Pat Pottle

Patrick Pottle (born 8 August 1938, London; died 1 October 2000) was a founder member of the Committee of 100, an anti-nuclear direct action group which broke away from CND.

In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, Pottle was jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to organise the Committee of 100 demonstrations at the nuclear base USAF Wethersfield in Essex.

In Wormwood Scrubs prison Pottle met the spy George Blake and his outrage at the “vicious” sentence imposed on the spy led him and two others, Michael Randle and Sean Bourke, to free Blake in October 1966.[1][2][3]

A few months after Blake's escape, Pottle met and married Susan Abrahams, daughter of the Olympic champion Harold Abrahams and his wife Sybil Evers.[4]

Notes

  1. ^ Patrick Pottle, Daily Telegraph, 4 October 2000
  2. ^ Richard Norton-Taylor, Pat Pottle, The Guardian, 3 October 2000
  3. ^ Nick Cohen, A jailbreak out of an Ealing comedy, New Statesman, 9 October 2000
  4. ^ Lloyd Jones, The man who loved liberty, BBC, 22 February 2008

References