Nigel Young (Letters, 14 April) did a fantastic job as the organiser of London region CND, but the primary organiser and recruiter for the Aldermaston marches of the early 1960s was the redoubtable Peggy Duff, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Somehow the prominent role of women at the beginnings of the UK’s Ban the Bomb movement is largely unrecognised. I vividly remember April Carter’s work for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (the initiators and organisers of the first Aldermaston march), who in 1958 organised the daily picketing of our nuclear bomb facility by both women and men (I was one of them). I recall too, the decades of publicity and civil disobedience by Pat Arrowsmith. Thankfully Greenham Common’s women carried on the leading role of women in the fight against the bomb. Zoe Williams’ call (10 April) for renewed public protest is a timely continuation of that tradition.

Martin Smith

Bristol

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