Diane Munday

Diane Munday (née Schieferstein: born March 1931) is a British political activist who, as a leading member of the

With the ascent of the Labour government in 1964 and the appointment of Harold Wilson as the Prime Minister, the ALRA sent a delegation to Frank Soskice, the new Home Secretary, requesting a change to the abortion law. However, at the time, the Labour Party was not at all unanimously supportive of abortion (not least because a significant element of Labour's voter base in urban areas were working-class Catholic Irish diaspora who were strongly opposed to it, aside from a general taboo against abortion in society already) and the ALRA was told that this was a highly sensitive issue and that as there was no significant public demand, the government would not address it.^[2] Munday was told that the proposition was “too middle-class Hampstead” and that she had to prove demand from ordinary women.^[4] Thus, the ALRA decided to ramp up their campaign to manufacture a consensus and Munday personally targeted women's organisations, particularly "respectable" ones such as the National Council of Women of Great Britain (known to be fairly socially conservative) and over the space of a few years, Munday trained a network of women to address such meetings, which grew larger and larger, cluminating in a meeting at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.^[2]

The specific aim of the ALRA was to encourage the general public to lobby Members of Parliament to table an

The ALRA maintained some sympathisers within the Labour Party and thought they had a breakthrough in 1965 when Lord Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin agreed to table a private member's bill after a meeting with Munday, Vera Houghton, Glanville Williams and David Paintin. Silkin's proposals were more modest than the ALRA's full agenda, mainly being aimed at legal protection for doctors, extending abortion to victims of sexual assault and also excluding Northern Ireland from being included. Silkin's Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bills were debated, with Lord Dilhorne, Lord Denning and Lord Stonham, participating in the debate, questioning elements. The bill fell as the Wilson government, who had been elected with a tiny majority in 1964 called a snap election in 1966 and won in a landslide victory. In any case, there had been some disagreements between ALRA and Silkin about the scope of the bill, but they were confident of his support for a future bill and that their case was now growing. After preparing a second bill, Silkin agreed to step aside for Steel's private member bill instead.^[11]

A working party for the Bill was drawn up including Munday, Vera Houghton,

Munday became the General Secretary of ALRA from 1970 and in 1974 she became a founding member, press and publicity officer for Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Service (later the British Pregnancy Advisory Service).^[6]

Munday has had a longterm involvement with the

Munday has also been involved in lobbying in favour of voluntary euthanasia (and assisted suicide), being a "carer" for three people who wish to undergo euthanasia. She was involved in the Diane Pretty case, arguing against the result of the Pretty v United Kingdom case under the European Court of Human Rights which decided that the European Convention on Human Rights did not provide a "right to die" and that her husband could not hope to escape prosecution if he "assisted" in her death. Munday argued: "It is now legal to commit suicide in the UK: it is illegal to discriminate against the disabled. But in this scenario a person who is prevented from taking their own life as a direct consequence of their disability is clearly discriminated against in a most fundamental way."^[1]

Filmography

• Abortion on Trial (2017)

References

Footnotes