I am the daughter of William Herbert and Hilda Barlow Pollitt
and I was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire on 23 June 1929.
My mother frequently told me that her mother travelled across
England at my birth, delighted to have a girl born into the
family. Standing at the end of my mother’s bed, she announced,
“She shall be named Georgina Edwina”. My grandmother’s
name was Georgina, while her father’s name was Edwin, after
whom she named her second son. I would have been delighted
with one or both those names, but my mother told me that she
said, “The month is June. We shall call her June”.
I was sent
to Huyton College as a boarder at the age of six, the youngest
girl in the school and had my seventh birthday there. I received
a letter from my mother saying that she made a mistake on
my birth date and it was changed from the 24th to the 23rd.
I enjoyed school, especially when it was evacuated to Rydal in
Westmorland for the duration of WWII.
As a member of the school climbing club, I grew to know
and love the fells and high peaks of Westmorland. However,
when I was sixteen I had a course of desensitising injections
for allergies, the second of which caused a severe anaphylactic
reaction and I was hospitalised for many weeks. I missed two
terms of school, only returning to write the final exams. The
headmistress spoke to my mother: “June has promise and it is
not fair to her that she write after such an absence”. She urged
that I repeat the following year. As we went home my Mother
commented, “They are only trying to get more money out of
us” and I was taken away from the school.
After eleven years
I had been looking forward to my final year, my own study,
personal tuition. Education in Switzerland sounded attractive
but the entry form required me to enter the name or title of my
parents. I was dismayed and did not apply.
Interested in law and English, keen to go to university, I was
enrolled at the Manchester Foot Hospital to study chiropody.
I looked the word up in a dictionary, and stormed around
the house once I realised where my future lay. To no avail. I
qualified in 1949 and was asked to join the staff. However on
the advice of our family doctor to live in a better climate to assist
my asthma, I sailed to South Africa. In 1953 I returned to view
the Coronation. More pneumonia made my doctor press me to return to South Africa.
I sailed to Durban where I started a practice and
lived a free and interesting life. In 1954 I met Trevor
Cope, we fell in love and married in 1955. He was
a lecturer in African Languages at Natal University.
He became Professor and Head of the Department
of Zulu Language and Literature. He was awarded
the title of Emeritus Professor for his international
contribution to Linguistics.
In 1972 I read of the death of a young woman
from ‘backstreet abortion’. The paper reported her
mother’s words, “My daughter is dead; nothing
will bring her back. But maybe her death will make
people think about the abortion law.”
With a legacy
of ‘Women’s Rights’ in my Griffin background,
I started a lobby group, the Abortion Reform Action
Group (ARAG), to change the restrictive law. The
group became a national organisation which I headed
for years. I was helped in my work by doctors and
reformers overseas and was appointed Research
Associate in Southern Africa for the Transnational
Family Research Institute, and the International
Womens Health Coalition, both based in Washington and both voluntary. I was voted as one of South
Africa’s top women achievers by Barclays Executive
Women’s Club and Fair Lady. Totally unexpected.
Encouraged by Anthony who had emigrated to Australia earlier,
and who had met and later married Wendy Dare, a
fifth generation Australian, and a high school Maths
teacher, Trevor and I emigrated from South Africa to
Australia in 1985.
In a final effort to change the law I wrote a book
exposing the truth behind the political moves of the
Nationalist Government to deny women medical
help in terminating pregnancy. It detailed the history
of the struggle to reform the restrictive abortion law
in apartheid South Africa and the law’s disastrous
effect on women’s health, and society. The book, A
Matter of Choice, was published by Natal University
in 1993, the year before the first non-racial general
election when Nelson Mandela was elected National
President. A copy of my book was
given to the new female Minister
of Health. The following year the
Government passed one of the
best abortion laws in the world,
which aimed both to help and
educate women. It carried
the word ‘Choice’ in its title.
In Australia, we entered a new life. We bought a
house on the edge of the bush in Northern Sydney,
made friends and, ‘once a teacher always a teacher’,
Trevor enrolled as a ‘leader’ at the local branch of the
University of the Third Age (U3A) and taught for 16
years on classical music and literature, mostly speaking
on his two heroes, Shakespeare and Beethoven. I was
his secretary. And for twenty years we were both
volunteers in a well run Neighbour Aid Centre in
St Ives, which provides great help for local people in need, drivers for medical appointments, shopping for
those who are house-bound, and sitting with clients
while their carers had a break. And we travelled!
