You have no right to harden your heart in this country. - Mary Burton

I do think about it a lot,’ she says. “It’s intellectually interesting to think about what might be done, to try and find solutions

Well, it’s very difficult because socialism hasn’t really made a big difference in many parts of the world. I just think an awareness needs to be instilled in people who have wealth, that it is to their benefit to share some of that wealth. That if they want safety and security, it costs you. It’s all a question of people stealing at the top, their wealth is stolen wealth. It’s taken from the lives of the poor. So whether the wealth comes from mining or natural resources exploitation, agriculture and so on, people make fortunes at the cost of other people’s labour. The discrepancies are too great. It can’t possibly be just.

At the time, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I was fortunate in that my husband supported me. But my parents-in-law were very anxious. And that was something that really had to be negotiated. My mother-in-law had known some of the women who first joined the Black Sash, but she said to me, you know, that they left because it was getting very communistic. I mean, there was nothing communistic about the group. But that was the perception – very clever propaganda on the part of the government. And anything communism was just terrifying, people were absolutely terrified.