Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was a series of protest camps established to protest against nuclear weapons being placed at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, England. The camp began on 5 September 1981 after a Welsh group, Women for Life on Earth, arrived at Greenham to protest against the decision of the British government to allow cruise missiles to be stored there.[1][2] After realising that the march alone was not going to get them the attention that they needed to have the missiles removed, women began to stay at Greenham to continue their protest.[3] The first blockade of the base occurred in March 1982 with 250 women protesting, during which 34 arrests occurred.[4][5]
The camp was brought to a close in September 2000 to make way for the Commemorative and Historic Site on the land that housed the original Women's Peace Camp at Yellow Gate Greenham Common between the years 1981 and 2000.[6]
History
In September 1981, 36 women chained themselves to the base fence in protest against nuclear weapons.[4] On 29 September 1982, the women were evicted by Newbury District Council but set up a new camp nearby within days.[7] In December 1982, 30,000 women joined hands around the base at the Embrace the Base event, in response to the third anniversary of NATO's decision to house nuclear missiles on British soil.[4][8] The courage and creativity of the Greenham women was highlighted by a small group climbing the fence to dance on missile silos that were under construction on New Year's Day 1983.[8]
Greenham Common peace sign
The camps became well known when on 1 April 1983, about 70,000 protesters formed a 14-mile (23km) human chain from Greenham to Aldermaston and the ordnance factory at Burghfield.[9][10] The media attention surrounding the camp inspired people across Europe to create other peace camps.[2] Another encircling of the base occurred in December 1983, with 50,000 women attending. Sections of the fence were cut and there were hundreds of arrests.[4][11]
On 4 April 1984, the women were again evicted from the Common; again, by nightfall many had returned to reform the camp.[12] In January 1987, although Parliament had been told that there were no longer any women at Greenham, small groups of women cut down parts of the perimeter fence at Greenham Common every night for a week.[13]
The protestors consisted of nine smaller camps at various gates around the base. Camps were named after the colours of the rainbow, as a way of contrasting against the green shades of the base.[14] The first camp was called Yellow Gate, and others included Blue Gate with its New Age focus; Violet Gate with a religious focus; and Green Gate, which was women-only and did not accept male visitors.[4]
Memorial to Helen Thomas at Greenham
The last missiles left the base in 1991 as a result of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, but the camp remained in place until September 2000, after protesters won the right to house a memorial on the site.[15] Although the missiles had been removed from the base, the camp was continued as part of the protest against the forthcoming UK Trident programme. Sarah Hipperson, who had been a part of the protest for all nineteen of its years, was among the last four women to leave the camp.[16] The old camp was inaugurated as a Commemorative and Historic Site on 5 October 2002. There are seven standing stones encircling the "Flame" sculpture representing a campfire. Next to this there is a stone and steel spiral sculpture, engraved with the words "You can't kill the Spirit".[17] There is also a plaque there for activist Helen Wyn Thomas, who was killed near the site in 1989.[5] The site has since been given to the Greenham Common Trust to care for.[17]
Local and national opposition to the Peace Camp
The Greenham women knew that their actions and presence were not entirely welcome in the local community. In an article Anne Seller, one of the Greenham women, remarked that the local pubs around Greenham refused to serve the women. People opposed to the protest would often meet in such places to think up ways of disrupting their activities. "Vigilante groups" would form to attack the women, noted Seller, making many of them afraid to venture into the town.[18]
Neither were the local police friendly toward the protestors. Often police officers would release detained Greenham women in the middle of the night and if they drove them back to the base, would drop them off far from any established camp. The women were forced to walk long distances to rejoin the protest.[18]
The Greenham women also experienced opposition from a local group by the name of Ratepayers Against the Greenham Encampments, RAGE, who were shopkeepers, businessmen, former military officers, retired professionals and local housewives from Newbury who disagreed with the peace camps. Along with a local branch of Women and Families for Defence, the opposition groups would campaign in Newbury with slogans such as: "Peace Women: You Disgust Us" and "Clean Up and Get Out". RAGE aimed to use local opinion and government to remove the Greenham women protesters, claiming they lured in illegal immigrants as well as did not represent a real concern for humanity and the future generations, because they left their children at home and were considered naive children who did not understand the problems of international defence.[19]
The Ministry of Defence called for an increased police presence at the base. Terrorists might be trying to infiltrate the base, the ministry claimed, pretending to be Greenham protesters. The Greenham women saw this as one more attempt to hinder their protest.[18] The British government also enacted a set of by-laws in an effort to end the Peace Encampment at Greenham Common, which made it illegal to enter the base without permission, and sent hundreds of women to prison for criminal trespass in Spring 1985. These by-laws were deemed unlawful in 1990 by the House of Lords, which was a monumental victory for the Greenham women.[8]
Some feminists opposed the disarmament movement, claiming there were more important issues to address at home. The opposition came from the idea that women should try to focus on the issues in their daily lives such as health and work instead of dedicating the time it takes to dismantle the patriarchy at the top. It was difficult to justify protesting nuclear weapons when equal rights within the home did not exist. Men were allowed to participate in the protests if invited by women, causing the women opposed to the protests to dislike the movement more. Women questioned if the disarmament protests were true feminist movements if men were allowed in the space, and it caused women to not take the protests as legitimate because they did not think a true feminist movement needed men to make a statement.[20]
Protest strategies
The women at Greenham used actions, posters, and songs to protest against the nuclear missiles and gain attention.
The first protest action undertaken at Greenham involved women chaining themselves to the fence of the base in September 1981. The most well-known protest actions that the Greenham women undertook were the Embrace the Base event and their human chain protests. At Embrace the Base, 30,000 women held hands around the perimeter fence. In April 1983, the Greenham women and their supporters created a 14-mile human chain. In late October 1983, the Greenham women arranged an action to take down the perimeter fence, which was described in the press release as "our Berlin Wall", where about four of the nine miles of perimeter fence were cut down. By using a distraction of dressing up as witches to fake their partaking in a Greenham Halloween party, the women were able to prevent the police from suspecting the cutting of the fence before it happened.[8] In December of that year, another human chain was created, circling around the fence, while some parts of the fence were cut.[4][11]
The Greenham women would often 'keen'. They would dress in black, and say that they were mourning for children who would be lost to nuclear war in the future.[21]
Posters were used by the women at Greenham, and often featured the symbol of a spider web, meant to symbolise the fragility and perseverance of the Greenham women.[22]
Singing was another protest strategy used by the Greenham women. Popular songs were sometimes used with their lyrics rewritten to support the anti-nuclear cause. Some of the songs were original, written by the women of the camps.[23] In 1988, "Greenham Women Are Everywhere", the official songbook of the camp, was published.[24]
Importance of gender
On 12 December 1982, 30,000 women held hands around the 6 miles (9.7km) perimeter of the base, in protest against the decision to site American cruise missiles there.
In February 1982 it was decided that the protest should involve women only, which established it as the first and longest lasting peace encampment.[25][8] This was important as the women were using their identity as mothers to legitimise the protest against nuclear weapons, all in the name of the safety of their children and future generations.[26]
The spider web became one of the most-used symbols at the camp, because it is both fragile and resilient, as the Greenham women envisioned themselves.[22] The Greenham women were notorious for dressing themselves up as witches[27] in order to contrast the symbol of the evil witch with the actions of ordinary women at the base.
There were several instances when women entered the camp, effectively entering a "male" space. On New Year's Eve 1982, the women broke into the base for the first time; 44 women climbed over the military base's fence and climbed on top of the silos and danced around on them for hours. All the women were arrested, and 36 were imprisoned.[25] On 1 April 1983, 200 women entered the base dressed as teddy bears.[25] A "child" symbol like the teddy bear was a stark contrast to the highly militarised atmosphere of the base; the women again were highlighting the safety of their children and future generations of children.[26]
The next major event was 'Reflect the Base' on 11 December 1983, when 50,000 women circled the base to protest against the cruise missiles which had arrived three weeks earlier.[25] The day started as a silent vigil where women held up mirrors as to allow the base to symbolically look back at itself and its actions; however, the day ended with hundreds of arrests as the women pulled down large sections of the fence.[25]
Upon breaching the barriers and entering the base, the women were making the statement that they would not stay at home and do nothing the way that women are traditionally expected to while the men take care of the serious "male" issues.[26] Their refusal to go home at the end of each day was a challenge against the traditional notion that a woman's place was in the home. Many media outlets even questioned the behaviour of the Greenham women: if their children were so important to them, they asked, then why were they not home with them?[26] The media tended to ignore the Greenham women's collective identity of "women as mothers" protecting the children and largely focused on the illegitimacy of the camp, describing it as a witches' coven laden with criminal activity, with the women posing a threat to family values and the state.[26] One such part of the protest that the media ignored took place on 12 December 1982, where women hung pictures of their children on the fence. The idea surrounding this particular event was to hang representations of things the women loved on the fence; to many, this meant hanging pictures of their children. Candles were also brought to the protest to mourn the future of the children.[28]
Aftermath
In 2000, the fences surrounding the base were taken down. The site of the protests was turned into a memorial to honour the nuclear disarmament movement. The memorial consists of a garden with Welsh stones surrounding it. The memorial is meant to show peace and the fight against nuclear weapons. The rest of the land has been given back to the people and the local council.[15]
Related movements: the Moscow Trust Group and Window Peace (New York)
In May 1983 three women representing the Greenham Common Peace Camp (Karmen Cutler, Ann Pettitt, and US citizen Jean McCollister)[29] flew to Moscow and met with the official Soviet Peace Committee and the unofficial "Group for Establishing Trust between the USSR and the USA".[30][31] At the airport on 27 May the Moscow customs confiscated Jean McCollister's diary, which contained notes of her conversations with the Trust group.[32]
The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp inspired related peace movements in the U.K. as well as abroad. One such movement was Window Peace, a year-long live-in performance art installation in New York City.[33] As a tribute to the protestors of the original movement, who at the time had been living outside of the Greenham RAF camp, as well as to the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment,[34] women artists and activists created a rotating series of art installations in the store SohoZat[35] at 307 West Broadway in Manhattan.
The Window Peace installation, created in 1986 by artist Susan Kleckner, took place in the Soho Zat storefront, located in lower Manhattan.[36] As had been the practice of the Greenham Common movement, only women artists could participate; however, men were allowed to participate if they had been invited by a woman. Each week for an entire year, beginning 12 December 1986 until 11 November 1987, 51 women artists[34] occupied the storefront window with their art. Among the artists were Susan Kleckner (also the originator), Ann Snitow, Dianna Moonmade, Sharon Jaddis, Tequila Minsky, Anne Meiman, Carol Jacobsen, Joyce George, Jane Winter, Marsha Grant, The Women of the Greenham and Seneca Movements, Catherine Allport, Eileen Jones, Susann Ingle, Sharon Smith, Linda Montano, Dominque Mazur, Cenen, Pamela Schumaker, Judy Trupin, Connie Samaras, E.A. Racette, Peggey Lowenberg and Maggie Ens, Kathy Constantinides, Elaine Pratt, Coco Gordon, Sally Jacque, Kay Roberts, Anna Rubin, Renee Rockoff, Harriet Glazier, Karen Marshall, Paula Allen, and others.[37]
February 1983 Greenham Women's Peace Camp Newsletter (Zine-style newsletter created by members to mobilize new participants, circulate information about events, document their actions and create forums for cultivating ideas, demands, tactics, and analyses)
Cook, Alice; Kirk, Gwyn, eds. (1983). Greenham Women Everywhere: Dreams, Ideas, and Actions from the Women's Peace Movement. Pluto Press.
Fairhall, David (2006). Common Ground: The Story of Greenham. I.B. Tauris.
Harford, Barbara; Hopkins, Sarah, eds. (1984). Greenham Common: Women at the Wire. The Women's Press.
Kerrow, Kate; Mordan, Rebecca (2021). Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981–2000. Foreword by Frankie Armstrong. The History Press.
Laware, Margaret L. (2004). "Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common". NWSA Journal. 16 (3): 18–41. JSTOR4317078.
Liddington, Jill (1989). The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain Since 1820. Virago Press.
Lowry, Maggie (1983). "A Voice from the Peace Camps: Greenham Common and Upper Heyford". In Thompson, Dorothy (ed.). Over Our Dead Bodies: Women Against the Bomb. Virago Press. pp.73–77.
Pettitt, Ann (2006). Walking to Greenham: How the peace camp began and the Cold War ended. Published by Honno.
Roseneil, Sasha (1995). Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham. Open University Press.
Seller, Anne (1985). "Greenham: A Concrete Reality". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 8 (2): 26–31. doi:10.2307/3346050. JSTOR3346050.
Kirkwood, Lucy (2015). Bloody Wimmin. Nick Hern Books. ISBN9781780015934.
Lunn, Jennifer (2023). Es & Flo. Nick Hern Books. ISBN9781839041402.
Musicals
Beyond The Fence (2016) A wholly computer created musical in which computers scripted, scored, and provided lyrics to a musical about the Greenham Commons Women's Peace Camp.[39]
Gates of Greenham (1985) A Peace Oratorio, composed by Tony Biggin and performed by the Quaker Festival Orchestra and Chorus, subsequently recorded by the festival chorus and The London Philharmonic Orchestra[40]
Davies, Stephanie (2020). Other Girls Like Me. Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company. ISBN978-1-949290-38-7.
Related Research Articles
Royal Air Force Greenham Common or more simply RAF Greenham Common is a former Royal Air Force station in the civil parishes of Greenham and Thatcham in the English county of Berkshire. The airfield was southeast of Newbury, about 55 miles (89 km) west of London.
Peace camps are a form of physical protest camp that is focused on anti-war and anti-nuclear activity. They are set up outside military bases by members of the peace movement who oppose either the existence of the military bases themselves, the armaments held there, or the politics of those who control the bases. They began in the 1920s and became prominent in 1982 due to the worldwide publicity generated by the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. They were particularly a phenomenon of the United Kingdom in the 1980s where they were associated with sentiment against American imperialism but Peace Camps have existed at other times and places since the 1920s.
A bolt cutter, sometimes called bolt cropper, is a tool used for cutting bolts, chains, padlocks, rebar and wire mesh. It typically has long handles and short blades, with compound hinges to maximize leverage and cutting force. A typical bolt cutter yields 20 kilonewtons (4,500 lbf) of cutting force for a 250 newtons (56 lbf) force on the handles.
Stop the City demonstrations of 1983 and 1984 were billed as a 'Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction', in other words protests against the military-financial complex. These demonstrations can be seen as the forerunner of the anti-globalisation protests of the 1990s, especially those in London, England, on May Day and the Carnival against Capitalism on 18 June 1999. They were partially inspired by the actions of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
Royal Air Force Molesworth or more simply RAF Molesworth is a Royal Air Force station located near Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, England with a history dating back to 1917.
Faslane Peace Camp is a permanent peace camp sited alongside Faslane Naval base in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It has been occupied continuously, in a few different locations, since 12 June 1982. In 1984, the book Faslane:Diary of a Peace Camp was published, co-written by the members of the peacecamp at the time. There is also a secondary site on Raeberry Street in North Glasgow.
Women Strike for Peace was a women's peace activist group in the United States. Nearing the height of the Cold War in 1961, about 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate against the testing of nuclear weapons. It was the largest national women's peace protest during the 20th century. Another group action was led by Dagmar Wilson, with about 1,500 women gathering at the foot of the Washington Monument while President John F. Kennedy watched from the White House. The protest helped push the United States and the Soviet Union into signing a nuclear test-ban treaty two years later. Reflecting the era in which the group's leaders had been raised, between the First-wave feminism and the Second-wave feminism movements, their actions and pleas leaned towards female self-sacrifice rather than towards their own self-interests. However, they pushed the power of a concerned mother to the forefront of American politics, transforming the mother from a "passive victim of war to active fighter for peace".
The Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice was a women-only peace camp formed to protest the scheduled deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles before their suspected shipment from the Seneca Army Depot to Europe in the fall of 1983.
Jean Bourne was a British journalist.
The anti-nuclear movement in the United Kingdom consists of groups who oppose nuclear technologies such as nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Many different groups and individuals have been involved in anti-nuclear demonstrations and protests over the years.
A protest camp or protest encampment is a physical camp that is set up by activists, to either provide a base for protest, or to delay, obstruct or prevent the focus of their protest by physically blocking it with the camp. A protest camp may also have a symbolic or reproductive component where 'protest campers' try and recreate their desired worlds through the enactment of protest camp infrastructures or through the modes of organising and governance.
Anti-nuclear protests began on a small scale in the U.S. as early as 1946 in response to Operation Crossroads. Large scale anti-nuclear protests first emerged in the mid-1950s in Japan in the wake of the March 1954 Lucky Dragon Incident. August 1955 saw the first meeting of the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, which had around 3,000 participants from Japan and other nations. Protests began in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the United Kingdom, the first Aldermaston March, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, took place in 1958. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, about 50,000 women brought together by Women Strike for Peace marched in 60 cities in the United States to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. In 1964, Peace Marches in several Australian capital cities featured "Ban the Bomb" placards.
Helen John was one of the first full-time members of the Greenham Common peace camp in England, UK, and was an peace activist for over 30 years.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It opposes military action that may result in the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and the building of nuclear power stations in the UK.
Helen Wyn Thomas was a Welsh peace activist from Newcastle Emlyn. Hers was the only death incurred in the course of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp campaign.
Rebecca Johnson is a British peace activist and expert on nuclear disarmament. She is the director and founder of Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy as well as a co-founding strategist and organiser of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Sarah Hipperson was a midwife, magistrate and peace campaigner who spent 17 years living at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp on RAF Greenham Common protesting against the siting of American nuclear cruise missiles in the United Kingdom. In 1982, she founded Catholic Peace Action. Her nonviolent resistance resulted in over 20 imprisonments and several appearances in court. She lived to see the transformation of Greenham Common back into use by the public and was one of the last four women to leave the camp. She appeared as herself in the documentary Margaret Thatcher: The Woman Who Changed Britain.
Carry Greenham Home is a 1983 documentary about the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp created by Amanda Richardson and Beeban Kidron. It bears the same name as the song by Peggy Seeger. It is considered "the first full-length documentary of a protest camp as a site of ongoing protest and daily living or re-creation."
Susan Kleckner was a feminist filmmaker, photographer, performance artist, and writer active from the late 1960s until 2010 and based in New York City.
Ann Pettitt is an English activist. With other women she started the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp by marching from Cardiff to RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire in 1981. She published the 2006 book Walking to Greenham.
1 2 3 4 5 Laware, Margaret L. (2004). "Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common". NWSA Journal. 16 (3): 18–41. JSTOR4317078. S2CID143461496.
↑ Moores, Christopher (Autumn 2014). "Opposition to the Greenham Women's Peace Camps in 1980s Britain: RAGE Against the 'Obscene'". History Workshop Journal. 78 (78): 204–227. doi:10.1093/hwj/dbt038. JSTOR43299032.
↑ Constantinides, Kathy (1987). "Letter about Window Peace". Brooklyn, NY. Folder: "Pacifism/Peace Movement/"Window Peace" Installation ca. 1987. Archived from the original on 6 October 2016. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
Laware, Margaret L. (2004). "Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common". NWSA Journal. 16 (3): 18–41. JSTOR4317078. S2CID143461496.
Liddington, Jill (1989). The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain Since 1820. Virago Press.
Kleckner, Susan (30 April 1987). "For Immediate Release: Window Peace" (Press release).
Mair, Eddie (3 November 2011). PM (Radio broadcast).
Moores, Christopher (Autumn 2014). "Opposition to the Greenham Women's Peace Camps in 1980s Britain: RAGE Against the 'Obscene'". History Workshop Journal. 78 (78): 204–227. doi:10.1093/hwj/dbt038. JSTOR43299032.
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