SOS: Save Our Sons
Jean McLean
“I think it was because we made our message clear. We spoke about what was wrong with forcing young men, who couldn’t even vote – weren’t old enough to vote – to go and fight in a war in a country where people didn’t even know where it was. You know?”
This entire venture of mine began because of Save Our Sons, or SOS. I found a documentary about Save Our Sons in the library of the high school where I was teaching, and I was immediately captivated by these women who protested for eight years. Five of them even went to jail for eleven days. This episode includes interviews with two of those women who were jailed, Jean McLean and Joan Coxsedge. You’ll also hear from Ceci Cairns, as well as Tony Dalton, whose mother Dorothy was very involved in SOS.
Let’s start with Jean McLean, who is generally acknowledged as the leader of Melbourne’s SOS. When I was teaching this period, Jean came to speak to my students, and I was entranced by her - as were my students.
Jean McLean
“I spoke to women that I knew. I was a young mother. I was doing a pottery class, and I spoke to the women in the pottery class. And a couple of them had fourteen-year-old sons, and they said, “God, this could affect our children.” And they were pretty upset.
And so I said, “Well, let’s have a meeting, call a meeting, get as many people that we know together, and see what we can do.” I mean, I’d never done that sort of thing before, and nor had they. But anyway, we had a house meeting. And I invited a minister of religion called Bruce Silverwood, who was the – the Uniting Church had just combined, with the Methodists and Presbyterians. I think he was Methodist. I think – but anyway, he came to the meeting, because he was – he spoke out about peace and this sort of – and I think he had a letter to the editor, or something like that. So I asked him to come, to tell us what to do. How to oppose things. Not religiously, but just to speak.
Anyway, he suggested to hire a hall in the city called the Assembly Hall, because it only cost $9 or £9 to hire it. And it was a public hall, you know, so you could invite people. Which we did. And we put a little ad – I wish I had it. A little ad about that big in the Herald or The Age. The Argus – no, The Argus had had it by then. The Age or the – anyway, we put this little ad in. And we had over a hundred people turn up. We got the shock of our lives. Because we didn’t have a network. We didn’t have anything.
So, anyway, a hundred people came, including two women who’d been involved in the first conscription, including Dorothy Gibson, who was a member of the Communist Party and the wife of Ralph Gibson, who was also a Communist. And I think Nancy Walsh was another one of that era… And I’ve always – the most satisfying thing about the anti-conscription movement was that it had a beginning and a middle and an end. And we actually won. Because when you look at other issues, like nuclear and – well, dozens of them. The environment. All these things. You have struggles, you get bigger, and then it dies down. But we’ve never actually had a final winning. And they’re bigger issues in some ways. But this was really life and death.
So a hundred people turned up. And we discussed the possibility of the name, and they said that – at the same time that we had our meeting, the little meeting, there was a meeting in Sydney. And they had a little ad in the – a little thing in the paper, a write-up, that they had formed a Save Our Sons movement. And so we decided that it would be better to have – look like we were bigger – [laughing]
So we called it Save Our Sons. But it was a Victorian movement. In those days, of course, you didn’t have these magic phones, and travel was expensive, and you couldn’t just fly up – fly to other states. So we all did our own thing. We joined together to take a petition to Canberra. And we had one conference, I think, in Sydney, that people came for. But basically, it was a Melbourne organisation.
And at first it was just against conscription. And one of our members, our committee members, said she wasn’t against the war in Vietnam, but she was very much against conscription. She thought people should volunteer. And so we thought, rather than have an argument, that we would accept something everybody could agree to. And Vilma Ames, her name was. But as the movement grew, it became obvious that the reason conscription was brought in was to send people to the war. And so even Vilma decided that, you know, that there were two sides of the coin. And so we then became more involved in opposing the war, as well. And especially as the war was shown on our television screens every night, and we saw Vietnamese women being burnt by these brave soldiers, and, you know, napalm and all that. So the anti-war side of the movement became as – well, not as important, but it highlighted why it was so wrong to force young people to war.”
As Jean says, there was already a group in Sydney by the name of Save Our Sons, but they can’t really be seen as a nationally coordinated group in the way you might imagine in the 21st century. Save Our Sons is probably the group that’s had the most focussed research done on it with regard to women protesting against conscription and the Vietnam War, at least as far as I’ve found. In 1984 Rosemary Francis wrote a thesis looking at both the Women’s Peace Army, who were active in World War 1, and at SOS. Then in 1991, Pauline Armstrong wrote a Masters thesis on SOS, having herself been a committed member of the group in Melbourne. She contributed to that documentary I’ve already mentioned, from 1996. More recently, in 2021, was Carolyn Collins’ book called Save Our Sons - it comes out of her PhD and she’s done excellent work in making it accessible to an ordinary reader. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the protests of this era, as she looks at SOS from Perth to Sydney and everywhere else they existed. I of course am only focused on Melbourne.
The name might have been Save Our Sons, but the women involved weren’t necessarily mothers of conscription-age boys. Ceci Cairns, for instance, had a toddler, and Jean McLean’s son was also not yet an adolescent. In fact I found a letter from a Mary Sticklan suggesting that actually some people in the organisation didn’t love the name but they were stuck with it because it had already been chosen by the Sydney group (Mary Sticklan to Miss Abraham, 14 November 1965, Save Our Sons 1965-1968, Dalton Collection, SLV).
Jean McLean
“We had a small number of people – women, mainly – who joined us, and then their son didn’t get called up, and they’d leave. But in general, no. In general – they might have been like me, I had a two-year-old son, and and even if they joined because they wanted to protect their son, if he didn’t get called up, they still – you know, by this time, they were indoctrinated to believe in the cause.“
It is true though that most of the women involved were at least middle aged: Ceci was probably the youngest in Melbourne, having been born in 1944, making her in her early 20s when she starts protesting. For comparison, Jean was a decade older, so in her thirties. What that means in this context is that sadly for me, many of these women had already died before I started my research - women such as Dorothy Dalton, who according to Pauline Armstrong’s Masters thesis was a foundational member of SOS (Pauline Armstrong, A History of the Save Our Sons Movement of Victoria: 1965-1973, MA 1991, p44). In her case though I got to speak to her son, Tony, a noted draft resister:
Alexandra
Do you think your mum would have got involved in SOS and so on, if you, for instance, had been much younger or much older?
Tony Dalton
I can't say. I mean, certainly, my involvement was, yeah, was a real spur. And in some ways, my involvement in - because I'm older than my brother to start with, and he actually gets involved in other things; he goes to Adelaide to do his university degree, which is very unusual, and gets involved in what I'd call cultural politics as well as anti-war stuff - but I'm really at the frontline, because - partly because of my age at the time. But I think it's really my involvement that gets them going again, politically, yes. That's my sense of it is, that my involvement in the anti war movement, anti conscription movement, stimulates them. They'd been in the left. And I think my mother probably been a member - I think my mother had been a member of the Communist Party back in those days in East Melbourne.”
Ceci Cairns
“I knew I was on the side of the anti-Vietnam people, and I must have met up with Jeanie somewhere, and said, “Hey, I want to join you.” [laughing] And I loved the way that – her - SOS was really focusing on the women who would never have gone to an ALP meeting, or put themselves out in the front in any way. They were just ordinary people who were – would have been very shy of that sort of activity. But they were passionate when they realised what could happen to their sons or their – brothers or relatives, or something. They were the ones I wanted to join, for that reason. I thought it was wonderful that we were working with women who just wanted to express themselves with that. And that suited – fitted with everything I sort of believed in. I became a solid SOS person for the next several years.”
That’s Ceci Cairns. In terms of other women joining, Joan Coxsedge got involved through her local Labor party, because Jean and SOS tapped into that grassroots political organisation pretty early on. Another stalwart was Irene Miller, who In notes that appear to have been for a speech, states that she joined in 1965 because she believed that fighting and war are a stupid way to settle differences, and that it was a conflict that the Vietnamese should solve themselves. She also discusses the fact that she had worked as a civil ambulance driver in England during World War 2, and therefore seeing the results of the German air raids. In another note, Miller says she moved to Australia because she was horrified at nuclear bomb shelters being planned in the UK, and Australia seemed like a peaceful country to be instead. (Save Our Sons material collected by Irene Miller, Box 1/5). As well, she pointed out that members of SOS ranged in age from their 20s to their 70s, were single women, mums of young children and sons of conscription age, and grandparents as well. Their newsletter was mailed to all Melbourne suburbs, and even to regional Victoria - Miller says the mailing list was up to 500 by 1970.
The work that these women and others actually did was really varied. In a book about Dorothy Gibson - a member of the Communist party and involved in all sorts of political actions, as well as SOS - her husband Ralph remembers that she would regularly join the vigil outside the Swan St barracks for every new intake of conscripts. He notes that this was incredibly hard in winter, because of her arthritis, but she did it anyway.
Alexandra
And were you involved in the - being outside the barracks for the intakes?
Ceci Cairns
Yeah, yeah, that was terribly sad. That was one of the saddest things we did. That – you just – you so often saw these young men, they looked like babies, you know, they were coming in, they were crying a lot of the time. I mean, what we saw was not what you’d think. They came in with their families, and a lot of them had girlfriends, and they were always drinking – you know, the families were trying to get them to drink champagne, or something, to make them feel better.
But often, they looked utterly – many of them – and, of course, they – we just stood there, saying, “You don’t have to go. Join us, and we’ll get you out.” And, of course, no one ever did. Because by that stage, of course, it was impossible for them to realise that there was another option.
It was terribly sad. It was one of the saddest things you ever saw, these boys who didn’t want to do it. You know, they didn’t actually want to. It wasn’t their choice. And they were crying. A lot of them had tears in their eyes, and they looked miserable, and the families were hugging them. It was just horrible.
I mean, there were some who were gung ho, of course – not all of them were like that. But enough of them were like that to make you realise that the common perception was – you never saw that picture in the paper.”
In an April 1970 newsletter, there’s a reminder about the upcoming intake at Swan St Barracks, which says “It is much easier to get up in the dark and come to town once every twelve weeks than go to Vietnam and get shot. Every member protesting makes it more meaningful.” (Alvie Booth folder, https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/items/f7c6014f-ffd1-52e2-9734-2730f80793ed/full).
Perhaps my very favourite story of an SOS action comes from Ceci Cairns:
Alexandra
Am I right in thinking that it was you with Jean McLean in the Fashions on the Field at the Melbourne Cup?
Ceci Cairns
Oh yes, that was another hilarious story. Well, we had a committee, and we were always trying to think up ideas of what to do. And I can’t remember exactly who came up with it at first, but it – someone came up with the idea. I can’t remember who it was. Maybe it was Jeanie. And we had marvellous women on the committee, Jo Maclaine-Cross I think was the person – everything that we wore that day was handmade by our committee.
Alexandra
Wow.
Ceci Cairns
They made the dresses, they made the hats. We bought shoes and dyed them orange, I think. And we made the capes, and painted the signs on the back. And the idea was that – we thought no one would take any notice of – I mean, the main thing about it was that we were copying – who was the model from the year before? Famous – not Twiggy. Someone like that, though.
Alexandra Pierce
Yes.
Ceci Cairns
Someone quite famous. Who came to the Melbourne Cup and wore a skirt halfway up her thighs, you know, it was quite – longer than a real miniskirt. And she was sort of in the press, and it was a great drama, and everything. And we thought, oh well, we’ll just go a bit shorter, and just go up – you know, up to the – sort of – almost up to the crutch.
So I remember one of the things I had to do was find some stockings we could wear. And in those days, there were no pantyhose. There was one – I’ve searched Melbourne’s pantyhose. Because you had to have pantyhose if you were wearing really short skirts. You couldn’t have suspenders. And I finally found these quite thick, funny old pantyhose that no one would dream of wearing these days. I mean, they looked all right – so that’s what we wore. So that was interesting, you know, pantyhose had barely been invented.
And then we went on thinking we’d be just pretty ordinary in the crowd. But we were hoping that, because we were a bit exotic, wearing matching clothes, that we’d go into some sort of competition. People kept saying, “Oh yes, you know, you’ll make it,” you know.
So we had this mad home-made gear on, and as soon as we stepped out into the Cup place, where you walk around, we started being photographed. And we couldn’t believe it. And everyone was taking our photograph. And we realised we were the only people there with really short skirts. That was why they were photographing us. They were photographing us because we showed our legs, and if you – and the other bizarre thing was that the men – they were all men. At one stage, we found we were – a circle of men were around us, lying on the ground with their cameras, so they could get sexy pictures of whatever. Which, you know, you couldn’t see a thing. But, you know, it was kind of their idea of getting these outrageous pictures. And we just said, “We can’t go on like this. We can’t go on being photographed for this reason. This is bizarre.” But the other funny thing was, we did think – we thought we were going to be up on some pedestal before we turned our cloaks around, so we never dreamt we’d be turning them around in the crowds. And because there was such a sense of goodwill around, and they were all laughing with us, and thinking we were hysterical, and everything, and we were laughing with them – and we just changed our cloaks around.”
Just to break in and explain this: Jean and Ceci’s cloaks, read together, said “Gamble on horses, not with lives,” and “Stop the War in Vietnam.”
“And everyone noticed it, and they – and these people came up and said, “Oh, that’s interesting. Good on ya.” Or, “What are you doing?” or – no one abused us, or was rude or unpleasant. That was the most extraordinarily bizarre experience. It was really bizarre.
Alexandra
That’s really awesome.
Ceci Cairns
And, again, we didn’t – I mean, I did – I suppose I felt – I probably did feel afraid. I mean, you felt courageous, you know, you were doing this bizarre thing, you were standing out there, all alone. We had no – we had – I think we had one – Jo Maclaine-Cross, I think, was with us, carrying our handbags for us, so we could pose. It was quite mad. It was quite mad. It was a good experience, and it got the best press of almost anything we did. It was amazing. And when I got home, my – this was before I was a single mother – my mother-in-law rang me up and said, “Oh,” she said, “how dare you call your—” she said, “Thank goodness you’ve called yourself by your maiden name, I would never want the name O’Brian besmirched with your behaviour.” So, you know, that was the worst thing I had, was from my mother-in-law. Which was a bit funny, too.”
Then there’s the time Joan Coxsedge was involved in a protest at a Billy Graham event. Billy Graham was a noted American Christian evangelist, who was strongly in favour of the war in Vietnam.
Joan Coxsedge
One of the things that I have never forgotten - you might have heard about this - was a demonstration against Billy Graham. God, well, it was only a handful of us that turned up, most of them wouldn't have a bar - there was a hard core of us if you like - we were, I think that you have to admit there was a hardcore, and I was in that, of course. And he had a crusade held at the Myer Music Bowl. And we thought well, he was very close to Richard Nixon, very pro war. Fair target. We'll have a go. And then of course to do that we met in St Kilda Road. I remember that, feeling fairly apprehensive. And we had our placards, and we marched - and they're all praying or doing something, I can't remember really, but I think they were all praying. He was up there on the stage going for his life, as Billy Graham does, because I can't stand the man but anyway, that's beside the point. We walked up behind him and held up our placards. Nobody said a word. Not a sound was said. He ignored us completely, you could have heard a pin drop. And we were just holding up these things behind him. He didn't move a muscle, not a muscle. And so we just stood there for a while. And then we quietly filed out again, and stood there at the back and waited till they all came out. And then some of them were saying, you know, what was all that about, sort of thing, you're thinking - dull cretins, can't you read? We've made it very clear, it was anti war, stuff like that. But he was the master of the group. Formidable, very formidable. But that was one I won't forget in a hurry. Because I can remember the silence, I can remember the absolute silence. And we didn't say anything. We weren't chanting or doing anything, we just held up our signs, we decided in advance that we wouldn't try and disrupt it, that we'd just make our peaceful protest. And that was it.”
Aside from the more flashy events, there was a lot of work on the ground, too.
Alexandra
Were you involved in the more mundane things, like handing out pamphlets and those sorts of things?
Ceci Cairns
Oh God, yeah, all the time. Yeah. Absolutely. In fact, that’s what it was. And that’s – I mean, for instance, we used to meet on the library steps, outside the Melbourne Library in Swanston Street. And every – I can’t remember if it was every week or every month. A few of us met there with a sign saying Anti-Vietnam War – Stop The Draft, or whatever it was, Join Us. And we met there week after week after week for I don’t know how long. I mean, it seemed like years. And occasionally someone would come up, you know, we’d meet someone. But most of the time, we just did it. I learnt how long it takes to – you know, that movement was a movement that – my God, it didn’t build up to the moratorium quickly. It was that kind of drudgery that we – we just did. That gradually built up to the huge moratoriums. That’s how it is, you know? I’m now working with Get Up, I do stuff with Get Up every now and again, and a lot of people seem to think it’s all going to happen instantly. I feel like going, “Oh well, in my day, you know, we stood on the steps,” you know.”
Joan Coxsedge
we wrote letters, of course, we organised petitions and fundraisers, we held lunchtime rallies in Melbourne's former city square - that's next door to the town hall in Collins Street, which is now God knows what. We used to walk around and around holding placards looking very respectable, which used to irritate me a little bit, because some of the women even had hats, and I thought 'oh good God you can carry that one too far', you know, but anyway...
Alexandra
I think I read somewhere about - was it Irene Miller was saying something about hats and gloves so that they'd look – maybe it wasn't Irene who said that, somebody else said something about, put your hats and gloves on so we look respectable.
Joan Coxsedge
Somebody did say that; I wasn't into hats and gloves, so I just walked around as I was. But anyway, and you did get a lot of abuse - you'd get - it was incredible - you'd get some of these well-dressed men in their business suits coming up and saying you should be crucified. This was Easter time. I thought, Oh my God, that's not very nice, you know, and you just kept walking and marching. But that was the level of animosity in the early stages. Now sure that mellowed, but in the early stages God help us it was, you know, you just didn't know what you were likely to get.”
In the papers saved by Irene Miller, there are things like letters to Mothers Clubs, offering speakers for their meetings (Box 1/4), as well as pamphlets about not registering for National Service and ads for various events. All of these were written by members of SOS, and distributed by them. Pauline Armstrong notes that activities included organising teach-ins, writing to newspapers, fund-raising for SOS and for other groups, counselling conscientious objectors - the list goes on (Armstrong, p57). They were involved in a petition to the Prime Minister in May 1966 and in her thesis Armstrong says that the Victorian SOS group was responsible for collecting 14,000 of the 17,000 signatures (p61). As well, SOS raised funds for things like court cases for draft resisters and other people who were arrested or fined. In the April 1969 SOS newsletter, Mrs Zarb sends her “thanks to SOS for the money raised and sent to her for legal fees incurred by her son’s court appeal.”
In hindsight, probably the most significant event that got SOS the most attention was the jailing of the Fairlea Five, so-called because Fairlea was the women’s prison in Melbourne. In April 1971, five women entered the Department of Labour and National Service building to hand out anti-conscription leaflets. The Tribune, a Sydney based Communist newspaper, described them this way: “Mrs. Jo Maclaine- Cross, 47 (president of the Victorian ALP Women's Organisation) ; Mrs. Jean McLean, 35 (secretary Save Our Sons; vice-president, Victorian Vietnam Moratorium Committee; vice-president, Victorian ALP Women's Organisation) ; Mrs. Renee Miller, 50 (committee member, Save Our Sons); Mrs. Joan Coxsedge, 40 (executive member, Victorian ALP Women); and Mrs. Chris Cathie, 36 (executive member, Victorian ALP women, and wife of former Labor MLC Mr. Ian Cathie).” (From a Victorian correspondent, “The stirring saga of the "Fairlea Five’”, Tribune, 21 April 1971, p12).
I’ll link to this article on the website, because the article includes statements from all five that are quite fascinating: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/237868449.
Joan Coxsedge
Certainly when we went to jail it was a very effective thing. It upset people profoundly that five women with all these children were sent to jail. That was a very, very important, if you like, watershed - was a very important watershed in the whole anti war movement. That upset them. Five women, you had Rene with 10 bloody kids or something, had a headstart. I think Jo Maclaine-Cross had five. Chris Cathie had four, I had three and Jean had two. So we - between the lot of us, there were a lot of children, a lot of children. And the anti war movement came behind us and the trade union movement did, and very effective there. And I think there were a few stoppages at the waterfront over that.
Alexandra Pierce
So I guess you got a lot of publicity out of that.
Joan
A lot of publicity. And that was luck, too, because it was held... The court case came up on the Thursday before Easter. And it dragged on and on and on. And we were at the magistrate's court waiting for the damn thing to come on. And nothing was happening. And it didn't come on until about four o'clock in the afternoon before Easter. And of course, all the media had gone, except for one ABC journalist, except for one. And he was there and he reported it. And that's when it got out. Now, it was sheer luck, because he could have gone and then - I don't know, it would have got out but not like it did, it ended up on the, you know, seven o'clock news. And that really helped and the others picked up on it. And away it went.
Irene Miller’s ephemera included telegrams of support that she received during and after their stay at Fairlea, including from people like a previous Federal Labor leader, Arthur Calwell.
Finally, I asked many of my interviewees who weren’t in the group whether they had heard of SOS. Many of them had not, or had forgotten about them in the intervening years. Some of them, though, had very strong memories of the group or Jean in particular. Fiona Lindsay was a student at La Trobe University and is featured in the episode about that campus. Her mother was also a member of SOS, which Fiona discusses here, as well as the fact that Fiona has a very different memory of Jean McLean’s involvement from what others have said:
Fiona Lindsay
“My mother was involved with the SOS, right from the beginning being - and she was a party member, so - as were a number of women from the Communist Party. I did go to several meetings with her in the old ballroom at the Vic Rail ballroom up above Flinders Street Railway Station. And I remember my mother proposing several motions and so on to be adopted. Yeah, so it's really from the time of Australia's involvement, engagement with the Americans in that way that we became very actively involved - because we'd already been involved with the peace movement.
Alexandra
So then she gets involved in SOS, hears about it from Jean McLean or someone presumably -
Fiona Lindsay
No no no. Jean McLean was later. You know, there are a couple of - some people used it for their own advantage. I think Jean was one and Jim Cairns was another; because there was a lot of activity before then, that was foundational to getting these movements going. And, and, you know, okay, so I think one needs to be a little cautious about looking at time, timeframes and, and what happened when, what meetings were held when and so on; it was an accumulation of activity over... and a continuation of activities from one movement into another so - and of course, you always find people who are going to be, become spokespeople, appointed or not, and they have skills which are really valuable. But I think sometimes they weren't necessarily engaged with the nitty gritty, at the early stages of getting things going, from my recollections.
I can’t speak to Fiona’s memories of course. I can only note that the archival material I’ve looked at and referenced here does point to Jean’s involvement right from the start.
Alexandra
Did you think that what SOS was doing was an important contribution?
Frances Newell
Well, yes, because it was part of the way in which conscription and the war became an issue, not just for a handful of 20 year old young men, but for a broad swathe of society.
Diana Crunden
Well, they were the first obvious demonstrations done by women. I mean, by anybody, but they were women. You know, with chaining themselves to the conscription gates, and all of that sort of stuff. They were really terrific. And they did – they went to jail, didn’t they?
Alexandra
They did. They had fourteen days. The Fairlea Five.
Diana
Yeah, I mean, ours was three nights, or something, and it was pretty insignificant, really. But fifteen days is a long time.”
Martha Kinsman
Oh... Save Our Sons was extremely important. I don't think that - I mean, Save Our Sons made it acceptable and even necessary for ordinary Australians, and including ordinary Australian women who had been brought up to you know, never talk about politics, never talk about sex at the dinner table, etc. It made it not only possible, but acceptable and important for Australian women to get involved. So they were very important.”
Andra Jackson
Yes, I personally thought they were very effective. There might have been some people in the Labor Club that, again, as I said, probably saw them as a middle class bourgeois movement, but wouldn't have come out and oppose them, but didn't really take them that seriously. I think they were very effective in - especially when they went to jail for their principles. I think, I think they were respected because they were prepared to go to jail. And it was an issue that mothers could relate to - the fact that they were mothers, it was a very effective campaign. And I think it was very much - I don't know if that happened overseas, but certainly, it got a lot of publicity here in Melbourne.
For her Masters thesis, Pauline Armstrong spoke to Jim Cairns, who had been one of the key faces of the anti-Vietnam protests and went on to be deputy Prime Minister under Gough Whitlam. He said, quote, “the input by all women, and the the SOS women, specifically, was of inestimable value. The SOS movement had been a driving and consistent force in the anti-conscription and anti-war movements since 1965” (Armstrong p164). Armstrong herself reflected that SOS, quote “must, without doubt, have exerted some influence on the public consciousness. It was certainly attracting the attention of those in authority” (p186).
I’ll give the last word to Jean about why SOS was effective:
Jean McLean
I think our movement was very successful. And it was successful, in part, because they couldn’t really label us, you know? We started off being naïve – no, first we were Communists. Then they decided we weren’t. Then we were naïve – and finally, they decided that we were respectable middle class women who objected to the war.
So, yeah – and when we’d sit down – we always made decisions together, what actions – and when we decided, we’d sit down at a demonstration place and refused to move, they’d have to pick us up. But we never fought them. Always non-violent. Mainly because it’s the most effective way of getting things… we didn’t put people off. We had people joining us all the time.
Alexandra
I read somewhere that you had five hundred members by the end of it, and you had lots of other people who were supporting you, not just – I mean, some of the stuff that I’ve read around when you were in Fairlea is simply incredible, the twenty-four hour vigils and so on. What do you think made SOS so attractive?
Jean
I think it was because we made our message clear. We spoke about what was wrong with forcing young men, who couldn’t even vote – weren’t old enough to vote – to go and fight in a war in a country where people didn’t even know where it was. You know?”