Lizi Jamal

I was just thinking first of all uh about how my parents considered me rebellious. My Mother oh one of the memories she often says about me and she says to people about her rebellious daughter and her feminist daughter is um when I was in church one day I um said why do we sing hymns and not hers. So that’s my first memory of um being aware of the language that we um probably and that’s probably I don’t know- five six years old I was then and um and I have always been told that I am rebellious because I didn’t conform.

0:51 I didn’t stay at Greenham-. I… I felt well because I had three children um um so I didn’t… didn’t stay there so I just used to go on the (breaths in) there was support there were days that were organised where there mass.. mass um tut um gatherings of women to surround the base.

We were blockading this um this bus to stop workers and servicemen going onto the site and um I.. that was my first experience of direct action and just lying down all together and I remember the song we just sang… we just sang “just old and strong we go on and on and on just like a mountain, you can’t kill the spirit”. Sings: “You can’t kill the spirit, it is like a mountain, old and strong we go on and on and on. You can’t kill the spirit, it is like a mountain”.
So we are all singing that song- together and we are surrounded by police um and then they started lifting us out pulling us dragging us out.. pulling us out and we had been told to be just like to be heavy eee and its- its- its very frightening it’s very frightening and um and at the same time the feeling of.. being together and strength of the singing all together and yes that was my first experience.

Recorded 08.10.2018 by Carmen Talbot

Transcribed by Elizabeth Strange.