Pearl Lilley
Born in Cambridge in 1915, Pearl Brammar began working at the local Co-op from the age of fifteen. She was active in both the Labour League of Youth and the Shop Assistants’ Union. In 1934 she became a member of the Communist Party. She became romantically attached to Sam Lilley (see separate entry), who joined the Party a year after she had done and they married on 12th August 1939.
During the war she was responsible for the Cambridge Housewife Committee and a member of the Anglo-Soviet Committee. After the war, in the municipal elections of 1946 and 1947, Pearl she was adopted as prospective candidate for the Cambridge Communist Party.
Pearl left Sam with the children sometime in the early 1960s and they were eventually divorced.
She remained active in the peace movement and from 1968 worked as general secretary of the British–Soviet Friendship Society.
In December 1975 she was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, presented to her by Ambassador Nikolai Lunkov at a ceremony at the Soviet Embassy.
1 Trackback / Pingback