Trump alarms me. He could press the button at any time. I sincerely hope we see a new wave of action now

I have always tried to stand up for my principles – I was a conscientious objector when I became due for national service in 1949. But it wasn’t until the 1955 general election that I did anything about it.

For a long time I’d been leaning towards communism – I joined the Communist party and went round knocking on doors, and later ended up selling copies of the Daily Worker (the predecessor to the Morning Star). I never thought communists would get into power, but that didn’t stop me advocating my beliefs. I’ve always wished for a socialist society, and I decided the best way to achieve that was by protesting.

One of the first marches I went on was to protest against rent increases for council houses in the 1950s. It was great to feel I was doing something, not just talking about it. I still feel that way, although at 86 I am not always physically able to get out there. I was on an anti-Trump march in February and someone joked that this probably wasn’t my first protest. I said, “More like my 101st”, and it is probably around that number.

The most memorable protest was in 1956, at the time of Suez, against the seizure of the canal zone. There was a huge meeting in Trafalgar Square, addressed by Hugh Gaitskell and Aneurin Bevan. A few of us felt listening to them wasn’t enough, and joined a group taking a petition to Downing Street.

Marchers started running to the side of the road and I realised that the mounted police were charging at us. That came as a shock and made me feel like we lived in a dictatorship, not a democracy.

I was at a rally in Trafalgar Square in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, when the news came through that President Kennedy would withdraw American missiles from Turkey. There was a big cheer when we heard the announcement – for a fortnight, people had been wondering if the world would be destroyed in four minutes. It was difficult to take in that it was all over. There was a real sense of relief that we weren’t going to be blown up.

In 2005, I decided to support Brian Haw in his peace protest. Brian had witnessed war in Cambodia and Northern Ireland, and decided we must put a stop to it, so he started a display of posters and banners in Parliament Square. He was there from June 2001 to September 2010, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer (he died in 2011). In 2005, I started going twice a week to manage the display and give him the chance to get something to eat and have a change of scenery. As a Christian, he was rather horrified by my communist outlook, but we were still good friends.

The government put through an act of parliament in 2005 to limit the size of the display, and to my dismay, they came and took most of it away the following year. It proved to me once again that if our government doesn’t like something, that’s it.

In 2013, I became involved with the anti-nuclear demonstration outside the Japanese embassy, and I still go every Friday for about an hour and a half. There are usually half a dozen of us. The others go on to protest outside the London office of the company that operated the Fukushima plant, but I’ve usually had enough by then and head home.

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As long as the weather and my health permit, I’d like to keep on demonstrating, whether it’s against NHS cuts or Stand Up To Racism. I could talk about the next socialist revolution and how capitalism is going to tear itself to pieces, but action is the important thing.

Trump alarms me. He could press the button at any time. I sincerely hope we see a new wave of action now. A neighbour recently said to me, “There is nothing we can do.” I think that is a very dangerous frame of mind. I was at the Women’s March in January, and when I got home I heard there were 100,000 people there. I was delighted.

To those new to protesting, I’d say: It’ll be a long, hard struggle, but a very satisfying one. You can’t expect great success, but every effort is valuable. I could well be gone tomorrow, but on my deathbed I can look back and say that I tried. Bunny Easton

• As told to James Somper.

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