Why I remember great aunt Joan, a WWII spy who disappeared over Bermuda Triangle, at this time every year – Alex Cole-Hamilton

My great aunt Joan disappeared over the ­Bermuda Triangle in 1945. She had been part of the Foreign Office delegation at the San ­Francisco Conference which set up the United Nations and her plane simply ­vanished from radar on its return flight to the UK. She was 27.

Joan is without question one of the most remarkable ancestors I have. Four years before her disappearance, at the age of 23, she had been awarded an MBE for her services in Norway prior to and during Nazi occupation in 1940. As an assistant to celebrated British spy Frank Foley, she had helped to evacuate the British legation in Oslo. This is captured in a dramatic account of her burning ciphers in the courtyard as a Wehrmacht division rolled into town. Joan then helped establish a resistance headquarters in a farmhouse north of the capital after walking many miles through forests in deep snow. She helped evacuate the Norwegian Royal Family from Tromso and connected many Norwegian soldiers with safe passage to the UK, before being evacuated herself on a British submarine.

When I think of Aunt Joan, I am left in awe by how much she accomplished in such a short life and, most importantly, against the tide of expectation for women in her time.

She saved lives and she very probably influenced the course of the war. Not only did she command the respect of the highest-ranking officials in the government of national unity, but she did so in the male-dominated world of espionage. Joan kicked against the preconceived notions of ‘a woman’s place’ and I often wonder what she would have thought of the place of women in our United Kingdom some 75 years later.

The struggle for equality

This Sunday is International Women’s Day and every year at this time, I think about Aunt Joan. Corretta Scott-King once said that the “struggle for equality is never-ending, you have to win it with every generation”.

There is such truth in those words, and whilst Joan won the respect of the men around her and pushed forward the frontiers of gender equality in her generation, things will always slide backwards unless we stay vigilant.

You don’t have to look very far to see the measure of the struggle for equality that falls to our generation. Women still only make up 36 per cent of MSPs, 23 per cent of council leaders, 13 per cent of senior police officers and six per cent of newspaper editors.

The distance we still have to travel in pursuit of gender equality can be seen in those numbers and also in the actions of men in positions of power who still use that influence as a means to molest the women beneath them.

Inspiring my own daughter

It can be seen in the gender pay gap and in maternity discrimination that still cling, stubbornly, to our workplaces. It can be seen in the reality that Holyrood has taken a full 20 years to discuss, let alone grapple with, period poverty.

There are more statues to animals in Edinburgh than there are to women and the exploits of powerful and inventive men are much more readily memorialised and mythologised on banknotes and in school text books.

The greatness of women in our nation’s history is seldom brought to the fore, as such I feel compelled to use my column in this week’s paper to remedy that just a bit.

There is a letter in my attic from Anthony Eden who, as Foreign Secretary, wrote to my great-grandparents expressing concern over Joan’s disappearance.

Whilst it’s quite special to have a letter in my possession that was signed by someone who would later become prime minister, I keep it and I treasure it in memory of her and all that she achieved.

I will use it to inspire my own daughter when she’s old enough to understand that the greatness of women is nothing new.

Alex Cole-Hamilton is the Lib Dem MSP for Edinburgh Western.