This was a really scary time. We were being told that the Russians were the enemy and we had to arm ourselves and that was the accepted truth. I remember getting pamphlets through the door telling us to hide under the table and to make sure we had a bottle of water. It all felt a bit inadequate but we were being bombarded with this stuff so there must have been a real level of fear.
I was 18, in my final year of school, living independently, when CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) got talking to me in Walsall market and soon after I began to attend their local meetings. I had been brought up in a very working-class Tory household and I always felt like I didn’t really fit in. I was starting to question some of the things that we were being told by the government.
When the protest march was scheduled over Easter weekend I was keen to go. I think we walked from Walsall to Birmingham, or at least we walked part of the way and headed to Handsworth Park. Hundreds of people were there and they had come from all around the area.
I was with the Walsall group when we were approached by a young woman and asked if we wanted to be in a photograph for the Observer. There was a little discussion among the group and we said, “Oh go on, then.”
We thought it would be a picture of all of us but she asked me to pose with this bloke I had never met. He was also a CND supporter but not from my group and presumably she had singled him out, too. She and the photographer asked us to pose with our arms around each other holding the CND banner and we both thought it was so cheesy. I was quite embarrassed about it, being that age I was very aware that it looked as if we were a couple, but we just thought, “Sod it, let’s do it.” It took about five minutes.
It was really important that our names weren’t included and that we weren’t identifiable. We were told that being in CND meant we wouldn’t get a job. It was a time of real paranoia. I imagine the image worked in the context of people being so scared at that time – it showed some love and peace in the middle of it all.
I wasn’t expecting it to be on the front page of the newspaper the next day. I took it with me to Sunday lunch with my parents. I got very little response. My dad was not pro-CND, he thought the Russians were going to get us. I remember being embarrassed more than anything else – it looked like I had a found myself a boyfriend on the march!
As a result I didn’t really think of it as that big a deal but I have kept that front page all these years. I’m 52 now and I’ve kept it in a box that’s moved with me from house to house.
I showed it to my 16-year-old daughter the other week for the first time. She thought it was amazing and immediately started taking pictures of it and posting it on Instagram. She loved the fact that I was a part of that history. I think I did, too, otherwise I wouldn’t have hung on to it. I have always sort of hidden it away like my little treasure, knowing that it was an important moment in my life and that to have it captured by someone is a real gift.
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