation that sponsored the run, the sponsored run, were commercial people.

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They made trainers and they objected to us working with an organisation that was commercial. I thought this was delved because we actually made money for WILPF out of it. It sounds to me like it's like the tall poppy syndrome because you put your head above the parapet as it were in order to make money. They were jealous of your effort do you think?

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Oh I don't think they were jealous, they just had principles which were different from mine. I'm much more compromising I suppose. I wanted to make money. You mentioned WILPF having a paid organiser. It seems to me that the Fawcett Society benefits hugely by having a paid organiser and I would like us to have had the same.

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Tell me, what do you think of the opportunity which 2015 will centenary offers? I suppose to get everyone together. I had originally thought of going to The Hague and I'm not now. Why not now? Because I'm no longer an enthusiastic member of WILPF I suppose.

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But I used to live in Holland so I can even speak Dutch. But no, I shall observe what happens in The Hague and I think it's a really great thing to do. I mean I worked quite a lot as you probably know at the Geneva office of WILPF because I was the personnel person internationally. And I went and did the appraisals for the Secretary General for several years.

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And so I have some sort of small insights into how the international works. They have to change things. They have to do things that make a difference. I don't think they do. They probably do in other countries. I mean we've particularly been knowledgeable, haven't we, about the WILPF branch in the Congo. Because we have Congolese refugees in our membership. And I suspect they do do some good work there.

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I didn't see good work being done here in the UK. What would you say about the governance of the international WILPF, which of course now has a very active Secretary General? Yes, and she's impressive. I don't know. It seemed to me when I was there, and that was before the Secretary General, so it was a different Secretary General then,

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that they were so latched into the United Nations. And the United Nations has very little effect on certainly the UK and perhaps not very much in the world. They seem to me to be so occupied in going to United Nations meetings and chairing United Nations Commission meetings. And I doubt whether the United Nations has a huge effect on the rest of the world. If they're not doing that, what should they be doing instead?

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Helping the branches like the UK. I mean the UK branch I think doesn't have officers at the moment or doesn't have a president or a vice president. I mean that's a very telling indication of lack of enthusiasm, support, whatever. I think they should have helped branches there. Rather than going to the UN. Well, I mean I'm being stupid about the UN, am I not? I thought they quite enjoyed chairing committees.

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It may be much better now with the Secretary General who has been there several years and who is a very able woman. What do you think, I mean, the world in the UK is doing things to celebrate 2015. This recording interviews with people is part of it to archive them and there's going to be various reenactments of going to the Hague. What do you think wealth should look like at the end of 2015, which it doesn't look like now? I mean what changes should this make?

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I think people should recognise that they exist. I mean also I'm a woman in black as you probably know and they're really quite successful I think at making their self evident. But they have a very different set up, they don't have officers and committees and organisation, they just do things. It would be nice if people had heard of WILF. When I mention to people that I'm a member of WILF they have not a clue what I'm talking about. So you think there should be a massive publicity?

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I think they should do things that, I mean there are so many problems in the country. If you're, I mean I'm probably being stupid about this, if you're just latched into peace and war, we don't actually, we have of course people killing people in Afghanistan and formerly in Iraq. And perhaps we should have been much stronger against those things happening because that was the only time that Britain was involved in a police war conflict, apart from Northern Ireland perhaps. But if you're about peace you ought to do something about it. And I'm not aware that we are.

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Well I think we do write letters to ministers and things don't we? Oh wow. So you don't think that this special year is going to make a great deal of... I would love it too. I much admire those women, I'm hugely admiring the women back in 1915.

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Very courageous they were and splendid. But they had a purpose did they not? They had a war to stop. Okay they didn't stop the war but they really tried and were quite influential when the war was over. As I said I think it's difficult to be a peace organisation because you have to, I'm not being clear, a peace organisation has to try and stop the country in which it lives fighting people, killing people. And we do it quite a lot, this country does, we kill people on quite a large scale in Iraq and of course in Afghanistan.

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What did we do about that? Letters to the papers aren't going to do much are they? And it would have been very unpopular to oppose the war in Iraq and we all walked in that million thing, at least I did. But the women in 1915 were very unpopular too. Those dangerous women.

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They were. I don't know that we've done anything about Iraq and Iraq seems to me pointless killing the people. The trouble is that the recent Islamic, Syria and Iraq, it's very difficult to know what to do. It is. Do you just let them rampage across?

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It's a very difficult decision. But I think we should be discussing what they do about it. I think it's a hugely difficult decision. Terrorism which isn't about invading people's countries, it's just about killing people in other people's countries in many cases.

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A hugely difficult problem. But we'll need to address it. If it's a peace organisation. If we did get this sort of a grip as you're talking about, would you become more active in it?

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Probably, yes. Well that would be my hope. Thank you Diane, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

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Well done. That was interesting. Did you think you said all you wanted to say? Yes, there were things I hadn't thought through probably.

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No, that was stimulating. I hope it's recorded. It's interesting the comparison with the Fawcett Society, isn't it? As I said, I've been looking at the website for the Fawcett Society recently because we had the speaker.

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And it's doing a huge amount.