00:00:00.000 - 00:00:32.580

Now, Una, can you tell me a little bit about your background? Yes. I was born to a family who had a British father who was an intelligence agent for Britain, but had grown up in Russia, St. Petrograd, at a time when the Tsar was still reigning.

00:00:33.340 - 00:01:03.860

That was my father. And I was also born to my mother, whose original name was Hilda Evelyn Pidiani. And Hilda Evelyn Pidiani was born to an Italian family. She was born a temple of an English family of the Archbishop of Canterbury,

00:01:04.400 - 00:01:24.480

but a second cousin to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Frederick Temple. And her father was a doctor, and he was a doctor in Constantinople. So my mother and my father met. No, no, my, so sorry, my grandmother.

00:01:25.520 - 00:01:47.340

I'm sorry, we have to start again. No, no, we're fine. My grandmother was born, was a British lady, born to the Temple family, a second cousin to Archbishop Frederick Temple, who was at the time Archbishop of Canterbury.

00:01:48.040 - 00:02:15.200

And his brother was a doctor, Octavius, and that doctor was a doctor to a very important personage in Constantinople. So my mother was a young woman in Constantinople. My grandmother was a young woman in Constantinople,

00:02:15.600 - 00:02:29.520

and she met Frederick Pidiani, who was an Italian tobacco merchant at the time, and they eloped. The family promptly disowned my mother completely. Oh my goodness.

00:02:30.020 - 00:03:01.000

And they went to Russia, and they settled down, and they had seven children. My grandmother never spoke any language except English, but my grandfather, Pidiani, spoke many, many languages. Now they had seven children, and the seventh and last one was Hilda Evelyn Pidiani.

00:03:01.380 - 00:03:26.720

That was my mother. And she grew up in St. Petrograd in Russia at the time when the Tsar was still reigning. And then in 1918, when the Tsar was deposed, she and her family fled because they had been involved in supporting the white Russians.

00:03:27.400 - 00:03:49.840

My father was working as an intelligence agent, and my mother was working as his courier, and they were both working for the British intelligence at the time. My father spoke many, many languages, and he was very fluent and also very capable of assuming many different personalities.

00:03:50.980 - 00:04:23.300

And they worked with great dedication at that time for the British government. But in 1918, when the Tsar was killed and the Soviet government came into power with Lenin, my mother's family had to flee, so they fled. My mother came to England because the British government helped her to come to England,

00:04:23.300 - 00:04:51.320

and my father came back to England at the same time by different routes. They didn't marry at that time. My father was already married, and he had two children. So my mother lived because her father had never educated her.

00:04:51.320 - 00:05:12.500

So in those days, young ladies were brilliant in social attributes. They were expected to marry well, they were expected to keep house for their husbands, but they were not expected to have any kind of working profession. And so she was very skilled in needlework.

00:05:12.700 - 00:05:26.680

She was a beautiful seamstress. She was very skilled in music. She was very skilled in many languages, and she was extremely elegant and very beautiful. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

00:05:27.640 - 00:05:40.140

She had dark hair. She looked very Italian. She was everything that I, as I was growing up, was not. I was an awkward child.

00:05:40.240 - 00:05:57.340

Were you the firstborn? I was the only child of the match. And I was conceived in Rome in 1925, out of wedlock. And as I say, my father was already married.

00:05:57.820 - 00:06:17.100

But there was an enormous upheaval in those days because a child born out of wedlock to a single mother was going to have a very, very difficult life. And so was the mother. It was still a terrible thing to happen to a young woman.

00:06:17.220 - 00:06:35.600

I can imagine, yeah. So my father was forced by his family and a very important lady called Mrs. Doughty Wiley, who had been married to the Gallipoli hero,

00:06:35.600 - 00:06:46.900

Lieutenant Colonel Doughty Wiley, who won the VC in Gallipoli. Oh, wow. And she took charge

00:06:47.600 - 00:07:04.540

and forced my father to divorce his wife and to marry my mother. Oh, my goodness. Before I was born, in 1925, about four months before I was born.

00:07:07.600 - 00:07:28.760

So it was that kind of a marriage. Now, my father had continued his intelligence work upon his coming back to England. So he was working with Sidney Riley, who was another political spy. And both of them were very keen on the white Russians.

00:07:28.760 - 00:07:50.300

They were very supportive of the white Russians, who were overthrown totally, and a lot of them were killed by the Leninist Russians and by the Trotskyites. So he continued with his work right the way through.

00:07:55.660 - 00:08:26.280

But he hadn't got any understanding of what it meant to be a father. So he managed to beget children, in quantity probably. But he wasn't a faithful husband, and my mother couldn't cope with his infidelities.

00:08:27.640 - 00:08:54.320

Now, when I was 18 months, he left her and he went to the lady who had been his lover during his first marriage. And he went to her and he eventually married her. So my mother was affronted by his desertion of her,

00:08:54.580 - 00:09:09.800

and she told him to get out. But that left us, like his first family, who was a Catholic family of a mother and two children, two girl children, that left them in penury.

00:09:10.140 - 00:09:33.960

Both lots of family were in penury. He never supported either my stepsisters or myself and my mother at all financially. And the result was that they, my stepsisters, my half-sisters, grew up knowing that I was alive,

00:09:34.200 - 00:09:50.540

but I grew up without any information that they were alive at all, and without any knowledge of them. So for the first six years of my life, I prayed to God. On the first 11 years of my life, I prayed to God

00:09:50.540 - 00:10:08.560

that my mother and my father would come together again. Because I loved, I heard stories about my father. I invented stories about my father. And I told these stories at school, and of course they weren't true.

00:10:08.560 - 00:10:26.560

So my mother found out, and she was extremely cross, because I was telling stories about my father, who was a hero, and flew over the Sahara Desert, and did all sorts of wonderful things. Did you have a kind of religious base, a church background at all?

00:10:26.580 - 00:10:44.500

No, no, no, no, no, no. But, yes, well, I did, because my mother was an atheist. All her family were also atheists. But she had grown up in Russia, and the national religion was Orthodoxy.

00:10:45.420 - 00:11:12.280

So the whole family, her father was a Roman Catholic raised by Jesuits, and he was an atheist as well. Her sisters were of atheistic principles. But my mother was a kind of peasant who believed in...

00:11:12.280 - 00:11:27.340

She always made the sign of the cross on my forehead. She would always take me to the Orthodox Easter services. We would always maintain all the rituals leading up to Easter. Oh, my.

00:11:27.340 - 00:11:45.940

In the émigré community that she lived in, in Hampstead Heath, when I was a very little girl. Now, my mother was working as a basement sweatshop sewing, and that's what she did for a living.

00:11:47.120 - 00:12:11.760

And she was living in an émigré community of Russian aristocrats who had been forced to leave Russia, come to England, and via Paris, many of them, and were living in great poverty. So she and I were living in great poverty in Hampstead, a garden suburb.

00:12:14.720 - 00:12:33.400

And she worked at whatever she could get. But she had no education, so it was always cheap jobs. My mother hated my father, and I have to say that I acquired a hatred of my father as a result of her.

00:12:36.420 - 00:12:51.740

She didn't talk very much to me about my father, except to say he was a scoundrel and a drunkard. And what did you love doing? What were your kind of interests and passions as a little girl and as you grew up?

00:12:53.300 - 00:13:12.580

Survival and adoring my mother. Totally committed to my mother and totally against my father. That's how I grew up. Did you like school? Did you enjoy school at all?

00:13:19.300 - 00:13:38.820

You see, I was growing up in the 1930s. Now, my father's sister, my auntie Marguerite, was very cross with her brother for leaving my mother's family. And they were the best friends. They were two very great friends.

00:13:38.820 - 00:13:53.480

So my mother had been out to India for my auntie's birth, and she had a child that was three years older than I. It was my cousin, Marguerite. So I was brought up more or less with Marguerite,

00:13:54.140 - 00:14:13.180

who was three years older than I, by my auntie whenever my mother was ill or couldn't work or fell on hard times. So I would be sent off to auntie Marguerite, who lived in East Sussex.

00:14:13.800 - 00:14:29.600

And that's how I grew up. And I also grew up in a Russian emigre community that spoke Russian, observed all the Orthodox rituals, whether they believed it was cultural.

00:14:29.820 - 00:14:36.460

It was cultural for us. We kept all the fasts for Lent. We kept everything. So it was a very religious upbringing.

00:14:36.460 - 00:14:50.200

But it was by accident, as it were. And I always remember... Okay, sorry about that interruption. I always remember the mystery and the smell of incense and the candles

00:14:50.200 - 00:15:04.980

and the great, deep, baritone voices of Archbishop Bloom, who was at Ennismore Gardens at the time. And he would say, And we would all shout,

00:15:05.120 - 00:15:20.520

He is risen indeed. So, yes, I was steeped in that kind of mystical religion at a very, very early age. But then the war came.

00:15:21.660 - 00:15:38.660

And prior to the war, my mother and I, we used to go out to Latvia, where my grandmother was living and where her elder sister was living, Mabel. And Auntie Mabel was a very, very strong elder sister in the family.

00:15:39.220 - 00:15:50.340

And she was married to a German Protestant. And they had three children, all boys, all Nazis, all fought in the Second World War. All Nazis?

00:15:50.540 - 00:16:01.400

As Nazis, yes. And two of them were killed on the Russian front and one of them was taken prisoner on the Russian front. So I adored my cousins.

00:16:01.640 - 00:16:15.000

I used to go every year. And the last year we went was 1938. And it was then that I saw the Jewish people in Berlin being treated very badly,

00:16:15.200 - 00:16:27.400

made to wear armbands, excluded from schools, called filthy Jews. Their shops and their work shattered.

00:16:27.800 - 00:16:45.780

So I saw that and I heard Hitler giving a speech at the Berchtesgaden. Now he had done a lot for the German people and the German people loved him. So he brought them out of poverty

00:16:45.780 - 00:17:00.880

and he had helped them to survive years and years of misery after the Second World War because of the penalties that the German people had to pay to the Allies. So that was the last time.

00:17:01.120 - 00:17:15.500

And I heard Hitler shouting at the Berchtesgaden on that occasion. I've never forgotten his voice. He was very, very shrill and virulent. So then we came back from that

00:17:15.500 - 00:17:33.080

and the war started in 1939. And I was with my Auntie Marguerite in East Sussex when the war started and the sirens went.

00:17:34.340 - 00:17:45.100

And so after that she and her husband, who was an Air Vice Marshal in the Air Force, went out to Egypt

00:17:46.100 - 00:18:00.520

with this very strong friend, Tataka Dauti Wiley, and they spent the war in Egypt. He died of bacterial endocarditis but the wife and her daughter, Marguerite, my cousin,

00:18:01.640 - 00:18:12.600

stayed in Egypt and Marguerite was in the Air Force as well. She married an Air Force man in the end and had three children and then they emigrated to Australia.

00:18:14.640 - 00:18:32.280

But I grew up knowing that my three cousins, whom I adored, were enemies and not knowing what was happening to them. And so the war for me was a terrible struggle

00:18:32.280 - 00:18:46.180

between loving the enemy and this is when I became, during the war, I did become very religious myself because I knew I had to love my father

00:18:46.180 - 00:19:01.240

and I knew I had to love my... I loved my cousins but they were enemies. And that's really how the first time I got to know God. Not because of the church at all.

00:19:01.980 - 00:19:21.380

I didn't go to church at that time. But I was on a playing field, I remember it very well and I just felt that there was this thing called love that could teach me to love my enemy.

00:19:22.940 - 00:19:36.960

And that's how I fell in love with God. I fell in love with God but I didn't know anything about Jesus. I didn't know anything about the church. And because I was at a school in Great Morphine at the time,

00:19:36.960 - 00:19:53.320

a secondary school, and I was very clever. That was the thing that got both me and my mother out of education, education, education. So somehow she amassed the money

00:19:53.320 - 00:20:06.340

or my auntie paid for me to go to school. I think my auntie paid for me. I got a very good education and there was a confirmation service.

00:20:06.340 - 00:20:14.680

So the headmistress said, do you want to be confirmed? So we all said yes. And that's how I got confirmed.

00:20:17.120 - 00:20:34.720

In Great Morphine Priory Church at the age of 15 during the war. And I began to go to church. But it didn't last very long, didn't last very long.

00:20:34.720 - 00:20:50.860

But the mystical bit, the mystery, that lasted you see. So the next time I got religious then I dropped out, as you do.

00:20:53.100 - 00:21:05.700

And the next time was when I went to Cambridge and I got a scholarship to go to Cambridge and I ended up at Girton College. I was a medical student by that time

00:21:07.940 - 00:21:27.120

and we were working on dead bodies. In those days we had to dissect the whole of a dead body. And it so happened that a very, very evangelical proselytizing medical student was on the same body

00:21:27.120 - 00:21:44.480

and she talked incessantly about Jesus and about conversion and about knowing Jesus. And I hated her with profound hatred. And I was even less likely to become religious.

00:21:45.440 - 00:21:59.020

However, we were at, it's ridiculous how I got converted, we were at dinner at Girton and it was formal dinner.

00:21:59.020 - 00:22:11.640

So formal dinners were preceded by grace and formal dinners were occasions when you had conversations over a long, prolonged session at dinner.

00:22:12.300 - 00:22:20.740

And somebody said to me, who was a Catholic, oh, Anglicans don't go to confession. Yes they do, I said. She said, do you go to confession?

00:22:20.920 - 00:22:28.020

Yes, I said. It was a lie. I was so ashamed of telling a lie. The one thing my mother,

00:22:28.380 - 00:22:41.620

my mother really, really brought me up so strictly, you didn't lie, you didn't steal, you didn't take things. If I did anything that was wrong, she would immediately take me back to the teacher

00:22:41.620 - 00:22:52.920

and I had to confess it. So, you know, I was morally schooled in a very religious way, although we were not religious at all.

00:22:54.660 - 00:23:05.460

Well anyway, that was it. I then had to go to confession because I realised I told a lie, so to make it better I went to confession.

00:23:05.580 - 00:23:12.500

Yeah. And that's how I got converted. I didn't know anything. I was 19 years old.

00:23:12.580 - 00:23:18.020

Would you like to take a break? Would you like to take a break? Because I think we just need to... Okay.

00:23:18.760 - 00:23:28.340

We've just had a little break and, you know, it was in her early adultery years, I mean adult years. Yes, well, I got converted

00:23:29.780 - 00:23:41.440

by a Franciscan friar and he taught me everything that I then drank in, lock, stock and barrel, about his form of the Anglican Church,

00:23:41.600 - 00:23:55.220

which was high Anglican. He was a wonderful priest living in Cambridge and chaplain and vicar of St Bennett's Church

00:23:55.220 - 00:24:08.220

and I got drawn into St Bennett's Church and I became a very ardent Anglo-Catholic, so ardent that I wanted to become a nun.

00:24:08.720 - 00:24:21.320

Now, I was halfway through my medical studies and I was persuaded not to become a nun at that time so I went down to London, qualified, did everything that I was told to do.

00:24:21.380 - 00:24:34.640

I was very obedient in those days and when I qualified I was at the London hospital as a medical practitioner.

00:24:35.560 - 00:24:46.280

I was one of three women who were taken in by force to the London hospital by the government because they felt that women should have

00:24:46.280 - 00:24:58.520

the opportunity of becoming doctors in all the medical colleges and so that's why they forced them in 1948. So there were only three of us.

00:24:58.960 - 00:25:10.300

We had a hard time because we were women and we were excluded from all sorts of things. We weren't allowed to use the common room, we weren't allowed to use this,

00:25:10.420 - 00:25:22.140

we weren't allowed to do that. We were not allowed to take senior posts, we were not allowed to go dining. So this is how I became much more involved

00:25:22.140 - 00:25:41.380

in the feeling of inequality between women and men and began to resist inequality between women and men because I didn't see why women shouldn't advance in medicine as well as the men should advance in medicine.

00:25:42.000 - 00:25:56.600

I was also a socialist at the time because the National Health Service was coming in and I was passionately keen on the National Health Service but the senior consultants of course were very, very resistant.

00:25:57.500 - 00:26:16.600

So I wrote an article for the Daily Express about my passion for the National Health Service and how important it was going to be and I got vilified by, I got hauled up and nearly dismissed.

00:26:16.840 - 00:26:33.700

Oh my goodness. And it was very, very difficult for me to continue but I became a rebel, a rebel socialist, a rebel woman who didn't see why she shouldn't advance in medicine

00:26:33.700 - 00:26:48.880

and an outspoken feminist at that time. You were very young. I was very young and I was very ignorant in many ways as well. Very what?

00:26:49.400 - 00:27:11.960

I was outspoken as people who are young are outspoken and everybody else was right and I was wrong and I was right. So eventually it was a very sad thing. I went to see the neurosurgeon.

00:27:12.020 - 00:27:24.680

I wanted to become a brain surgeon and I went to see him and he said to me, yes you have the brains to become a neurosurgeon but you are a woman

00:27:25.500 - 00:27:38.860

and I have to tell you that if you take up this profession you will not be able to marry. You will have to remain single and otherwise you, and I thought well if I have to remain single

00:27:38.860 - 00:27:55.540

I might as well go and be a nun and be a medical missionary. So that's what I did. I went and joined a religious order and I went to America as a missionary.

00:27:56.460 - 00:28:01.760

To Africa? To Africa. I went to Africa as a missionary. Which part of Africa?

00:28:02.120 - 00:28:21.680

Liberia, right up against the Angolan border. There was already Swapo. There was a war on the Angolan border. We were right up in the middle of the war.

00:28:27.160 - 00:28:48.460

I was not an evangelical missionary. I was kind of just trying to live a Christian life of love in the middle of two ongoing wars and in the middle of the most appalling deprivation

00:28:50.540 - 00:29:11.660

because the men used to go off to the copper mines No, wait a minute, that was Namibia. That was the first thing. There was also a very strong Muslim contingent

00:29:11.660 - 00:29:31.960

and there was a very strong American input into Firestone and the Firestone people were in charge of the monetary state in Liberia. So anyway, I fell out with them.

00:29:33.740 - 00:29:52.180

My kind of doctoring was intensely idealistic and because I was a woman, the women of Liberia, I could go and help them to give birth.

00:29:52.980 - 00:30:05.240

Now, there was a disease called schistosomiasis that shut the cervix out and many of them died in birth and I could do caesarean sections.

00:30:06.200 - 00:30:18.500

So I did caesarean sections. I could do anything below the waist. You didn't have anesthetics for anything above the waist and most of my clients were gentlemen

00:30:18.500 - 00:30:35.920

with huge hydroseals which they brought to me in wheelbarrows and also hydroseals, great big food collections around hydroseals and hernias were the big thing that I operated on

00:30:35.920 - 00:30:55.440

because I could do all those below the waist. But the women, I went into the birthing place with them and I saw them die. So I delivered, I remember, 12 caesarean sections.

00:30:56.200 - 00:31:07.900

I said to the order that I was serving that if ever I was recalled to England, I needed to sterilize these women because they would die if they had another child.

00:31:09.440 - 00:31:19.480

And the order didn't hear that. No. And they recalled me because I was a troublemaker. There was no doubt about that.

00:31:21.400 - 00:31:42.260

I was much more on the side of the Africans than I was on the side of the American overlords until the leader of the mission, who was an American monk,

00:31:42.260 - 00:32:02.160

was called from America to Africa to settle the dispute. And he settled the dispute by sending me home. And then I fell ill because I was so upset about the women. And I was ill for six weeks.

00:32:02.780 - 00:32:16.120

And he escorted me home. And to cut a long story short, we fell in love and eventually we married. Of course, that was the worst possible thing to do

00:32:16.120 - 00:32:31.240

for a nun and an American monk to get married. And he got dismissed from his order. You know, was this Anglican? Was he an Anglican?

00:32:31.240 - 00:32:44.160

Yeah, he was part of the American Episcopal Church. He was a monk. He was a superior of this outfit, an American monk. Very, very, very well-known, very, very well-respected

00:32:45.540 - 00:33:00.180

member of the Society of the Holy Cross. So he got dismissed and excommunicated and all the rest of it. And I got dismissed from being a junior.

00:33:00.240 - 00:33:12.220

I was a junior nun, so I got dismissed. So there we were. We'd written to them to say we were going to get married. We came back to England and we waited for three weeks.

00:33:12.380 - 00:33:23.060

We got married in a registry office. And on the day that we were married, we had no work. We had nothing, absolutely nothing. It was quite extraordinary.

00:33:23.980 - 00:33:38.180

But we had a friend, a doctor, and I started to work as a nun and a doctor at that time. My husband couldn't earn any money and he didn't know anything except being a priest.

00:33:39.780 - 00:34:02.860

He got a job, several jobs, but they were all very good. So from that time on, I was the breadwinner in the family. And my husband was the homemaker. We adored each other.

00:34:03.040 - 00:34:18.380

I have to say it was an extremely happy marriage. And we worked to recover. I then started going into general practice. When we came back, we went out again to another African country,

00:34:18.560 - 00:34:38.500

to Namibia, which was a desert country, with enormous quantities of illness. Because there, the men were all taken off the reserve and put to work in the copper mines.

00:34:38.620 - 00:34:54.500

It was the second one. I got it muddled up, so you'll have to sort it out. Did you go, when you went back to Namibia with Leo, did you go with the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel?

00:34:54.760 - 00:35:03.400

USPG, it's now something else, yes. Yes, we did. And how long were you there? Only 18 months.

00:35:04.260 - 00:35:24.900

Again, I got into trouble because I was too much on the side of the African people. Apartheid was awful. It was awful.

00:35:26.000 - 00:35:40.040

There was a post office. A large part of the post office was for six white people living and working on the reserve. And the Africans had a tiny little one

00:35:40.040 - 00:35:58.400

but they had to queue up for days to be able to get anything. And they had to walk on the other side of the road and they were treated so badly. So you made trouble again.

00:35:58.540 - 00:36:04.560

I made trouble again. And we got flung out. The answer was that we got flung out. So we were back in England

00:36:04.560 - 00:36:20.080

and at that stage I went into general practice because I wasn't a qualified surgeon. I was just a surgeon because I had to be a surgeon. So when we came back to England, it was 1961,

00:36:21.080 - 00:36:32.920

and I got a job with a Christian doctor at a place called St. Paul's Wood Hill. And she wanted a Christian doctor because up the road was a communist practice

00:36:32.920 - 00:36:45.500

and she was wholly anti-communist. Of course, I was a passionate socialist but that didn't matter because I was a Christian. She took me in as her assistant

00:36:45.500 - 00:37:06.260

and then Dr. Bonhoot her name was and then she retired and I took over her practice. I practiced medicine by myself for several years but then it was unsustainable

00:37:07.260 - 00:37:21.280

and so I joined the communist practice which was also a Catholic practice because there was a communist in it and there were Catholics in it.

00:37:21.520 - 00:37:42.900

And this is when I became this. By this time it was 1960-something, 67, 68. And because I was in one part, I had a surgery in one part of the place

00:37:42.900 - 00:38:03.860

and they had a surgery some distance away. But the Catholic practice, which was also some distance away, and the communist practice, they didn't have the kind of...

00:38:10.860 - 00:38:24.940

They had rules. And the rules were exclusive. So patients began to come to me from all over the place.

00:38:25.380 - 00:38:34.040

The Catholics who were refused abortions would come down to me because I wasn't refusing abortions. I was very anti-abortion

00:38:34.040 - 00:38:43.860

but I wasn't refusing abortions if I thought that they had a legitimate reason for them. That's amazing. And so this was in 1967

00:38:43.860 - 00:38:51.740

when the David Steele Act came in and also... Was it Waffenden? No, what was it called?

00:38:51.740 - 00:39:04.260

It doesn't really matter. Steele. It was Steele's bill, the abortion bill. The one that was brought in in 1967. Yeah.

00:39:04.600 - 00:39:17.740

So that was happening and therefore I found myself involved with women in great hardships and also we were having back-speed abortions galore.

00:39:17.740 - 00:39:31.060

We were having deaths from back-street abortions. We were having everything happening in that practice. I was working with very, very poor people. Where were you?

00:39:31.980 - 00:39:44.940

St. Paul's Woodhill, which was an overspill where they moved everybody from Bermondsey and Battersea and South London out in massive blocks to a new housing estate

00:39:44.940 - 00:40:03.260

and put them there in a situation where there were very few advantages at all. And so it was on a big, big housing estate. I was a Christian doctor.

00:40:04.720 - 00:40:20.760

Some of my friends were Jewish socialist doctors. Some of my partners were Jewish socialist doctors. One was an out-and-out communist and he believed in euthanasia.

00:40:21.940 - 00:40:38.040

It was a very mixed bag of doctors. But I was getting patients from the Catholic surgery down to see me. I was also getting a lot of gay people who were coming to see me

00:40:38.040 - 00:41:04.260

because they were terrified of being exposed. Some of them were threatened, blackmailed. Some of them were put in prison. At that time, I still thought of homosexuality

00:41:04.260 - 00:41:21.100

as a medical condition. But I couldn't sustain that because I still love. And so, again, I started working.

00:41:22.480 - 00:41:36.880

That was how I started working for the change in the law. And this is how I got drawn in to both the feminist thing because of the abortions and because the women left on their own

00:41:36.880 - 00:41:54.340

or were treated very, very badly by their husbands. And then in 1972, the government of the day, the conservative government, decided to bring in the giving of family allowances

00:41:54.340 - 00:42:09.380

from the mother to the father. And I was, by that time, working in an extremely... I joined the other practice. I was working in a very, very deprived area.

00:42:11.900 - 00:42:27.720

And, again, I was a very devout Christian as well, of my own kind, of course, not... LAUGHTER And so I rang up 20 organisations,

00:42:28.140 - 00:42:39.920

women's organisations, to ask them if they would support a march. And they all said no. They wouldn't go with the bra burners

00:42:40.480 - 00:42:52.020

and those nasty, horrible, filthy lesbians. And I didn't know what a lesbian... I hardly knew... I did know what a lesbian was, but I mean... I know what you mean.

00:42:52.260 - 00:43:01.640

I didn't have that kind of... Language. I didn't have that language at all. So I was cross.

00:43:02.360 - 00:43:14.840

And my health visitor and I were both cross. And we decided to go on the march. And we went on the march. And there I met other Christians

00:43:14.840 - 00:43:26.380

who were on the march and who were respectable middle-aged women and married and church people and everything. I couldn't...

00:43:26.380 - 00:43:37.080

I couldn't believe it. But that was when I really... began to speak up. Now, I had, during those years,

00:43:37.500 - 00:43:54.200

when I was encountering massive, massive social and political fallouts from my patients who were becoming ill through what society was doing,

00:43:54.360 - 00:44:06.480

both to homosexuals and to women, I realized I didn't know enough. So I had taken a long course in psychiatry and I'd also taken a long course

00:44:06.480 - 00:44:19.240

in order to try to be a woman minister because I thought that having those two things... And, of course, it was terribly difficult because I found that, you know, as a woman,

00:44:20.320 - 00:44:32.060

there was nothing in the church. I was a respectable doctor with authority. But I was nothing in the church. And I wasn't going to be able to be ordained.

00:44:32.720 - 00:44:44.700

And nobody was a woman who was going to be put in any kind of responsibility in the church anyway. And as a medical doctor, I find that my homosexual patients

00:44:44.700 - 00:44:58.480

were treated so appallingly. I did a study in psychiatry, for God's sake. So, actually, when I qualified, when I undertook these two disciplines

00:44:58.480 - 00:45:11.180

to try and learn more about my patients, that was why I took those courses. And to do more, I became involved in the political social thing.

00:45:11.780 - 00:45:31.900

And it was on behalf of women that I stood for Parliament in 1972 in a very conservative, liberal, marginal seat of Saturn. And by this time, I was working in a different...

00:45:31.900 - 00:45:43.260

I'd left... In order to get qualified, I'd left and gone to work in a psychiatric hospital to get my psychiatric training. And I'd left one practice,

00:45:43.560 - 00:45:55.500

and I was working for another practice, which was largely a Christian practice. And they were a lovely Christian practice, absolutely Methodist,

00:45:58.880 - 00:46:11.160

socially very, very... They didn't believe what I believed, but... But supportive? Were they supportive? They were supportive of me.

00:46:11.540 - 00:46:19.740

They just thought I was crazy, but they were supportive of me. And I was a good doctor. And I was a partner.

00:46:20.180 - 00:46:26.460

Not a full partner. I was never a full partner, because, who knows? That didn't happen in those days.

00:46:27.420 - 00:46:39.300

But I was a partner. When, if you can remember, when did you see your, I think, probably almost universal feeling

00:46:39.300 - 00:46:52.600

that homosexuality was a medical condition, when did you see it shift, begin to shift? Oh, it shifted. It shifted because I was on a...

00:46:58.500 - 00:47:08.440

It shifted at that time, when I was already very much involved in supporting homosexuals, and in supporting the David Steele bill,

00:47:10.160 - 00:47:16.200

to... The abortion bill. The David Steele bill, but then the other bill,

00:47:19.600 - 00:47:26.180

the decriminalization... Of homosexuality. Was it Wolfenden? I can't remember the name of the chap,

00:47:26.340 - 00:47:39.780

but don't worry, because I'll find out. Well, it was when the decriminalization bill was going through, that I was meeting homosexual patients

00:47:39.780 - 00:47:50.720

who I could in no way think were disturbed. We were still recommending that dreadful treatment. Oh, ECT?

00:47:51.440 - 00:47:58.500

No, no, not ECT, no, no. Oh, I know, behavioural... Making them vomit. Yeah, oh dear, yeah.

00:47:58.500 - 00:48:11.100

Yes, they were still doing that. Well, I began to see homosexuals who were not, who were in loving relationships, I began to see them in faithful relationships.

00:48:11.120 - 00:48:21.220

Aversion therapy, it was something... Yes, aversion therapy. I was seeing Christians, masses of Christians,

00:48:21.500 - 00:48:30.980

in long-term partnerships. Very good. OK, good, good. Who were in faithful, long-term relationships,

00:48:31.320 - 00:48:45.060

who were patently loving. I was meeting lesbian people. Because I was working for the women, I was involved with lesbian women

00:48:45.060 - 00:48:56.980

who were also working to change, for the Act, the 1975 Act. So this is what brought me into the company of people who were not my patients,

00:48:58.700 - 00:49:13.220

but who were actively engaged in political work, were not sick in any way, and were living in relationships

00:49:13.220 - 00:49:28.560

which I could plainly see were healthy, loving, good relationships. And so, for me, the two things went together. Now, the ordination people

00:49:28.560 - 00:49:40.260

were extremely angry with me for being loving towards the homosexuals. And they asked me to stop. And I wouldn't stop.

00:49:40.880 - 00:49:50.800

I didn't know that. Oh yes. My husband and I had a long conversation about whether we could stop.

00:49:51.240 - 00:50:03.400

At that time, there were two... I knew that quite a lot of the people who were supporting me as Christians were also lesbian or gay.

00:50:07.460 - 00:50:18.600

And of course, some of the gay people were terrible towards the women those days. Oh, definitely, yes. So I was experiencing hostility

00:50:18.600 - 00:50:29.720

from the homosexual community. And I was experiencing hostility from my own heterosexual community that wanted ordination,

00:50:30.460 - 00:50:45.320

but did not want homosexuals, those nasty people. And I couldn't do it. So of course, I was in trouble on all sides.

00:50:46.040 - 00:50:55.980

And really, that's how I started the Christian Parity group, which was for partnership between men and women, and was open to everyone,

00:50:57.080 - 00:51:07.480

whatever their gender. Very important. So this is how I started Christian Parity. And it was always, it was always, always

00:51:09.180 - 00:51:26.740

people who were persecuted simply on account of their gender or their sexuality. And I stuck to that. But it brought me into great trouble.

00:51:26.820 - 00:51:41.240

And it bore fruit, because, you know, it bore fruit. It did. That's how I met Richard Kirker. Yeah, that's how I met Richard Kirker.

00:51:41.500 - 00:51:52.040

That's how I met, Lesbian Day, transgendered people. I was also working with transgendered people, which nobody at that time was working with.

00:51:53.020 - 00:51:59.880

So I was helping them, too. It's brilliant. Yeah. So it all came into one whole thing,

00:52:00.020 - 00:52:08.740

that people who were persecuted simply because, not because they were mentally deranged or ill or in any other way,

00:52:08.860 - 00:52:19.120

but simply because they were transgendered or they were living in ways that were unacceptable to society. And so I was seeing more and more

00:52:19.120 - 00:52:32.240

families that were consisting sometimes of very irregular situations, sometimes people living in triple situations, where there was a husband and wife,

00:52:32.620 - 00:52:45.120

and then there was a lover, and there were two women and a male, or three women, you know. So how has all that work,

00:52:45.240 - 00:52:57.300

all those years of dedication and standing up against the tide, how has that impacted on, you know, on you and on the people you love,

00:52:57.960 - 00:53:10.400

do you think? Oh, it was terrible. Because people became ill in the course of...

00:53:10.400 - 00:53:22.920

You had to be very, very strong. You had to have a lot of support. I got all my support from outside the church. I used to go back time and time again crying

00:53:22.920 - 00:53:35.480

because I hadn't managed to stand up and speak in a company dominated by men. And I went back to them and said, I can't do it.

00:53:35.840 - 00:53:50.700

And they said, well, you know, go back and try again. And it was my secular lesbian and gay friends who actually helped me through,

00:53:52.660 - 00:54:06.220

the lesbians particularly, who helped me through that stage. But then when I began to stand up, it was very lonely.

00:54:06.700 - 00:54:16.320

I got very, very despondent. I got depression. It was a terrible time. And I remember my husband saying

00:54:16.320 - 00:54:26.460

to one of the women who wanted ordination, Diana McClatchley, it's all very well, but why are you letting Una do all the speaking

00:54:26.460 - 00:54:34.480

and nobody else is helping? So that's how women in media, not the women in media, that's how...

00:54:35.100 - 00:54:42.480

Christian Parity? No, no, no, no. That was how the Anglican group for the ordination of women

00:54:46.020 - 00:54:55.280

became Mo, the movement for the ordination of women. That was in 1974. And of course they would have nothing to do with me

00:54:56.220 - 00:55:02.800

because I was a ginger group. So I had the Christian Parity group. I never knew that. I never knew that MOW...

00:55:02.800 - 00:55:09.640

I was on the founding committee for MOW, you know, sitting in church house. I had no idea. Because we were in Christian Parity group.

00:55:09.640 - 00:55:16.500

No, no. But we agreed, we agreed that I would be the... I mean, it was Christian Howard

00:55:16.500 - 00:55:27.780

and I kind of worked it out that I was the ginger group. And she was going to be the respectable group. And Monica Fairlawn came in

00:55:27.780 - 00:55:40.340

as the leader of the respectable group. I just remember that I was so delighted when you asked me to design the funny money and I still have that wonderful Eve with a snake

00:55:40.340 - 00:55:48.440

and the money until women are ordained. And that was you, that was your inspiration. Yes, I remember that too.

00:55:48.920 - 00:56:03.140

So, yes, so, you know, it was... I mean, I suppose it was my faith that kept me going. I had a very deep belief in the rightness of what I was doing.

00:56:05.240 - 00:56:17.260

But... And my husband, by this time, who had started as a complete anti-feminist, when I said I felt women could be ordained

00:56:17.260 - 00:56:25.920

and that I might have a vocation myself, it was 11 years before I spoke again. 11 years. He was so scornful.

00:56:27.480 - 00:56:35.560

You know, I had enormous struggles. And enormous struggles between my love for my children, who were suffering.

00:56:36.980 - 00:56:45.360

Just a minute. Sorry, that's... Good, good to go. But I did begin to gather friends

00:56:46.360 - 00:56:56.660

and people who felt as I felt and the movement towards the ordination of women. They were doing the educational work. I was doing the ginger work.

00:56:57.380 - 00:57:12.740

And we had an understanding between us that that combination of publicity combined with the educational work would ultimately result in a good outcome.

00:57:13.260 - 00:57:25.240

It did result in a good outcome in that deacons, women, were appointed to the diaconate. I did not join the diaconate at that time because I wanted to remain lay

00:57:25.240 - 00:57:38.920

in order to continue to do the publicity work. But when my husband died and I moved to Wales, I had to become a deacon

00:57:38.920 - 00:57:45.940

because I couldn't work for the church in Wales without being a deacon. So I became a deacon. I continued my work.

00:57:46.500 - 00:57:59.120

I wasn't ordained until three years after the women in England were ordained. And I didn't go to England to get myself ordained. And I earned the respect of the Welsh church

00:57:59.120 - 00:58:10.200

for not going to England. So when eventually Rowan Williams decided that he would ordain me against my better judgment in those days...

00:58:12.190 - 00:58:27.550

Was that 1995? Yeah, that was 1997. January the 11th, 1997 I was ordained as a priest in the Welsh church.

00:58:27.850 - 00:58:40.270

And I've remained a priest in the Welsh church ever since. I don't exercise my priesthood now because I gave it up to become a Roman Catholic in solidarity with the Roman Catholic women

00:58:40.270 - 00:58:52.830

who are denied any voice in the church whatsoever and who are treated despicably. And I still work with a number of women who have a very strong vocation

00:58:52.830 - 00:59:09.510

but can't fulfill it. And one of the things I learnt when I was not ordained was how to be a minister without any authority. And because I learnt how to be a minister

00:59:09.510 - 00:59:18.710

without any authority, when I became a Roman Catholic and left all kinds of authority and became, in their eyes, an A-person,

00:59:19.390 - 00:59:31.490

I have loved it. And I'm happy where I am. I'm completely fulfilled. I don't exercise the priesthood

00:59:31.490 - 00:59:44.550

in any obvious, visible, or concrete way. But I believe that I am a priest of the church of God, though not of any institutional church.

00:59:44.710 - 00:59:55.250

And I am still a rebel. Hear, hear! I'm still supportive of, and I feel I'm in the right place.

00:59:55.930 - 01:00:07.450

I live in a very hostile environment in the Catholic church, my own particular branch of it. And I live in a very hostile place

01:00:07.450 - 01:00:20.890

where homosexuals are still looked down upon. But it's all right. What are your hopes for the future, specifically regarding LGBT?

01:00:21.430 - 01:00:33.150

The hopes for LGBT people is that we will be accepted as full human beings in partnership and in marriage and in every possible way.

01:00:34.130 - 01:00:43.630

I think the church's attitude towards homosexuality is appalling. And I fight it tooth and nail. Come the day.

01:00:44.290 - 01:00:47.930

Come the day. Thank you so much. And it will happen. It will happen.

01:00:48.110 - 01:00:49.410

God bless. Thank you.