LISE MUNK PLUM

Born in 1916, Lise Munk Plum was the daughter of a wealthy businessman.  

Around 1960, together with her husband Niels Munk Plum, who was an active member of the Danish resistance movement during the German occupation of Denmark, Lise Munk Plum pioneered the establishment of the Danish anti-apartheid movement that was later to have a major influence on developments in South Africa. 

The couple also helped nurture the emerging Danish disarmament movement, supporting its efforts to halt the nuclear arms race. 

They supported a range of other alternative activities and were among the first Danes to recognise the need for ecology, highlighting its importance for issues such as flora and fauna and human nutrition. They played an important role in calling public attention to the serious threats of environmental pollution, both locally and globally. Another project earning their support was an information campaign on the enormous risks associated with nuclear power at a time when top Danish politicians and major business organisations were in favour of building nuclear power stations at several sites throughout Denmark. 

Support of grassroots organisations also benefited opponents of Danish EC/EU membership. It was pointed out that the aim of the Brussels project was gradually to establish a new European state with its own centralised legislation, military and fiscal policy (single currency), judiciary and police force. Leading politicians and business organisations dismissed these predictions when they were first put forward around 1970, but with hindsight we now know that events took a different turn. The support for this work was not least sustained by a desire to uphold and develop Danish democracy rather than allowing it to be replaced by a system which itself does not embrace the basic principle of respect for civic influence and participation, and where control of emerging power structures is not fundamentally guaranteed. 

Already in the 1980’s Lise Plum informed the Danish public about the suppressed Palestinian people and furthermore initiated support to the Palestinians.

With her interest in ecology, Lise Plum was asked to open the first organic restaurant in Denmark in the well-known Copenhagen pub Cap Horn in Nyhavn. The old building was converted and re-designed for its new purpose, with respect for its original ambience, and remains an organic restaurant to this very day, many years after Lise Plum’s death.