My friend Laurens Otter, who has died aged 91, was a committed peace activist. Originally active in the Peace Pledge Union in the 1950s, Laurens joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament on its creation, attending the first Aldermaston march in 1958. Throughout the late 50s and 60s he and his wife, Celia, were arrested and imprisoned on many occasions. They spent their honeymoon in 1961 apart, in separate London prisons – Laurens in Pentonville and Celia sharing a cell with the campaigner Pat Arrowsmith in Holloway. Among many direct actions, perhaps the most celebrated is the time Laurens was among protesters who tried to board the nuclear-powered US submarine Patrick Henry in the Holy Loch, Scotland in 1961. An aerial photo captured the scene with Laurens in his kayak surrounded by five naval launches and gunboats. Born in Montreux, Switzerland, Laurens was the younger son of British parents, Helen (nee Stephens) and Francis Otter. Francis, a railway engineer, met Helen, a gifted linguist, en route to India, where Laurens’s elder brother Robert was born, and the family moved again with Francis’s job. They returned to the UK when Laurens was still a boy, and he was educated at Marlborough college and at Trinity College, Dublin, though he did not graduate.
In his youth he considered joining the priesthood. He retained a lifelong Christian faith and, despite his commitment to anarchism, adherence to the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. He married Celia Ball in 1961, and in 1971 they moved from Croydon, Surrey, to Wellington, Shropshire. Thereafter their house became a centre of radical thought and activism. My own political awakening began there, as did that of many others. Laurens had joined the Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists on its formation in 1969. The following year they published his book An Introduction to Revolutionary Anarchism. He remained a revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist, though seldom a member of any particular group. In the 70s Laurens was active in the local Ramblers Association and a founder of Wrekin Against Racism. He was instrumental in forming Telford Anti-Nuclear Alliance and, as a friend of the murdered activist Hilda Murrell, published the pamphlet The Arrogance of Uncontested Power in the mid-80s, blaming the security services for her death. Laurens helped found the Wellington Civic Society, for which in 1992 he wrote the book Wellington: A Town With a Past. His learning, wit and generosity made many friends, even if his discursiveness sometimes frustrated them. Celia and Laurens were last arrested in 2008, sitting down for peace in Telford. Celia died in 2014. They are survived by their daughter, Fiona.