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Ian Campbell was born in 1936. During the 1983 General Election, he stood as Labour candidate for the Clwyd North West Constituency and in the 1984 European election, he was the Labour candidate for the North Wales constituency. Thalia D. Campbell, a banner-maker and teacher, was born in 1937. She was one of the founders of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, at the US military base in Berkshire, England, which started in 1981 after a march from Wales of women peace activists. The original Camp on Greenham Common closed on the 5th September 2000 after 19 years of a continuous presence. Campbell integrates her political convictions and her artistic talents by searching through archives to exhibit the neglected political art form of making banners. Both are retired but actively involved in the Peace Movement and Marches, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Life on Earth, etc, and in commemorating the Peace March and Camp. They are also staunch conservationists, especially in their local area of Pembrokeshire.

Town repairs are off the wall, say conservationists
22 February 2007
Western Telegraph

Works on Pembroke town walls have been criticised by members of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW).

Concern by residents about the lack of maintenance on privately-owned sections of the walls led to a county council clearing programme along The Commons and north wall. Weeds, ivy and trees were removed so the council could assess the wall's condition and reach an agreement with property owners to begin repairs this summer.

The clean-up has met with support from many residents, but Ian and Thalia Campbell say it is causing more harm than good. Ian said: "The ivy should be sprayed and gently removed by hand when it is dead."

He said tearing roots out also removes mortar and makes the wall unsafe. "Parts of these walls have been here for 1,000 years," he said. "Imagine what a tourist attraction it would be anywhere else."

The CPRW hopes Pembroke will gain membership of the Society of Walled Towns as the almost complete medieval walls are a valuable historic monument. But the group fears inappropriate repairs may destroy what should be the town's crowning glory. Ian said: "Repairs done with cement are unacceptable. Water gets into the lime, expanding it and causing cracks. We need conservation solutions, not engineering solutions."

The pair do not oppose work on the wall, but insist it must be done properly. Thalia said: "When we found out how they were going about it, we went from thinking it was wonderful to thinking it was a nightmare."

The Campbells have a longstanding interest in history and archaeology and are particularly protective of Ian's home town. "We won't get everything back now," said Thalia. "But we don't want to lose any more."

Ian Campbell says the recent clearing of Pembroke town walls has removed mortar, causing cracks and making sections of the wall unsafe.

See the National Parks website for Pembrokeshire click for link

Swansea film maker records attack by Italian police

13/1/2006

A Swansea video company succeeded in recording a brutal attack by Police on peaceful people. Today Hamish Campbell from Undercurrents productions showed his video images to a jury in one of the most controversial European court cases in recent times.

Hiding in a water tower 40 year old Mr Campbell filmed dozens of riot police raid a school where young people were sleeping. Due partly to his evidence, 75 people, including some of Italy's most senior police officers, are now on trial accused of taking part in an orgy of brutality against protesters during and after the demonstrations at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa.

BBC television broadcast the images recorded by Undercurrents and praised the cameraman's bravery. BBC reporter Bill Hayton stated today on BBC online -
'Hamish Campbell, from the anti-capitalist film-making group Undercurrents, filmed the whole raid as he hid behind a water tank on the roof of a nearby building - a very brave guy.'

Mr Campbell is among the first British witnesses to give evidence in the trial of Police who are alleged to have organised a raid on a school building where protesters slept, beating them up and planting evidence on them.

My media performances are few and far between and often censored/ cancelled at the last minute!! I've been four times on Womans Hour and four times cancelled at the last moment (we've been told not to have you on) by whom?
One time a TV interview as part of a serious programme my contribution and a woman friend's were dubbed over with music.
I've been on Mid Week, on Esther Ransome with Hamish. Is your mother a fanatic?, Today a few times, a big row with David Davies a conservative AM, a few cooking programmes I brought in politics into cooking!!. Joined in Any Questions a few times as Gertrude used to do.
Went on Sky TV news once - Made up, hair done etc. I said to the make up girl ' its the first time I''ve worn make up since the 1950's'. The live bit was OK but the recorded bit was Edited !! All the parts I was really proud of taken out.
One occassion was very interesting I got through to the programme, They asked where I lived. I felt they were looking at a list and when I said Pembroke they allowed my contribution!!! We had just moved from Borth. I had the feeling if I had said Borth I would not have got on!!!!I
Its hard having an unusual name!
Sexism has certainly cut me to size, and being political too.

"They clip her wings and then complain she cannot fly" Thalia

The first time I was aware of the two Nuclear bombs being dropped on Japan was when as a child of eight my Grandmother wrote letters to the newspapers on her old typewriter in her bed sit in our large Victorian house in Torquay and probably also to Freddy Grisewood's 'Any Questions'. I only took her ancient Typewriter to the tip when we moved three years ago.
The Hiroshima bomb was Uranium and the Nagasaki bomb was Plutonium. There are still debates going on whether the second bomb was needed, or an American experiment to see the difference or to frighten the Russians who were about to invade the Far East.
In the 1950's as a student I read in the news papers and listened on the radio to reports of CND demonstrating against Nuclear weapons. I remember the 90 year old Bertrand Russell demonstrating in Trafalgar Square and going to prison and the Committee of One hundred demonstrating at Greenham Common in the 1960's being piled into removal vans by the police, positively charming and amateur to what happens now.
In the 1960's as a young family we were living in the shadow of the new nuclear plant being built at Hinckley Point. In amongst all the excitement of the new jobs coming to the area I don't think I was the only one who worried about the safety of my preschool children. We were thinking about buying an idyllic thatched cottage in the shadow of the growing Nuclear Plant but in the end glad to move away to Southampton.
With my teenage children in the late 1970's I once again found myself under threat from the nuclear industry when living in Corris N. Wales. The Government was planning four nuclear dumps in Wales. The plan near us was to fill the empty Slate Quarries with Nuclear waste, almost in our back garden. The whole Community was out in protest. Entire villages turned out to Public meetings, and took part in direct actions. Julie Christie took a leading role. When the English Government Scientists came to check out the nuclear dump sites, They were blockaded in their Bed and Breakfasts by local cars. When they went to ask for help from the local welsh police they were always too busy to sort out this difficulty. When the English scientists got up in the hills to do their job they were surrounded by Welsh farmers in their land rovers with their dogs and guns and could not do their work. Finally after 18 months of more direct action Michael Heseltine announced in Parliament that Wales was not a suitable place to dump Nuclear waste.
People at the other planned nuclear dump site were worried too and out of all this came Nuclear Free Wales where all Councils voted to be Nuclear free, AND the march to Greenham Common. Ann Pettitt in Carmarthenshire had been protesting against the dumping and when we won she had the idea of marching to Greenham to protest about the first strike Nuclear cruise missiles soon to arrive from the USA. That's a whole other story.
Hibuksha, victims of those two nuclear bombs on Japan came to Wales in the 1980s to tell us their story.
In the mid 1980s there was Chernobyl. Friends had a Geiger counter we were sharing to test our surrounds for radioactivity. We were in our garden at the time of Chernobyl using it and wondering about our high readings!!! There are still farms in Wales unable to sell their sheep now.
To commemorate 40 years since Hiroshima Justine Merritt a retired American teacher organized the US Peace Ribbon Project of tea towel sized art works depicting
"What I cannot bear to think of as lost for ever in a nuclear war" to be wrapped around the Pentagon. The project ended with Washington brought to a standstill with 17 miles of Ribbon pieces.
To day we are planning a new generation of Nuclear weapons whilst asking other countries to stop their nuclear ambitions.
For evil to Flourish all it needs is for good people to do nothing

It is important that we acknowledge our art of social activism as an important historical record. Banners have been part of our activities for decades. Thalia Campbell, a banner maker and a founder of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, was inspired on the initial march to Greenham to organize the creation of a banner from a sheet. After the women made the banner, it continued to be used as a bed, a shawl, a screen and a baby-changing place. Campbell integrates her political convictions and her artistic talent; she makes dozens of banners and encourages others to make them as well. At a recent workshop in Victoria, she showed slides of 100 years of UK Women's Banner Making," based on her years of searching through archives and attics to exhibit this neglected political art form. This record of unnamed women in co-operatives, suffragettes, suffragists, peace groups, international solidarity, miners' strikes and childhood sexual abuse movements is an inspiring testimony to social event largely ignored by mainstream historians. At her workshops, Campbell develops a collective process in which participants design their own banners. After her workshop I made my first banner - for Hiroshima Day. At our next banner making workshop we want to make a banner with the powerful words of U.S. novelist Alice Walker: Resistance is the Secret of Joy.

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I met a descendent of Robert Southey when I did a banner workshop for Battersea Labour Party as well a an old Jamaican Grandfather (with his grandson) who came across after the war on the ship THE WINDRUSH. That banner work shop was an interesting experience for all kind of links....two proudcers for the BBC and ITV. John Farrell, Lord Alf Dubs and
other interesting people... Thalia

Thalia D Campbell
St Julians

Malta has problems when sending representatives to international bodies, because so few women take an active part in public life.
In the UK we have been through the entire cycle from no women, through token women, to the present, sidelined women.
After the Suffragettes women were used to organising separately, and were thus represented in the early Labour Party and trade unions. When they amalgamated with the men, women’s voices were lost so they set up the women’s sections in the Labour Party. Later on the Women’s sections had the right to send resolutions to the National Conference which, if passed, became party policy.
At the 1981 Labour Party conference Dora Russell read out the resolutions of the first conference she had attended 50 years before, asking for the same rights. For years the women’s debates were held on a Thursday afternoon and the unions used this time to hold their receptions – piss ups – leaving only one lonely delegate to hold the card to vote everything down.
We decided to change this and photographed the vacant numbered seats and wrote a letter to all the unions telling them we would send the photos to their women members. The Conference then timetabled the womens debates throughout the week, and the unions held their receptions in the evenings.
In the 1980s Labour Councils set up Womens Committees with real budgets. These recruited many women into active politics but Mrs Thatcher started and then Tony Blair continued to shut them down. Women also had the right to send resolutions to the Labour Conference taken away by Blair.
Neil Kinnock encouraged women by positive discrimination in the party by adopting women as of right on the short list for selection. The unions adopted a policy of proportional gender representation, the Party then had a policy of alternate and equal, so if a male delegate was sent, the next year it had to be a woman.
Women’s voices were heard, it worked.
Blair took over the party machine and in the name of equality selected naïve biddable women, Blair’s babes to replace his male opponents in the Party.
This went slightly wrong because he did not expect a landslide and some good women came through, even if these have been completely sidelined in Parliament and have not been seen or heard in government.
Blair’s government has the largest number of women in Parliament ever, but is run by the laddish tendency, young men who discount women, men who see a woman’s agenda as irrelevant.
Women have more rights in the EU, but relatively few are in positions of power. With enlargement and the defeat of communism women are even more marginalised, heard but then ignored.
You do have active women in Malta and I can remember a Woman’s Day activity where there was a stall at City Gate, but most women hastened past with averted eyes.
I can even remember a Women’s Day in Malta with a priest on the platform. In the UK no man would dare to presume to be prominent at such an event.
It would be wonderful to hear a woman speaker on the platform at the political rallies in Malta talking about the concerns of over half the electorate.
In the women’s story since the Suffragettes men have never given power away, women have always had to fight for it.

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