Helen Steven

Helen Steven (19 October 1942 – 12 April 2016) was a Scottish Quaker peace activist and one of the founders of the Scottish Centre for Nonviolence. Her opposition to the nuclear submarine base in Scotland was recognised with the Gandhi International Peace Award in 2004.

Life Steven was educated at Laurel Bank School and at the University of Glasgow, and worked for several years as a history teacher.

With her partner Ellen Moxley, she founded Peace House in Braco, Perthshire in 1985, providing training in peace, justice and nonviolent direct action. Steven later helped to establish the Scottish Centre for Nonviolence in 1999 in Dunblane. The Centre closed in 2007, but during that time Steven was able to develop a non-violence module for a masters degree that was accredited by the Open University.

In 1984, after being arrested for taking part in a nonviolent demonstration at the Faslane nuclear base, Steven said in her defence statement: "If I see that base at Faslane as morally wrong and against my deepest convictions – as wrong as the gas chambers of Auschwitz, as wrong as the deliberate starvation of children – then by keeping silent, I condone what goes on there". She refused to pay the fine and was imprisoned. One of the examples she highlighted was opposition to the Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile, which finally fell after 20 years of solidarity concerts, Amnesty International letters, speaking tours by Chilean refugees, and countless symbolic acts of protest.

Steven died in 2016.