Oral Account

Joan Meredith

Joan Meredith was born in 1929 in Doncaster. She grew up in Yorkshire in a politically active Methodist family with strong Labour and trade union ties, especially to the Durham mining communities.

Influenced deeply by her grandmother and early schooling, she developed a strong sense of social justice. Joan became a teacher and, later in life, a peace campaigner. Her political activism began at age 54 after leaving her marriage and finding solidarity in a women’s refuge. She became involved in anti-nuclear protests, was a member of CND and later Trident Ploughshares.

She was arrested over 20 times and imprisoned for her activism. Joan became close friends with with Pauline Campbell, supporting her direct-action campaign following the death of her daughter, Sarah Campbell, in Styal prison in 2003. In this interview Joan reflects on how they campaigned together, Pauline’s impact and the archive she kept documenting their actions. Her story is one of late-life radicalism, resilience and solidarity shaped by a lifelong resistance to injustice and inequality.

Joan Meredith was interviewed by Naomi Oppenheim and Deborah Coles.

You can listen to the full oral history interview at the Bishopsgate Institute.

JM: because she was the most courageous woman I have ever met in my life. And you just did it with her because she was outstanding, wasn’t she?

NO: What was your relationship like with each other?

JM: Oh, she wanted me to… she used to be trying to work out that I could have been her mother. [laughs] She used to say, well, you could have been, you know, Joan. You might have been 16, but you could have been. [laughs]

DC: Well, that shows how close she was.

JM: Oh, we were. I still miss Pauline, because, well, you just… When we used to come back from a protest and things, I used to leave my car in her drive, you see, and we used to go together and used to come back. And we used to stop the car and we both used to say, we’ve done it again! We’ve done it again! We were both of us shouting. Power to the people! Oh, she was… And we went to something at Warrington, to do with the, oh, something there.

DC: That would have been the inquest, wouldn’t it?

JM: That was at Warrington, was it?

DC: Yeah, yeah.

JM: No, it was before. And she went in and she came out, and we had to be down in London for a Fawcett meeting or something.

DC: Oh yes, I was at that with you.

JM: And, ee, and we came out and I said, where are we going? She said, we’re going down to London, we’ve to be in London for 6 o’clock, or whatever. And I said, ee, where are we going to park? Well, she went into the taxi rank, parked the car. I said… oh, she said, does it matter? Come on, we’ve to be down in London. And we got on the train, went down to London. Wherever she went, wherever she went, she had to stop and polish her boots. She wouldn’t go anywhere until her boots were absolutely… And when we used to, I used to go really early morning to go to different things, and she had a shower every time, and she used to come out and her hair was wet, and we’d sit in the car. When we stopped at a traffic light, she used to be setting the hair and putting her lipstick on, then we’d have to… D’you know? She lived for the minute, didn’t she? She never wasted, she never wasted a minute, did she?