Event
The 100th Birth Anniversary of Margaret Smith Ungphakorn Kasidit Ananthanathorn argaret Smith Ungphakorn was born in England on 18 November 1919. Her father was a religious teacher of a Christian denomination that upheld modest living. He was a conservative and a nationalist who had volunteered for World War I. Her mother was an anti-war pacifist who became a Quaker near the end of her life.
Margaret grew up in London near the Thames River. When she was young the gardens and fields in the area were her playground. She had come to know a variety of flowers, and this made her love Nature. She was enrolled in St. Paul’s School, which had a number of feminist teachers at the time. The school was a formative influence on her. Margaret was courageous and steadfast in her principles. Two examples will suffice. One, she opposed World War Two and thus refused to serve the British state in the war. Instead, she chose to do social work. Margaret was an anti-war activist all her life. In 2003—at the age of 84—she joined the mass protests against the Iraq war. Vol. 35 No. 3 September - December 2019
53
Two, she had the courage to fall in love with a foreign student named Puey Ungphakorn. They both met at the University of London, and got married in 1946. Subsequently, Margaret moved to live in Thailand, a place that she had barely heard of. She gradually learned Thai and came to read and speak the language competently. Margaret was a social democrat. When she was a student, she was influenced by a friend who had connections with Labour Party MPs. However, Margaret refused to be a Labour Party member at first. Although not a Marxist, she felt that the party was insufficiently radical. It was only later in life that she became a party member in order to protest
