My friend and fellow Greenham woman Hazel Rennie, who has died aged 88, was a stalwart of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She joined the Greenham Common women’s peace camp in December 1982, and stayed on and off until the camp closed in 2000.
Bouncing with energy and passion, she was often arrested, giving her name once, deadpan, as Millicent Uprising Shortly. She was sent to Holloway prison four times, refusing to pay fines for trespass. Despite being arthritic and partially sighted, in 1986 she was so badly beaten up in an attack at the camp by two men, who were never apprehended, that she was admitted to hospital, but she still went back to Greenham Common.
Sharp-witted and funny, and a gifted storyteller, she finally gained the confidence at the camp to recite the poems she secretly wrote. Her warm welcome, her interest in and celebration of woman, her well-directed fury at injustice, her friendship, her passion to achieve change, was the reason that many women stayed at Greenham, or came back month after month, year after year.
Once back in Worthing with her family and husband Jock, she became more involved in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Worthing CND and Worthing Against War, and visited Aldermaston peace camp.
She wrote – and spoke – more poetry, and continued her fight for peace and justice, both writing and taking the role of the judge in a play, Putting Tony Blair on Trial, produced at the Friends Meeting house in Working in 2003. The following year, wearing a white boiler suit, she led a “weapons inspection tour” of the town, asking if anyone knew where Saddam Hussein had hidden his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
She wrote letters appealing for the release of prisoners detained in Guantánamo Bay, and many believe it was her eloquent letter to Gordon Brown that was instrumental in bringing Brighton resident Omar Deghayes home. She also called for the release of Shaker Aamer and was delighted when he left Guantánamo last year.
At 70, she gained her maths GCSE.
Hazel grew up in East Morton, West Yorkshire, with four older sisters and a brother, and went to school locally, leaving at 14 to work in a munitions factory. She then joined the Women’s Air Force and met Jock Rennie, who was in the RAF, and they married in 1958. With their four children she travelled the world as Jock took up postings in Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Singapore and Bahrain, before settling in Worthing.
She is survived by Jock, her children, Katie, John, Ruth and Robbie, three granddaughters and one grandson.
