Peggy Duff (8 February 1910 – 16 April 1981) was a British political activist who started off her career with a protest against the treatment of German prisoners of war in Britain after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. She was principally known for her contribution to the

peace movement A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world pe ...

as the organiser of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Duff was described by

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

, a friend of hers, as "one of the people who really changed modern history".

Background

Duff was born as Margaret Doreen Eames in Chiswick,

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbour ...

. She was the elder daughter and middle child of Frank Eames, a stockbroker's clerk, and Evelyn Rose Eames ( Pitman. From 1921, she attended Hastings Secondary School for Girls; in a 1929 reference by the school's headmistress described her as being "very public-spirited". She then went to Bedford College, University of London, where she read English. After university she worked as a

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and in 1933 married Bill Duff, a fellow journalist. He was killed during the

while covering an American air raid on the Burma railway for an armed forces' newspaper. The couple had two daughters and a son ( photo-journalist

Euan Duff Euan Duff is a photographer and photo-journalist, born in 1939 to the political activist Peggy Duff and her husband Bill, a journalist who died in the latter stages of the Second World War. He freelanced as a photo-journalist in London during ...

Political activism

Duff began her involvement in peace campaigning in the late 1930s. During the

, she joined Common Wealth, an idealistic

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

party to the left of Labour, which had been set up by Sir Richard Acland. After the 1945 election, in which Common Wealth ceded its vote to the Labour Party, Duff was employed by Victor Gollancz's organization Save Europe Now, which sent food and clothing to occupied Germany and Austria from rationed Britain, and campaigned for the repatriation of prisoners of war. From 1949 to 1955 she was business manager of '' Tribune'' newspaper, then identified with the supporters of Labour MP Aneurin Bevan. Briefly working with Gollancz again, Duff became the secretary of the National Campaign for the Abolition of

Capital Punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

, set up in August 1955, in part as a response to a number of controversial executions (including that of Ruth Ellis). In 1956, she was elected as a Labour member of St Pancras Borough Council, on which she became Chief Whip for the Labour group. Duff was a councillor on Camden London Borough Council, for the Camden ward, from 1964 until 1968. She also supported the rights of tenants of council housing, but in doing so gave the green light to controversial architectural redevelopments and

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

programmes that are often considered to have blighted the ward she served.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

At the Labour Party Conference in 1957, Aneurin Bevan, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, astonished his supporters by denouncing demands for unilateral nuclear disarmament. In November that year, Duff responded by joining with others to establish the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which aimed to persuade Britain to "renounce unconditionally the use or production of nuclear weapons and refuse to allow their use by others in her defence". Duff became the Organising Secretary for the campaign, and her energy and resilience became well known to its supporters.

Canon John Collins Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western c ...

, Chair of CND, noted that she never gave the impression of efficiency "and seemed thoroughly slapdash", but that her work had impressive results. She organised the second and subsequent

Aldermaston Marches The Aldermaston marches were anti- nuclear weapons demonstrations in the 1950s and 1960s, taking place on Easter weekend between the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and London, over a distance of fifty- ...

from 1959 to 1963.

Later life and death

In 1965, Duff commenced work for the

International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace The International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace was an organisation formed by peace groups from western and Non-Aligned Movement, non-aligned nations in 1963. As a result of confrontation between western and Soviet delegates at the 1962 W ...

, resigning as General Secretary of CND in 1967. She resigned from the Labour Party on 10 May that year over

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Harold Wilson's diplomatic support for the United States in the

Vietnam war The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

and refusal to condemn the Greek dictatorship of "the Colonels". She subsequently wrote her memoirs, ''Left, Left, Left'' ( Allison & Busby, 1971). Duff also edited and wrote part of ''War or Peace in the Middle East?'' (1978), in which she argued for "no more blank cheques for Israel". She died of

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or ...

University College Hospital University College Hospital (UCH) is a teaching hospital in the Fitzrovia area of the London Borough of Camden, England. The hospital, which was founded as the North London Hospital in 1834, is closely associated with University College Lon ...

, aged 71, and was buried at Hampstead Cemetery.

Legacy

called Duff "one of those heroes who is completely unknown, because she did too much," and stated that "she should have won the

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolo ...

about twenty times." He described her as a "leading figure", in both the CND and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Peggy Duff 1910-1981 First General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and local councillor lived here

Peggy Duff 1910-1981 First General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and local councillor lived here

Camden London Borough Council erected a blue plaque at 11 Albert Street, Camden Town, London, in tribute to her, reading: "Peggy Duff, 1910 – 1981, first General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and local councillor, lived here.""Plaque: Peggy Duff"
London Remembers.

References