Anne Kerr (1925 - 1973)
Anne Kerr's adult life was defined by war, and her personal,
religious and political response to it. After leaving college
in 1942, she volunteered for the Women's Royal Naval
Service and was based at various ports on the south
coast. During this period she met her first husband, James
Clark, with whom she had a son, Patrick. Returning to London
after the end of the war, she worked as an actress and in
broadcasting, before entering politics locally in
Putney. She built her political career and reputation
within the British peace movement, during a period defined by
opposition to nuclear weapons and by the Vietnam War.
She died of alcoholic poisoning in 1973, the year that a cease-fire
was declared in Vietnam and a peace settlement agreed. She
was 48 years old.
Poster for anti-Vietnam War
demonstration on 21 October [1967] [DYO/12/102]
'It is about time that you had a woman to represent your
constituency in Parliament - not in North Vietnam' - Sir John
Rodgers, Conservative MP for Sevenoaks, 1967
From a Methodist family, Anne Kerr's political life
was rooted in her Christian faith. This is revealed by her
early involvement in the radical pressure group Christian
Action, established by Canon John Collins in 1946. Christian
Action worked for reconciliation with Germany, provided
humanitarian relief to the starving in post war Europe, and
later, opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa. Kerr sat
on the council of Christian Action from the 1950s onwards.
She took part in a tour of Eastern Europe in this capacity in
autumn 1956, witnessing the Poznan Trials and the political
pressures within the Soviet bloc which exploded in Hungary only
weeks after she returned home.
During the same period she was also active in the campaign
for the abolition of the death penalty in Britain, which gathered
momentum after a number of controversial executions, including that
of Derek Bentley in 1953. A mass rally to launch the National
Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment was held at
Methodist Central Hall in 1955. As a Labour councillor and later, a
Labour MP, Kerr continued to be involved both with the Bentley case
and the wider movement, until abolition was enacted by the Wilson
government in 1965.
CND March, 6 April 1958 [copyright Getty Images] - this
was the first Aldermaston march
In 1958, she followed Canon Collins into the newly formed
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, of which he was the first
chair. Kerr gained much publicity for herself and the
movement by her readiness to speak at public meetings and to take
part in the early Aldermaston marches, which also began in
1958. In the early 1960s, she became a member of the
non-violent direction action group, the Committee of 100, led by
Bertrand Russell. This group used more radical methods of
campaigning against nuclear weapons, including a number of mass
sit-downs. Kerr was amongst those arrested and briefly
imprisoned before the most significant of these, planned to take
place on 17 September 1961 in Trafalgar Square.
Anne Kerr entered parliament in the period between the Gulf of
Tonkin incident in August 1964 and the implementation of operation
'Rolling Thunder', the sustained bombing of North Vietnam by the
United States in late February 1965. She moved away from the
unilateralist position which prioritised the abolition of
nuclear weapons and recognised the Vietnam War as a greater and
more immediate threat to global stability. She
addressed the first public demonstration of opposition to
American intervention, held in Trafalgar Square in April 1965,
and helped to develop a specifically anti-Vietnam War movement
out of the existing network of peace groups. She worked
closely with the British Council for Peace in Vietnam and Medical
Aid for Vietnam, and chaired the British Liaison Committee for
Women's Peace Groups.
'No to war', 19 February 1968
[copyright Getty Images] -
women marching on Downing Street in protest against the
Vietnam War
Her relationship with the Labour Party in government became
increasingly ambivalent as the decade progressed and many of her
aspirations failed to be realised. As a member of the Tribune
Group, she aligned herself on the left of the party (with her
second husband, Russell Kerr MP), and was periodically opposed to
the government on major issues, such as prices and incomes policy,
Rhodesia, the Commonwealth Immigration Act, the annual defence
estimates and the white paper, 'In place of strife'. Kerr
regularly attended conferences abroad on themes of peace,
disarmament and the Vietnam War, a fact that did not go unnoticed
by an unfavourable local press and which led to comment from her
political opponents that she was neglecting her Kent
constituency.
Her traumatic experiences during the
Democratic Convention in Chicago in August 1968, when she was
caught up in violent confrontation between the police and anti-war
demonstrators, received extensive publicity in the British and
North American press. By the time she lost her seat in the
1970 general election, she had been campaigning against the war for
over 5 years. No longer in parliament, she turned away
from the anti-war movement and set up her own pressure group, Women
Against the Common Market, to raise 'the issue of the shopping
basket'. This depended for its impact on liaison with
other anti-Common Market organisations and never attained
widespread support.
Biography
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Photograph of Anne Kerr
on an anti-Vietnam War
demonstration, 15 November
1969 [DMK/1/224]
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Born in Putney, 1925
Member of Christian Action, the Christian Socialist
Movement, the Methodist Peace Fellowship and the
Fellowship for Reconciliation
Founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1958
Labour councillor for Putney, London County Council,
1958-1965
Founder member of the Committee of 100, 1960
Labour Member of Parliament for Rochester and Chatham,
1964-1970
Member of the Tribune Group of Labour MPs and signatory of the
Socialist Charter, 1968
Chair of the British Liaison Committee for Women's Peace
Groups
Founder of Women Against the Common Market, 1970