Not everyone develops their undying love of music sitting under the family’s mahogany dining table during air raids.  Not everyone goes on to become an indefatigable peace campaigner, marching against nuclear weapons, the Iraq wars and Israel’s attacks on Gaza at the age of 103.  Hetty Bower is not everyone.

Hetty was born in Dalston, London in 1905. During World War I air raids, the voice of Caruso singing arias from Pagliacci rang out from the giant horn of the ‘His Master’s Voice’ gramophone to drown the noise of anti-aircraft guns. Sometimes the family sheltering beneath the solid table sang along.  Hetty’s eldest sister – a strong influence later, introduced symphonies into the musical mix.  Hetty was hooked.

Although their radical Liberal father, an orthodox Jew, approved of votes for women, he felt women shouldn’t interfere in politics. So Hetty’s sister used to go secretly to suffragette meetings at Toynbee Hall and then tell Hetty about them.

In 1922 Hetty was taken to Queen’s Hall to hear Fenner Brockway announce the General Election results publicly as they came in over the telephone.  Three working-class Clydesiders, Jimmy Maxton, David Kirkwood and John Wheatley entered Parliament to become part of the first Labour minority government of 1924.  Hetty joined the Labour Party in 1923 and the Independent Labour Party in 1924.  On a 1927 trip to Bradford to stay with the Betts family, who they had met at an Independent Labour Party summer camp, she got to know the daughter Barbara, later Barbara Castle. It was through the Labour Party that Hetty met her husband, Reg Bower, with whom she shared over seventy happy years.

For Hetty the myth of ‘our brave boys’ going off to fight the enemy was quickly dispelled when she saw disabled and limbless servicemen returning during World War I.  She had met people who were committed to not killing and seen how badly conscientious objectors were treated in 1918.  She became and remained a pacifist.

In the period leading up to Word War II Hetty worked for Kino Film, a progressive film documentary production company.  In 1940 her father gave the lie to what we would now call ‘spin-doctors’, the pro-war propagandists trying to frighten the British public into supporting war by telling horror-stories of Germans cutting off the hands of Belgian children.

During the war, with two young daughters to care for, she volunteered to help at the offices of the Czech Refugee Trust Fund and subsequently ended up running a Czech Refugee Hostel in North London for Trade Unionists, Socialists, Communists, Jews and anyone else they could get out of Czechoslovakia during that period.  She is still in contact with some of the refugees and some of the children born in the hostel.  One went on to become Czech ambassador to Britain, still lives close by and is in regular contact with her.

After the war, wanting a job to fit in with her children’s school hours, Hetty applied to become a teacher.  She was rejected on the grounds of hearing difficulties but has always believed the real reason was her fervent support for the progressive education both her daughters enjoyed.  Instead she became a school secretary and a passionate advocate of music in schools.
When CND was founded in 1957 it was inevitable that Hetty would join.  Less inevitable was that more than 50 years later she would still be supporting it just as actively, usually accompanied by her daughters Celia and Margaret.  She continues to walk, to adore music and to live her life as an advocate for peace.