My friend Barbara Doris, who has died aged 99, was one of the 36 people who marched from Cardiff to Greenham Common in August 1981 to protest about the placement of cruise missiles at the US and RAF army base near Newbury, Berkshire. She was one of the founders of the women’s peace camp subsequently set up at the base.
She lived there for several months during the first winter and returned frequently. For many years she remained a committed peace activist.
Barbara was born in Liverpool to Gwen (nee Hall), a nurse and midwife, and Thomas Thomas, an electrical engineer who was in charge of Lister Drive power station. She won a scholarship to Holly Lodge girls’ school in Liverpool and then in 1940 went to Liverpool university to study science. This she had to abandon because of the blitz in 1941.
During the war Barbara worked briefly as a chemist in industry (involved in bomb manufacture), and at a sawmill. Then she trained as a nurse in Glasgow, and in 1945 took an intensive course to become a teacher. Posts at various schools and colleges followed, and in 1961 she became a tutor at Carlett Park FE college, Eastham, Wirral, for a pre-nursing course, taking early retirement 20 years later.
Barbara had suffered from depression at times and in the 1970s was a founder member of Depression UK (D-UK), earlier called Depressives Anonymous. She set up support groups in Liverpool and Wirral.
All her life she was a rebel, developing a keen leftwing point of view. In the 1970s and early 80s, she joined CND to campaign against cruise missiles, and then became a member of Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat.
She lived at Greenham Common peace camp throughout its first autumn and winter, when she suffered a frost-bitten nose, and returned many times to a tent she left there. Barbara was among the “59ers”, the group of older women, crucial to the ongoing protest, who volunteered to stay on so that younger women could return to their work and family lives.
In December 1982 the women held an “Embrace the Base” protest, holding hands around the perimeter. It was based on a similar event that Barbara had attended at the Pentagon as a Greenham delegate.
Later on, she became a member of Mothers for Peace, travelling to the USSR and the US to make contact with other peace groups. She also took a peace quilt to Geneva, embroidered with the faces of 40 children from the USSR and the US.
In later life, Barbara spent more time enjoying her lifelong love of nature. She made her bungalow in Neston, Cheshire, more sustainable with insulation and solar panels, and in 2015 joined the Green party.
She is survived by her daughter, Madeleine, from an early marriage.
