Greenham Common

In the 1980s, the women of the Greenham Common peace camp fought to get all US nuclear missiles removed from UK soil - the last warheads left in 2008.

Politically active herself, she visited the women campaigning against the controversial deployment of nuclear cruise missiles at the Greenham Common American airbase in Berkshire in 1983.

As a young girl, her mother took her on marches for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an organisation vehemently opposed to the Thatcher government's decision to allow US nuclear warheads to be installed at RAF Greenham Common, west of London.

Laverne described her mother's strong political beliefs, saying she had been part of the Greenham Common movement, which protested against US nuclear missiles being sited in Berkshire, and later became a Labour city councillor in Sunderland.

In 1981, Ann Pettitt organised a women-led march from the Welsh capital Cardiff to the airbase at Greenham Common in Berkshire, England, to protest against American nuclear-tipped cruise missiles being sited there.