Liz Brandow writes: I remember Helen John so vividly – her sense of humour and practical common sense were invaluable. When I arrived at the RAF Greenham peace camp to stay for a few days to help, shortly before Christmas in 1981, I was given a stack of Christmas cards to answer. I wasn’t sure: “Surely they want a reply from a real Greenham woman?”
Helen retorted: “You’re a woman, you’re at Greenham – you’re a Greenham woman!” Yes, indeed, and millions of us all over the world had common cause with her, and women’s peace camps were established in several countries. I visited one in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan, and spent the festive season of the following year at another camp near a USAF base in upstate New York.
Helen was always an inspiration and leaves a huge gap.
Georgina Smith writes: Helen John could be very funny and was lively company, whatever the situation. The political messages that we wrote on walls may have been graffiti, but we did not daub them – we wanted them to be read.
Those we painted on the high court in Edinburgh in 2006 included No Star Wars, Ban Cluster Bombs and £76bn for Genocide, and I recall watching with Helen, from the police car, as the officers fetched large pieces of board from the adjacent building site to cover them.
In the subsequent court case, we did not wish to pay a fine or undertake community service, and were sentenced to several weeks in prison for malicious mischief. Nonetheless, we maintained that it was legitimate protest.
