Ray Georgeson

This audio clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. A quotation from this recording features in the book Voices for Change, published by UCL Press in November 2026 (available in print as well as a free PDF download). The full interview, along with the summaries, transcripts and recordings for this and the rest of the interview collection, is available at the British Library (Sound and Moving Image Collection, under the shelf-mark C2037). For more information, including educational materials and other resources, visit the Oral History of the Environmental Movement project website at www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:Ray Georgeson: I would say exactly when it happened, and it was, it was the- It was early March 1980 and me and my pal, who was also called Ray funnily enough, it was part of why we ended up friends in Skelmersdale. He was Ray Loft, was forever known as Lofty. So me and Lofty are sitting in our pub, Saturday lunchtime in the John Bull in Wigan, which was where all the bikers used to go, where all the rock music, best juke box for miles around, you know.Chris Church: What was it called sorry?Ray Georgeson: The John Bull.Chris Church: The John Bull.Ray Georgeson: It’s still going. The John Bull in Wigan. And Harold the landlord was, he knew his audience. He had a fabulous juke box and you know it was, and Thwaites bitter. And it was, it was grand. So we’re sitting in there having a pint, Saturday lunchtime, thinking about whether or not to go to watch football match or not, or what to do. What are we going to do this afternoon? And these two girls came in, okay, and they were selling tickets for a bus, a coach trip to London and they were Wigan Friends of the Earth. And they were, they were- ‘You don’t have to come on the demo. We just need to fill the bus.’ And they were going to the demonstration which was the first anniversary of Three Mile Island. So it was March 1980. Because if you remember Harrisburg went up in ’79.Chris Church: It did, yes.Ray Georgeson: And so the truth of it Chris is he quite fancied the blonde and I quite fancied the redhead. [laughing] And we thought, this might be a laugh, you know, with these lasses. We’ll get on this bus and have a day out in London. And we had a day out in London and I had an absolute whale of a time. We went on the demo, we didn’t, we went on the demo. We listened to the speeches from I’m pretty sure it was Tom Burke, I’m not sure, it might well have been.Chris Church: I wouldn’t be surprised. I think I was there.Do you remember- You may well have been there. I can’t remember the detail. I do remember a big demo in Glasgow a bit later on where there was Tom and there was Petra Kelly. But anyway, we’re on the demo-Chris Church: No I have photos of sitting on Trafalgar Square steps.Ray Georgeson: There you go, it was Trafalgar Square. Well we were there with Wigan FoE and we had a great day. And well it was an eye opener because, you know, they told us all about it on the bus, what it was all about. And we were like, ‘What’s going on in the world? The world’s going mad. We need to do something about it.’ And they were all just great young people. And it wasn’t- So I didn’t come in from a kind of scientific, you know- I came in on the back of we’re all feeling a bit sick of Maggie Thatcher and the world was feeling a bit shit, you know, and these people were trying to change it and trying to do something about it.Chris Church: So how big was Wigan FoE at that time?Ray Georgeson: Oh it wasn’t very big. But they did quite well to fill the bus but there was- So the local group’s coordinator was a guy called Steve Hornby. You, he may not, he may have- I don’t know if he’d left the group by the time we got to know you. You don’t remember Steve. So Steve and Karen- So husband and wife, he was the coordinator. She was the redhead. [laughing] So that was the end of that. [laughing] And, and Lofty didn’t get off with the blonde either. There was no- There was no, you know, none of that. Although I did meet my first wife as a result of Wigan Friends of the Earth. [laughing][…]Chris Church: You went on the demonstration.Ray Georgeson: We went on the demonstration on the first anniversary of the near meltdown of Three Mile Island and I just remember it being a lot of fun with a lot of great people that I didn’t know and weren’t in any circles that I kind of mixed with in my fairly kind of straightforward life as it was at that point of work and pub and music and not much else, you know.British Library catalogue number: C2037/96 Project clip number: 34