Cllr. Desna Allen

Transcript by Jayde Stevenson

My Grandfather firmly believed there was no place for a woman with education because she will only get married. Unfortunately, he communicated this to my mother who, uh, would refuse to allow me to stay on at school after the age of 15- I had to go out to work.

I was… a little bit bored with the level of conversation I was getting from clients, uh, you know… basically ‘have you got your washing?’ and ‘is it raining?’ – not very interesting, so I then joined a local women’s group – Chippenham Homemakers, and uh, within a year became the chairman of that group.

And they were affiliated with the Women’s Gas Federation, which is a now a defunct body- they finished in 1993 but they were very powerful in influencing- rather like the WWI does- they were a voice for influence, and I used to go to conferences- I got a bursary to go to, um, Durham to the university, uh… for a week where we had uh, Sherry Williams, Dame Barbara Castle, various uh powerful women talking to us… and energising us really- motivating us. 

And uh… I carried on with that group until somebody persuaded me to become a school governor and following that, a two stand for elections local council. So, I… I’ve always felt that people wanted my opinion, and they do get it (laughs). 

Well, I certainly got in conjunction with, uh, my colleague from Calne when we were both Mayer of our towns, I got the speed limit reduced on the A4 at Pewsham which some people didn’t like, but it has reduced the number of accidents quite considerably and I was very proud of that. Well, we did uh several publicity drives and were photographed with getting petitions together and people to sign and motivating them and uh… it happened so that was good.