My mother-in-law, Peggy Walford, who has died aged 97, was a communist for more than 80 years and was one of the last women to vacate the anti-nuclear protest site at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire.
She first joined the protesters in 1983 and, apart from brief returns to her home in Coventry, remained at Yellow Gate camp for the next 17 years until the final four women left the site in 2000. Her time at Greenham was peppered with arrests, the last when she was 78 for criminal damage, and she had several sojourns in Holloway prison.
Born in Brechin, Angus, Peggy was the eighth of nine children of Elizabeth (nee Duncan) and Joseph Mitchell. Her father had been a tailor but did not return to work after being gassed during first world war service. After leaving Bank Street school, Brechin, Peggy earned 10 shillings (50p) a week at the local weavers, almost all of which went to her mother for board.
In the 1930s she spent a brief period in London as a domestic servant at the home of the editor of Punch magazine, but then returned to Brechin and became increasingly politically active. In 1936, having heard the general secretary of the Communist party of Great Britain, Harry Pollitt, speak in Lesmahagow, near Lanark, she joined the Young Communist League and remained with the party for the rest of her life.
In 1941, during the second world war, she met Jack Walford, a machinist at a “shadow” aircraft factory run by Coventry Gauge & Tool in Brechin. Both were committed trade unionists and they married in 1942. Jack was called up in 1943 and did not leave the forces until 1950. In 1953, they and their young family settled in Coventry.
Peggy’s political interests led to two memorable family holidays. In 1969, Peggy, Jack and four children squashed into a Hillman Minx estate, with a co-driver, and drove to Kiev in the Soviet Union. As man landed on the moon, they were in Timișoara, Romania, their young twins listening to events on a transistor radio. The following year they travelled to Moscow, this time slightly less cramped, in a caravanette.
In 1986 Peggy’s campaigning again took her to Moscow, where she was arrested and deported for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner in Gorky Park. She also travelled to Libya for a peace conference in 1990.
Peggy left Greenham for a few months in 1989 when Jack died, and in the late 90s her arthritis sometimes brought her home for longer periods, but she was always determined to return.
In her later years her daily copy of the Morning Star newspaper was always read avidly and debated with gusto. It was awaiting collection when she died in hospital after a short illness.
Two sons, Ian and Trevor, predeceased Peggy. She is survived by her daughter, June, and son, Brian, six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
