Too Bad I Didn't Take Notes: The Autobiography of Edith Ballantyne

This note describes a book project that Edith Ballantyne and Felicity Hill are undertaking to document five significant movements of the 20th century through the eyes, work and experience of Edith Ballantyne and her work in WILPF. This note also requests your input for this project, and invites the WILPF IEC to view this work as one of the many initiatives that contribute towards preparations for WILPF’s 100th anniversary.

Greetings to WILPFers at the 2006 IEC in London!

Edith Ballantyne will be 84 on Human Rights Day in 2006. She has been approached on a number of occasions to share the knowledge and experience she has gained through her political activities, especially around the United Nations over the past forty years. However, not until recently have circumstances allowed her to take the necessary time for reflection, research and consultation to undertake such a task.

The time is now ripe for her story to be taped, filmed, transcribed and written, which is what is happening while the WILPF IEC meets in London.

Because Edith does not see her life as separate from the movements in which she participated, she has chosen five areas as prisms through which to view her work in significant struggles: a) peace and disarmament b) the status of women c) defeating Apartheid and defending the rights of d) Palestinians and e) Indigenous Peoples.

Any story of Edith’s is also a story of the United Nations and multilateralism, so this work will identify trends and possibilities for democratizing global governance and achieving the goals of the United Nations Charter, because these were the overarching goals of Edith's life and has remained a strong WILPF focus since its inception.

Through this work, we hope to stimulate interest, interaction and discussion about WILPF towards our 100th Anniversary. The outcome will be presented in a multi-media form, including a book, web archive and video. These political resources will be of interest and use to WILPF members, NGO activists, diplomats, UN officials, students and historians.

The one paragraph summary of Edith’s fascinating life! Born Edith Meuller in Bohemia to socialist anti-fascist parents of the German minority, her family were forced to flee Hitler's Sudentenland in 1938. On the day she left, Edith was intercepted by her mother and aunt on her way home from school, she turned around and went back to the railway station bound for makeshift arrangements in Pilsen, then London and on to farm the edge of Canada's western railroad. After farming life proved impossible to sustain, the family found its way to Toronto where Edith worked as a charwomen and was there discovered by WILPF activists who were working to expose the practice of wealthy Torontans exploiting the labour of WWII immigrants. The WILPF women taught her English and helped her generally to know and assert her rights. Edith later moved to Montreal, married Cam Ballantyne, and with him moved to Geneva in 1948. They had four children. After a brief stint working for the World Health Organization (WHO) as a subeditor on official records, and the monthly WHO Chronicle, Edith reunited with WILPF, discovering its headquarters in Geneva almost by accident. She went on to lead the organization for twenty-three years from 1969 as Secretary General and then served six years as its President and continues her activities in WILPF.

You are invited to participate!

WILPFers gathered at the IEC – and all WILPF members who have known her – are part of Edith’s story because you were also part of the movements for social change against Apartheid, for peace and disarmament and the rights of women, Indigenous Peoples and Palestinians.

We would truly appreciate any written contributions, documents, photos or other materials that could help us document the life of this remarkable woman!

Could you write a page, a few paragraphs, some impressions, a story, an anecdote, a fleeting memory about Edith? Do you have contacts with others that you feel could assist us capture her story? Can you involve your branches and sections in taped discussions, or a circular letter that people add impressions to as it is sent by post or email?

Any of these would help us enormously as we begin this project that spans decades and events!

Please send your input to:

EdithHistory@gmail.com or by post c/o Ballantyne, 7 ave de Secheron, 1202, Geneva Switzerland

Our timeline

Throughout the 2006 summer period - Felicity and Edith have been working intensively, going through all of Edith’s papers and floppy discs, video taping over 30 hours of memories, and going through the 114 microfiche reels of WILPF’s papers held in the UN library. We have also been liaising with our most helpful archive in Boulder, at the University of Colorado.

From October 2006 – April 2007, Felicity will return to Australia, and has organized her new job so that she can work one day per week on the project. During this period we will liaise with publishers (we have already met with Zed Press in London!), and will also undertake fundraising efforts to enable several trips to significant places in Edith’s life, and so we can convene some gatherings of Edith’s peers.

From May 2007 – until it is finished, Felicity will move back to Geneva and work full time on the project. During May on the margins of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in Geneva, we will bring together some of the Indigenous People’s with whom Edith has worked.

June and July 2007 - Edith has never visited the free South Africa, and will visit the numerous colleagues from the anti-Apartheid movement now retired in the Capetown and Johannesburg area, and also those in government in Pretoria.

August 2007 – on the margins of the annual conference in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to mark the atomic bombings, we intend to convene a small group of Edith’s peers to reminisce about the movement for nuclear disarmament.

September – December 2007 – writing and consolidating material gathered at the three gatherings and elsewhere.

January/February 2008 - We have been invited to go on the Peace Boat to conduct some lectures and concentrate on writing, on our way to the Middle East where another consultation will be held, possibly in Egypt as it offers a neutral place to which all players from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria can travel. Also, Edith was one of two NGOs invited to address a peace conference by Egypt’s First Lady, Susanne Mubarak, indicating that she is welcome there.

March 2008 – Consultation on the women’s movement on margins of the annual Commission on the Status of Women in New York.

April – September 2008 - The final six month period will entail writing, transcribing interviews and debates for the website, scanning photos and documents, the editing of film, fact-checking and further interviews. The history as constructed will be sent to a wide range of WILPFers, non-governmental players and others that have been consulted by mail and email for comments.