My mother, Doris Clay, who has died aged 98, supported many causes to which she was devoted. But she also had the strength to change direction when her beliefs in peace and justice were no longer being upheld.
When she was 24 she joined the Communist party, and campaigned for them at the 1945 general election. She became secretary to the deputy head of the party, but in 1956, when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, she resigned from her job and the party.
In 1957 she signed up with CND, going on the first Aldermaston march the following year. She also joined the Committee of 100 and was one of 4,000 people who sat down in Whitehall outside the Ministry of Defence. She was arrested and spent a night in prison. Twenty years later she began regular visits to Greenham Common women’s camp, protesting against the cruise missiles.
Doris was half-Jewish, and her interest in politics had begun in her early teens via a staunchly Zionist uncle, Sam Sarna. But much later, in 1962, an Iraqi student rented a room in her family home. There began a debate with regard to Israel, and from then on she supported the Palestinian cause. Though she still believed in the state of Israel, relations with her uncle were severed.
From 1963 Doris travelled regularly to Syria, Iraq and Jordan. She even made some radio broadcasts in Jordan, in an attempt to defuse tensions between Jews and Arabs.
She joined the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding in 1967, and for a short time worked as a secretary at their headquarters in Trafalgar Square. She set up an East Anglian branch five years later.
Doris was born in Islington, north London, to Emily (nee Kingett), a teacher, and Maurice Sarna, a manufacturing furrier. She attended Pitman’s College in Clerkenwell, leaving at 16, and then worked as a secretary in the Air Ministry. She lived initially in south London, then St Albans, and finally, in 1963, Thetford in Norfolk, taking various secretarial posts in between raising her children and travelling.
In 1972 Doris joined the VSO and spent 15 months in Kumasi, Ghana, teaching English and keyboard skills. She made many lifelong friends there.
In 1980, through Christian Aid and the Anglican church in the Middle East, she achieved her wish to be a volunteer in Gaza. From there she wrote letters home about the atrocities she witnessed. She also wrote of the kindness she was shown by the Palestinian people.
While in Gaza, following discussions with a fellow volunteer, Doris became a Quaker. In 2003, aged 83, she joined a silent vigil in the main square of the town to protest against the invasion of Iraq.
Doris is survived by her husband, John Clay, whom she married in 1959, by her two daughters, Julia and me, from previous marriages, by four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
