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So today is Thursday the 20th of November 2014, and I'm here, Olivia Dickinson, with Martha Jean Baker in her flat in central London, and I'm here to interview her for the WILPF Archive. So Martha, could you give us your date of birth, your full name, your place of birth,

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and your current job title? My name is Martha Jean Baker, as you said. It has been Martha Jean Baker most of my life, although I did have a brief period of time when I was married to somebody else and took on his name.

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I was born on the 22nd of September 1944 in Baltimore, Maryland. I lived in Baltimore for about two months, and then my family moved to Chicago, and we lived there until I was about three, and then we moved to Minneapolis, and when I was five, I think it was, yeah, just five, my parents bought the house where I lived

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until I, except for a year away at university, until I got married. And can you tell us a little bit about your current job for WILPF at the moment? Currently, I am an international vice president. I've been an international vice president for about five or six years, and my term is

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up in April at our 100th anniversary, and I do not plan to stand for re-election. Well, we can revisit that later, but let's talk a little bit first about your childhood. So you said you were living in Chicago and then Minneapolis. What sort of environment did you grow up in?

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Were you growing up in a campaigning environment? Was there activism immediately in the home when you were little? Yes. My parents, I mean, from as long, far back as I can remember, were politically active,

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very left-wing, and I don't remember much about their political activity in Chicago because I was very small, but I have a sense that they were also very politically active there because they were people who became part of my life, our family's life, who my parents had known in Chicago.

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I was born at the end of World War II, and after the war, one of the first very political things that I can remember is that my parents were active in—Henry Wallace had been Truman's vice president, and for some reason in—sorry, had been Roosevelt's vice president. Henry Wallace had been Roosevelt's vice president, and for some reason in 1944,

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Roosevelt was convinced to drop Henry Wallace so that—Henry Wallace didn't become president when Roosevelt died. Too bad he would have been much better, but thank you, Malcolm. Yeah. Excuse me.

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Hello?