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Dorothy Forsyth
IN 1957 the British government announced that it was starting to test nuclear weapons. At last my early feelings of injustice were about to be turned into action and protest.
It was important to me to be at home with the children. Now, at the age of thirty, I wondered who I was apart from a wife and mother. One day, I picked up a copy of Peace News and read about an organisation called the Peace Pledge Union. This was a pacifist organisation that had the saying, 'Wars will cease when men refuse to fight'. Members were asked to take a pledge to support them. This felt like something I could become involved in - so I joined.
My involvement progressed quickly. I went to a public meeting at Central Hall, which led to the formation of the National Committee For The Abolition Of Nuclear Weapon (NCANWT), which would later evolve into the Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in February 1958. After the meeting, someone asked Peggy Duff, a political activist and future founder of CND, for the names of all the people who had attended from Hornsey, and called us. We formed Hornsey NCANWT and I became secretary.