Reply to comment

Published: 4 August, 2011
by BERNIE MILLER

 

TELL Hetty Bower she’s the stuff films or novels are made of and she’ll reject the sugges­tion with incredulity. 

 

Hetty has lived 105-plus years, most of that time campaigning for peace, democracy and human rights.

 

She is widely known and respected in activist communities and will be speaking out again for peace at this Saturday’s annual Hiroshima Day Commemoration in Tavistock Square. 

 

Yet she has never courted fame or publicity for herself – she actively avoids it, insisting: “I’m not important.”

 

Anti-war and pro-rights demos still find Hetty marching: for peace and human rights, opposing hospital clos­ures, supporting union opposition to government cuts or slamming the trebling of students’ tuition fees and slashing of disability services.

 

Always impeccably turned out, her diminutive stature and conventional appearance belie her radical thinking and absolute determination to continue struggling for peace as long as her legs and voice allow.

 

Given her age, she remains in amazingly good health.

 

She draws inspiration and strength from other people, from an almost childlike delight in nature, an insatiable love of music and an image of how the future can be.

 

That image is often based on experiences from her past: having a suffragette older sister whose objective of votes for women was achieved; working for and then witnessing the election of the first Labour MPs to Parliament in 1922; supporting and co-ordinating refugees during the First World War; having a sister who worked in the legendary Finsbury Health Centre and then celebrating the introduction of the NHS;  working in education at a time of expansion accompanied by marked reductions of inequality; delighting in the population of the UK being housed after the war; experiencing exemplary social services being created; the introduction of free higher education and universal maintenance grants.

 

Now she watches with dismay but never despair as the current government destroys all those advances, condemning Britain to a future worse than the past was, even during Hetty’s childhood.

 

Accompanying Hetty on her various escapades over the course of a year is breathtaking. Such determination and dedication might paint a grim picture but Hetty loves good humour often laughing until she cries.

 

With most of her own generation dead, she is inspired by younger cross-generations: Tony Benn (80s), her own daughters (70s), comedian Mark Thomas (40s), Gill Hicks, who lost both legs in the July 7 bombings and now works ceaselessly for peace, and her new great-grandson.

 

Hetty loves speaking to her local primary school but just three weeks ago was able to join forces with Gill and speak to teenagers at a nearby secondary school.

 

The youngsters were spellbound, con­centrated intently, asked insightful questions and empha­sised how much she inspired them.

 

It was mutual. 

 

Hetty’s efforts are bolstered by thinking she might play some small part in today’s youth undertaking peace and democracy initiatives.

 

Gill Hicks and local schoolchildren are eloquent testimony to her effectiveness.

 

Some may be born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.

 

Eschewing celebrity, modest Hetty remains unaware just how great she is and how strongly she motivates future generations.

 

• 105-year-old Hetty Bower will be speaking  at Camden CND’s  annual Hiroshima Commemoration on Saturday, August 6, at noon in Tavistock Square.

 

• Hetty will speak again in Trafalgar Square this autumn at the event to mark the 10th anniver­sary of the invasion of Afghanistan  – and doubtless elsewhere before then.