BETTY TEBBS and I met at a CPGB conference in the late ’70s. We were active together in the CPGB, New Communist Party, peace movement and National Assembly of Women.

We travelled up and down the country to meetings and events, Betty at the wheel. I always laughed when she was being cut up on the motorway by a couple of very large lorries and she would stick two fingers up to the drivers through the window.

If they saw this diminutive figure they would have been amazed at how feisty she was.

But her driving got us to Greenham Common in her camper van, where we stayed for a while making friends with women from around the world.

I always enjoyed watching young women meet her for the first time and very soon be stunned by her experiences of campaigning, nationally and internationally.

She had no fear of powerful people who she believed prevented us from changing the world in the interests of working people.

This was expressed when she and two other women from the Women’s International Democratic Federation met the Russian and US teams who were supposedly negotiating on nuclear weapons in Geneva.

She asked the Americans why they wouldn’t sign a “no-first-strike” treaty. The senior negotiator said they didn’t need to because they wouldn’t use the weapons first, to which she replied: “Well you bloody well have haven’t you!”

Her courage and determination never to give up knew no bounds, visible to all who listened to her speak at the Unite/Daily Mirror fringe meeting at Labour Party conference in Liverpool a few months ago.

Betty said: “We must get rid of Trident, we must have peace and socialism and we can’t have one without the other, we need it now and it’s up to us to do it.”