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.
In the United Kingdom, people came to live outside military bases at protest camps in order to witness their opposition to and nonviolently protest against the presence of nuclear weapons in Europe that were directed against the then Soviet Union by the United States, calling for nuclear disarmament. The women at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp were particularly against the placing of US cruise missiles there, something they claimed made the area a direct target of Soviet Union aggression. During the 1980s the United States Air Force had land-based cruise missiles at several of the above locations, not only Greenham Common; they have since been moved back to the United States, though there remains a US military presence in the UK, and the UK continues to possess and develop nuclear weapons itself. Due to these factors the concept of the peace camp remains alive today; and because of the presence of Faslane Peace camp there has continuously been at least one peace camp outside a military base in the UK since 1982.
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2009) |
The first peace camps are known to have originated in the 1920s.[ citation needed ]
The first modern peace camps were the various (initially mixed but later) women-only peace camps at the military base at Greenham Common, England, set up in 1981. Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp maintained a presence at the camp until 2000. Women-only peace camps were based at Waddington, Lincs from April – September 1982 and Capenhurst October 1982 – March 1983. Other, mixed-sex, peace camps sprang up at the military bases of Upper Heyford, Daws Hill in High Wycombe, RAF Molesworth, Lakenheath, Naphill and Faslane. Faslane Peace Camp, which was established in 1982, is still in existence today. There has been a women's peace camp at Aldermaston for one weekend a month since 1985 that continues to meet. [1]
A bunker was constructed for RAF Strike Command on National Trust land (Bradenham Village) near High Wycombe, England between 1983 and 1985. Naphill Peace camp was set up to witness and oppose this construction. The Angry Pacifist magazine was produced out of Naphill Peace camp.
Thomas and Concepcion Picciotto are founders of the longest running peace vigil in the US. The White House Peace Vigil has been located opposite the White House at Lafayette Square on the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. since June 3, 1981. [2]
The Brambles Farm Peace Camp was set up in 1982 on the site of a research and development facility for the production of the Spearfish 7525 torpedo for the Royal Navy. The camp, although anti-war and anti-nuclear in its beliefs, was also supported and attended by local people demonstrating against the loss of green space and the lack of public consultation. The protesters held up the construction work for a number of months and was visited by some 3,000 people from this country and abroad. A Torpedo Town festival was held in the area for a number of years afterwards, the largest in 1991 at Liphook in Hampshire when some 25,000 people danced to the Spiral Tribe sound system. These festivals fell foul of the rave party and free festival crackdown in the early 1990s by the Tory government.
In 1983, feminists established the Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Romulus, New York, the site of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, to demand the abolition of nuclear weapons. [3]
In 2001 Brian Haw set up the Parliament Square Peace Campaign outside the Houses of Parliament in London. In August 2007 others who had joined him were evicted but he was allowed to stay. [4]
A peace camp was set up at Fairford on 17 February 2003 in protest against the Iraq War. [5]
In February 2005, peace activists and residents began a peace camp at the village of Daechuri, South Korea, in opposition to the expansion of Camp Humphreys, which declared autonomy from Korea on February 7, 2006. As of October 2006, resisting residents remain on-site, despite demolition of homes owned by residents who have accepted compensation.
On May 13, 2005, protesters set up a peace camp on Drake's Island, just off Plymouth.
In August 2005, Cindy Sheehan set up Camp Casey, a peace camp named after her son, outside the Texas ranch of United States President George W. Bush, through which she has attracted considerable media attention.
The term peace camp is primarily used for a form of anti-war protest camp particularly prevalent in the UK in the 1980s, however, it is also sometimes used to describe political factions before or during wartime that are opposed to a particular war. These are not a physical camps but political alliances. Currently, there is an Israeli peace camp.
In addition, the term is sometimes used for summer camps that bring together youth from different groups in conflict (e.g., Palestinian and Israeli youth) to work towards transformation and improvement of mutual relations. While the organizers of such camps clearly support peaceful solutions, participants may not do so or at least not to the same extent. In addition, these camps are not intended as a "protest camp", but rather to constructively work towards their goals and bring about change in the participants, which are intended to serve as disseminators of peaceful attitudes in their home communities.
In the early 19th Century, "Apaches de Paz" or Apache peace camps were established for the purpose of religious conversion. They were established near presidios in the early 19th century by the Spanish in what is now Mexico and the southwestern United States. These were administrated by the Roman Catholic Church to convert the Apaches to Roman Catholicism and - in the eyes of the Spanish - gaining the salvation of the Apaches. Rations and farming supplies were also given out at the camps in an attempt to turn the Apaches into farmers.[ citation needed ]
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
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.
Swords to ploughshares is a concept in which military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications.
His Majesty's Naval Base, Clyde, primarily sited at Faslane on the Gare Loch, is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy. It is the navy's headquarters in Scotland and is best known as the home of Britain's nuclear weapons, in the form of nuclear submarines armed with Trident missiles.
Stop the City demonstrations of 1983 and 1984 were described 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.
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.
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. 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. The first blockade of the base occurred in March 1982 with 250 women protesting, during which 34 arrests occurred.
Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport, shortened to RNAD Coulport, on Loch Long in Argyll, Scotland, is the storage and loading facility for the nuclear warheads of the United Kingdom's Trident programme.
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.
The Aldermaston marches were anti-nuclear weapons demonstrations in the 1950s and 1960s, taking place on Easter weekend between the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and London, over a distance of fifty-two miles, or roughly 83 km. At their height in the early 1960s they attracted tens of thousands of people and were the highlight of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) calendar. Similar demonstrations also took place around the world.
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 peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
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.
The application of nuclear technology, both as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been controversial.
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.
Atomic, Living in Dread and Promise is a documentary film about nuclear history directed by Mark Cousins and Produced by Heather Croall, Mark Atkin and John Archer. It uses only archive footage to explore life and death in the atomic age. The band Mogwai created the original soundtrack. The film, with a live performance by Mogwai, closed the Edinburgh International Festival in 2016. It was then shown on BBC Storyville to mark 70 years since the bombing of Hiroshima. The soundtrack was subsequently reworked by Mogwai into a studio album, Atomic.
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.
Eunice Stallard was a political and community activist in Wales. She was active in the Labour Party, involved in several peace movements, notably at Greenham Common in 1981 and organised community support during the 1984 - 1985 miner's strike. A Purple Plaque to mark her life was installed in Ystradgynlais in 2020.