Committee of 100; Mary Ringsleben

Mary Ringsleben was an original signatory of the Committee of 100, which was founded on the initiative of Ralph Schoenman and Bertrand Russell in October 1960. The Committee called for a mass movement of civil disobedience against British government policy on nuclear weapons. Its members saw a need for more radical methods than those used by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, especially following the defeat of the Labour Party in the 1959 general election. In this sense, the Committee of 100 was the successor of the Direct Action Committee, which disbanded in June 1961 after the Holy Loch demonstration. The Committee of 100 aimed to use non violent direct action on a mass scale, something the DAC had never managed to sustain. Bertrand Russell resigned as president of CND to take on the presidency of the Committee of 100 and Rev. Michael Scott became chairman.

Many leading DAC activists joined the Committee of 100, including Michael Randle, who returned from Ghana to become its first secretary, and April Carter, who sat with Randle on the working group. Mary Ringsleben was another of these. Based in Leeds, she was an organiser of the Northern Direct Action Committee, alongside Francis Deutsch in Hull. The Northern DAC was important for the successful demonstration at RAF Finningley V-bomber base near Doncaster which it organised in July 1960. Combining a vigil at the base with a 10-mile walk from Finningley to Doncaster, the demonstration received an unusually high level of support from the local CND group, trade unionists and labour activists, and local church ministers.

The Committee of 100 did not share the DAC's Gandhian commitment to using non violent methods to achieve a non violent society. Its focus was limited to achieving British unilateral nuclear disarmament, as described in its manifesto by Russell and Scott, 'Act or perish'. Its early campaign tactic was to organise sit-down demonstrations and these were not to be undertaken without at least 2000 volunteers pledging to take part. The first of these sit-downs took place on 18 February 1961 outside the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. The high point of the Committee came on the weekend of 16-17 September 1961, with successful demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and at the Holy Loch Polaris submarine base. These were preceded by the arrest and trial of 32 members of the Committee for incitement to breach the peace.

Mary Ringsleben resigned from the Committee in March 1962, along with fellow activists from her DAC days, Pat Arrowsmith and Wendy Butlin, and four others. This was in protest against the dissolution of the original Committee of 100 and its reorganisation on a decentralised basis. All rapidly rejoined. Under this new structure, 13 regional committees became responsible for organising demonstrations, with the National Committee limited to a co-ordinating role. Of the regional committees, the London Committee of 100 was the most active and influential. A national magazine was launched by the London Committee in April 1963, published under the name Resistance from January 1964.

A number of subcommittees and groups concentrated on specific campaigns or organisational work. Mary joined the trade union/industrial subcommittee in late 1961, along with Douglas Brewood junior, Pat Arrowsmith and Inez Randall, all of whom had experience of the DAC's industrial campaign. As a leading member of the North East Committee of 100, Mary planned an occupation of Town Hall Square in Bradford in July 1962 by demonstrators acting as casualties of a nuclear attack. However activity in the region was dormant by the end of the year, reflecting the loss of momentum in the Committee of 100 and the nuclear disarmament movement as a whole.

Mary continued to be involved with the Committee of 100 until it was finally wound up in 1968. However there is no evidence in the archives indicating whether she was directly involved in any of its main activities after 1962. These included the Spies for Peace operation during 1963, and various marches and demonstrations organised under the ad hoc Save Greece Now committee, from 1963 through to the invasion of the Greek Embassy on 2 April 1967. The political initiative had passed to the anti-Vietnam War movement and nuclear disarmament shifted down the political agenda.

From the guide to the Papers of Mary Ringsleben relating to the Committee of 100, 1960-1968, (University of Bradford)