MAW’s 2024 Remembrance Lecture was delivered on 10/11/2024 by Professor Mererid Hopwood
“Imagining Peace: Taking inspiration from the 1923–24 Welsh Women’s Peace Petition.”
To view Mererid’s inspirational talk, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgNSkZc7eus
Each year, the Movement for the Abolition of War invites an expert to give the Remembrance Lecture, and in 2024 we are looking forward to hearing from Prof Mererid Hopwood. As well as being one of MAW’s Vice Presidents, she has the honour of being Archdruid of the National Eisteddfod of Wales, and is Secretary of Academi Heddwch Cymru, Wales’s national peace institute. She is a poet, translator and academic who leads the Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University. She has won several awards for her literary works and has published many books and articles in Welsh and other languages.
Mererid has recently co-edited ‘The Appeal 1923-24: The Remarkable story of the Welsh Women’s Peace Petition’. (available here: https://siop.llyfrgell.cymru/en/products/the-appeal-1923-24-the-remarkable-story-of-the-welsh-womens-peace-petition-edited-by-jenny-mathers-mererid-hopwood )
In 1923, the women of Wales took part in an unprecedented appeal: 390,296 women, representing 30% of the nation’s female population at the time, signed a peace petition calling on the United States to join and lead the League of Nations.
The campaign represented a bold movement to champion equality through elevating the voices of women to the international stage. Now, a century later, volunteers and community groups in Wales have unearthed this inspiring tale of peace and women’s empowerment.
The peace movement among the women of Wales grew from the ashes of the First World War. Organised through the Welsh League of Nations Union, the petition appealed to the women of America: “We long for the day when the affairs of Nations shall be subject no longer to the verdict of the sword. And we feel that the dawn of the peace which shall endure would be hastened were it possible for America to take her place in the Council of the league of nations.”
