My friend Sheila MacKay, who has died aged 75, was a community worker, an educator and a lifelong activist for peace and justice. She spent her life exploring what it means to tackle inequality by working within groups where people supported one another. She was also immense fun.
With her lifelong partner, Margaret Bremner, Sheila was in 1984 one of the founder members of the Gareloch Horts, a women’s nonviolent direct-action group that, more than 40 years on, is still protesting against the UK’s nuclear weapons. She took part in many eye-catching actions at the nuclear bases at Faslane, Coulport and Greenham, at international arms fairs and at the parliament buildings in Scotland and London, for which she was arrested many times.
