Greenham Common

In 1980, following the end of the détente period of the Cold War, international tensions were once again on the rise. It was in this year that the decision was made for the United States to store cruise missiles at the Greenham Common RAF base in Berkshire, England. With the horrifying scenes of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still in living memory and the potential for nuclear weapons to destroy human civilisation as it was known, protest over the creation and storage of nuclear weapons was high. At the same time, second wave feminism was in full swing, with discourse and protest over women’s rights and their place within society. At the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, (GCWPC), all of these aspects overlapped. Some of the women that gathered there were mothers, terrified about what future their children might face in a world decimated by nuclear war. Others saw nuclear weapons as a manifestation of patriarchy, where majority male authorities favoured violence and destruction over preservation of human life.^[1] Whatever the precise details of their motivations, these women were united by one goal: nuclear disarmament.   

The protests began with the march of the ‘Women for Life on Earth’, consisting of thirty-six women, four men and several children, from Cardiff to Greenham in 1981.^[2] Following this, a camp was set up outside this base by protestors which evolved into several distinct camps by 1982.^[3] The last protestors left the site in 2000, even though the last missiles had been removed from the base in 1991.^[4] Over this period, GCWPW saw many spending the day protesting against the fence, trying to form blockades and general disturbances to the base, but more famous were the women and children that made the camp their permanent residence. Others arrived from abroad to participate from countries including the Netherlands and the United States.^[5] Numbers fluctuated, but on days  of organised mass protest, between thirty thousand and fifty thousand attendees were estimated.^[6] Both the formation and the longevity of the camp were remarkable. With 2021 being the forty year anniversary of its beginning, look back at some of the ways these women formed their protests and the backlash that they faced.

Tactics and motivations

In February of 1982, the decision was made to send away male activists and make GCWPC a space exclusive to women and children.^[7] A variety of reasons for this decision were given. Some, for example, argued that if protests were women-only then they were less likely to incite police violence against them.^[8] Another reason given was that the women of the camp were unwilling for themselves to be pushed into the traditional female role as a housewife by being given the responsibility of cooking and cleaning for the men.^[9] This argument would be more in line with second wave feminist thinking. Many of the women there saw nuclear weapons as manifestations of the patriarchy, so were reluctant to allow such things in the camp as well. Over time, a shift could be observed in increased gendering of their opposition by the women of GCWPC through language and imagery, citing nuclear weapons and war as masculine and an expression of a destructive patriarchy.^[10] GCWPC women taunted the military authorities as having ‘missile envy’ that fueled Cold War tensions with each nation wanting to prove themselves as the superior nuclear power.^[11] As well as criticising their opponents for dangerous expressions of masculinity that they believed showed them to be comfortable with the destruction nuclear weapons could inflict, the women infantilised the male majority military. Phrases like ‘Take the toys away from the boys’ were paraded through banners, badges, and songs and insinuated that the military were too irresponsible to hold these weapons.^[12] Situating the military and government as immature children helped the GCWPC women to define themselves within an opposing identity which was central to much of their activism: as mothers.

Caroline Blackwood’s book, On The Perimeter (1984), is an account of her visit to the camp in its early years and provides an insight into the exact motivations and opinions held by women in the camp. The conversations she had there revealed how the camp took great toll on its inhabitants both physically and mentally. They lived at the mercy of harsh weather, amongst thick mud and cold winds, often with the local council trying to strip them of what possessions they had to push them into abandoning the camp, and facing verbal abuse from the soldiers on the other side of the fence, which was often sexually charged.^[13] When questioned on why they were putting themselves through these conditions to fight for a cause which some called hopeless, many had the same response: for their children. ‘I think of the grandchildren and I know I have no choice’, spoke one woman.^[14] Much of the activism at GCWPC utilised imagery of children, such as tying toys and photos of infants to the fences of the RAF base. By positioning themselves as mothers, women at GCWPC legitimised their position both as the rightful opposition to what they portrayed as an irresponsible military and as defenders of children and future generations from the dangers of nuclear weapons.

Criticisms

However, their identities as women could also be used against them by those that criticised their activism. Women of the GCWPC were dismissed on the basis that they were not capable of understanding the intricacies of nuclear arms, that the presence of nuclear weapons was preventing full scale war. However, Blackwood’s interactions with the women of GCWPC would suggest that they were fully aware of the delicacy of the situation. Efforts were made to disrupt the transportation of the Greenham warheads for fears that a road accident could lead to spillage of nuclear material and a devastating pollution of the environment.^[15] They also attempted to prevent even the practice of military maneuvers for the fear that satellite images of such activities might alarm the Soviet Union and result in the initiation of nuclear war.^[16] Mothers of younger children were especially criticised for their involvement in GCWPC as it removed them from the domestic space.^[17] Those that took their children with them were criticised for exposing them to ‘squalor’.^[18] For many of these women though, leaving behind their families and struggling through the sometimes harsh conditions of camp life was ‘better than having dead or mutilated children’.^[19]

Relation to other anti-nuclear movements

GCWPC was not the first movement to use imagery of children and the family in anti-nuclear protest in the United Kingdom. Others included movements like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), established in 1957. At the beginning of the 1960s, the majority of the leadership of the CND was male, but by the middle of the decade much of the top leadership consisted of women.^[20] Women within the CND would often also use their identity as concerned parents to appeal to others with children to join as well as pushing their nuclear disarmament position through claims to be defending the wellbeing of children.^[21] Imagery of children was used in CND publications as a unifying motivation for all nuclear disarmament activists.^[22] In these earlier years of both nuclear disarmament activism and second wave feminism the benefits of utilising the role of mothers included that it was a powerful motivation and argument but it did not require women to step far out of their traditional role which open activism in a public sphere could challenge.^[23] The CND had a resurgence in interest in the early 1980s, attributed to escalating tensions and increased spending on nuclear weapons all while public fear was being stoked by programs such as ‘Protect and Survive’ alerting many to the heightening potential for a devastating nuclear war.^[24] Many of the women involved at GCWPC had also been involved with the CND. However, they had grown frustrated with what they saw as a slow-moving organisation and sought more direct and visible protest.^[25] The carnivalesque protests seen at GCWPC, singing, breaking into the base to dance on silos and to hold picnics dressed as teddy bears, were certainly more extreme than the marches of the CND.^[26] It was a more direct form of protest that many women felt pushed to after years of mainstream peace movements.^[27]

Conclusion

GCWPC was a highly memorable case of nuclear disarmament protest, used as a model for other camps spanning the US, Europe, and Australia set up in the following years.^[28] It was one example of the recurring case of women at the front of anti-nuclear campaigns and a continuation of a long standing link between femininity, pacifism, and environmental protection. ^[29] The juxtaposition of the military and masculinity on one side of the fence and women holding brightly coloured banners and photographs of their children on the other is imagery that persists in people’s memories of the camp today.^[30]

Blackwood’s book recounts interesting conversations to compare. One woman shrugged off the potential of developing cancer from exposure to campfire smoke while living at the camp as negligible compared to the medical effects of exposure to nuclear radiation.^[31] Outside of the camp, one man viewed the women only as a nuisance and thought that surviving a nuclear attack would only provide a fun challenge.^[32] Comparing these anecdotes shows just how divided opinion was on nuclear weapons at the time and just why women were frustrated enough to endure the mental and physical strain of the camp. It helps explain why the women also tried to raise alarm about leukemia cases in the population nearby the camp; because more visible and individual risk seemed to be more concerning than a theoretical nuclear war.^[33] Forty years later, it remains an iconic feature of the nuclear disarmament and peace movements.

^[1] Alison Young, Femininity in Dissent, (London, 1990), pp. 1-2
^[2] Margaretta Jolly, ‘’We are the Web’: Letter Writing and the 1980s Women’s Peace Movement, Prose Studies, Vol.26, Issue 1-2, (2003), p. 197
^[3] Elaine Titcombe, ‘Women Activists: Rewriting Greenham’s History’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 22, Issue 2, (2013), p. 311
^[4] Ibid, p. 311
^[5] Caroline Blackwood, On the Perimeter, (London, 1984), pp. 25, 30
^[6] Titcombe, ‘Women Activists’, p. 311
^[7] Tim Cresswell, ‘Putting Women in Their Place: The Carnival at Greenham Common’, Antipode, Vol.26, Issue 1, (1994), p. 37
^[8] Young, Femininity In Dissent, p. 30
^[9] Sasha Roseneil, Common Women, Uncommon Practices, (London, 2000), p. 147
^[10] Titcombe, ‘Women Activists’, p. 313
^[11] Roseneil, Common Women, p. 310
^[12] Catherine Eschle, ‘Beyond Greenham Woman? Gender Identities and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Peace Camps’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 16, Issue 4, (2017), p. 476
^[13] Blackwood, On the Perimeter, pp. 14, 35 : Roseneil, Common Women, p. 238
^[14] Blackwood, On the Perimeter, p. 12
^[15] Blackwood, On the Perimeter, p. 23
^[16] Ibid, p. 23
^[17] Young, Femininity in Dissent, pp. 60, 67
^[18] Ibid, p. 60
^[19] Blackwood, On the Perimeter, p. 39
^[20] Jodi Burkett, ‘Gender and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1960s’, in Simona Sharoni, Julia Welland, Linda Steiner, and Jennifer Pederson (eds.), Handbook on Gender and War, (Cheltenham, 2016), p. 424
^[21] Ibid, pp. 432, 434 : Lawrence S. Wittner, ‘Gender Roles and Nuclear Disarmament Activism, 1945-1965’, Gender and History, Vol. 12, No. 1, (April, 2000), p. 204
^[22] Burkett, ‘Gender and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 432
^[23] Ibid, p. 433-434
^[24] Burkett, ‘Gender and the Campaign’, p. 419 : Roseneil, Common Women, pp. 40-41
^[25] Titcombe, ‘Women Activists’, p. 311 : Young, Femininity in Dissent, p. 32 : Roseneil, Common Women, p. 35
^[26] Cresswell, ‘Putting Women in Their Place’, p. 38
^[27] Roseneil, Common Women, p. 54
^[28] Astrid Mignon Kirchhof, ‘Finding Common Ground in Transnational Peace Movements’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 61, No.3, (2015), p. 438 : Eschle, ‘Beyond Greenham Woman’, p. 472
^[29] Benjamin Redekop, ‘‘Physicians to a Dying Planet’: Helen Caldicott, Randall Forsberg, and the Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement of the Early 1980s’, The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 21, Issue 2, (2010), p. 279 : Burkett, ‘Gender and the Campaign’, p. 420
^[30] Eschle, ‘Beyond Greenham Women’, p. 476
^[31] Blackwood, On The Perimeter, p. 8
^[32] Ibid, pp. 102-103
^[33] Ibid, p. 39