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Greenham Common remembered, 25 years on

Helen Carter
Wednesday September 6, 2006
The Guardian

A bit of the original perimeter fence at Greenham Common forms part of an exhibition at the Guardian Visitor Centre in London marking the 25th anniversary of the largest women's demonstration in modern history.
On August 27 1981 a group of 36 women, four men and several children set out to walk to Berkshire from Cardiff to protest about the imminent arrival of 96 American cruise missiles. It took them 10 days to complete the walk. They carried a leaflet which said: "Why are we walking 120 miles from a nuclear weapons factory in Cardiff to a site for cruise missiles in Berkshire?" On its reverse it showed a picture of a dead baby, deformed by radiation, in Hiroshima.
At the height of the peace camp in December 1982, 35,000 people turned up linking hands and arms and surrounded the nine-mile perimeter fence.
The exhibition includes 50 photographs, cartoons by Posy Simmonds, badges, posters and court documents - including papers where protesters attempted to take action against the then president Ronald Reagan and his deputy George Bush snr through the US federal courts. The exhibition also contains articles from the Guardian and Observer at the time to show how the protest was reported.

Among the well-known actors and politicians who visited the camp were Julie Christie, Yoko Ono, Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot and Sheila Hancock. Many of the original Greenham women went on to protest against Trident at Faslane in Scotland.

· Greenham Common 25 years on. September 6 to October 20 at the Newsroom, Guardian and Observer Archive and Visitor Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London. -

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There are few places I'm less likely to eat these days than a Little Chef. Its problems are to do with class and history. People no longer use the A roads where most Little Chefs are situated.
The Newbury branch was a god-send in the days when I was up and down to the peace camp providing hot food and drinks and a pay phone where I could phone my copy to the office in London.
One bitterly cold new year's morning, longer ago than I care to remember, I went straight from a party in London and watched women from the camp break into the American air base at dawn and dance on the missile silos. After a while there were complaints from other customers (or so we were told) and the peace women had to stop using the Little Chef loos to wash off mud and grime acquired around the camp fire. But it was still a relief for journalists like myself to turn into the welcoming car park dashing betweeen the peace camp and the local magistrates' court.

Joan Smith - The Independent 02.01.2007

My Involvement with Music was most active on the march and at Greenham.
We made up songs and reused old songs with new words. By singing at the
top of our voices with often spontaneous righteously angry words we
often held the police at bay for as much as four hours before they moved
in to remove us or arrest us. Singing was a powerful weapon at Greenham.
On the Greenham March on the way to the largest store of Nuclear Weapons
in Europe at Welford (we had deviated from our route) we had no
breakfast or much lunch and sang "Pack up your missiles in your Old Kit
bag and Leave boys leave" and other similar ditties. That day we walked
25 miles instead of Eight!
We presented the US Commander of the base with a bunch of Wild flowers
including Nettles, Brambles and Thistles. So showing him we cared about
the Environment with the presentation of this uncomfortable Bouquet.
At Brawdy In N Pembrokeshire where the US And UK monitored the
underwater movements of Nuclear submarines, Fourteen of us sang songs
for four hours whilst chained to a large anchor out side the Military
base others of us were singing whilst blockading the Main
(ONLY] Entrance for four days/nights sitting under the banner Womens
struggles won the vote .....Some police were moved to tears. After they
cut us from the anchor. They carried us very gently across the road and
put us gently on our Sleeping bags on the grass verge. Singing broke
down the "Us and them" with the police. Thalia

It is important that we acknowledge our art of social activism as an important historical record. Banners have been part of our activities for decades. Thalia Campbell, a banner maker and a founder of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, was inspired on the initial march to Greenham to organize the creation of a banner from a sheet. After the women made the banner, it continued to be used as a bed, a shawl, a screen and a baby-changing place. Campbell integrates her political convictions and her artistic talent; she makes dozens of banners and encourages others to make them as well. At a recent workshop in Victoria, she showed slides of 100 years of UK Women's Banner Making," based on her years of searching through archives and attics to exhibit this neglected political art form. This record of unnamed women in co-operatives, suffragettes, suffragists, peace groups, international solidarity, miners' strikes and childhood sexual abuse movements is an inspiring testimony to social event largely ignored by mainstream historians. At her workshops, Campbell develops a collective process in which participants design their own banners. After her workshop I made my first banner - for Hiroshima Day. At our next banner making workshop we want to make a banner with the powerful words of U.S. novelist Alice Walker: Resistance is the Secret of Joy.
From The Integration of Art and Politics
By Theresa Wolfwood

Link to the Danish Peace Academy Website

Extract from the book:
August 28th 1981 - The sun shone hot. We made friends - a woman called Thalia Campbell had brought her daughter Lucy and big felt pens and banner making things and someone had even thought to make our own postcard showing the route of the march. We were whipping up an infectious , mad-cap spirit of optimism. On walking to Devizes Thalia performed cartwheels , at which she was exceptionally good.
Read more.......
ISBN 1 870206 762

"I wasn't involved in the early evictions at the local court, but I did happen to be at Greenham the day the council officers came round to take the names of the people to evict when it was going to the High Court. I was at the Yellow Gate and these two men in suits turned up and I was the first woman to speak to them and foolishly I gave them my name, which meant the action in the Royal Court in London was Newbury District Council and 17 named others. The other women after that didn't give their names and they had great trouble in finding their names. So I had the experience of going through an eviction procedure for Greenham in the High Court, which was quite terrifying really. I came home and decided to hide away, because at that time the law said that an eviction had to be placed in your hand. But the Conservative government had just changed the law and it meant that the eviction notice could be nailed to your premises. So I came down here and hid away in various farms in the hills thinking that I couldn't be evicted if they couldn't find me to give me my eviction notice. But I decided to go up to Greenham to support my friends and when I got there we found there were these big brown envelopes nailed to the trees with our names on them like the wild west. When I went up there to support my friends in the court I found I was the first one in the court and had I not gone up there I wouldn't have even known I was in court because it was nailed to a tree at Greenham, my eviction notice. So I rang my son and he said "Mum will I ever see you again?" I think he had visions of me going straight off to prison and he was quite worried as well, I was quite worried too really." Thalia Campbell

The organisers of mass protests against nuclear weapons recall how they mobilised thousands of women during the 1980s at the Greenham Common airbase. This was a peculiarly British stand against the presence of US 'Cruise' missiles at the nominally UK but actually US controlled Berkshire airbase. As the story of the protest is recalled a monument is being constructed in memory of the well-known women's peace camp.
Ian and Thalia Campbell's dense and textured video about the making of the Greenham Common Monument.
The monument is a life sized bronze sculpture that commemorates the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp and their 19 year effort to prevent guided nuclear missiles from being sited at the Greenham Common Air base in Berkshire.
Thalia recalls their presentation: "It was very thrilling to see the response of the Audience to our Video 'Greenham the making of a Monument.' It seemed to be appreciated by all ages and both sexes, academics and non academics alike.
Watching the video as part of the audience in Sheffield, I realised how rarely we hear unmediated women's voices. We do see women on TV and hear them on radio, but I always feel it’s not their agenda or / their script! Apart from Woman's Hour that is!! We did wonder how the women speaking about the Greenham march with the sculpture being made simultaneously would work, but it did work and quite well we thought. We had worked so hard for so long and were so close to it!"
The video worked a treat and during question time a range of other activists came out of the audience and saluted Ian and Thalia's sterling effort.

GHOSTS AT THEIR OWN MEMORIAL

I saw it on the web site and it did not look good
A million pounds of our Money so it certainly should

I got on the bus from Wales before dawn
Still dark, cold dew on the lawn

Woman, woman where have you been?
I've been up to London to look at the Queen
Meeting the women of world war two
Celebrating the work they had to do.

She unveiled a monument, What a to do!
The women asked each other does this represent you?
The emotional message made women feel sore.
Its bizarre ,weird ,disturbing, insulting , women belittled sad, black and dour,
It's like an old clothes shop, or a lynching and hanging in any past war
It's ,disappointing and not what we want. The police thought so too.
We would have liked something better , for our brave and our bold,
Our hopes and our fears, our faces, our bodies, our children too.

Those hanging colourless uniforms with no bums or tits
Too much was left to the old establishment male gits
(Not how I normally speak of men but the rhyme was irresistible!)
A failure of them and us once again!

Women wrote letters to say what they thought
Often unanswered they all came to nought.
Public Meetings would have been good!
The artist what say did he have?
More on TV and a real dialogue
Were women in Wales asked what they wanted?

Woman, Woman. What did you do?
I took up some leaflets to share with you.

Young women fly past in helicopters and tornados
The songs, bands and speeches wove a magic spell.
I just can't share these leaflets. Oh Hell!!
If I take them back home my man will say I'm a wimp!

Because of the bombs we stood far off with a few,
Many silver haired and fragile too
An ATS woman who stood for hours with no chair
said have you some leaflets to spare?
Give me some leaflets, we'll pass them around.
Yes I agree with you It's got to be said
We were promised three bronze figures right from the start
One for of each of the services, A real work of art.
Its our work that should celebrated not our return to the home.
Our fortitude, bravery and comradeship should be seen.
Our jobs could be in words carved on the plinth.

After so many years it's all that we've got.
Will it speak to the Future? I rather fear not.
In beautiful bronze figures our spirit and humanity should be there for all time

Written on the bus coming home 11.July 2005


Thalia Campbell

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