Sheila May Skinner
Peace Campaigner
As a teenager Sheila May Chisholm worked in a Red Cross Post during the Hull Blitz in 1941, until she was old enough to join the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRENS) where she trained as an Armourer.
Sheila came to Scotland during the war where she met and married a Scot and settled in the Lothians. She had studied at Hull School of Art and was a frequent contributor to the Royal Scottish Academy and Scottish Society of Women Artists (RSA and SSWA) Annual Exhibitions.
In the 1970s she developed puppet workshops which were very popular with play schemes and arts festivals and led to her being employed by Lothian Region as a puppetry instructor in primary schools.
Becoming a grandmother in 1976 made her passionate in wanting to hand on a planet that was more peaceful and just than the world of her childhood. She felt she had a duty to right some of the wrongs that she felt existed at that time. She became involved with the Charter 88 Democracy Movement, a pressure group which advocated constitutional and electoral reform.
Sharing a birthday with Hiroshima Day was a constant reminder to her of the evils of nuclear weapons, and influenced her support of the Campaigns for Nuclear Disarmament and Against the Arms Trade (CND and CAAT).
Sheila stepped up her campaigning in her 70s when she concentrated on using her sewing skills to make banners for many organisations in the Edinburgh Area. These included CND, CAAT, Peace and Justice, Women in Black, the Green Party and other groups drawing attention to injustice across the world.
Her banners have been at many protest marches, including the G8 in Florence, and she made one to go across the Edinburgh Bypass to let motorists know that nuclear convoys heading to the naval base at Faslane on the Gare Loch were also using the road.
Into her 80s when no longer able to take part she would be seen on her stool, holding an appropriate banner, in Edinburgh outside the Scottish Parliament, on Princes Street, at BAE Systems (the world’s third largest arms producer) on Ferry Road, as well as at Faslane, often at the start or end of a march giving support and encouragement.
In 2015 in her 90th year, Sheila retired from campaigning.
Margaret Ferguson Burns
Sources:
Jenny Wilson (Sheila’s daughter). Interview 2014
Allen, Tom. Edinburgh protesters sidestepped by David Cameron at Scottish Parliament. In The Guardian 14 May 2010
BBC Culture Café Sheila Skinner with Claire English. Radio Interview 13 December 2011.bbc.co.uk/programmes
BAE Systems. In Campaign Against Arms Trade website: www.caat.org.uk.
