Shabana Mahmood urged to grant visa to former Weather Underground activist

Home Office refused entry to Judith Clark, 77, invited by RSC to speak about restorative justice after her time in prison

Human rights activists and celebrities including the lawyer Helena Kennedy, the actor Harriet Walter and the theatre director Phyllida Lloyd have urged the Home Office to overturn its decision to refuse a visa to a former member of the radical US group the Weather Underground, saying her decades of rehabilitation should count in her favour.

Judith Clark, 77, was the inspiration for Walter’s portrayal of prisoners in the Donmar Warehouse all-female Shakespeare trilogy, including Brutus in Julius Caesar and Prospero in The Tempest.

Clark had been invited to speak about rehabilitation and restorative justice at a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar in Stratford-upon-Avon next month, but her application to visit Britain was refused last week.

She had also hoped to attend the UK launch of her daughter Harriet Clark’s first novel, The Hill, on 5 November.

Kennedy said that while the Home Office had rules governing visas for people with serious criminal convictions, there was also ministerial discretion, which should be exercised in Clark’s case.

“This is a woman in her 70s who served a long sentence for political activism, which involved no violence on her part, and whose clear remorse and exceptional works within the prison system led to her early release,” she said. “She was deemed to pose no threat to US society and in my view she poses no threat whatsoever to the UK’s national security.”

Walter said immigration rules designed to protect the public should allow flexibility in exceptional cases such as Clark’s. “There is no other purpose behind the short visit she wants to make other than to reward us with her presence as a speaker in our post-show conversation and to celebrate her daughter’s first book launch,” she said.

Lloyd said Clark had become a touchstone for the creative team’s understanding of repentance, redemption and rehabilitation during the making of the Donmar trilogy.

“To say she did her time and turned her life around is an understatement,” she said. “To have her speak in the UK would be an inspiration in the realm of restorative justice.”

Clark joined the student movement against the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and became involved in the Weather Underground, a radical organisation that emerged from the American anti-war movement. She was later involved in the May 19th Communist Organization, which pursued armed revolutionary activity.

In 1983, she was convicted for her role as a getaway driver in an attempted robbery of a Brinks armoured truck in New York in 1981, during which a security guard and two police officers were killed. She was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 25 years to life.

In 2017, the then-New York governor Andrew Cuomo commuted her sentence, allowing her to seek parole. She was released in 2019, after serving 37 years.

During her incarceration at Bedford Hills correctional facility in New York, Clark helped establish an Aids education and support group, developed programmes to help mothers maintain relationships with their children, raised service dogs for veterans and first responders and helped build a college education programme.

She has since worked in criminal justice reform and support for formerly incarcerated women. In 2025, she became director of the Survivors Justice Project, which works to secure legal relief for survivors of domestic violence facing prison sentences.

Walter and Lloyd met Clark while researching their Shakespeare trilogy, which reimagined the plays as productions staged by women in prison. Walter said Clark had helped her understand Brutus, the politically conflicted character in Julius Caesar, who struggles with the moral consequences of his actions. Her story also informed Walter’s portrayal of Prospero in The Tempest.

“By the time I met Judy she had developed into one of the most exemplary and evolved human beings I have ever met or am likely to meet,” Walter said.

The RSC has invited Clark to take part in a post-show discussion entitled Can Art Save Lives?

It would also include a company member introduced to theatre after prison through the charity Clean Break.

Kennedy first met Clark more than 30 years ago at Bedford Hills while making a television documentary about women in prison. “Her remorse for her participation in criminal conduct was very evident to all who were involved with her,” she said.

In her own letter supporting her visa application, Clark said she had publicly disavowed her actions and apologised for the harm she had contributed to a decade into her sentence. She spent the remainder of her imprisonment trying to turn her remorse into work benefiting the prison community, families and those harmed by crime.

Clark hoped to visit Britain from 4 to 15 November with her wife, Cheryl Moch. Her daughter has said that The Hill draws on her own experience of visiting her mother throughout her imprisonment. Despite their separation, she wrote, Clark had found ways to mother her.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “It’s our longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases.

“All applications for entry clearance in the UK are carefully considered on their individual merits, in line with the Immigration Rules and based on the information and evidence provided by the applicant.”