Janet Bloomfield, 10 October 1953 – 2 April 2007
We at ORG are sad to announce the sudden and untimely death of our friend and colleague, Janet Bloomfield, from a short and unexpected illness on 2 April. Janet had worked with ORG for over ten years, supporting and developing our nuclear programme, and providing inspiration and guidance for all our work from the basis of her creative vision of peace, and her sense of service drawn from her Quaker faith and practice. In mid-March Janet had played a core role as participant and facilitator at our Charney Manor consultation, where international diplomats, academics and British politicians came together to share their perspectives on the true causes of nuclear proliferation, and look for ways to mitigate them. Only the week before she died, on Tuesday 27 March, Janet was a vibrant contributor to our Networking and Briefing Meeting at Development House, where our new report was launched on the security dangers of a nuclear power renaissance. Janet seemed to be at the height of her powers. Janet was not a prolific writer, preferring to work through personal contact and the many talks she gave both in the UK and abroad (she was listed as an expert speaker by the UN). However, she did write three things with ORG’s encouragement during her last years. The first of these was a briefing paper on Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, for a joint BASIC/ORG project in 2005. The second was an unpublished discussion paper on Making Peace and Security NGOs More Effective, written in January 2006 but published here for the first time. The third, published just three months before her death, was a paper on The Future of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. It was one of Janet’s moments of creative generosity which, about two years ago, led us down the intellectual path which resulted in perhaps our most important publication to date, Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World, published by Random House on 11 April, which has received unparalleled worldwide media coverage for any ORG publication. We know that Janet was immensely proud of this piece of work, and believed it could have a profound effect. Future editions will be dedicated to her memory. As many people will be aware, Janet had been active in the movement to rid the world of nuclear weapons since 1981. During 1993-96 she was Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the largest peace and disarmament organisation in Europe. She continued to serve as an honorary Vice-President of CND, and was also a member of the Peace Campaigning and Networking Group of Quaker Peace and Social Witness. Internationally, she consulted with the Geneva-based International Peace Bureau (of which she was Vice-President from 1994-97), a Nobel Peace Prize winning network of non-aligned peace organisations in 44 countries, which nominated Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat for the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize. She has been involved with Abolition 2000, a global network of over 2000 citizen groups working for a nuclear free world, since its inception in 1995, and sat on its administrative council, as well as having been convenor of its Abolition Now! campaign working group from 2004-06. She was also a Fellow of the British American Project. At the time of her death, Janet was pushing forward with enormous energy and positivity on her multiple plans. With ORG she was about to co-edit a new edition of our Dialogue Handbook and was finalising plans with us to run a Dialogue Training Workshop in London in June. Most importantly, she was on a wave of exciting new projects with Atomic Mirror, the trans-Atlantic NGO she co-founded with her colleague Pamela Meidell, which uses the creative arts to raise awareness of nuclear dangers. Janet’s deep knowledge and wisdom extended far beyond peace and security to art, literature, history and matters spiritual. She carried her wisdom unassumingly with humility and a sense of service. Above all, and however dire the circumstances, she always sought, and promoted, signs of hope. Oxford Research Group, 13 April 2007 |
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