Papers of Mary Ringsleben Relating to the Committee of 100

Archive reference: Cwl MRL

One of the group of Commonweal Archives which give an incredibly rich and detailed picture of non-violent direct action movements in the early 1960s.

Mary Ringsleben and the Committee

Mary Ringsleben was an original signatory of the Committee of 100. 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. It aimed to use non violent direct action on a mass scale, something its predecessor the Direct Action Committee (DAC) had never managed to sustain. Bertrand Russell resigned as president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to take on the presidency of the Committee of 100 and Reverend Michael Scott became chairman.

Mary Ringsleben, based in Leeds, was an organiser of the Northern Direct Action Committee, alongside Francis Deutsch in Hull. Along with other DAC activists like Michael Randle and April Carter, she joined the Committee of 100. In late 1961, she 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. However, she resigned from the Committee in March 1962, along with fellow activists from her DAC days, Pat Arrowsmith and Wendy Butlin, and four others, in protest against the dissolution of the original Committee of 100 and its reorganisation on a decentralised basis. All rapidly rejoined.

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.

The Archive

These papers were given to Andrew Skelhorn by Mary Ringsleben, during his PhD research at the University of Lancaster, and by him to Commonweal.

This is a small archive which comprises a series of files of Committee of 100 papers, arranged chronologically and covering the entire history of the Committee. Each file contains a mixture of meeting minutes, circulars, reports, policy and discussion documents, leaflets and correspondence. The files reflect Mary Ringsleben's activities and interests within the Committee, including her involvement in the trade union/industrial subcommittee.

The Archive was catalogued as part of the PaxCat Project, with support from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives.