The women's peace movement...
a history of the
Greenham Common women
Keeping it women-only gave women their own space for creative actions within the peace movement, but it also made it much more difficult for the authorities to handle the protest.
From mid-August 1982 to summer 1983, some extremely imaginative actions were developed, including the occupation of a sentry box, the disruption of the laying of sewage pipes to the base, etc.
Then the arrests started. The women
The peace movement is not dead. At the end of October tens of thousands of people all over Europe demonstrated against their government's policies on nuclear weapons and Nato, proving that the peace movement is very much alive and kicking
In Great Britain, 30,000 people assembled in Barrow-in Furness to protest at the construction of Trident submarines there.
In september, 40,000 women had turned up at Greenham Common to protest against the 16 Cruise missiles stationed there and also against the
Tory government's decision to send thousands of territorial army troops to West Germany as part of Nato's operation Lionheart.
The security forces were taken aback at the numbers on this protest.
Paratroopers were pulled out of bed in their pyjamas to try and stop women removing the fence and climbing into the base.
Once again, 'the spirit of Greenham' is helping to keep the peace move-
To understand the continuing strength of the Greenham protest and the support it has inspired it is necessary to look at how it e
Only then is it possible to appreciate how these women have helped keep the peace movement as a whole alive and built a national and international women's peace movement.
Janine INGLEFIELD
It all started in the spring of 1981 when European women organised a peace march from Copenhagen to Paris. It was a mixed march and the organisers were very restrictive in what they would allow in terms of direct action. The women began to think of organising their own actions.
In Britain, some women had the idea of marching from Wales to Greenham
International Viewpoint 12 November 1984
Common in Berkshire, where the first Cruise missiles were to be sited.
On August 27, 1981, forty women, plus children and a few men set out on their 'Women for Life on Earth March' to Newbury (the nearest town to Greenham Common). On September 4, at Newbury, scouts were sent ahead to locate the airbase. The next day there was a demonstration to the base supported by local CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmturned their arrests into political trials where the case against the government's deliberate and conscious escalation of the arms race was brought to the attention of the national and international press.
Outside the trials, mass protests took place with women singing and weaving webs, sporting their woolly hats, short hair and suffragette colours (Green, White and Violet - Give Women Votes). Women organising
The cause of the Greenham women had captured the public imagination. The case against Cruise missiles was persuasive, and opinion polls began to reflect majority opposition, particularly among women. Margaret Thatcher had to change her defence minister.
This explains the huge mobilisation that took place on Sunday, December 11, when 30,000 women joined hands to encircle the base. On the Monday many women stayed to participate in the blockade. On January 1, 1983, the women scaled the barbed wire fence late at night, and by morning were to be seen holding hands, dancing on the silos.
The women's peace movement was not built simply through actions at the camp, however. The camp itself also stimulated the self activity of women all over the country in their own towns and villages.
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NOMEN PEAC PEACE MOVEMENT
Perugia in summer 1984, the strength, confidence and left-wing character of the women's peace movement asserted itself in an international forum.
Not only did women lead the demonstration in Assisi, Italy at the end of the meeting but they began to assert themselves in the conference itself.
We ve lived through two World Wars were here, determined e/V therell never be a Third!"
affinity group discussions produced two highly controversial reports at the end of the conference.
One was by a Spanish woman from the Movimiento Comunista de Espagna (MCE) (4) which criticised the diplomatic, male-dominated orientation of the events and argued that if more women were the conference would be representative of the grassroots of the movement. In Britain, Germany and Holland women make up at least half of the peace movement, she pointed out. Highlighting the creativity and energy that women had brought to the struggle against nuclear war and the way women had made the movement
Women of all ages are united in opposition to Cruise (DR) What was so attractive about the Greenham movement was, in fact, the notion that anyone who put the case for peace could be a 'Greenham woman'.
Greenham support groups were mush-
These were a more formalised version of the 'affinity group' in which women who took action together at the camp stayed in contact to prepare for future actions. Many of the women were completely new to political activity and came from a variety of backgrounds and ages. The movement became unstoppable.
The links made with the trade unions and the Labour Party at the time of International Women's Day for Disarmament on May 24, 1984, is a further example of what the women were able to achieve beyond the camp.
Consistent lobbying conferences, the Women's TUC and the TUC (Trades Union Congress) itself produced the first ever strike action against the installation of Cruise missiles in
The action was concentrated primarily in the local government unions, and in some cases was backed by sympathetic municipal Labour councillors. Also UCATT (the building trade union) members have been refusing to work at the airbase for some time, and later Rolls Royce workers in Scotland decided to boycott Trident.
If CND had adopted as bold a trade-union orientation, at this point, as the women of Greenham, more rank-and-file action could have been achieved. CND has always had an ambiguous relationship to the Greenham women.
The women's peace movement was much more dynamic than CND itself and had resources enough of its own to mobilise independently. However, there are many women active at the base of CND, and, under pressure from this base, CND publicised and built actions called by Greenham women. But the women's peace movement was autonomous from CND, and this threatened the latter's respectable, pressure-group-oriented leaders. 14
The most successful mobilisation that CND itself built at Greenham was at Easter 1983. Burfield, Aldermaston (1) and Greenham were linked in a human blockading at Greenham, after a lot of debate with CND, was
One hundred thousand people were mobilised that day. It was a
The Greenham women have inspired widespread international support the beginning. The Thatcher government, with its special relationship with the US, made it the target for peace campaigners
The first missiles were to be sited in Britain and Comiso, Italy. Women from as far away as Australia sent messages of support to the Greenham women within the first few days of the camp being
In December 1981, two women from Greenham participated in the second of the Women's Pentagon Action peace initiatives in the USA. (2) Perugia conference
Greenham women travelled to Holland and Germany that year to address demon-
The women's peace march from Copenhagen to Paris was followed up in 1982 with a march from Stockholm to Moscow, and in 1983 from Oslo, Norway to New York.
Women's peace organisations like the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (3) found a new lease on with this feminist peace movement. It was in the Copenhagen to Paris march that women decided they should have their own day for disarmament and May 24 was chosen. International Women's Day itself was still a focus and on March 8, 1983, for example, women from led a mass protest in Brussels outside the Nato headquarters.
At the END (campaign for European Nuclear Disarmament) conference in such a popular one, she urged the leaders of the peace movement not to get diverted from their original aims into highflown negotiations.
The focus against Cruise and Pershing missiles had to be continued, she added to loud applause. The women are now planning to organise their own international conference toward this end and to strengthen their voice inside the peace movement. The MCE woman's speech 1. Aldermaston is the location of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. It was the scene of many protest marches in the early days of the peace movement. Burghfield is the site of the Trident factory.
The Women's Pentagon Action is a network of women who originally got together to plan a sene somet - encircling the Pentagon.
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was founded in April 1915. Its headquarters are now in Geneva, Switzerland.
The MCE is a revolutionary organisation in Spain which works closely with the LCR (Liga Comunista Revolucionaria, section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state), on many questions. 'What we're saying is women are powerful (DR)
International Viewpoint 12 November 1984
was followed by that of a woman in exile from East Germany who had previously been imprisoned for her 'unofficial' peace activities. Here the bold internationalism and consistent commitment of the women's peace movement to fighting for a new kind of international peace movement, outside the constraints of the Soviet bureaucracy and against the Western imperialist governments, was dramatically revealed.
Women from Greenham had had previous experience of the problems of the independent peace activists in Eastern Europe. Some of them went to the Soviet Union to talk to official and unofficial peace activists. One, Anne Petit, was thrown out of the country for taking unofficial peace activists into the official headquarters. Women from the Greens were not even allowed into East Germany because of their commitment to peace.
All these activists exposed the hypocrisy of the policy of peaceful co-existence of the Soviet bureaucracy and their pre-
Outside Newbury court where hundreds of women have been tried (DR) tence at arms control. How could the Soviets be seen as serious about peace if they imprisoned those in their country who campaigned question other peace activists at Perugia. siles were deployed at Greenham mon. The Greenham women announced that they would continue their protest and make it impossible for Cruise missiles to come out on the roads surrounding the common.
It was not until the following March that the authorities dared to give the go-ahead for the missiles to come out of the base. When it did come it was assisted by a huge police escort. It was a full-scale military operation, and the Greenham women were there, ready to oppose it. One woman lay down in front of the convoy and stopped it but only, alas, temporarily.
The reasons for the rise of the women's peace movement lie in women's socInternational Viewpoint 12 November 1984 ial position today. Opposition to the warmongering policies of and Reagan administrations is high among
It is tearing women away from the traditional backing they have given to conservative politicians.
This is because the social and economic crisis is hitting women and other specifically oppressed groups, in such a
Women can see the senselessness of closing schools, hospitals and old people's facilities down when billions of pounds and dollars are spent on weapons of mutual destruction. nuclear arms race is crazy, and women are daring to say so loud and clear.
In Britain, women are also turning to the labour movement for answers how to stop these warmongering governments. The links that have been built between Greenham women and the labour movement and Greenham women and the miners' wives in particular show the move, they are often quicker to learn from their experience than men because they have to confront so many problems to be able to organise. Their opposition to the Thatcher government is very practical. Women are stuck in low-paid-jobs, sometimes forced to, or choosing to, bring up children alone. They are more and more often the only breadwinner in the house because, in some areas, publicsector employment for women has surtraditional areas of male employment (in industry) have perished When their opposition becomes articulated, it is devastating in its militancy.
CND has had difficulty in coming to terms with the Greenham women. women-only issue, especially when women's actions were so much in the forefront, put many people's (mostly men's)
On the left, the Socialist Workers Party, the Militant tendency and others continue to be hostile to the Greenham women whom they falsely categorise as separatist, pacifist and middle class. But as the camp has continued, the women have won more and more respect in the labour and peace movements. They have proved themselves time and time again the most consistent, active fighters against Cruise and the most willing to withstand the repression that the police and soldiers mete out to them.
have inspired other women. The miners' wives in particular point out that their decision to have women's marches against pit closures was the Greenham women's As Kay Sutcliffe from the Kent region put it, 'We want all women marching with women's banners, like a
The desire of wives to be politically active in the strike shows how far the ideas of the women's liberation movement have spread in Britain today.
When women turn to the peace movement and the labour movement today, they turn a critical eye towards these or-
They want organisations that speak for, and involve, women. They are no longer content to play the "supportive role' they have traditionally played in the labour movement, because it no longer accords with social and econ-
The capitalist recession is radicalising women. They have higher expectations and have won gains from the period of the boom, and they are not going to allow these gains to be easily wrenched from them - especially for the sake of
Women can and will be won to the left wing of the labour movement in Britain and internationally if the left wing is prepared to listen to their cause and fight for the changes that women want to see. 5. According to a survey in 1983, Reagan's support is 17 per cent higher among men than women. 47 per cent of women voted Democrat and 55 In the Congressional elections in 1983. per cent of men voted Republican. In the June 1983 elections in Britain 54 percent of men compared with 56 per cent of women voted against the Tories.
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