Peace warrior is still end nuclear menace
RAE Street has been arrested, travelled the world and camped out on an RAF base - all in the name of peace.
The campaigner has spent almost four decades fighting to raise awareness of the devastating effects of nuclear weapons.
Former teacher Rae, 80, has protested outside NATO headquarters and embarked on a whistlestop tour of the U.S to promote a message of nuclear disarmament.
She was even part of the famous Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp - an anti nuclear protest which spanned almost 20 years.
But it was a visit to Hiroshima - the city where the United States detonated a nuclear bomb during WWII - that Rae was convinced the fight to eradicate nuclear weapons was so vital.
“One visit which deeply moved me above all others was being at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorative events,” says Rae, from Littleborough, Rochdale.
“I broke down in tears and collapsed in the dust at seeing the trike whose small rider had been vaporised when the bomb fell. My small grandson was the same age.”
It has been 60 years since the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was founded at the height of the cold war. The group’s famous logo has become an internationally recognised peace symbol, worn with pride by everyone from Jeremy Corbyn to Damon Albarn.
For Rae, the fight for peace is more important now than ever before.
“We’re in a precarious position at the moment with North Korea and America,” she says. “If we have these nuclear weapons how can we say other people can’t have them as defence? More importantly, we have reached the stage where they are useless.
“The thing that has cost the most terrible suffering recently is terrorism so what use is Trident to us? It’s costing billions, there are huge cuts to the NHS and all the time this money is being used on defence for these horrendous weapons.”
Rae joined CND in 1980 and quickly became an active campaigning member, all while raising a young family.
“I think right from being a young girl I was really concerned about nuclear weapons,” she says. “It was always in my mind. Then in 1960 I saw a film called ‘Hiroshima mon amour’, a French-Japanese film and it just devastated me. I thought ‘how can ●●Rae Street has been campaigning as a member of the of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmerment for more than 30 years anyone think of doing anything with these weapons?’”
In 1981 Rae was instrumental in forming the Littleborough Peace Group. Many of the group are still working together to this day.
It was during this time that Rae and her fellow campaigners travelled down to Berkshire to support the women of the Greenham Common Peace Camp, who were protesting a government decision to allow cruise missiles to be based there.
The first blockade of the RAF base happened in May 1982 with 250 women protesting, during which 34 arrests were made. The camp was active for 19 years and disbanded in 2000.
“We took coach loads of people down during that time,” says Rae. “I had children so I didn’t stay long but we all went down and stayed overnight. It was just a wonderful feeling in a way. The whole ethos was to demonstrate non-violently. I felt free to do that.
“We got terrible abuse and people would say ‘women should not be bothered with foreign policy and defence’. But we just carried on.”
Five years into the Greenham campaign Greater Manchester and District CND members held an anti-nuclear conference at Manchester Town Hall. It was here that a friend asked Rae to speak about nuclear disarmament issues in the USA.
“It was absolutely floored,” says the grandmother. “And I had to work out what to do with the children. I was told ‘you’re going where no CND person has ever been before’.”
Rae spent three weeks on a whistle-stop tour of the mid-west, travelling from St Louis to Milwaukee speaking at colleges, universities and churches to raise money to support the women of Greenham in their legal battle.