Greenham Common

NotSpaghetti

I think that's irrelevant Oreo,
Surely?

It’s a side issue yes, though an interesting one in a social history kind of way.

I have a friend who was there and has spent her life protesting, organising political events and waving banners. She visited me recently, dressed from head to foot in black and draped in controversial symbols. I don’t think my village is ready for what looked like a terrorist and I find her ardour just boring.

Astitchintime

Sorry, have to confess……….when I first read the title of this thread I thought there’d been a spate of manky ham on sale in the supermarkets 🤭🤭

Snap! I thought, ‘is this a new food trend, and some think it’s common?’

I'm not ashamed that my late husband worked there. He was a member of the USAF Security Police, and just doing his job. There was nothing peaceful about the day to day protests. The American servicemen didn't engage directly with the peace women. That was left to the RAF Regiment. However, my husband was regularly verbally abused and had urine thrown over him on several occasions. One of his RAF Regiment colleagues lost part of a finger trying to prevent the fence being cut.
As previous posters have stated, the missiles were removed due to the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Nothing to do with the Peace Women, some of whom remained in the camps for another 9 years after the missiles had been removed.

Now that Putin has become aggressive and the US a less reliable ally we in Europe and the UK need to consider our future defence needs. Protesting for peace and placating a modern-day Hitler won't cut the mustard. A pity we wasted the so-called 'peace dividend' rather than investing in the capabilities of future defence.

CariadAgain

The missiles are gone - so yep...it did work.

I'm ashamed to say my former brother worked there and even requested (via our mother) that I stop supporting the idea of closing the base. Blimmin' cheek - and I'm the older one of us at that! But I did laugh at my mother saying "It might harm your brothers career" - yeah right.....career...he was just a driver there. I hadn't asked her to "ask" him to stop shaming me by working there...

My side of protesting involved other things basically - so I just had one visit there in the event - and do remember how freezing cold it was and was pretty admiring about women camping out there throughout the year.

The missiles are a couple of miles away at AWE. I used to live on the outskirts of the village and drove through Greenham Common every day taking my daughter to school.

Usedgobeblonde

I don't think so!!!

They were mostly selfish individuals who were just an earlier version of the wealthy and entitled people who have recently thought their cause re JSO of throwing paint on valuable and historic paintings and holding up traffic so that people couldn't get to their hospital appointments etc etc were completely justifiable. It wasn't. And the Greenham selfish oddballs weren't justified either.

(And I speak with the experience of an absent mother whom, I realised later, was just off enjoying herself and enjoying the freedom she'd had as a teenager. We were never able to bond and have been distant ever since. And, yes, she did sit on motorways in recent years. She still acts like an entitled silly child. But thank goodness for my lovely dedicated and hands-on Father and later my fabulous step-mother)
.

I was underage but I wanted to join the women. I did find it sad so many marriages broke under the strain but then it shows that they had the courage of their convictions. maybe they were the type of meek housewives that until then did what the husband dictated and this was pure rebellion on their part?

boheminan

Yes, I spent a lot of time at Greenham women's peace camp. It's an experience I am very proud to have been a part of. I stayed in a bender at Violet gate, cut many a wire and was arrested.

It's strange that it's so long ago c40 years. A couple of years ago the base had an open day that a friend (from Yellow Gate) and I went to and found we were practically mobbed by a little gang of visitors to the base that were very excited to have met 'real Greenham wimmin' (very strange) it was odd to be on the other side of the fence.

Apart from cutting wire what did you achieve?

labazs

I was underage but I wanted to join the women. I did find it sad so many marriages broke under the strain but then it shows that they had the courage of their convictions. maybe they were the type of meek housewives that until then did what the husband dictated and this was pure rebellion on their part?

It wasn't just women living at Greenham Common protest that had the marriage break-ups.

I was in a large active CND group and marriages were definitely a casualty there as well and I was watching some disintegrate around my ears.

It is a "heavy load" to carry to be an activist on top of leading a "life of one's own".

I was basically single and so I didn't land up "paying that price" - but I got unfairly dismissed from a job because I was active in CND. I was told I was good at the job and I knew that was so - but I walked into my bosses office one day to see him with a copy of a newspaper in his hands and asking "What is a secretary of a mine doing doing this?". I pointed out the blindingly obvious - and managed to do so in a polite tone of voice - that I hadnt mentioned where I worked/what job I did/absolutely nothing to do with my job and that I'd done the action concerned "in my own time and it was perfectly legal". There was no connection whatsoever between what I'd done as "myself in my own life" and "that job I was doing for money" - but I got unfairly dismissed soon after that (and they even stole a bit of my job pension money I'd paid in to boot - as when I asked for it to be transferred to my next job pension scheme they denied it existed and I hadnt realised they'd steal from me and so hadnt kept my payslips to prove that money does exist!!!). So - dirty tricks all round. I was far from the only one.

I just had to be grateful that I didn't receive the same treatment as a friend of mine that was also very active - and he and his wife came back to their own house one day to find "someone" had been in. That "someone or someones" weren't thieves - but what they had done was go through all his (our!) papers from the group and then deliberately "gone to the loo" in his house (to besmirch it) - and nothing had been stolen! So we knew/they meant us to know they were not thieves - they were worse! He promptly told us all - and he and the rest of us thought "We are not going to be bullied and spied on like this" and we carried right on as normal. Despite the state of his house....despite odd phonecalls where we could swear (I could swear....) there was someone else on our phoneline and they weren't even trying to hide it wasnt acting normal.

So yep....a lot of us were made to "pay a price" - even if we hadnt knowingly put ourselves in that position and were just being an employee from 9am-5pm Monday to Friday and being "ourselves" outside those hours and doing absolutely nothing illegal.

I'm still gobsmacked looking back at the way some of us (perfectly conventional and law-abiding people) were harassed like that....

I was at that time a member of CND.

I also went on the Greenham common protests.

This was in the 1980’s, but now CND seems to have died a death.
Although I still believe in the disarmament of nuclear weapons.

YES

Cossy

I have the greatest of respect for these women, as I do the suffragettes. Willing to give up so much and enduring so much for their beliefs.

This. Sums up their courage and determination very accurately. I only went on two demos (Surround the Base and the huge match) but my daughter is very proud of the photo of her (aged 4) standing under the signpost to Greenham Common while on the demo - it's inspired her throughout her life.

As M0nica accurately states, the activities of those protesters made ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE to any policy re missiles, it just occasionally wasted time and resources of the local police.

It may have made them feel better, and -- in their own minds -- given them some purpose in life, but that's all.

Just like the 'Just Stop Oil' fruitcakes ("yes dear, chucking orange paint or powder at Stonehenge, or a museum painting, will surely make world leaders think you're committed" -- or at least, should be). . . .or those protesting re Palestine (Chump & Netanyahu fearfully awaiting their every appearance?!). Good causes, but wildly misguided (frankly, bonkers) ways to try and get the points across.

Interesting thread. Thanks!

There is a 2021 film about Greenham called ‘Mothers of the Revolution’ narrated by Glenda Jackson. It’s available in several streaming platforms and seems to have been quite well received…. The 2021 New Zealand International Film Festival noted that "this extraordinary story shows how traditional ideas about mothering and womanhood were subverted as women faced down hostile locals, police, military, media and, ultimately, global superpowers to take their protest worldwide".

I will be watching it tonight in my quest to work out whether it was all in vain. My initial gut feeling is that the impact of the Womens Peace Camp at Greenham was broader and wider than the goals they set out to achieve.

Calendargirl

Astitchintime

Sorry, have to confess……….when I first read the title of this thread I thought there’d been a spate of manky ham on sale in the supermarkets 🤭🤭

Snap! I thought, ‘is this a new food trend, and some think it’s common?’

Me too 😁

I lived too far away and had two young children but I went once, when we held hands around the base.

I thought the women were wonderful.
I went there for day events twice and wished I was brave enough to join them.

DrWatson

As M0nica accurately states, the activities of those protesters made ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE to any policy re missiles, it just occasionally wasted time and resources of the local police.

It may have made them feel better, and -- in their own minds -- given them some purpose in life, but that's all.

Just like the 'Just Stop Oil' fruitcakes ("yes dear, chucking orange paint or powder at Stonehenge, or a museum painting, will surely make world leaders think you're committed" -- or at least, should be). . . .or those protesting re Palestine (Chump & Netanyahu fearfully awaiting their every appearance?!). Good causes, but wildly misguided (frankly, bonkers) ways to try and get the points across.

Re Palestine - and Netanyahu does seem to be steadily destroying his own society from within. Lots of younger people in it are leaving and emigrating abroad/going back to their own countries etc. They seem to have one heck of a mental health crisis on their hands (ie most of them still believe they're right and knowing deep down that you are very very wrong and yet telling the world you are right understandably impacts back onto them). Add in that - if they are the relevant age group = they're scared of being drafted into the IDF. There is certainly a good deal of "internal combustion" going on in them right now.....

Even Netanyahu must see that they look as if they are going to implode from within and add all the boycotting etc from without and it may be that the whole thing will self-destruct (fingers crossed the Palestinians might then stand some chance of getting their own country back).

I totally supported what the women at Greenham did plus the women at Menwith Hill near Harrogate who camped outside for years!
Their sheer determination and commitment raised so much awareness for the rest of us! I only did a day !!
They deserve our admiration not sarcasm as seen by some on here, as usual ! Many husbands supported them too in their campaigning !

I think it became a bit like a cult and ended badly when the rad. fems. took over.

I vaguely remember seeing the woman on the news. I just thought they all looked bonkers.

I was at Greenham Common on the day women embraced the base. Two coach loads of us went from Paddington in west London. There were thousands of women there. We spread out all along the barbed wire fence that surrounded the base and held hands. A siren or something like that went off and there was a loud speaker announcement that told us we had surrounded the base..It was a rapturous moment. There was a women's choir in one of our coaches and on the way home they sang. "You're not going to take my world away. Not with me watching.".
The barbed wire was interlaced with ribbons, wool, embroidered banners. It was a wonderful thing. So many women demonstrating peacefully, using women's craft as a form of expression.
Was it successful? There are still nuclear weapons and wars taking place in so many parts of the world, women and children suffering horrifically. I don't think we can succeed in one place at one time but there is also among humans a consistent will towards peace. If we can never achieve it, it looks as if there may be no future for any of the children being born now.
I have an embroidery on display currently in the Museum of Edinburgh which celebrates the way women have expressed themselves through thread in history and across the world. I have sewn on it, among other things, a small section of the fence st Greenham with a banner pinned on it.

Wow, what a 'blast from the past'.

It's actually quite refreshing to remember an era when many of us still believed we could make a difference - and we did indeed do so (whatever the naysayers have to say about that).

I wonder what I would have thought/what any of us would have thought if we'd known we were going to get lined-up within our lifetimes to have a Lockdown imposed on us for months at a time/be so much more restricted generally in many ways and Klaus Schwab et al looming 2030 at us as the date by which they want our society changed totally - and very much for the worse.

If we'd known then what we know now - would we have still been able to find the mental/emotional energy to "rage rage against the dying of the light" as the phrase in that poem goes?