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An Oral History Interview with Eileen Daffern

Brighton Peace Campaigner

By Roslyn Cook

Eileen Daffern, born on New Years Day 1914, has lived in Brighton since 1960 and has spent over fifty years actively campaigning for peace and nuclear disarmament. She reflects on the origins of her beliefs, and how her political ideas developed gradually as she experienced life working in the "colonies" in the 1930s. Already radicalised by the second world war, it was the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 that caused her to become a nuclear pacifist.

Growing Up in Yorkshire after WW1

Eileen looks back on her childhood influences and how she came to work for peace

School and University

The first girl from the village to attend grammar school goes on to university

1934 -1945 Work, Travel and WW2

Eileen describes her gradual political awakening, how the war radicalised her and how Hiroshima made her a nuclear pacifist

1945-1960 Hiroshima's Impact and the Politics of Peace

Eileen reads from newspapers of the day and describes life in postwar USA and her activism in Canada before moving to Brighton in 1960