ANNA MENDLESON HAS DIED

This is a very sad post for me to make on a political one. Stuart Christie has let Ian Bone know Anna died on November 15th after a long illness and her funeral took place with her two daughters and a few friends in Cambridge on November 20th. Anna was of course one of the 4 sentenced to 10 years for the Angry Brigade actions in 1972. After release from jail she gained acclaim for her poetry writing under the name Grace Lake.

‘Vapour trails tracing back to the summer of ‘72 when Hilary Creek and Anna Mendleson – one quarter of the Stoke Newington Eight – had been bailed for a last glance of freedom for a decade to a blissful Gower summer. Doomed women facing a life stretch hugging naked on Oxwich beach,kissflicking under broody Swansea rainstorms,waiting for the turnkey’s chastity belts. An intensity of repressed desire. Visitors and more visitors from London. Ian Purdie, Darcus Howe,World in Action – lolloping with wine bottles and dancing among the depositions at Three Cliffs Bay. The ever lightening summer nights as they weaved homewards down the Pennard Castle valley clutching their late night supplies from the Parkmill Happy Shopper. A last sumer idyll before the storm would break about their heads.Suspended time, cancer terrorists in remission. Pulses racing as they scrabbled home among the reedy streams and distant headlight beams. Fireflies dancing in the smoke at Rhossili and time closing in with the tide’

Thanks Anna - You made some fucking noise -’IF YOU WANT PEACE PREPARE FOR WAR’