Frances Vigay

Business activities In 2015 Vigay founded "Wild Thyme Wholefoods" in Southsea on the south coast of England. The company, which functioned as a workers' cooperative, was named Green Business of the Year by the Portsmouth News in 2018. However, it was forced to close in 2022 because of rising costs, such as higher energy bills. Vigay also noted that the cooperative had fallen victim to the rising popularity of vegan diets, which meant that customers could increasingly find what they needed in supermarkets, without having to seek out specialist shops.

Greenham Common The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was established in September 1981 to protest about the planned installation of missiles at RAF Greenham Common, near Newbury, Berkshire in England. The missiles arrived in 1983 and were removed in 1991 but some protestors stayed at the camp until 2000, turning their attention to nearby bases. In August 1993 some of these protestors decided to take action at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston on the anniversaries of the American Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945. The protestors cut the inner and outer fences at Aldermaston, and Vigay and seven other women from the Greenham Camp, Rosy Bremer, Sarah Hipperson, Katrina Howse, Aniko Jones, Jean Hutchinson, Mary Millington, and Peggy Walford, together with one woman who was visiting the camp, entered the establishment. They were arrested and charged under the Criminal Damage Act 1971. They did not appear in the magistrates’ court until February 1994. In the court a witness called for the defence, who gave evidence on the levels of plutonium from the establishment at Aldermaston, was not allowed to give his evidence in public.

The women were all found guilty and given a two-year conditional discharge. They decided to appeal at the Crown Court in Reading, but as, by this time, the number of women at the peace camp was very small and there was a possibility that they would be sent to prison, Jones and Howse, agreed to accept the verdict and return to the camp. The appeal did not take place for another 17 months, being held in July 1995. The case lasted ten days, with the women arguing that the weapons establishment was preparing for an act of genocide and that it produced radioactive contamination. The women claimed that this gave them a “lawful excuse” for their actions. Vigay argued before the court that while, perhaps, scientists at the establishment were able to separate their work from its implications, “I cannot turn off and live with it. Therefore, I have a responsibility to act and to face the unthinkable. It is harder to live with these weapons than to oppose them.” The women lost their case and a year later five, including Vigay, appealed to the High Court, which concluded that the production of nuclear weapons was as a deterrent and thus was not unlawful, that their production did not amount to the crime of genocide, nor conspiracy to commit genocide.