| Leonie Caldecott writes here about Greenham Common where women have staged | ||
| a continuousprotest against Cruise missiles being based in Great Britain. | ||
| The first time I saw Greenham Common US Air Force base, just over a year ago, in September | ||
| 1981, the 'Greenham women' were still a long way off their present notoriety. An attempt to | ||
| attract media coverage by chaining themselves to the fence resulted only in the discovery that the | ||
| 'gentlemen' of the press found bondage more disarming than disarmament and only for a day or | ||
| 5 | 5two at most. | |
| I arrived at the small encampment in the midst of drizzling rain to find a couple of women | ||
| making tea on a fire under a makeshift shelter. Feeling slightly awkward, I sipped the proffered | ||
| brew and asked them how long they intended to stay. 'For as long as it takes to get a genuine | ||
| public debate on the issue of nuclear weapons in this country, and about Cruise missiles in | ||
| 10 | particular,' said a cheerful woman with a small child in her lap. She tumed out to be Helen John. | |
| Now, when I see her on television arguing in her down-to-earth manner, unperturbed by even the | ||
| most hostile questioning, I remember that first meeting and can't help smiling at how unlikely | ||
| this prospect seemed at the time, as in the early days, it was all too easy to imagine the camp | ||
| fading away into the twilight of exhausted activism. | ||
| 15 | 15 During the long hard winter months many changes occurred: practical problems and personality | |
| clashes took their toll. Some women left. Other, younger women tumed up. The local council | ||
| issued an eviction order. The women asked men not to stay at the camp any longer, but only to | ||
| visit. The first eviction was enforced, then another from the Ministry of Transport land on to | ||
| which the women had moved. By the beginning of this winter the women had no space left on | ||
| 20 | which they could legally live. So they lived rough under plastic sheeting and large umbrellas. On | |
| top of this, there was growing pressure from the wider peace movement for the women to prove | ||
| their effectiveness. | ||
| In September the idea surfaced within the camp of surrounding the base completely with | ||
| women. December 12, the day of the decision to deploy Cruise missiles, was set as the date. | ||
| 25 | I felt excited but a trifle sceptical. Where would they get the requisite numbers of women in | |
| the time left? They would need at least 12,000 to cover the nine miles and the weather might well | ||
| be less than conducive to a mass tum out at that time of year. Greenham communications are | ||
| erratic at the best of times and by now the funds raised from supporters were beginning to run | ||
| out - due to legal costs and fines incurred during the spring and summer. The women were on | ||
| 30 | their own. | |
| Or rather, not on their own, as it tumed out. They began to send out chain letters which spread | ||
| like wildfire, tuming up in the postbags of women far and wide, all over Britain and other parts | ||
| of the world. The mythology of Greenham had begun to operate. Everywhere I went in those | ||
| intervening months, women were talking about it. | ||
| 35 | The big day dawned grey and drizzly. Coaches full of women of all ages and backgrounds | |
| thundered down from all over the country towards Greenham. By early aftemoon there were | ||
| enough women at the base to surround it three times . Men provided food and ran the crêche. | ||
| My own experiences over the past 16 months have shown me that the peace issue is the straw | ||
| that could break the back of women's political passivity. It's as though the small, pilotless Cruise | ||
| 40 | missile is the line over which hitherto a-political women are suddenly refusing to let the powers | |
| that be. | ||
| The Sunday Times, December 19, 1982 |