The first piece of correspondence I received as a local councillor in Haringey in 1978 was from Pat Arrowsmith. She wanted to know what I was doing as her elected representative to protect her from nuclear war. She much enjoyed the response from the director of social services: “I am supposed to go down into the council bunker (if you can get me down there) and organise the distribution of emergency bedding.”
Regular correspondence followed and some 20 years later she contacted me when the housing department was threatening to take her to court following complaints from her neighbours about her feeding flocks of pigeons (“peace doves” as she called them) out of her window. I had to explain to the housing officers that not only was she quite prepared to go to prison over the issue, but she might even relish it. Eventually they decided it would be easier to drop the matter.
