What would you like to ask Ailsa Johnson?
[[When were you at Greenham, and how long were you there for?|Ailsa Johnson When were you at Greenham, and how long were you there for?]]
[[How many times did you visit?|Ailsa Johnson How many times did you visit?]] I was, this was during the 1980s that I was, I was visiting.
[[How did you came about becoming a Greenham woman? | Ailsa Johnson How did you came about becoming a Greenham woman?]]
[[Did you know anybody um who lived at Greenham? |Ailsa Johnson Did you know anybody um who lived at Greenham?]]Um, quite, I would say several, several times as well as the big demonstrations. My local CND group used to go up and take things for the women.
[[Okay, so is that how you came came about Greenham?|Ailsa Johnson Okay, so is that how you came came about Greenham? ]]
[[What was your - what detail or moment sums up um, your experience of Greenham?|Ailsa Johnson What was your - what detail or moment sums up um, your experience of Greenham?]] I, it was when the place was set up in the 1980s. And I had young children. And I lived in Surrey, so it was easy for me to go to Greenham for the big demonstrations, and also to visit.
Um, I stayed there overnight one night when the convoy came out, and that was a very frightening and surrealistic experience. But mostly my visits were for the big demos and to visit during the day.
[[And in terms of um, your relationship with um, you know, the local residents, did you...? |Ailsa Johnson And in terms of um, your relationship with um, you know, the local residents, did you...?]]
[[And when you when you left Greenham, or, you know, were obviously sort of actively following it. I mean, what was your opinion on the way that it was, you know, shown in the media, do you have any memories of..?|Ailsa Johnson And when you when you left Greenham, or, you know, were obviously sort of actively following it. I mean, what was your opinion on the way that it was, you know, shown in the media, do you have any memories of..?]] Yeah, I think the visits to Greenham and the CND group locally grew up together really. It was really, the local CND group was reactivated by Greenham I think - it was an existence and had been in existence since the first marches from London to Aldermaston, and Aldermaston to London, but this, but the Greenham women revitalised, I think, the local CND group in Surrey.
[[Can you can you give me some - do you remember any examples of you know, any peace protests happening? You know, I've heard people talking about songs they used to sing...|Ailsa Johnson Can you can you give me some - do you remember any examples of you know, any peace protests happening? You know, I've heard people talking about songs they used to sing...]]
[[And do you remember, or do you have knowledge of the different gates at Greenham, and... |Ailsa Johnson Yeah. And do you remember, or do you have knowledge of the different gates at Greenham, and... ]]Yes, I know, several people that lived at Greenham, and I’m still in touch with quite a few of them. Because they were all members of Aldermaston women's peace camp, which, after Greenham went back to being a common, we had the peace camp continue at Aldermaston and Burghfield.
[[Tell me more.. |Ailsa Johnson Did you know anybody um who lived at Greenham 2]]
[[I was going to ask, you know, how did um, being, you know, an activist and campaigner affect your personal life, but it's, you know, it's ongoing and actually since Greenham you've, you've been heavily involved in activism. I mean how has that impacted?|Ailsa Johnson I was going to ask, you know, how did um, being, you know, an activist and campaigner affect your personal life, but it's, you know, it's ongoing and actually since Greenham you've, you've been heavily involved in activism. I mean how has that impacted?]]
I think the night when um, I was up there and the convoy came out. I think it was a very surrealist experience to actually see that these weapons were coming out onto our roads. Greenham was closed - they finished at Greenham because they took the weapons off the roads in that way, and put them onto submarines. And were updating the nuclear weapons and were able to put them onto submarines. So Greenham was um, er, ceased being a nuclear place.
On the other hand, Burghfield and Aldermaston are where, is where the research, the maintenance, and the keeping of the nuclear weapons is now and that is why we're continuing protest at Aldermaston. Only last October, Trident Ploughshares, which is also linked to Greenham, and the legacy of Greenham -these are a group of people that blocked the access to Burghfield for a whole day. And their case is coming up in April 2019.
So people are still campaigning vigorously for - against nuclear weapons because the need is still so great.
[[How much do you think the camp was politically infiltrated or sabotaged?|Ailsa Johnson How much do you think the camp was politically infiltrated or sabotaged?]]
[[What do you think the reason is, um, for that, you know, the Suffragette movement is celebrated, whereas the peace movement has, you know, sort of been ignored and isn't, you know - I hadn't heard of Greenham, for example. So, you know, why do you think...| Ailsa Johnson What do you think the reason is, um, for that, you know, the Suffragette movement is celebrated, whereas the peace movement has, you know, sort of been ignored and isn't, you know - I hadn't heard of Greenham, for example. So, you know, why do you think...]]
Yeah, I think the political situation in the world is very dangerous. Um, we've always thought that proliferation was a big threat. And with the very unstable political situation worldwide, I think the threat is as great as it was in the 1980s. In the 1980s we were, at Greenham, trying to stop the weapons coming to Britain. And we failed. And, unfortunately, the need to protest is as real now as it was then. Unfortunately, Britain has not signed the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. This was passed last year at the United Nations, and um, the people campaigning for it were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the fact that the nuclear weapons are such a big threat still. And we were hoping that Britain would sign up to the treaty, but unfortunately, they have not.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/campfire_image_kayleigh_hilsdon_inverted.jpg" width="480" height="480" alt="Black and white illustration of a Campfire with moon, sun, smoke and a raining cloud, titled Legacy by Kayleigh Hilsdon">
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''You are sitting at a campfire, with seven Greenham Women.''
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In the drifting smoke and low fireside flicker, you cannot clearly make them out.
Speak with them, and you will see them clearer through their words.
------/XX\------
Who would you like to speak with?
[[Ailsa Johnson]]
[[Penny Gulliver]]
[[Sue Say]]
[[Mica May]]
[[Diana Derioz]]
[[Alison Napier]]
[[Becky Griffiths]]
------/XX\------
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Find out more about the Greenham Women you are speaking with.|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]
[[Say goodbye, and leave the campfire.|Credits]]Um, the weapons were gone from Greenham common, but the research and the maintenance of the weapons was being done at Aldermaston and Burghfield. And that's why we have a camp there every month, the second weekend of every month, and we have the right to camp there. We went up to the High Court to get permission, or to get recognition that camping is a form of protest. And we won the case so that we can, we can have a - it’s recognised that we can do our peaceful camp every month at Aldermaston and at Burghfield.
[[Tell me more.. |Ailsa Johnson Did you know anybody um who lived at Greenham 3]]
[[You've obviously learned from Greenham because youve carried it on, you know, the peace movement and, I mean, is that still happening today? I mean, have you taken Greenham to now? (Laughs).| Ailsa Johnson you've obviously learned from Greenham because you've carried it on, you know, the peace movement and, I mean, is that still happening today? I mean, have you taken Greenham to now? (Laughs).]] It’s a camp where we just go and camp for one night usually, and we're a vigil to, to acknowledge, to find out what's happening at Aldermaston. It's very much linked in with Nuke Watch - Nuke Watch is an organisation that monitors convoys coming out of Aldermaston and at Burghfield on their way up to Scotland with warheads. And these warheads are sent up to Scotland for refurbishment and brought back down again.
The convoys are on the motorways going up through population centres such as Glasgow on the way to Coulport and they’re huge convoys that have got military accompaniment on the motorways. It’s usually four warhead carriers, great lorries, and there's usually a lot of support vehicles for breakdowns and for emergencies. And these are travelling on our motorways, in amongst all the heavy traffic on our motorways, and accidents have not - could easily happen. So Nuke Watch is very much linked in with Aldermaston women's peace camp.
[[Please tell me more.. | Ailsa Johnson Did you know anybody um who lived at Greenham 4]]
[[Okay. I mean I was going to ask, how your fear of nuclear weapons compares, you know, compared then to your fear of nuclear weapons now....? |Ailsa Johnson Okay. I mean I was going to ask, how your fear of nuclear weapons compares, you know, compared then to your fear of nuclear weapons now....?]]Another organisation that's linked in with the peace camp is Nuclear Information Service. This is an academic research body that tries to find out what is happening at Aldermaston and at Burghfield. It’s based in Reading, so it's handy for knowing what's happening at Burghfield and Aldermaston, and it alerts the media and speaks to the media about what the developments are at Aldermaston. So very much all these things are very much carried on from Greenham. Greenham has been, has become a common again. But the research, the nuclear weapons factory is still alive and well at Aldermaston and at Burghfield. So this is why we are still protesting, and it's a women's only camp. And because it's in, it's in the spirit of Greenham, and it is a continuation of Greenham.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, we had the camp. When we were at Greenham, there was a lot of people that didn't like the peace women. There was obviously some people that supported, and took food to the women, but a lot of people were threatened by the women, and thought they were wrong and that nuclear weapons are a deterrent.
But recently we had a um, there was an open day at Greenham common. And we had - we set up a camp just like it would have been in the 1980s, and the locals were coming onto the common with their children to go cycling, and to enjoy the open air, and they said ‘Oh, yes, we remember the women at Greenham, and we have our children here today’.
So it has been passed down from generation to generation, that the Greenham women were very much a focus of life when you live near Greenham, and that lots of people actually did remember the Greenham women with gratitude, really - not, not because we got rid of Greenham - weapons from Greenham common particularly, but because they got they've their Greenham common, common land back.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
Yes. I think songs are a big feature of the, of um, the campaign really. I mean, it is really quite frightening on a personal level to, to demonstrate and to protest. And I think the songs that grew up from Greenham and since then, so made good use of sort of like keeping morale up and giving us a united feeling that what we were doing was the right thing.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I haven’t got too much knowledge of that because I just went up, um, as a day - on a day and just went to a gate which we, we thought we would go to that day, not particularly because we were involved in that particular camp.
[[Do you know which gate that was? |Ailsa Johnson Do you know which gate that was?]]
[[Do you have memories of the other women who were who were at that gate as well?|Ailsa Johnson But do you have memories of the other women who were who were at that gate as well?]]I think I was at Green Gate.
[[Green gate?|Ailsa Johnson Green Gate?]]
[[Do you have memories of the other women who were who were at that gate as well?|Ailsa Johnson But do you have memories of the other women who were who were at that gate as well?]]And Blue Gate. I'm not quite sure what all different ones are.
[[But do you have memories of the other women who were who were at that gate as well?|Ailsa Johnson But do you have memories of the other women who were who were at that gate as well?]]
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes. In fact, there are some women that were at Greenham that are still involved in the Aldermaston women's peace camp.
And so we do have a continuity.
And these are women that have been campaigning since the 1980s.
And I have a lot of respect for them.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, yeah, I think it was. Yes, I think the security services knew. Um, it was definitely infiltrated. There is evidence coming out now that there were police undercover people there. There's going to be a big revelation quite soon about how it was infiltrated. Like other environmental campaigns, um, the police thought that they were, that we, that they needed to keep an eye on us. And I'm sure that at one time our phones were tapped.
[[Oh, really?|Ailsa Johnson Oh, really?]]
[[And what sort of relationship um, did you or any of the other women have with the men around you? So going back to the military, and the police?|Ailsa Johnson And what sort of relationship um, did you or any of the other women have with the men around you? So going back to the military, and the police?]]
Yeah.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think the women always tried to behave in a non-violent way. And this is NVDA - nonviolent direct action, has therefore grown up and the police and the protestors have sort of like grown together in this. What, what's happened is because the women - the police can can rely on the fact that we're not going to be violent, and therefore their attitude to us is different from say, them treating hooligans or something like that. They have a respect for us, because they know that we're non-violent. And this deescalates the confrontation.
[[Please tell me more...|Ailsa Johnson And what sort of relationship um, did you or any of the other women have with the men around you? So going back to the military, and the police?2]]
[[What do you, um, what do you think the police and law makers learnt at Greenham?|Ailsa Johnson What do you, um, what do you think the police and law makers learnt at Greenham?]]
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]] We're non violence, therefore, they don't have to treat us with violence, and it doesn't escalate into a terrible situation. So, I think the campaigns and protest movements now are benefiting very much from the fact that this nonviolent direct action grew up in this way, that the police can rely on us to be not violent, and therefore, they treat us better. And there's been studies to show that non-violent campaigns have a much greater rate of success than violence does. Um, it's, it is the basis of a lot of campaigns now. For instance, the climate change campaigns now are making use of the fact that the peace movement developed this non-violent way of protesting, and I think this is the way forward - that violence only creates violence, and that non-violence is a much better way to to protest.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Um, I think, um, I think they, they learned that it's a lot easier to to, to police a non-violent demonstration than a violent demonstration. That it won't get out of hand. They can rely on um, the protesters not to be violent and therefore, the violence doesn't escalate.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well, like in all things, the media are looking for sensational stories, and they were - they would concentrate on, not on the issue of the fact that the women were protesting against nuclear weapons, but trying to find things that weren’t um, relevant really to the movement. It doesn't really matter if you're a lesbian or, or straight or black or white. The people that were protesting there were protesting because of nuclear weapons.
And unfortunately, the media probably picked up on some, whenever they could find any bad behaviour, they would concentrate on that - not on the actual issues. But that's the problem of our media these days anyway, that they think that people only want to know about sensational things, and not the issues.
And I think it's symbolic of the fact that our media is not informing people. It's just entertaining people, and using people for - to sell their papers, or television programmes and ignoring the real issues - the real issue being the fact that nuclear weapons are an abomination, and the pinnacle of war and weapons.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think it's totally culturally acceptable now, for women to have the vote. Obviously 100 years ago, it wasn't culturally acceptable.
Now, it's not - a lot of people these days think that nuclear weapons are a good thing because they think that they're a deterrent, and therefore, it's not so - sometimes it's not socially acceptable in certain spheres of society for people to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. We need to have a cultural change, just as we did with the Suffragettes.
We need to all recognise that nuclear weapons are a terrible, terrible thing. And that the future of the world, especially in this political climate, is at risk because of nuclear weapons. Um, it's, we've always been against proliferation of nuclear weapons from spreading to other countries. And so not only do we have a horizontal proliferation, we also have a vertical proliferation where they're developing new weapons these days.
And so, um, we will continue to protest against this.
[[Is there anything else about Greenham that I haven't asked you about that you’d like to perhaps say?|Ailsa Johnson Is there anything else about Greenham that I haven't asked you about that you’d like to perhaps say?]]
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think um, it's been sort of like part of my DNA really. I grew up in Barrow in Furness, and they’re building Trident submarines there. And in the 1980s I had a young family, and I think that was a very pivotal time in my life, a time when I was developing, and it was a time when Greenham was in existence, Greenham peace camp was in existence. And I think this all fed into the fact that this, you know, became part of my personality, really.
And I think I shall always be protesting against weapons of mass destruction.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, because yes, Greenham was a very formative experience and I continue to do the work through Nuclear Information Service and through Aldermaston women's peace camp, and through Campaign Against the Arms Trade and through all the other issues I'm involved with.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
I think I would like to say that a very formative experience for forming my views was when I read a book called Children of Hiroshima. It was written six years after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. And it's the accounts from children of what it was like in Hiroshima when the bomb fell. And this is - it's such a striking, poignant read that I’ve carried this
all the way through my life. And it reminds me of why I'm continuing to campaign because of the suffering of these children.
[[Thank Ailsa Johnson and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/nvda.JPG" width="400" height="400" alt="Black and white illustration of a wreath of flowers and bolt cutters, titled NVDA by Kayleigh Hilsdon">
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''Which song shall we sing?''
------/XX\------
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[["We are the Witches" by the women of Greenham Peace Camp, performed by Carolyn Francis.]]
[["The Ballad of Freda Geese" by Christina Li.]]
[["Peace camp Newbury Berkshire" by the women of Greenham Peace Camp, performed by Jenny and Flo Crowe [EXPLICIT LYRICS].]]
[["Sarah's Song" by the women of Greenham Peace Camp, performed by Jenny and Flo Crowe.]]
[["Like a Mountain / Can't Kill The Spirit" by Naomi Littlebear, covered by Christina Li.]]
[["We Are a Gentle Angry Women" by Holly Near, sung by Claire Ingleheart.]]
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------/XX\------
[[Speak with another woman
around the campfire.|Campfire]]
[[Leave the campfire,
and view the credits.|Credits]]What would you like to ask Penny Gulliver?
[[So, um, can I ask you when you went to Greenham? How old you were? And how did it come about? How did that happen?|Penny Gulliver So, um, can I ask you when you went to Greenham? How old you were? And how did it come about? How did that happen?]]
[[What was your family’s reactions - your parents’ reaction to you going to Greenham?|Penny Gulliver What was your family’s reactions - your parents’ reaction to you going and doing this?]] I was 21, um and I was living in London. I was involved in community theatre - issue based, political theatre, and I went, it would have been October 1983, and I was there for a year. For a year, basically.
And I went because, I was already a political person, and a kind of, on a very - a fairly straight forward, socialist trade union kind of family background, and stuff - from the south, from Southampton.
And er, and I thought, and I was anti-nuclear, very anti-arms trade - all those kinds of things, and for me I didn’t think I was going to go and live there forever, but I did feel like I have to go and do a shift. And my shift was a year - but I had to leave in the end because I got sick.
Um, but er that’s why I went. I went this is a point where I’ve got - I haven’t got a job, I was applying for community theatre jobs and not getting them. So I went with somebody else in the same - also involved in community theatre. And so we went.
The year previous, I can’t remember now the dates - the er, the hands around the base thing had happened for the first time the year before - I can’t remember the dates, or maybe it hadn’t? I can’t remember at all, but we were there for two of those, so I think it might have been the year before, or it might have been the year after - sorry. Um, and so and we stayed. Basically we went down for three nights, and it was really cold, but on the third night I warmed up and went ‘yeah, I can do this’. So we went back to London, packed a proper bag and we went back the following day, and I lived there for a year.
[[And when you went for those three nights, did you take a tent or did you take a bender?|Penny Gulliver And when you went for those three nights, did you take a tent or did you take a bender?]]
[[How come you chose Blue Gate? Or did Blue Gate choose you?|Penny Gulliver How come you chose Blue Gate? Or did Blue Gate choose you?]] No, I took a tent. We took a tent and we left it there, because it was a scrappy old tent that we literally machined together. Like, you know - I can’t believe - it didn’t have a fly sheet, so we added a bit of plastic into a fly sheet that we found it was too small. And the three of us slept in there and it was absolutely freezing. And so we left it there, and when we went back obviously somebody else was sleeping in it, and then we built a bender.
So, um continued to build benders all year, particularly after, because in the March of that year was when they started to come and clear the camps everyday, and they cleared Blue Gate - I was at Blue Gate. They cleared Blue Gate everyday, and so you were literally, um building a bender everyday to sleep in, unless it was warm enough to sleep out. I got quite good at it.
[[Do you think that the notion, that women actually organising together and just simply doing things together - like socialising together was more normal, let’s say - then, than it is now?|Penny Gulliver Do you think that the notion, that women actually organising together and just simply doing things together - like socialising together was more normal, let’s say - then, than it is now?]]
[[How important do you think - in London there was Squatters Movement going on, in the country there was a lot of unemployment - you didn’t get sanctioned for finding a place - how important do you think those things were to Greenham Common?|Penny Gulliver How important do you think - in London there was Squatters Movement going on, in the country there was a lot of unemployment - you didn’t get sanctioned for finding a place - how important do you think those things were to Greenham Common?]] Blue Gate chose us. It was a complete accident. It was dark when we got there - we got off the bus, we walked up the hill, um, because it was October and it wasn’t late, but we’d gone and it was completely dark, and we didn’t really know where we were going. We walked up the hill, and we could see something, which of course was a fire, and Blue Gate was the first gate that you come to if you walk out the town of Newbury, and so we stopped there.
[[Please tell me more..|Penny Gulliver How come you chose Blue Gate? Or did Blue Gate choose you?2]]
[[Can you remember each of the gates having a particular character?|Penny Gulliver Can you remember each of the gates having a particular character?]]
And at that time it was called the Inter City Punk Gate, and it was, and the woman I went with was from Bradford, and everybody was really from the north of the county, or they were Irish, Scottish or Welsh. And there was one other southerner there at the time, and then there was two of us, really. And that was, and we kind of - we went and it was very working class, and very quickly you kind of understood - I think at that point there was four gates, or maybe - yeah it was probably only four - Yellow, Green, Orange and Blue. And then because over that winter and the spring, you know all the others popped up - Red, Turquoise, blah blah blah. Yeah, so we stayed - it was a bit like it was a good fit, but it was an accident.
[[Can you remember each of the gates having a particular character?|Penny Gulliver Can you remember each of the gates having a particular character?]]
[[Was there a sense that this was the right place to be?|Penny Gulliver Was there a sense that this was the right place to be?]] Yes.
[[Can you tell me what they all were?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me what they all were?]]Yes.
[[Can you tell me about Orange Gate?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me about Orange Gate?]]
[[Can you tell me about Green Gate?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me about Green Gate?]]
[[Can you tell me about Yellow Gate?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me about Yellow Gate?]]
[[Can you tell me about Violet, Turquoise and Emerald Watch?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me about Violet, Turquoise and Emerald Watch?]]
[[How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?]]Orange Gate was definitely older at that time, or it felt older - to us - they were probably in their 30s. But there were lots of women there who’d been part of the Aldermaston marches and stuff, and it was lovely. They had settees at Orange Gate! They always had better cake! Which I don’t know how they did it, but they did. And they were very lovely.
[[Can you tell me about the other gates?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me what they all were?]]
[[How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?]]Green Gate was much more international - there was lots of women from all around the world. It was much more hippy, skippy, kind of lots of jumping over the flames and wishing out the evil - all that kind of thing, which I loved, but which wasn’t us. And I met a lot of people that I really liked - from other places in the world. And Blue Gate - some of the gates you had male visitors in the day - although it was obviously women only. Green Gate was women only all of the time - because it was really hidden and in the woods and stuff.
[[Can you tell me about the other gates?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me what they all were?]]
[[How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?]]And then there was Yellow Gate of-course, which most of the women at Yellow Gate referred to as Main Gate. And there were a lot of kind of nice women, there were a lot of women with children which was lovely, but there were also quite a small, fairly middle class group of white women who would come to Blue Gate and say things like ‘don’t speak to the press, you’re showing us up’, ‘don’t go to the pub, you’re showing us up’ - there was a lot of that kind of thing. ‘You shouldn’t be taking state money’ - because we were signing on, and we were all a bit like ‘what the fuck do you live on?’. And then of-course we found out they were all being sponsored by Japanese Peace Groups, and stuff like that, and it was like ‘great then - great for you’. So yeah, so there were clashes that year around class. (Laughs).
[[Can you tell me about the other gates?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me what they all were?]]
[[How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?]]Other gates popped up, so some of the Green Gate women went off and set up Violet - one along, including my friend Katrina, which was lovely and there were lots of kids at those, because they were on the other side of the fence, so there were very nice people - women, who set up there, and Turquoise set up just along from us, which were basically a vegan gate.
Because most gates were vegetarian, everybody was vegetarian, but you didn’t take - even if you were a meat eater, and there were meat eaters at our gate, but they went into town and had - you know chicken sandwiches and stuff - but that was a vegan gate.
Then there was Emerald Watch, which was basically - it was a Japanese woman, whose name I can’t remember, who was lovely, who set up what was Cruise Watch, because when cruise came in on the 14th November of that year - ‘83, it was - they set up literally on the other side of the fence from there. So they ended up kind of nine or so gates in that year. You know, some with more than others, but they definitely had character.
[[Can you tell me about the other gates?|Penny Gulliver Can you tell me what they all were?]]
[[How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?]]You see I think it’s probably, again, probably very different to who lived at what gates, and because we were definitely a very working class gate, we were very white. There was only one black woman who lived for any length of time at Blue Gate when I was there - one called Julie, who died, um, in her late 20s, so a long time ago now. And almost, a big chunk of us were lesbians, um - not everybody. Everyone respected the fact it was vegetarian, but there were some vegan women who went off to set up Turquoise, um, at that time.
But it wasn’t - it wasn’t - lots of those things weren’t a big issue. We talked politics all of the time - non, and we had - because we were Blue Gate, and because we were the first ones that a lot, I mean a lot of us obviously went to Yellow, but a lot would come to Blue because it was the first place that they ran into - like we did. So we had hundreds of visitors. And I have to say we talked politics to everybody who came, about everything - about the women who came and did night duties, because we, because we were getting ransacked by the police - because at that point Thames Valley were on the outside of the fence.
[[Please tell me more about the tensions..|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?2]]
[[Please tell me more about the Police..|Penny Gulliver But years later with the infiltration by under-cover policemen?2]]
[[I mean for me it’s definitely - I learnt a lot of other things here, so it was - I went for anti-nuclear, I came away with a lot of other knowledge.|Penny Gulliver I mean for me it’s definitely - I learnt a lot of other things there, so it was - I went for anti-nuclear, I came away with a lot of other knowledge.]]
[[How much do you enjoy vegetable mush?|Penny Gulliver How much do you enjoy vegetable mush?]]Um, that we started to have night watches every night - even before cruise came, um, so hat’s all you talked about. And um, but there were - the issues that we had - we spent quite a time arguing to have camp meetings, circulate the base, and that happened in that year, but man that was a struggle to get Yellow Base to move. And also that we, there was a treasurer who held the money for camp, and we got that to circulate, and that was a real scrabble. And those were the times when I remember there being issues.
I don’t actually remember, I remember there’d be women who’d fall out with each other - usually around sex, around sleeping with other women and all that kind of thing - that was the arguments that I remember.
[[Please tell me more..|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?3]]
The others I remember -
having a big meeting at Blue Gate the first time, and having terrible, um having a very big row, and it must have been the spring or something of ‘84, um, and it was about class. And um, I think people were shocked. I can understand why lots of black women came and went, ‘this is not for us’ - it was very white. It was a very, you know, and none of the er camps were very different on that level. And there were black women there.
I, sometimes, when people talk about it being very middle class I want to say ‘actually there was a lot of working class women there’, and they’re just kind of - again them coming round and saying ‘this is going to happen, but don’t you talk to the press, we’ll talk to the press because we’ll be so much more articulate than you’ - that kind of shit.
So, um, so, what I remember is there being some issues about class, but not within our gate. Actually usually, and the fact is there were lots of middle class women at Green Gate who we didn’t row with in the same way, because they were not hanging on to that power in the same way as some of those women at Yellow were.
But that makes - in lots of ways - that makes it sound like much more of a big issue, than on a day to day basis than it was - it wasn’t. Do you know what I mean?
[[Please tell me more..|Penny Gulliver How much do you think that the, those kind of tensions of class and race and sexuality and any kind of difference of politics, or veganism or whatever, how much do you think they were managed in day to day interaction? How much do you think they became problems?4]]
[[When - that talking about politics was, I know that you’re saying this wasn’t big problems between the women, but that talking about politics was not abstract, was it|Penny Gulliver When - that talking about politics was, I know that you’re saying this wasn’t big problems between the women, but that talking about politics was not abstract, was it?]]
And there was the same kind of structural power issues that you faced in your everyday life back home - it just happened to be all women, but men would turn up, and you’d say ‘it’s okay, come over to the fire, where have you come from’ whatever, at Blue Gate, and then he’d go ‘you know what you’re doing wrong’, and you’d go ‘for fuck’s sake!’
It would happen all of the time, ‘you’re a bit untidy’ - ‘well that’s because the police have been through and wrecked everything’ - do you know what I mean? ‘And sometimes that’s that’s not the priority - tidying up. I know you think that’s what women should be doing, but it’s not a priority.’
Do you know what I mean - it was that kind of - there would be a lot of that.
[[It’s like that’s why! You’re the reason why we’re doing it like this!|Penny Gulliver It’s like that’s why! You’re the reason why we’re doing it like this!]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes. ‘It would be much more successful...’ I said ‘yeah, that’s why all the mixed camps are all falling apart became of sexual, you know, sexual violence and all the rest of it. It might not be from other camp people, but who - that thing about who’s a good man, who’s a bad man, that kind of thing’. And obviously a lot of stuff around sexual politics was talked about and you know, we were predominately lesbian - but it wasn’t at Blue Gate at that time, but it wasn’t a big deal.
[[But years later with the infiltration by under-cover policemen?|Penny Gulliver But years later with the infiltration by under-cover policemen?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes. And that was - and at the time when we were there we had a couple of things with the press. We had somebody from the Sun come in her mini, and put it in a ditch at Blue Gate. We went over - not only did we get her out, and carry her practically to the fire, and sit her down, give her a cup of tea, see if she was alright, we got the mini out of the ditch - because there was no way else it was going to get out. And the next week in the Sun ‘molested by lesbians at Blue Gate - their hands were all over me, blah blah blah’, and we were all like ‘we just...the woman had crashed her car’.
So there was lots of that - there was the Scottish woman whose name I can’t remember - Lynn, who basically came from a small village, and some Scottish paper went home, and pictures of her all over - wasn’t allowed basically back into the village, never mind her own home. There was a lot of those kinds of things.
[[Please tell me more..|Penny Gulliver But years later with the infiltration by under-cover policemen?2]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]There was a lot of expose stuff, and we did get a bit paranoid about the police when - because we did run actions weekly - we went on an action at-least once a week, if not more, and we did during that whole year, and um and we did all get a bit paranoid sometimes - especially after the press and people would say ‘oh there’s police as well, there’s police spies’, and you’d get arrested and taken in, and they would say ‘we know this, and we know that’, and you’d go ‘how do they know that, how do they know that?’ And obviously it was, because there were police amongst us.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
No.
[[You were talking about things in the world.|Penny Gulliver You were talking about things in the world.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes.
[[In this place.|Penny Gulliver In this place.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, and there were people who came who came from a party political background - but few, very few. In one of those ways I was one of those people - my mother volunteered with the Labour Party for like 75 years or something, and I’m one of those people that she would say ‘just join the party, just do stuff’. And I would join the party, and then I would leave over something, and she’d go ‘nobody cares, that you’re leaving!’ And I’d go ‘I’m not giving them my money - they’re doing terrible things’, you know - several times - serial monogamy with the Labour Party.
And my politics are to the left of the Labour Party, but she would say ‘this is where working class people are, and how are we going to change things? You’re not going to change things’. And so, we were few actually - most women came from all sorts of different reasons, but their politics was very much definitely based in the reality of their lives - not about ‘I’ve read this at college, and I’ve decided to be a Marxist’, so yes.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]And I think that’s - for me - that’s one of the most important things that came out of camp. I think the vast majority of women went to camp - whether you lived there, you stayed overnight, you visited, people came because they were anti-nuclear, and it was clear cut.
And women said that so many times. ‘I came because I was against the bomb’ - a lot of older women would say ‘I don’t agree with the bomb’, or ‘I’m antinuclear - I didn’t know about all this other stuff’.
[[Please tell me more..|Penny Gulliver I mean for me it’s definitely - I learnt a lot of other things there, so it was - I went for anti-nuclear, I came away with a lot of other knowledge.2]]
[[There’s a lot of talk nowadays about intersectional feminism..|Penny Gulliver There’s a lot of talk nowadays about intersectional feminism..]]You literally could see those things being put together - because women would - there were lots of women from Ireland and they would say ‘this is what happens in Derry’, and they would go ‘oh god, if they’re telling lies about this, they’re probably telling lies about you, and they’re probably telling lies about those people, and those people, and this place.’ And you literally saw people string all those things together, and I think - so I think that was the most common experience for me.
[[Please tell me more|Penny Gulliver I mean for me it’s definitely - I learnt a lot of other things there, so it was - I went for anti-nuclear, I came away with a lot of other knowledge.3]]
[[There’s a lot of talk nowadays about intersectional feminism..|Penny Gulliver There’s a lot of talk nowadays about intersectional feminism..]]It wasn’t my experience, I went with a kind of fairly, er, you know - set of politics which had grown over years, but my politics did change at camp. I went thinking there was important things, and that was about class, it was about women, and about violence and war and all of those sorts of things.
And environmental and green stuff was definitely lower down the list, and when I went there I suddenly did that kind of, you know, I think I might have made this up but it was where someone would say - when you talk about domestic violence or whatever - in that situation, and somebody would say ‘you know when a company cuts down the trees on a hill in Bangladesh, you know, er, half a million women will drown in the villages below - so why are their lives less important than the women you’re talking about?’
And of-course they’re not, but actually what you need to talk about is the English mining and logging company that are cutting down the trees, and it looks - this is an environmental disaster, but actually it’s the death of people as well, so I think I suddenly - I did that kind of - you can’t - it doesn’t matter how you come to politics - what issues you work on, or how you string it together - it’s the fact that you’re involved and you do those things, and environmental politics and other things like that, are as important as the other things you come with. And you can’t prioritise - it’s pointless to try.
[[There’s a lot of talk nowadays about intersectional feminism..|Penny Gulliver There’s a lot of talk nowadays about intersectional feminism..]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes.
[[..and um again it seems to me that the actual make up of ‘well these women were all middle class, and these women were all white, and’...doesn’t reflect the variety of things that were being considering and talked about, and so it seems to me that it’s almost like, um there’s a kind of reductionism of ‘well if this person was here, they only talked about those things’?|Penny Gulliver ..and um again it seems to me that the actual make up of ‘well these women were all middle class, and these women were all white, and’...doesn’t reflect the variety of things that were being considering and talked about, and so it seems to me that it’s almost like, um there’s a kind of reductionism of ‘well if this person was here, they only talked about those things’?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, and that actually wasn’t my experience at camp, and we didn’t have that word then. But one of the things we talked about at the time, and people would get - and we fell into the trap of doing it as well, because there was a lot of class politics that we talked about.
But for me class is slightly different to some of the other things, class is one of the things I want to get rid of - I don’t want to get rid of some of the other diversities that we, you know, that we think about and that, was that - er, let me just think before I waffle endlessly about this!
[[Please tell me more..|Penny Gulliver ..and um again it seems to me that the actual make up of ‘well these women were all middle class, and these women were all white, and’...doesn’t reflect the variety of things that were being considering and talked about, and so it seems to me that it’s almost like, um there’s a kind of reductionism of ‘well if this person was here, they only talked about those things’?2]]
[[I mean I think what happened afterwards became quite well funded by people like the GLC, funding, er, different identity politics, which in man says, er, was a divide and rule...|Penny Gulliver I mean I think what happened afterwards became quite well funded by people like the GLC, funding, er, different identity politics, which in man says, er, was a divide and rule...]] We talked about it, but we got into a place where one of the things we got sick about in the ‘80s was there was a lot of fighting other - not fighting, arguing - about who’s the most oppressed. And so we wanted to not do that, but then we fell into that going - because I remember at one of these meetings we’d said there’s five or six middle class women who’d hogged the conversation about what we should do, and how we should bring attention back to what was going on - and there was a hundred people sitting around - and I remember being the person who said it really inarticulately going ‘you have to stop talking, because there’s a hundred people around here that haven’t said anything, and we need to listen to other people’.
And I remember this woman looking at me going ‘I’ve become big and strong by practicing - don’t tell me to shut up’. I went really red. And she went ‘okay, we’ll have 10 minutes, and then we’ll go around the circle’, and ofcourse people started to laugh, and it ‘was like why are you laughing?’ And it was Iike ‘so you’ve talked for an hour, and now the other 95 people here are going to get 10 minutes between us?’ And then the ice-cream van arrived and they went ‘ice cream!’ And they all ran off, and we all went home.
So it was a bit like - so it was that kind of, you know, we said there are people who have a worse time than us, and they’re not here - generally, because if you’re very poor, you’re very controlled, if, you know, very often that would be, you know obviously working class women, black women, women with disabilities were not at camp in great numbers because of obviously - because of the reality of their lives, and that not being the case. There were a lot of young people out of care, and run aways that used to arrive. And lots of women with mental health problems, and lots of women running away from domestic abuse, you know - who found a safe place there. Do you understand that - it was a bit like it was trying not to get into who is the most oppressed, but also, and recognising those things, but also saying ‘actually shut up!’ You know - ‘other people need to speak’.
[[I mean I think what happened afterwards became quite well funded by people like the GLC, funding, er, different identity politics, which in man says, er, was a divide and rule...|Penny Gulliver I mean I think what happened afterwards became quite well funded by people like the GLC, funding, er, different identity politics, which in man says, er, was a divide and rule...]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, yes.
[[...so it’s kind of - it’s a balance isn’t it?|Penny Gulliver ...so it’s kind of - it’s a balance isn’t it?]]
[[But for a long time it seemed to me that Greenham was somewhere those differences were being explored, but not used against us.|Penny Gulliver But for a long time it seemed to me that Greenham was somewhere those differences were being explored, but not used against us.]]It is.
[[How to recognise difference without having it used against you in that way.|Penny Gulliver How to recognise difference without having it used against you in that way.]]
[[But for a long time it seemed to me that Greenham was somewhere those differences were being explored, but not used against us.|Penny Gulliver But for a long time it seemed to me that Greenham was somewhere those differences were being explored, but not used against us.]]Absolutely, and somebody said - I can’t remember who it was - somebody said some marvelous expression of the ‘80s, and I can’t remember who said it - but it was like we were so busy fighting amongst ourselves, about how to cut things up, and who was most oppressed, that they actually sold the whole fucking lot off behind our backs, and we turned around and the world was gone. And that was really true.
And the left is always like that - we’re always easily - when we’re not doing it ourselves - picked upon from the outside about divide and rule - just as we’re witnessing now with what’s going on in the left - but that has never been different, it’s a bit like you know - it’s just ongoing.
[[But for a long time it seemed to me that Greenham was somewhere those differences were being explored, but not used against us.|Penny Gulliver But for a long time it seemed to me that Greenham was somewhere those differences were being explored, but not used against us.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Absolutely.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes. It doesn’t happen in my life now. I got to a women’s forum that’s local, and very few women go to it. But then it was normal, and I felt like, people say ‘oh it was so extreme in the ‘80s and stuff’, but lots of change - I feel, you have to start out there, because the compromise brings you in from where you are, and unless you stand out there and go ‘this is wrong - we have to change things’, and take a lot of shit for it, it doesn’t even get onto the agenda of change, and that was what was marvelous about Greenham was that you could sustain that for such a long period of time - and talk about all sorts of things.
And you know one of the things that we did over the Easter of ‘84 - the press did a ‘we’ve evicted everybody - everybody’s gone’, and the press silence and we decided on the Easter weekend to start being arrested, and everyone would keep - because they would just keep - they would arrest some, keep some in, chuck some out - you would just keep getting arrested until they were filling up all the local jails as far as whatever, and we would alert the press to say ‘look, we are still here, and this is still going on, and the cruise missiles are still here, and are still trundling around the countryside when they feel like it’.
And all these things were organised - it was consensus.
[[Please tell me more about this..|Penny Gulliver Do you think that the notion, that women actually organising together and just simply doing things together - like socialising together was more normal, let’s say - then, than it is now?2]]
[[And the percentage of time that was having a blow up about something or other, compared to the percentage of time that made something happen...|Penny Gulliver And the percentage of time that was having a blow up about something or other, compared to the percentage of time that made something happen...]]
[[What was the range of different kinds of reactions and relationships you had with the army?|Penny Gulliver What was the rang of different kinds of reactions and relationships you had with the army?]]All the meetings, we didn’t have voting - you talked until you agreed, and we did things all the time, on a daily basis. People seem to think that that’s impossible, and actually it’s not. And you might not get what you want today, but you might next Tuesday, when you talk about something else, and it’s a bit like, and people work, and it was like generally, when I think about camp it was - god it was a fabulous thing, and a fabulous time, and we had such a lovely time.
And we talked about such serious things, things that broke your heart that people would tell you about, and you felt like you were doing stuff, and that you would go on doing stuff, and yet would change your life, and it would change other people’s lives but it was wonderful - it wasn’t terrible - it was wonderful. And I can’t think of any other time in my life when I’ve worked in mixed groups when they’ve been nice people, and I’ve liked the men that I worked with, and we’ve done good things - but it wasn’t like camp, it just wasn’t.
[[And the percentage of time that was having a blow up about something or other, compared to the percentage of time that made something happen...|Penny Gulliver And the percentage of time that was having a blow up about something or other, compared to the percentage of time that made something happen...]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Absolutely - it was tiny - the blow up times, and I think it’s because obviously you want to unpick those times, you want to go ‘what went wrong, what could you do different?, but actually they were tiny in comparison to the good things and the disastrous things. The fact that, when I think about it now, we were running actions from Blue Gate, on at-least a weekly basis - sometimes people would be doing things every night of the week until everybody ended up in prison, and I think there was only four of us - in the January or something - when you were doing two on, two off - you know, just to stay up overnight because cruise came out of Blue Gate, so it was like, god, shattering. But shattering in a, you know, you’re young and you can do that then. You were alive, and it was wonderful.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, yes. And was difficult because you were just slammed in the press all of the time. Hideous stuff in the press constantly. You were getting, there were blokes in drive-bys at Blue Gate all the time - people got beaten up all the time, you know - some people got beaten up when they were arrested.
Things were thrown at you - I remember a farmer coming by and just shooing pig shit over everybody. Biscuit tins of blood - that kind of thing. So there was endless those things. But it was a bit like, well it was just like, you know, you had a make-do wash under a bucked somewhere, and you carried on. And it was like this is the place - no going home.
[[Say nothing..|Penny Gulliver Was there a sense that this was the right place to be?2]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]] I went home because I got dysentery - not from camp. But now I look back, and I think I probably didn’t have dysentery - I was ill, and I saw a doctor, and then the environmental health turned up and said I’d given a positive dysentery test and that I would have to leave and blah blah.
And that’s what happened, and then I left then - I went back for court, but I went back to London. We were squatting in South London, and I had to give a sample to environmental health for 6 months, and I never gave another positive sample. So now I look back and go ‘it wasn’t true’. And that was all over the press, because everybody knew my name - up until that point nobody knew my name, and suddenly all those women at Yellow Gate knew who I was! (Laughs). ‘Here’s a knife and fork, and go over there, and don’t touch anything’ - that kind of thing when you’re in court.
[[Keep listening..|Penny Gulliver Was there a sense that this was the right place to be?3]]
[[And you were ‘Terrified Mary’ by the end of all of this?|Penny Gulliver And you were ‘Terrified Mary’ by the end of all of this?]]
[[Were you ready to leave, anyway?|Penny Gulliver Were you ready to leave, anyway?]]We were talking about those things, it’s a bit like the place to be. And you were frightened - you were going to be doing stuff, and you would break in or whatever you were doing, or painting the runways, or whatever it was we were quite often on diversion - someone would come from Yellow and say ‘we want to take pictures of something, so you need to cause a diversion over here, Blue Gate’. So we’d be ‘oh great’, and we’d all rustle out, and you’d all pee - because we’d all have to pee before you went, and then you’d go and you’d break in, and you’d all get arrested, and you’d be sitting somewhere, and you’d go ‘oh, what’s going to happen tonight’, and then you’d find out they’d had a row at Yellow Gate about who was going to take the pictures and then they called it off, but nobody come and told Blue Gate!
[[Keep listening|Penny Gulliver Was there a sense that this was the right place to be?4]]
[[And you were ‘Terrified Mary’ by the end of all of this?|Penny Gulliver And you were ‘Terrified Mary’ by the end of all of this?]] You know those kind of things would happen all the time - because it was like four and a half miles to walk around and tell you, because there was no car, so they didn’t bother. So we’d all be sitting there going, ‘oh it’s going to be hundreds of people here, and this’ll be all over the press’, and of-course nothing happened at all, you know.
But when I think about now, I think this would have been cut down, and we’d have put carpet over, and you would have run - you and you would have run that way, so the soldiers would chase you, and the next lot could go over the barbed wire, and then you, you and you would do that and they’d have the paint, and they would run to smash out the lights - this was before um, cruise came in and stuff - there was lots of trying to paint out the lights on the runway so that they couldn’t land, and so and I was thinking, golly - it was fantastic, it was like those games you play - the games I played when I was a kid where you’re always things like, you were resistance fighters in the war and you did all that kind of thing, you know - crawling along the ground, and through puddles and stuff.
You were doing that, but you were doing it for something that was really worthwhile and wonderful, but still scary - but wonderful.
[[And you were ‘Terrified Mary’ by the end of all of this?|Penny Gulliver And you were ‘Terrified Mary’ by the end of all of this?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]God it was awful, people who’d never - they’d come up and go ‘you should be over there’ - because I was only went back for one night because I was in court the following day, and suddenly everybody knew who I was, and it was a bit like god! Little neon sign around my neck.
[[Were you ready to leave, anyway?|Penny Gulliver Were you ready to leave, anyway?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Maybe I was. There were people who stayed a very long time, and I think a year - had that not happened I don’t think I’d have stayed much longer. I think lots of people were going off to do different things who had been there that year, and it was - there was a rolling kind of new people coming and going. And in lots of ways I liked the winter more than the summer.
The summer - it was nice because you weren’t wet and cold and stuff, but there was a lot of things to do in the winter, and I quite like building, these things that you discovered - that I liked digging, and you know we built an outdoor shower I remember, one day. It was basically cold water and a bucket, and we all took our clothes off and had a shower outdoors - and it was February, but it was - there was just ridiculous things like that, and it was like wow, who’d have thought we could rig this up, you know.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[I think there’s a big important thing about whatever was happening - whether it was building a shower, falling out with, being a bit of an arse, being magnificent - it was all women, doing all of those things.|Penny Gulliver I think there’s a big important thing about whatever was happening - whether it was building a shower, falling out with, being a bit of an arse, being magnificent - it was all women, doing all of those things.]]Yes.
[[And do you think that had an impact - how old were you at the time?|Penny Gulliver And do you think that had an impact - how old were you at the time?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I was 21 to 22, I was.
[[Do you think that has an impact to, on young women - to experience that so young?|Penny Gulliver Do you think that has an impact to, on young women - to experience that so young?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes I do, and I think what one of the important things that came out of all that for women that went, and for me, and certainly for women I knew, it makes you brave in a way that you don’t experience in your life. You spend all your life being told ‘you’re not brave, you’re not strong’, do you know what I mean, and very much I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and I was a lesbian and you start to stand outside - I knew I was a lesbian at secondary school - you start to stand on the outside of that stuff and look at it - well some people do, and I know a lot of other women, no doubt, internalise that kind of homophobia and stuff, and stereotypical stuff about women - but you kind of start to think ‘well I don’t agree with those kinds of things’ - but you’re subjected to all of that all of the time.
[[Say nothing..|Penny Gulliver Do you think that has an impact to, on young women - to experience that so young?2]]
[[Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?]]And it is about, and definitely it was about being weak, and dependent on men, and only men being able to do certain things and whatever, and suddenly you go ‘actually, you can look at all the roles women have, and they are the strong roles - the roles that hold up communities and hold up families, hold up each other, that they make things work, they stick things together, they are the strong-men of the world - from the circus, but they are women’.
And I think you went to camp, and it was a bit like you just couldn’t get away from it - all day everyday, it didn’t matter what needed doing, you did it, and you had a good time. And some things were stupidly easy - that were things that you’d been made to feel women could never do, you know, and even through visitors - like the men who would turn up and tell you they thought you should tidy up, because it looked bad when people drove by - those kinds of things, and it was like oh man! Or ‘you’d be better off...this is the sort of strategy you should use’, and anyway..
[[Keep listening..|Penny Gulliver Do you think that has an impact to, on young women - to experience that so young?3]]
[[Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?]]So yeah, it made you brave - and you were frightened, you were going to break in, and you don’t know what’s going to happen, and the first time as well, you don’t know what it’s going to look like to be arrested. I’d not been arrested - I’d been on demonstrations where now you would say you’d been kettled. I remember going on anti Robert Ralph - the racist who went to Winchester Prison - he was the man who put the sign up saying ‘I only want to sell my house to a white family’, but he’d also been done for lots and lots of assaults - this wasn’t his first crime. And I’d taken part in there were big National Front things, and I’d turn out with all these Hippies - when I was at school, it was really great, and they would kettle you - so I’d had some skirmishes with the police, but this was the first time I’d been arrested. And all that, and then going into court all the time, and things which are scary, but as soon as you’re done them the first couple of times, they’re not scary.
You still have - people got beaten up or people got locked up by themselves, and I’m a bit claustrophobic, so I found that quite difficult to be put in a prison, but actually it makes you brave. And you think this is how you change the world - you change the world by with other people, and in this case you change the world with other women - this is how it’s done. It’s not done through the funny old channels that we done, or writing petitions or whatever.
[[Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, I think so - because I was excited to go, and you have that trepidation of ‘what if it’s awful?’, do you know what I mean? But as soon as you got there, and there’s a fire, and it’s one of the things I only think about now about being outside - there was a fire, and you ate vegetable mush everyday, or baked beans and mashed potato - I think that’s all I ate for a year, and you sang all the songs that you knew, and then you went to bed or whatever, because you kind of ran out of things to do, and then you got up and started building things. But it as exciting, and you met people, and you heard all sorts of stories, and there were people who were really funny and that you loved, and there women that you didn’t like very much, and there were women that I didn’t like very much, but it didn’t kind of matter in the grand scheme of things, you just got on with things, and it was fine - do you know what I mean, and it was, it was wonderful.
[[Please tell me more..|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?2]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Day to day it was like which part of the year, I’ll say again so October, November, December of ‘83 there were many, many visitors, so you talk to visitors all day everyday. It was just constant, and great, and there were lots of practical tasks.
The police were there at first - Thames Valley, they were awful - they were really disruptive and they would destroy things and wreck things, so we started a night duty, where you would sit up all night. So there was an awful lot of putting things back together again all the time, but there were also things like making sure there was food - people would cook, people would wash up.
You had to gather fire wood everyday, because of-course that was the only way to a) cook things, and stay warm, and fill your hot water bottles at night if you were cold, which lots of the Australians did - who were always cold at Green Gate. So it was busy, but there were lots of us.
Then come January lots of people went to prison at the same time from Blue Gate, and we went down to four and five of us, and that was quite hard, so you’d have to have two people on at night and so you would be sleeping in day, and then on at night - almost like a night on, a night off - and doing all those other jobs. So that was, it was really busy, but it was good.
[[Keep listening quietly..|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?3]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]As well as all the other things - you were still doing actions, and um I, so there was a woman - Kirstin, from Manchester, but I think she lived in Bradford, and she was a wonderful writer, and we had a book that on night duty you would write in, because there’s just not very much to do - as you can imagine, and the nights were long in the winter, and it was wonderful - it was a novel, it was fabulous writing, and it was funny and interesting and insightful, and it was a piece of history in itself. And we’d write all the songs - we wrote all of the songs that we’d sing, and I can’t sing, but wrote a lot of songs, and they were all written in the Blue Book, and it was very precious.
[[Keep listening..|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?4]]
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]And then our time at the start of the year - in the March they decided to evict everybody, and they evicted Blue Gate everyday, and the police would come and out out your fire - with an extinguisher they’d put out the fire. So you had to be quick enough to get a shovel, put it in the fire and run away with something hot on the shovel when they put it out. So when they’d gone, you could come back and you could start with hot coals basically, and so you weren’t losing - because sometimes it would be difficult to restart.
They’d come and evict you, and they’d take everything - all your benders, all your possessions: your boots, your sleeping bags, everything - if you weren’t quick enough - the food, your pans, everything, and so you had to be quick. And also because cruise came out of Blue Gate, you knew of-course you were never quick enough - lots of times - you’d go ‘oh my god there’s loads of police arriving’, and it’d be like three in the morning, and you’d go ‘they must be bringing it out’, and someone would have to run or cycle to the nearest phone box on the estate to set off the telephone tree - but invariably someone would get to the box and the phone wasn’t working, because they used to cut the phone lines at the same time as cruise came out.
And there would be like hundreds of police that would surround you, and cruise would come out of Blue Gate, so there were, that was always in your mind that you couldn’t just skip it and go to sleep, because it was where it was coming out of, and you can imagine they would have gone mad if we’d let it come out without telling anybody.
[[Say nothing..|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?5]]
[[So there was a tactic to say there is no - Greenham is finished, it’s over, and the counter response from the camp was for every woman to get arrested?|Penny Gulliver So this was a tactic to say there is no - Greenham is finished, it’s over, and the counter response from the camp was for every woman to get arrested?]]Um, and so then there were evictions, so that was kind of council workers would come, and the police would come, and everything would be chucked in, and then it was people running off into the woods and trying to scoop things up, so you’re kind of, you try and pack things a bit in the morning to make sure you don’t lose it.
But the first morning of the eviction, which I think was the 5th March or something, me and another woman who lives her - Annie - we’d come up for a court case the following morning, for things that we’d done earlier on, and on the way up someone had given us a ride and said ‘let’s do some painting on the way up’, so we stopped at all the army recruitment bases, all the way from London, and painted, and we painted some bridges on the M4 saying about peace - things like that. And we got to camp and said ‘is there some white spirit or some turps?’ And they went ‘oh no, we’ve run out’, and we were covered in paint.
So we crawled into a bender and slept, and we slept between two fuzzy blankets - a yellow fuzzy blanket and a pink fuzzy blanket that when we got up in the morning had stuck to all the paint all over us, our skin, our clothes, everything. So we went off to court looking like that we were doing some kind of action in the court, but actually we had nothing to get it off and stuff.
But the worst thing about it was, they held us that night - because they couldn’t send us to prison - we got three weeks or something, and they couldn’t send us for some reason, because they started the evictions that day, so we were in, and everyone was coming in, and there was one - Penny Thornton from Bradford, she tipped blue paint all over herself when they came, and was smearing it all over the windscreens, and of-course they brought her, and she was just like blue from head to foot! And we were like ‘oh, you’re blue, and I’m yellow, and she’s pink!’
Anyway, and they all came in, and then they shipped us off, and as we were going along the M4 I just always remember being in the van - and it was an ordinary van, which was odd because they used to put you in the horrible, you know the butchers’ wagon things, where you were in the - you know, and I’m really claustrophobic. But we were sat in an ordinary minibus with the police, and they kept going ‘that’s one of your lot’, and it was us!
And we were laughing, because there was all this yellow and pink paint on everything, and we were smothered in yellow and pink paint, and nobody went ‘hey’ - they obviously weren’t detectives - ‘it’s the same colour as you!’ Anyway then of-course we went to Holloway, and I can’t tell you how much we scrubbed with the whatever to get the crap off, but you know - it came off eventually.
[[Keep listening..|Penny Gulliver Was there also a sense of ‘I knew this was possible’?6]]
[[So there was a tactic to say there is no - Greenham is finished, it’s over, and the counter response from the camp was for every woman to get arrested?|Penny Gulliver So this was a tactic to say there is no - Greenham is finished, it’s over, and the counter response from the camp was for every woman to get arrested?]]
Yes, yeah. And to keep going, and there were women who came down - visitors and stuff, who looked after the camp, so that everybody who lived there regular, who could, took part in that action.
And it was quite funny, we all went of into the woods for the night before and just had a really nice time - who was going to go where, and what, and you know what the structure of the weekend would look like and stuff, and then we went back and did it all in broad daylight and they were all a bit ‘oh, this is all a bit odd’, because on Good Friday they couldn’t send you straight down because the magistrates wouldn’t sit again until the Tuesday, so we would have to go into the police stations and fill them up.
That was the idea - rather than them just picking you up and sending you off in little groups to prison they would - we would have to fill up the jails, so that was why we did it over the Easter weekend, because that was the maximum amount of time they would have to hold us, and stuff.
And so yeah, but it was all quite funny, but I remember then the army brought dogs - which is quite scary - cutting in in daylight, and they were all revving the dogs up, so they were all really kind of crazy on the inside, and people got quite hurt, and got bitten and stuff during that, but I remember getting through and these two soldiers looked at me and did the ‘what’s the best way to carry you, then?’ And I went ‘I don’t know, I’m going to just lie down now’ - because that’s what you did, you just lay down, but I said I’ll tell you what - ‘you can put your arms under my knees and around the back, and then you can pick me up and put me in the back’, and they went ‘okay’.
And that is what they did - they picked me up like in a little chair and put me in the back of the wagon, and there were literally - I was looking going ‘I feel really bad’, because I can see Annie from Green Gate being dragged by her beautiful long blonde hair through the mud by some arse with a dog, and there I am with these two soldiers going, and I wanted to go ‘I think you’re in the wrong business, I really think you should go and, maybe you should be Quakers - you’re not cut out for this, boys’.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]So then life looked different, and there was a press silence then, they were saying you were evicted, but the evictions carried on everyday, nobody went away, but there was a press silence like ‘oh, Greenham’s ended’, so over the Easter we did a kind of - yeah, and I can’t remember, there was probably about 90 women involved, and you just kept going in and one, and Julie - who I talked about before - she was last woman standing, and she broke in something like nine times before they eventually kept her - but that’s how long it took.
I think I broke in three times before I was shipped out to Windsor nick, which was new. And we filled out all the police stations around in a spiral out from Newbury, and we told all the press - the only press that came was the Guardian, and they took pictures and run it, and it was really funny because when we went all to court for it, we all got charged for it.
Annie who lives here was on the front page of the Observer with bolt cutters, and they offered no evidence against her, and she was the only person who didn’t get actually found guilty on that occasion, and it was really funny, because we were like ‘she was on the front page of a national newspaper on the Sunday’, and there was a wonderful picture of her, which they run again at the millennium and they looked at things that had happened, and one of the pictures they ran was the picture of her cutting through the wire on that action, but it was great, because it was a bit like they were ‘oh, we don’t know who this person is, and she got off’.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[So this was a tactic to say there is no - Greenham is finished, it’s over, and the counter response from the camp was for every woman to get arrested?|Penny Gulliver So this was a tactic to say there is no - Greenham is finished, it’s over, and the counter response from the camp was for every woman to get arrested?]]Most of the time it was nothing at all. There were some who would stand at the gate and just shout abuse and stuff. Most of the time they looked very bored. Some of them when you broke in were quite horrible. Some would stand at the fence and go ‘oh, I don’t agree with this nuclear stuff you know - there’s stuff going on now you know, there’s lots of fuss going on, I think something’s happening. And they would tell you things.
Or sometimes you would walk around - because they all had their guns - and they would walk and they would just shout abuse at you, and you’d be walking along the fence and they’d just be shouting at you. But not all of them. Some of them were certainly anti-nuclear.
[[Just listen..|Penny Gulliver What was the rang of different kinds of reactions and relationships you had with the army?2]]Some of them were obviously ‘well I don’t really want to be in the army, but it was a bit like I didn’t have anything else, so don’t be horrible to me’ - that kind of thing. When you, and I think on the whole the police were much more unpleasant, and sometimes when you got held inside, they would take you to wherever it was, and they would hold you, and some of the holding staff were very unpleasant, and it felt like they got these jobs because they were like - you know. But some of them they were just, ‘I don’t know why we’re here, and I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t like the Americans being here’, and would speak their anti-American - because we would change all the signs to say USAF - United States Air Force, rather than what was on them because it wasn’t MoD stuff - it was the Americans, and the Americans did what they want as well.
But it was also really badly - at some level it was really easy to break in. Women broke into the control tower, and nobody come to arrest them until they flicked the lights on and off twenty times, do you know what I mean, and used all the phones, and go ‘okay stand down everybody, everybody go home - there’s a picnic on runway one’ all this kind of thing, and it was ages...and it was a bit like if foreign powers wanted to come it would be so easy!
This is a nonsense that this is safe at any level, and then you trundle around the countryside with enough weaponry to blow the planet up seven times, and think that that’s what, useful? Safe? Nobody needs to bomb us, we’re going to bomb ourselves when someone, you know, runs it into a tree at the end of the street because they drive too fast, and these machines are too big to turn the corners properly.
[[Of the little wind-y roads of Berkshire!|Penny Gulliver Of the little wind-y roads of Berkshire!]]
[[What about how that process where you learnt how to deal with being arrested, and what you do and don’t say at the police station?| Penny Gulliver What about how that process where you learnt how to deal with being arrested, and what you do and don’t say at the police station?]]
Oh my god, yeah. So a very mixed bunch, and a lot of them they just ignored you, but the whole spectrum.
[[What about how that process where you learnt how to deal with being arrested, and what you do and don’t say at the police station?| Penny Gulliver What about how that process where you learnt how to deal with being arrested, and what you do and don’t say at the police station?]]And I think - people did say to us ‘say nothing - they’re much less likely to make stuff up if you say nothing’, and I was very - I did that. And some of the interviews were horrible - they were abusive and really shouted at you, and other people had things thrown on you, or were dragged about. Or they would separate one out of a group.
The first time I was arrested there were lots of us arrested and they put us all in - I don’t know, four or five cells, and they put one woman in a cell by herself and stuff, and so they did those kinds of things, and they would say horrible things through the door and stuff to them. And you definitely just learn on the job, because people tell you what’s going to happen, but you don’t understand it until you do it.
And once what’s known is so much less frightening than what the unknown is, and I think generally I said nothing all of the time, and that was very true - if you said anything they felt very happy to embellish the story with everything and anything they wanted.
[[Just listen...|Penny Gulliver What about how that process where you learnt how to deal with being arrested, and what you do and don’t say at the police station?2]]
But the fact was you always got found guilty anyway, so it didn’t really matter, and they brought the stipendiary magistrate up from London in the January - that’s why so many people went to prison, because he came up and went ‘I don’t accept Greenham as an address, so..’ and sent everyone down immediately. And everyone was a bit shocked, because up until that point you got some warning about prison, but suddenly he was sending everybody down.
So um, yeah - that was a bit like ‘oh, but I haven’t brought my toothbrush with me’ that kind of thing, so people were doing it all the time, so you saw what happened. And sometimes, I loved court - I absolutely loved the ‘I’m going to be the barrister! And I loved all that - asking the questions and not, you didn't stand up when the judge came in, so there was always stated with whatever craziness. But I loved all that trying to catch people out and all the rest of it.
[[Keep listening..|Penny Gulliver What about how that process where you learnt how to deal with being arrested, and what you do and don’t say at the police station?3]]
Me Annie, we were there one time, and there weren’t many people there, but there was one woman with quite severe mental health problems, and it was quite stressful, and she was wanting to keep warm, and it was cold and it was like - I knew a woman who shouldn’t have been at camp, but you know, was not being cared for, so we nicked a bit of the council fence, and we burnt it because we couldn’t leave her alone with one of us at the camp. And we never did things like that - we never touched council property, but that time we did - we took a bit of that old fashioned twist-y wooden fence, and the soldier rung it in, and the police arrived and arrested us, left this woman by herself - which was a disaster.
And when we come up to court - and we had plaits - Annie had long plaits, and I had a plait down the back, and we were like ‘oh I’m so embarrassed, we’re going to be brought up for something we did which is about council property’, and so we said not guilty to it, and we didn’t get sent down - they said they needed to collect more evidence, and they put us out and we got a court date, and so when we went back we had everyone wear plaits - we made everyone wooly plaits, and everybody sat in the row behind int he public thing with plaits so we could do, and it was awful - you did that kind of ‘can you really pick us out from all the women sat behind us?’
Of-course everyone is sat there with these wooly plaits on their heads, and god love the soldier, he went ‘no, it really was you two’, but then the police arrived, and the two police officers lied. They lied. The first one came up and said a whole thing about how they had seen it, and they whatever, and the next one came up and contradicted the first one’s story, and both of them contradicted the soldier who had told the truth.
And we had such a laugh that day, and they said they felt like at the end of the thing he went ‘I’m throwing this out because the stories have somewhat got confused’, and it was awful because we went away going ‘we’ve actually done this one’, and it was something we shouldn’t have done. But then I loved all that!
[[Theatre?|Penny Gulliver Theatre?]]
[[With prison, what was that experience like?|Penny Gulliver With prison, what was that experience like?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I liked the theatre, and I loved that thing of trying to be clever. All those Agatha Christies that I’d learnt to read on, it was a bit like you know, it was another bit, it was enjoyment. I didn’t like being locked up, but I liked your day in court a lot.
[[With prison, what was that experience like?|Penny Gulliver With prison, what was that experience like?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It was a really - I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing. I wouldn’t. You know. I wouldn’t tell anyone to it out. I am claustrophobic. I’ve never not eaten in my life - I didn’t eat for the first four days in prison, and they put me and Annie in the same cell - this was a bit strange, because they put us in with the only woman I met in prison who should have been there, because she was up for like four or five lots of GBH - really quite nasty stuff.
She was really someone with very poor mental health, and all over the place, and they put us in a cell with her, who said ‘don’t speak or I will kill you’, so we didn’t speak for the fifteen days or whatever that we were in.
And because it was new, because Holloway doesn’t exist now - it was new Holloway at that point, and the windows are like two inches wide shutters, so I spent quite a bit of time with my lips at the window, breathing and stuff. But it’s a funny thing - you immediately become institutionalised in terms of being patted down and all these things. We got out very little - I think there were days and days and days when you didn’t get out at all - you just had your food put through the door.
But almost everybody I spoke to when I was there shouldn’t have been there - they were in for petty theft, for food - for nappies, all that sort of stuff. So many women with poor mental health, so many women who’d come from - they were in because they wanted to get away from he violent relationships they were in outside, so really the only woman I felt like probably needed to be in a cell at some level was the woman in our cell! But it wasn’t the place for her, either - do you know what I mean, it was all nonsense.
[[Keep listening quietly|Penny Gulliver With prison, what was that experience like?2]]
[[One of the things that is new to me, that I learnt through Greenham was there was that thing about there’s a whole load of women in prison because they’re poor women - that’s why they’re there.|Penny Gulliver One of the things that is new to me, that I learnt through Greenham was there was that thing about there’s a whole load of women in prison because they’re poor women - that’s why they’re there.]]And the psychiatric wing was above you, and people just cried and wailed and it was awful - all night and stuff. Anyway. We did do work on one day - the prison officer came and said ‘right, you’ve got work’, and we went ‘oh, we’re political prisoners’ (laughs). And she went ‘get off your bunks and get out here’. It was that kind of thing one day we had to wipe clean your cell everyday and she came and went ‘your haven’t mopped the floor’, and I said ‘I did it yesterday’, and she went ‘you mop the floor everyday’, and I was like ‘okay.
And we went and did work, and it was really funny - we had to go and put these little plastic people in toys into the plastic - you know push out thing, and put it in a box, and move it along and things. And you had to do it for two hours, and at one point they went ‘that table over there, you camp women, slow down - you’re going too fast’, and it was like a Patti Smith song - working in the piss factory. ‘Slow down, we can’t keep up’, and it was like oh god - you can’t go that slow, so we started putting the stickers in the wrong place and turning them upside down and putting the pneumatic drill into their heads and stuff like that. And for ages afterwards when I was in a toy shop I’d look to see if we could see the ones we’d packed, but that was a bit like, and then you got paid, and I wasn’t a smoker, so I was everyone’s friend because it meant I bought tobacco and matches and Rizlas with my spends, and gave a little bit to everybody.
So which was, but everybody was lovely - everybody was lovely, and they’d come over and go ‘oh there’s somebody else - one of your lot is in today, blah blah and stuff’. And there were a lot of women in at that time.
[[One of the things that is new to me, that I learnt through Greenham was there was that thing about there’s a whole load of women in prison because they’re poor women - that’s why they’re there.|Penny Gulliver One of the things that is new to me, that I learnt through Greenham was there was that thing about there’s a whole load of women in prison because they’re poor women - that’s why they’re there.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah.
[[Whatever else you dress it up as, and that kind of - well I was trying to figure this out, because here’s political prisoners doing political things, and then there’s what are these women? And it took me a while to then see that is a real politicisation, isn’t it?|Penny Gulliver Whatever else you dress it up as, and that kind of - well I was trying to figure this out, because here’s political prisoners doing political things, and then there’s what are these women? And it took me a while to then see that is a real politicisation, isn’t it?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It is.
[[To see that oh right, it’s as simple as that really - it makes me sound a bit thick, really - but I can’t explain it better than just to go yeah, it really is as simple as that - it was as simple as that.| Penny Gulliver To see that oh right, it’s as simple as that really - it makes me sound a bit thick, really, looking back - but I can’t explain it better than just to go yeah, it really is as simple as that - it was as simple as that.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]And I was I think what shocked me about prison, because you are absolutely powerless, and it’s really brought home to you - you are absolutely powerless in prison, and woman were so submissive, and you have to call - the prison officers then - you had to call them ‘Miss’, and there were all these women who were - who shouldn’t have been there, and that whole thing about ‘Miss, is it okay? Miss, I’ll do this’, and it was just like gut wrenchingly awful - all of it.
Because it was like none of thee women should be here, and isn’t that enough - that you lock them up? But once they’re there, it’s a bit like you’re absolutely being ground down into the dirt to make them as submissive and as powerless as you possibly can, and it was just - and everybody was on drugs - everybody had stuff given out at night and stuff, and it was a bit like on so many levels this is so wrong, and it was awful. Awful to see.
[[Infantilised?|Penny Gulliver Infantilised?]]
[[And medicated.|Penny Gulliver And medicated.]]Completely.
[[And medicated.|Penny Gulliver And medicated.]]
[[Was there anything, what was the attitude from the other women - apart from saying ‘there’s some of your lot in’?|Penny Gulliver Was there anything, what was the attitude from the other women - apart from saying ‘there’s some of your lot in’?]]
And medicated. And anybody who was pregnant none of them seemed to hang onto their pregnancies when they were in there. Yeah, awful.
[[Was there anything, what was the attitude from the other women - apart from saying ‘there’s some of your lot in’?|Penny Gulliver Was there anything, what was the attitude from the other women - apart from saying ‘there’s some of your lot in’?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]They were really nice and it was a bit like, and interested. The odd time that we managed to get into what was like the little canteen for the wing - where you had your dinner when you were out, but most of the time you didn’t, and you had very little opportunity to speak to other people.
You could sense if it was a prison officer who was alright, she would take things from cell to cell - like a newspaper or whatever and people wrote things, or put sweets in or a bit of tobacco or whatever, and send it off - but only with someone who could be trusted to do that. But there was very little opportunity to talk, and you were let out for very, very short amounts of time. And we weren’t allowed to talk in our cell, so um. Annie also went to - lots of women went to Rochester? No, I can’t think now - where the open prison is, is it Rochester? Fallen out of my head, which is a different set up because it’s an open prison.
I only went to Holloway because what happened was when I got picked up for non-payment of fines was when the stipendiary was there, so I had lots of pending cases, and not turning up to court and things like that - so I actually got sent down for I don’t know - half a dozen obstructions and half a dozen criminal damages, and I was give a week for all the obstructions and two weeks for the criminal damages, but they run the all concurrently, so I can’t remember if it was two weeks for, but I only did two weeks before you got let out - so they were all over and done with in the same lot, thank goodness - because I didn’t want to make it a habit.
Um. Yeah, so people were really nice and interested, and thought it was really odd that you would choose to be in prison instead of just paying your fine, and I’d say ‘well I actually don’t have the fine money’ - but I could have raised the fine money from peace groups and stuff, but that wasn’t the point. So there was a bit of ‘god’, but you know there were other women in there who were choosing to be in there because it was safer for them to be in there, so it wasn’t - not everybody was fazed by that.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Oh, absolutely. We were squatting at the time, in South London - in Deptford, and was, how long had we been there? Been in that place for two or three years, I think then, and we’d set up like a co-op, and then we got taken under the wing by a housing association later on, but we, but some of us moved out to have a women only house after that.
The thing was when you went and signed on they always asked you if you’d been looking for jobs, but of-course in the ‘80s there really were no jobs - like there are now, but um, but they didn’t sanction you in the same way. Of-course they did sanction you if you didn’t turn up, or you didn’t whatever, but it’s a bit like - it makes me laugh when now people say you’d got to look for a job - then you did have to look for a job, and when I came back from camp, um, because I’d been signing on for a year, I got sent to a skills’ centre to do a 10 week programme, and then from then afterwards got sent on programmes all of the time because I was still signing on.
[[Keep listening..|Penny Gulliver How important do you think - in London there was Squatters Movement going on, in the country there was a lot of unemployment - you didn’t get sanctioned for finding a place - how important do you think those things were to Greenham Common?2]]
[[And so, for example now you have to demonstrate you’ve spent that fortnight filling in all those application forms.|Penny Gulliver And so, for example now you have to demonstrate you’ve spent that fortnight filling in all those application forms.]]
[[On Enterprise Allowance you didn’t have to sign on any more, and I know of one thousand pounds that did the rounds.|Penny Gulliver On Enterprise Allowance you didn’t have to sign on any more, and I know of one thousand pounds that did the rounds.]] Yes.
[[On Enterprise Allowance you didn’t have to sign on any more, and I know of one thousand pounds that did the rounds.|Penny Gulliver On Enterprise Allowance you didn’t have to sign on any more, and I know of one thousand pounds that did the rounds.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Absolutely.
[[It only had to be there for a week, and then the next person got it. And so, um, I think, and it was within traveling distance of London, wasn’t it?|Penny Gulliver It only had to be there for a week, and then the next person got it. And so, um, I think, and it was within traveling distance of London, wasn’t it?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It was a bus ride, and the buses were cheap then, I think a ticket was about £3.50, which was a lot out of your dole money, but actually you lived very cheaply at camp, so that was fine, and it meant that you could be politically active - full time, at that level, and er, not have to like now be booked online for 20 hours a week and do so many applications - you just couldn’t have done that.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]So on one level - it was a community programme, and it was after all the YOPs and YOMPs and all those sorts of things, so it was really important, because we did turn up for a year, and we did sign on, and it was enough money for you to get the bus back, or sign on where you lived in Greenham and not be chased. In a lot of ways - we were talking about this in conjunction with the Community Enterprise Allowance scheme, which allowed people to do things for a year, which now if you wanted to be any kind of artist, you could not do, because you have to go and work for free in Big Lukes - do you know what I mean, if you’re on the dole for more than a fortnight - or Poundland, which in those days - and that has gone now for working class people - that opportunity to be any kind of artist or any kind of creative practitioner has gone, and that was very interesting, because people might not have had the thousands of pounds, but the Co-Op bank can put it in your account for the day, and then take it back out so you can actually pass to get on and do it, and so being on the dole was that.
And it was that interconnectedness - and people were very much on the streets, and it was post all the 1980 riots and things, and so there as a wider politicisation that had gone on, but actually being able to sign on and go and be at camp was really important, which you couldn’t do now - you would absolutely have to be self financing, you know.
[[And so, for example now you have to demonstrate you’ve spent that fortnight filling in all those application forms.|Penny Gulliver And so, for example now you have to demonstrate you’ve spent that fortnight filling in all those application forms.]]
[[On Enterprise Allowance you didn’t have to sign on any more, and I know of one thousand pounds that did the rounds.|Penny Gulliver On Enterprise Allowance you didn’t have to sign on any more, and I know of one thousand pounds that did the rounds.]] I quite like vegetable mush even now! And I was vegetarian for about 30years, and then I stopped when my daughter was ill. And I cook, and we always cook all of the time from scratch, but I’m not a great cook and I don’t much enjoy it, but I eat a lot of vegetable mush still now.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It was my mum, and she’d remarried as second time, um, and my mum is a political person and completely and utterly supportive of it. And if there was a car available at some times, we would drive to my mum, because it always an hour down south, and we would stay the weekend, and everyone would get a bath and all those kinds of things, and we’d wash all our clothes and stuff.
So we did that a few times, and lots of people would come down - I don’t know how many we could squash in a car. And my mum was fabulous, because my mum is not a cook, and I’d say oh Kirstin and blah blah are coming mum, and they’re vegans, and she’d say ‘it’s okay, I’ve got it down now - I know what a vegan is, they don’t eat any kind of dairy products or animal products and whatever’, and I’d go yeah. And she’d go ‘I’ve got lots of baked beans and a chicken’! And that’s every time we went down my mother would have bought a chicken for the vegans! So I still do not understand what the logic was in all of that.
[[Well it’s not made out of milk, is it?|Penny Gulliver Well it’s not made out of milk, is it?]]
[[What about your peers, were all your friends doing this?|Penny Gulliver What about your peers, were all your friends doing this?]] No, no absolutely. ‘So no cheese. So breast or leg?’! Yes, so very supportive my mum was.
[[What about your peers, were all your friends doing this?|Penny Gulliver What about your peers, were all your friends doing this?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]No, they weren’t, but they like in the squat people were involved in community theatre - that’s how we knew each other so people were political, and political in different ways and doing stuff. And London was at that time in the ‘80s there were demonstrations every weekend for something, and we would be, I mean not when I was at camp, but back in London all through the ‘80s it was all kinds of politics that people were involved in. I hung about with political people.
[[Do you think that just can’t happen now because you’ve got to go and do your zero contract job?|Penny Gulliver Do you think that just can’t happen now because you’ve got to go and do your zero contract job?]]
[[What would you say the legacy of Greenham is?|Penny Gulliver What would you say the legacy of Greenham is?]] Yeah, I think.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[Do you think that’s deliberate?|Penny Gulliver Do you think that’s deliberate?]] Yes, absolutely. All of this is about, in the same way that there are lots of - in the ‘80s you started to get caught up in things - the flooding of working class areas with drugs, all those kinds of things which were very obvious - there might have been some people that smoked a bit of weed, but suddenly there was no drugs, and then 6 months later council estates were flooded with heroin, and you just think well that wasn’t an accident was it? You know, suddenly there wasn’t half a dozen blokes on council estates that decided to be drugs entrepreneurs.
And I think it’s just it’s very definitely about people’s times - if you’re on the dole, for any of these things it’s a full time job, and at some level it’s increasingly become like that, but with zero hours jobs not knowing when you have to be available - you have to be available, that you have to be doing this, and the amount of bureaucracy and admin that goes with all of these things - it absolutely fills people’s times - you’re going to be homeless unless you do these things, you’re not going to eat next week unless you do these things. Of course it is a plan.
[[I was thinking about filling time - so the daily living took up an awful lot of the time?|Penny Gulliver I was thinking about filling time - so the daily living took up an awful lot of the time?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes.
[[Did that feel like, um, so once upon a time that would have taken up all of our’s time - did that feel quite enjoyable and satisfying to have that?|Penny Gulliver Yes. Did that feel like, um, so once upon a time that would have taken up all of our’s time - did that feel quite enjoyable and satisfying to have that?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]What I discovered about camp was I really loved loving outside. And I was kind of brought up in the country - I’m not a city person, and I thought I was a city person - coming out as a lesbian I went to London, and that was great there were other lesbians that live in London, and I know there are lesbians that live in Southampton, but I didn’t really find them.
But I kind of grew up out of the town most of the time - we moved house like every 6 months and stuff, and um, I never considered myself a country person, and I still don’t - (whispers) I don’t like the country, I think it’s malevolent, and the small places are scary places - but don’t tell anybody I said that.
Anyway, but um I loved living outside, and I now - living in the cold - 25 years in the North East, I hate the fucking cold! It’s a bit like you can’t be outside because it’s too cold, and I really regret that. I have a partner that doesn’t like change, and I want to drag her somewhere warmer - we can’t afford to go anywhere warmer, do you know what I mean, but I loved being outside, and I loved all that practical job stuff that we did - and maybe not forever, but I still now think, and I never thought about it - until I was asked to do this, the differences it made - and I went yeah, I really, really still miss it a lot, and I’ve never really - I’ve never done it since.
[[You’ve never gone on camping holidays?|Penny Gulliver You’ve never gone on camping holidays?]]
[[Do you think you’d ever do a fortnight in the wild somewhere?|Penny Gulliver Do you think you’d ever do a fortnight in the wild somewhere?]] Yes I do, I have gone on camping holidays. My partner doesn’t like camping, so, and when I got together with her 20 years ago now - we had a bit more money, because me and my daughter we’d go to Greece every summer when she born, and my daughter’s nearly 29, and we would camp on the beach in Greece for the whole of the holidays, and so, and that was just fabulous. And I love the sea, I love being warm, I love being outside, so that was fabulous. But then I got together with Pam and we have a bit more money, so we stay in rooms when we go somewhere - cheap rooms, but not under canvas.
[[Do you think you’d ever do a fortnight in the wild somewhere?|Penny Gulliver Do you think you’d ever do a fortnight in the wild somewhere?]]
[[Do you think it was the outside or do you think it was the collective?|Penny Gulliver Do you think it was the outside or do you think it was the collective?]]I think physically I don’t feel brilliant at the moment, um, but I do have those dreams about we need to just be somewhere - we live in a two up, two down - it’s not huge, but there is just two of us in it now, although grandchildren stay and things like that. We could easily Iive in a smaller space, we’re not tied to having much room at all - we could easily live in a room a lot of the time and I think could do that. Surely we could find somewhere where we’d have more outside and it might be warmer, and I do think about that. Land is one of my things that I’m very very interested in land and land politics that you know, we couldn’t afford to do it - we couldn’t afford to buy literally 20 square feet somewhere, but you know.
[[Do you think it was the outside or do you think it was the collective?|Penny Gulliver Do you think it was the outside or do you think it was the collective?]]
[[You’ve never gone on camping holidays?|Penny Gulliver You’ve never gone on camping holidays?]] It was all of it - all of those things, and when think about it, it’s a very strong presence in my life. I am not a joiner, I think that’s partly about being a lesbian, that you grow up always on the outside and having a lot of shit thrown at you for that, like even my mother saying ‘I know you’re more left wing than the Labour Party, but you need to be in the Labour Party to do blah blah, because this is how we’re going to change things’, and whatever, and I’m back in the party again now since Corbyn.
And I struggle with a lot of local politics because they want to talk about the kids on the park - well that’s where they should be. All those kind of small minded you know, small ‘c’ conservative type of stuff that drives me mad, and I get sucked into doing things. My daughter keeps going ‘you’re joining in community politics’ because I’m not that person -I like doing all the other things, and I’ll work all day everyday doing a million things, but I am not really the person who is going to be at the middle of community activities in the village - do you know what I mean? But I think that’s about being a lesbian.
Woman next door to us lived 30 years - Pam doesn’t speak to her, never speaks to her because she’s a lesbian - she’s a pillar of the Methodist church on the corner, and villagers are afraid, and are full of those people. Half of the street doesn’t speak to us because we’re lesbians, didn’t speak to Sian my daughter - didn’t at school because she’s a child of lesbians. So I do, I have I should be doing these things, I have my mother’s voice in my head going you need to do these things, because I do think the answer is collective, I do think it’s about how we change things - it’s at grass roots level, it’s at collective, at cooperative level - that’s how we do it - at community level, but I don’t really find it easy, and I’d rather be the person doing some things in that and then stepping out of it and letting other people get on with it, so both those things.
And I like being outside. I am someone who likes being by themselves, I get done in by lots and lots and lots of stuff all the time - people and blah blah blah, but actually my politics are about we need to do these things together, and we’re so alienated and isolated in our front rooms with our televisions and with our social media and all the rest of it, and although social media might be marvelous for some things, I feel like it still divides us more than it puts people together.
[[Do you think you also maybe need to have the place - given that you are in a small village - that this is the place where you are at home, and maybe the collective action could happen in a bigger place?|Penny Gulliver Do you think you also maybe need to have the place - given that you are in a small village - that this is the place where you are at home, and maybe the collective action could happen in a bigger place?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, I think so, and I think if I had more money that is exactly what I would do. There are things centrally that in Tyne and Wear - in Gateshead and Newcastle that I would pay a much bigger role, but we don’t have any money, and at the end of the day we have a shitty bus service - huge cuts that places like Gateshead you know, Labour - and there is less money in Gateshead than there is - Gateshead is a substantially poorer place than Newcastle, there’s a bit of money in Newcastle - there isn’t in Gateshead - people are poor.
And we’re not those poor people, but we don't have any money. If you want to go anywhere you have to keep a car, and you have to drive and what I found is for us to keep our heads above water, which includes me going on holiday in the summer usually because I can’t bear not being warm for two weeks - which is terrible. We used to go on the train, and I can’t afford to do that anymore, is that we work and we do a lot of stuff, and we do a lot of stuff for other people - we’re close to people in the Columbian community and stuff here, and there are all sorts of things that we are kid of a part of which aren’t strictly to do with village politics, they’re you know, they might be about other things - about refugee stuff, land stuff, money stuff, political education - there are things that I would like to do loads more work that I have done in the past that I can’t now because I can’t afford it - can’t afford to run the car back in and out and in and out all the time.
And I work long hours - the jobs I’ve been doing as a painter an decorator partly through choice is a) people here haven’t got any money, so they want you to do it for almost nothing, people want you to do it cheaper because you’re a woman, and they also want you to clean their houses at the same time which does my fucking head in, but if I go away to do it a) people pay me a bit more money to do it, and I just do it and it’s not here, and people aren’t endlessly saying ‘will you paint my ceiling for £10?’, and so I do that - but that’s not how I want to live - I end up staying in a house in the middle of the fucking Cumbrian moors for 3 weeks/4 weeks because I cant afford to come home everyday - I do that ‘what am I doing?’ This is not what my life or anyone’s life should
look like - this is not changing anything, this is just paying the bills, and I hate that.
And I feel like I’m in a funny place now because I feel like I’m not able to be politically - in my day job, which I was for a long time, even if I had no money. I’m not able to do that, I’m not at some level - I’m back in the party, there’s five hundred leaflets on the table which will need to be in people’s doors in the next couple of days. I am supposed to be doing a job this week, which I’m like I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get it all done. But that’s not really enough, and not really what I’m interested in, and not what my strengths are either.
[[Do you think that, um, you’re not a joiner, but do you think that Greenham was the most like how you would want politics to be?|Penny Gulliver Do you think that, um, you’re not a joiner, but do you think that Greenham was the most like how you would want politics to be?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, and I think because it gave, I think some of the things which I think are most important about it is what we touched on before about how people are politicised, and it was a bit like well, this is what it looks like. People come and you talk, and you talk about everything and anything, and you might come for one reason, but what you learn about is how, the inter-dependence of it all. How other things are connected.
How things are structural, and how that you have agency in that, but you know, as that old man with the beard said ‘you make decisions, but not in the conditions that you choose’, and I absolutely believe that, and I think that’s why you could see women’s heads move you could see ‘oh my god’, they lie about what’s happening in Ireland - it is a war and they are killing people, this is what’s happening.
You know we allow companies to go and cut the heart out of African countries and exploit people and make millions, and then pump guns and whatever into places - do you know what I mean, to make money, do you know what I mean? And we’re a part of that, you know, and I don’t think my life is privileged but it is privileged because it is based on poverty and oppression of other people.
And you could see people - you could see it, going ‘oh my god, oh my god I didn’t know that’, and you could see it - the fact that I came because I think domestic violence and domestic abuse was the most important thing, but now I see that is part of a big picture - that is not about one woman in her house, that is about women and about poor people on the planet, and these things are massive.
But being at camp was you saw that, and you saw it and it didn't matter if it was about people saying for the first time ‘I’ve never told anybody about this, but I was sexually abused’, and then half the people in the bender would do ‘so was I, so was I’ and people would speak things that they’d never - an 80 year old woman sat there going ‘my father sexually abused me, and it’s the first time that I’ve told anybody, and it was a bit like that power of putting speaking things, and calling things and understanding how it fits into those big picture was really powerful - in the same way that taking action made you brave, you knew that you could change things, and you could change things on a level that I am not, I am not a pushover, and my agency is important, and maybe I haven’t demolished the whole of the industrial you know weaponry complex today, but this is how we’re going to do it.
[[Just listen..|Penny Gulliver Do you think that, um, you’re not a joiner, but do you think that Greenham was the most like how you would want politics to be?2]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]All those things, you understand how it all fits together even if you don’t understand how it all fits together, but you go from people coming with quite simple conspiracy theories to going ‘oh no,’ you know, if we look at history and we look at what happens there - this is what happened at this time in this space and now it’s happening there. And how did people do that, how did the history of that people, who stopped that and changed that - what did they do, how can we learn from that? What did the Maoris do? They did that - because someone from New Zealand tells you, and you go ‘wow’, so that hopefully you’re confirming some of that stuff about your privilege and about imperialism and about all those kinds of things, you know - Sheila Rowbotham - how that got hidden from history, how that is the case for everybody in the world who has less time and space, and so that - those were incredible things to see - tangible - that you can feel the electricity.
You know, and women came from - the miner’s strike broke out that year, and they would come down and they would bring stuff and come down and talk about it, and we started to go to London and collect money and we used to go to Nottingham because that was where there was a lot - miners in some of the miners in Nottingham who chose to work, and as women, bunches of women in cars, you could get through the blockades - they would look at you, and you’d be a bunch of punks, and we’d say ‘we’re going to see a band’, and they’d go ‘oh, go on, go through’ - when they were stopping men, or more respectable looking women, so we could go on picket lines, or we could bring money and stuff.
So those ideas about, and that thing about that rippling out, so then you had Greenham women standing on picket lines with men who would say ‘I hate lesbians’ - ‘well we’re lesbians’ - ‘you’re lesbians? Maybe I don’t hate lesbians’ - that kind of, you know, that idea that, and again and you’re probably going to ask that, but I’ll say it anyway. It’s a long time ago, and all those women went away, but I believe it did not change their life - it changed their lives and it didn’t matter what it fed into and who they had those conversations with, it changed another, you know, million people’s lives because of what happened. We just don’t - we’ve forgotten in some ways about how it affected us, and all those, and that we stopped talking about - I stopped talking about it, and I should be saying, and I do it a bit more since I talked to that young woman who said she didn’t know nothing about it, a coupe of years ago, I say I was at camp - it’s funny, that’s what happened when we were at camp, and we’ve lost that, so..
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[Is that down to us? Do we have a responsibility to talk?|Penny Gulliver One of the interviewers - quite a few of them were of a certain age, but one was a young woman, and she said ‘I never even knew this thing happened’. And I asked her, ‘is that down to us? Do we have a responsibility to talk?’ Because I don’t think we thought let’s not talk about it - I suspect, as usual we were busy doing other things.]] Yeah, absolutely.
[[But do you think it’s, it’s a time when it needs to be told because otherwise there is always a forgetting that happens.|Penny Gulliver But do you think it’s, it’s a time when it needs to be told because otherwise there is always a forgetting that happens.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes. And we’re old - who were there, and like lots of things you know stuff dies out with people. A lot of women I was at camp with are actually already dead, and sometimes I think because there was the nuclear stuff under the ground that they came out with a few years ago and said ‘yeah, there’d been a spill in the ‘50s’, so we were all basically sitting on what was kind of living plutonium or whatever, and so obviously people are going to get a lot of weird things and die.
But generally yeah, and it’s not written down - or it’s written down in the odd sociology book when people have talked about it, but I think it’s important - that thing about reinventing stuff all of the time and about ways that we work, and I think it’s important - I’m not dissing social media and all the rest of it, but I think it’s interesting things like the Arab spring and stuff, when things kicked off in Tunisia they blocked the phone masts, and people were getting nothing on their phones, so they went out into the streets to find out what was happening, and that’s when things kicked of, because actually it’s not enough to do things in isolation and to do things online and whatever - you need to stand and one of the things - I worked in political education, and I like working with youth and community groups, because you sit in a group of people and they have a conversation and that for me is the times, like when you were sitting in a bender or around the fire, when people leap, and they go ‘blah blah blah bah blah’ ‘oh I never thought about that’, and every group I’ve ever taken from when we’ve done whatever it is about - I have learnt things, and I have changed my mind and I know that’s a kind of cliched thing to say but it’s true.
You know, a 14 year old says - this young girl ‘I never thought about it like that’, and that’s when you do it in a group of people, and it doesn’t matter who they are, and I think you need to talk about it, and we need to say those things.
[[So there needs to be some more getting together in real life as they call it?|Penny Gulliver So there needs to be some more getting together in real life as they call it?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, absolutely.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I was thinking about things because we’re in a time now where there’s a lot of stuff, you know again I’m not putting it down, but there’s a lot of stuff about identity politics, and there’s a lot of stuff - that whole thing about individualising, which comes from the ‘80s .... but er, everything got individualised - Thatcher’s stuff about there is no society, and we continue that. Everything is about individuals, and there’s an awful lot on the good side abut personal development and about people being, who hang on....is great, but for me change is about collective action.
I’m not someone who has lost - my political stuff is about that, and I’m very interested in things about different forms of economics, about things - I’m very interested in how we change land ownership and those kind of things more than, I wouldn’t say I’ve been involved in lesbian and gay politics, or even women’s stuff at some level, even though I think my most probably shaping experiences of my life were in women only spaces like Greenham, but that’s not where I’ve chosen to be, and I think that’s probably one of the legacies of camp that it’s actually people didn’t go in with one thing - well there was vaguely an antinuclear, but people came with all sorts of different kinds of life experiences and thoughts, and they went in the same way - they went out into the world in all sorts of spaces and took that experience and those ideas, and that thought process.
And I think that is a legacy, the fact is for me that is the strength of it - that we didn’t all come out going oh this is what we need to do this one thing is the priority for my work and my life, because actually that’s not what worked. What worked was all those different things being strung together to understand how they are a big part of the big picture, and how a logging company in Bangladesh is as important to understand the destruction and how that fits with that big picture as it is the, you know, something that we have cuts on our street nw because of the council cuts - because of austerity.
[[Say nothing, listen..|Penny Gulliver What would you say the legacy of Greenham is?2]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It’s that, and I think that is a legacy - that all those women went back out into all sorts of different places and worked in different ways, and some was very - it was in a very individual, or very women, or very lesbian centered kind of way, and for others it was completely different - it was anti-war or whatever.
So yes, I think that’s a legacy, I think the idea of how things trying together, how we are not the people we are prescribed, and as a whole sex we are - that whole cliche Greenham women are everywhere - but we are everything, and I think we understood that - god I think now when you look at how small you know power tries to make women’s lives and young women’s lives and I just think oh my god, it’s a bit like we have to break that out with the axe the boy took to camp, you know, because that’s from a person who believes entirely in non-violence I get really mad and I want to shout, and I want to kill people all of the time - but I wouldn’t.
You know.
[[So, when we say Greenham women are everywhere, they really are?|Penny Gulliver So, when we say Greenham women are everywhere, they really are?]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah.
[[They all went somewhere.|Penny Gulliver They all went somewhere.]]
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]They all went somewhere, and they talk to people - even if we’ve stopped doing it now.
[[Thank Penny Gulliver and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]What would you like to ask Sue Say?
[[So, um, can you tell me a little bit about how you first went to Greenham? How old you were, how you came to hear about it?|Sue Say So, um, can you tell me a little bit about how you first went to Greenham? How old you were, how you came to hear about it?]]
[[Was it women who did everything at Greenham?|Sue Say I mean, when I was asking earlier about seeing women doing all the things, I wasn't meaning exactly in terms of like, what amount of a masculine role and a feminine role, I was meaning more, because whatever there was to be done, including being an absolute horror.]] Okay, well, it's quite interesting - I was, I was brought up - I was adopted by people who brought me up in a little village in Surrey. And my father was a conscientious objector during the war, and my mum was a wren during the war. And so I was brought up with both the ethos of my mum thinking war is a necessary evil. And if it's done, it should be done by soldiers, sailors, army, not by nuclear weapons, and my dad being an absolute staunch pacifist who believed no war was ever justifiable.
And so for him, it was no war - you don't pick up arms against another human being - he was very definitely a Christian, as was my mum. And that was sort of the ethos that I was brought up in which was that talking - you had to talk in the end of the day, so why not do that first instead of doing all this sort of killing? Um, so that's where I came from.
I was, I was working in, in business - that's what I went into after after home. And I went into business and business studies. And I was working for a company, who were a brilliantly very good Swedish, politically, very good company, very positive about women's roles. And I got the job by being purely cheeky - waltzed in at 16, for a job that was for an 18 year old and said ‘I can do this’. And they went ‘Actually, you might be able to - we’re going to send you to college first.’
So they sort of sponsored me going to college, and I worked - training people, that's what I was doing. And we were going into businesses and telling them how to work better to achieve more profit. And we worked for Halfords. And during the process of working for Halfords, I looked at it and I could see very clearly what the problem was - men did not trust what women said. And so our advice to that company had to be take the women off the counters, and shove them into the back rooms in the offices, and I think it broke me.
I think, that just made me feel so sick inside. Business wise, it was the most practical, logical, sensible - but in my head, I thought I can't do this. And I think that was the point at which I left that job. And I thought I can't do this - I can't keep sort of being part of the position of oppressing women. I couldn't be involved in that. And I think that's what made me go, do you know, I just need a weekend - let me go and do something that's ‘rooty’. And I went to Greenham for the weekend. (Laughs). That is what I did. And I went in the November when I was 18.
[[Okay, so I need to not be part of this business that's pressing women and I think I'll go to Greenham for the weekend. You know, that's that's still quite a big - how did you know about it?|Sue Say Okay, so I need to not be part of this business that's pressing women and I think I'll go to Greenham for the weekend. You know, that's that's still quite a big - how did you know about it?]]
[[So, so the, the both the things of the nuclear disarmament and the, and the being - the organising with women, would you say there were equal importance to you at the time?|Sue Say So, so the, the both the things of the nuclear disarmament and the, and the being - the organising with women, would you say there were equal importance to you at the time?]]]
How did I know about it? Well, obviously you know, being brought up in a family that believed that nuclear weapons were abhorrent, I'd already heard of Greenham and I’d already been part of the local CND group - I'd been part of doing things, writing letters, and it wasn't really me.
I was an open your mouth and do something sort of girl, and I'd got sick of writing letters and having very sympathetic understanding letters coming back saying ‘Yes, this might be the case but...’ and I it just wasn't me, and I wanted to do something - I wanted to feel like I, I was actually connecting, and I thought, have a look at some of the things that were going on at that time.
And Greenham was relatively close to my home. And I thought, just go and have a see what the women are doing there, just see, because it'd be something positive about women after being in such a negative environment, and I got there for the weekend, and I didn't leave.
[[Was it an organised trip was a...?|Sue Say Was it an organised trip was a...?]]
[[Like so you're headed off wearing whatever clothes you were wearing, and you didnt know you were staying?|Like so you're headed off wearing whatever clothes you were wearing, and you didnt know you were staying the night?]] It was not! I got on a train, I bought a ticket, got on a train and hoped for the best.
[[Wow!|Sue Say Wow!]]
[[Like so you're headed off wearing whatever clothes you were wearing, and you didnt know you were staying the night?|Like so you're headed off wearing whatever clothes you were wearing, and you didnt know you were staying the night?]] You know, that is what I did. And then I sort of tried to hitch from the station, which, you know, I learned very quickly doesn't happen. There wasn't - at that time, you know, I think I was there for about an hour and 40 minutes at the side of the road before I thought no, just just walk.
You’ve sort of got an idea of where you’re going - follow the woods. And that's pretty much what I did.
[[Like so you're headed off wearing whatever clothes you were wearing, and you didnt know you were staying the night?|Like so you're headed off wearing whatever clothes you were wearing, and you didnt know you were staying the night?]]
[[And did you - what did you do - what happened that evening then? Did somebody find you - make your bender?|Sue Say And did you - what did you do - what happened that evening then? Did somebody find you - make your bender?]] No, no, I didn't take anything with me. I didn't take a sleeping bag. I didn't - because I really thought I was going for the day, you know, or just for the weekend, and I did sort of add a pair, had a spare pair of knickers but I didn't really care for much else. I had a little rucksack with a - you know, a pencil and a pen, and a couple of drinks and some food. And that was it.
[[And did you - what did you do - what happened that evening then? Did somebody find you - make your bender?|Sue Say And did you - what did you do - what happened that evening then? Did somebody find you - make your bender?]]
[[do you think it's our responsibility to talk about Greenham? I think sometimes we assume that stories are being passed down and then we realise actually, it's our job to do it. Is there anything that you just think well, the now needs to know about Greenham?|Sue Say Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about for this project? Which is - I’ll just tell you something interesting. When we - all the interviewers met up in Bristol, and there was mostly women of a certain age, and then one young woman who just said, ‘I'd never heard of Greenham.’ And I said to her, do you think that's partly our responsibility - that we didn't think about it? Or we're too busy living or, you know, just kind of assumed that - I think sometimes we assume that stories are being passed down and then we realise actually, it's our job to do it. Is there anything that you just think well, the now needs to know about Greenham?]]Well actually, there was already a bender there that belonged to a couple of German women who had gone away for the weekend. So I was invited to stay there. And that's what I did for the first two nights. And then after that, actually, funnily enough, there was an ambulance there that nobody was in, so I've moved into the ambulance. So that was quite good.
[[So was your address ‘the ambulance’?|Sue Say So was your address ‘the ambulance’?]]
[[It was very creative place|Sue Say It was very creative, wasn't it?]](Laughs). Yeah, in the clearing, in the clearing, Yellow Gate, as we called it - Main Gate, there’s another political argument for you.
[[We’ll come to that one. So when you - from your village, and then even from your circles and CND circles, was this still quite a extraordinary thing to do?|Sue Say We’ll come to that one. So when you - from your village, and then even from your circles and CND circles, was this still quite a extraordinary thing to do?]]
[[Do you think that Greenham women are misrepresented?| Sue Say Do you think that Greenham women are misrepresented?]] Um, well, let's put it this way, the CND group went up once a month with, with biscuits and cakes and jumpers and, you know, they they, they took it very seriously - supporting the women that were there. And so most of the people that I knew weren't - they were a bit surprised that maybe I went for it.
But they weren't surprised at you know - this was something that we had supported. So nobody was shocked. Nobody was thinking it was a bad thing to do. Because most people had actually been at one point or another - they did a sort of rota. And everybody went you know, once or once a month, somebody went taking anything, and taking requests, and then bringing them back the following month. So it wasn't something that was completely alien to anybody really.
[[And in all the time you knew of Greenham, did you only know it as a women only?|Sue Say And in all the time you knew of Greenham, did you only know it as a women only?]]
[[How did your mum the wren, and your dad the consc-y cope when you got arrested?|Sue Say How were your mum the wren, and your dad the consc-y coping with all this?]] Um, no, I'd heard the history of how it started and I thought I can see why it was necessary for it to become women. And actually, if it hadn't of been all women, I don't think I would have gone. I think what I was looking for was to root myself back into the woman that I was - if that makes sense. And I was very young, very immature. I thought I knew the way the world worked. Er, no! (Laughs).
So it was a bit of a shock, really - village life, village life, and very much so the Christian lifestyle back then. Everybody went to church. Everybody was involved in the Brownies. I was Brownies, Guides, Queen’s Guides. That was, that was what everybody did. I played hockey, you know, we were part of the community, we worked very hard to sort of ensure that the older members of the community had their needs met, you know, you went to the shop, you just automatically asked them if they needed anything when you were going down the street, you just sort of asked, you know, and you sort of had your own little set of old ladies and old men that you'd just sort of supported, just naturally and that was the lifestyle.
And I thought everywhere was like that, which was a bit of a shock. When I went to London, that was a hell of a shock. So you know, there was there was a sort of big gap between what I was used to, and then getting to Greenham was something else altogether.
[[But it was from village to Greenham, or village to London?|Sue Say But it was from village to Greenham, or village to London?]]
[[So, so the, the both the things of the nuclear disarmament and the, and the being - the organising with women, would you say there were equal importance to you at the time?|Sue Say So, so the, the both the things of the nuclear disarmament and the, and the being - the organising with women, would you say there were equal importance to you at the time?]] Village, to London, to Greenham. When I moved to work for the Swedish company, I was living in London at the time, and that was that was a big shock. A big, big shock. Policemen tell the truth you see in little villages, you know policemen don't just come out of nowhere and push you on the ground, or kick you, or hurt you. That's not what policemen did - policemen were there to make sure that you were okay. You know to deal with broken down cars, and one bike going missing when I was just a kid - just one - front page at the Woking Times! It was just right there Woking News and Mail - right there on the front cover. You know, a stolen bike!
That was the kind of place I was brought up, and going to London was a shock, it was a shock - but it was good as well. There was a lot more of a mix of people, and it was - I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the sort of eye opening experience, but it was quick and hard and fast. I learnt quite quickly, police tell lies, police hurt people, you know, and I hadn't perceived that at all because our our local bobby used to come to our CND meetings (laughs) - he wasn't that kind of person at all. He was lovely. And I grew up thinking they were supposed to help you, you know, like...
[[So what was that first evening at Greenham like, then?|Sue Say So what was that first evening at Greenham like, then?]]
[[Can you tell me about your experiences with the police at Greenham?|Sue Say You know that was, that was, and the other thing was meeting loads of women who'd all been in prison, that was two of the things that I didn't expect. And that, but that I had no idea how to expect those things, but they really expanded my understanding of what women were doing.]]Um, a mixture of - well if I, if I explain when I arrived at Greenham, I arrived at what I thought was Main Gate. And that's where most women, I think, started off - because that's the sort of the the main entrance of the base. And I was quite determined when I got there, that one of the things I wanted to do was walk around the fence.
So when I arrived, my first thing was to go to the fire wherever it was, and there were women around, and a few women spoke and said, ‘Yeah, you know, you can stay there, if you want to stay overnight. That's not a problem’, so I thought that's good. So I sort of put my bag in there. And then I decided I'm going to walk around this 9 mile fence. That's, that's that was my first job. And I literally set off from Main Gate - Yellow Gate, heading towards Green. And as you get to the corner, there's a big piece of concrete. And there was a woman sat on this piece of concrete talking to a soldier. And as I approached, I was just a bit - I wonder what she's saying.
And I just stood there listening to her, and this woman was telling this soldier, ‘It's never too late. You have to recognise the abuse that you do. When I abused my children. I did this, this, this’ and proceeded to talk about something incredibly personal, incredibly - made her very vulnerable, and she was trying to say to this guy ‘It's not too late, you can change this, I've changed me, you need to change you.’ And I just thought she was so brave, so brave to recognise her own failings, and to use them to try and help someone else to recognise theirs.
And I think that that was the single most powerful moment for me when I got to Greenham, was thinking, what is she doing? She's insane. Why would you tell some, some, you know, complete stranger who's not on your side in any way, shape or form - why would you open your emotions like that? Why would you open your vulnerabilities like that? And he massively stood there and abused her. And she sat there so calmly and said, ‘That's what I've just been telling you about.’
I just thought, yeah, you have - that's a good point. And it I think it had so much more of an effect on me than it did him, because it made me see that there was another side to things really, it's always so easy to see when someone's doing something wrong, but to acknowledge yourself and what you are doing wrong, and to try and change it, no matter how bad it is - that this woman was saying, to me, doesn't matter how bad you've been, you can always change your life, you can always be different. You can always see what you're doing and stop it. And I found that quite powerful.
[[It's like a little snapshot of the whole Greenham thing, isn't it?|Sue Say It's like a little snapshot of the whole Greenham thing, isn't it?]]
[[Did you make a it round the fence?|Sue Say Did you make a it round the fence? ]]Yes.
[[This woman trying to persuade this part of this big machine to be different. And yeah, that vulnerability as well.|Sue Say This woman trying to persuade this part of this big machine to be different. And yeah, that vulnerability as well.]]
[[Did you make a it round the fence?|Sue Say Did you make a it round the fence? ]]I did not. I did not. I met this woman. I talked with this woman, and we walked around to Green Gate, and it was way too cosmic for me! (Laughs). I found my way to Blue Gate, however, and that's as far as I got that day because of course, the pub was just down there. So off I went to the Rockabee, first day.
I was invited by a woman that I met - Lesley, and she just said, ‘Oh, I'm going to the Rockabee, come with me.’ So I ended up going, because she played pool. We both loved hockey and so that was, that was, that was my first day at Greenham, was to, to walk as far as Blue Gate - so I got two whole gates (laughs)! To the pub, which was just perfect. So I spent a bit of time at Blue Gate - I’ll be honest.
[[And for all the time that you stayed there, was that more or less your patch?|Sue Say And for all the time that you stayed there, was that more or less your patch?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]And I was I was quite, I was quite overwhelmed.
[[I am now.|Sue Say I am now.]]
[[Did you make a it round the fence?|Sue Say Did you make a it round the fence? ]]And quite emotionally moved by this, because this woman I would class as one of my friends, and if somebody’s said, you know, somebody who had been part of a - abusing someone would have been my friend, most people would have said ‘No’. But it it was an eye opener that we do things in our life that we're not very proud of. And what we have to do is acknowledge that, and change it, and that anyone can do that. And I was, I was quite overwhelmed by that. And I think that, that was probably the catalyst for me staying, actually.
[[Did you make a it round the fence?|Sue Say Did you make a it round the fence? ]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I would say Yellow Gate was my patch, or Main Gate as we used to call it. Main Gate. I loved the clearing, I loved being - the atmosphere I think, I think it's very difficult - for me I would look back, and I would say, each gate and area in a gate had a kind of feel to it. It had the kind of people - most people would start off at Yellow Gate - Main Gate, and they would disseminate to the gate that was more appropriate. I would say I spent very little time at any other gate other than Yellow Gate, however Orange and Blue. Yes, Orange because that was where there were children. And Blue because that was closest to the pub, is the truth.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think when I went, when I went, it was more about the anti nuclear. But when I got there, I realised that this was going to be a bit of a journey for me, and exploring the idea of woman-ness, if that makes sense. I don't think that I went with that agenda. I went with the agenda of what the hell am I doing? I have just caused at least 3 / 4 women in one particular Halfords to lose their jobs, and several others at several other places to be shoved back into office like positions, and I couldn't kind of, kind of come to terms with that. So I'd gone with that in mind. I needed to be with women.
And so it was perfect for me, and antinuclear - that was with women. However, when I got there, I suddenly realised that there were many shades of woman, which I hadn't really realised either. Coming from a very sort of Christian background, all the women were fantastic, and open, and warm, and loving, and caring - and they weren't angry, and opinionated, and independent, and strong and wilful (always). So that was a, that was a fantastic sort of explanation, because I was thought I was a bit out of place.
[[Please tell me more..|Sue Say So, so the, the both the things of the nuclear disarmament and the, and the being - the organising with women, would you say there were equal importance to you at the time?2]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Because whilst I was brought up in this very quiet, and gentle, and loving and supportive - my mouth would often not be quiet like that! My mouth was a little bit more loud, and clear and ‘Hold on a minute.’ You know, I asked the question - if I felt it, I asked it, whether it was appropriate or not. And down south I think definitely the desire to not ask the question is very much there . You're supposed to work things out by what’s not said, and I wasn't very good at that. Because I'd see something I'd go ‘Hold on a minute, you said it's really cruel or mean to do this, this..’ and I would sort of vocalise that. And I was often in trouble as a youth for that one.
And then suddenly, I was with a whole bunch of women who did exactly the same. And I felt sort of empowered really, because before I'd felt there was something wrong with that. Now some of the opinions and views I held and other women held were appalling. But the reality was, these were our opinions and views. They were being vocalised. They were being challenged, and they were being discussed.
And I think that was what it gave me an opportunity to do. It gave me a chance, an opportunity to vocalise and hear what other women, other ages, other experiences, other cultures, other races, other religions, all of that. And it gave you a an opportunity to hear the world from their point of view. And that was very, very, very useful - as a young woman that gave me the opportunity. Ahh! That's why people there do.. Ahh! Okay, and that's fine. You know it, it was very, very helpful to understand that women were very, very different than just the group that I'd grown up with.
[[Looking back from now, when you think about that, just the fact that you could see and hear women doing all of the things. So holding all of the different views, and doing all of the physical work, you know, so that like, rather than this is what women do, and the fact that...|Sue Say Looking back from now, when you think about that, just the fact that you could see and hear women doing all of the things. So holding all of the different views, and doing all of the physical work, you know, so that like, rather than this is what women do, and the fact that...]]
[[Were there people who could train you in particular skills?|Sue Say It also gets to the point about what's really going on as well. Like, you know, Russian trained specialist women. Yeah, obviously. We’d all done the Russian training. ]]Mmm , from my childhood, and this is where it becomes a bit of a clash. You know, my mum was the wren, and my dad was the conscientious objector. My mum was gown up - my grandfather was in the First World War and he was hit with shrapnel, and he had epilepsy. And the shrapnel would move a little bit, and they were expecting him to die any minute, but he married me grandma. They were told he’d probably only live a matter of days or weeks. And he outlived her, and had 13 children. But he had to have a sort of, he was retired on to a sort of tenement farm - can’t even say it now. So it was like he had a piece of land that he was given with a massive house on it. And he was told ‘Just do some gardening’. Now he ran a dairy business. He sort of maintained some of the grass areas, and had tennis courts for the rich. But the majority of it was his milk round, and he made cheese and you know, sort of that was the sort of life they had. And me grandma, my mum did that, but they grew everything. They ate what they grew.
So of course, my mum, she she plants in this village and so goes ‘That’s what you do’. And so the life that I lived was about animals, it was about growing our own food. It was about basically, if you didn't look after the plants, you didn't eat. And so it was - there was a lot of focus on working on the land. My father had a job, so he went and did the job. So of course, we were the ones who worked the land. So we were the farmers rather than the other way around. So I didn't really have that kind of stereotype, if that makes sense.
I did in the sense of my father was very conventional, he was the one that made the rules. And did you know, and my mum was this sort of - managed him. (Laughs). She managed him. She showed me how you make a man think it's his idea. And that was just splendid to grow up watching that. My mum definitely was the one who - she'd go, you know, she'd plant the seed, let it go for a little bit. And then she'd point out that he had said, which he hadn’t, you know, and it didn't take me very long as a child to work that out. I’d just go to my mum and say, ‘I want this’ and she would instil that idea, and my dad would come up with this fabulous idea that we were going to go swimming that day or, and it was, it was quite, it was quite funny to watch - because I always used to think well why can't she just say ‘This is what we want to do’, but that wasn't how their relationship was.
And I found that quite interesting because there were - my other friends had very different setups, you know? So that was quite a useful thing to see. So when I went to Greenham, that wasn't - the doing thing really wasn't the problem for me.
[[But the different political positions, the having something to say and saying it - did that just feel like well, this is what it's meant to be?|Sue Say But the, the different positions, the different political positions, so like, the having something to say and saying it - was that, was that, did that just feel like well, this is what it's meant to be?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]For me, yes, for me, I thought that's who I was supposed to be. But I spent a lot of time being told to stop it. You know, as a child my mum used to say ‘Can't you just!’ (Laughs). That was the phrase ‘Can't you just?’, and I felt no, no I can’t. That's how I feel - I need to say that. And I found it very difficult to hold that back. And I think that was a little unwieldy at times, and a little bit abrupt at times, and a little bit inappropriate at times. But that was pretty much who I was, I suppose. That was something I was.
And then I went to Greenham and everyone was like that! That was great. That was like, oh, fabulous, because then I had somebody to expand. If you have an idea and a view, it's formed from your prejudices, your experiences, your history, and then to come and see somebody else's perspective and have someone go ‘Oh no, because my dad did this to my mum, he hit my mum’ - I was mortified, because the way I've been brought up that just you know, I think the only incident when I was a kid, I can remember at 11 my mum and I squashing our faces up to the front window, watching the woman down the street launch her husband's clothing out of the window. It was just like (gasps), this is the most horrifying thing I'd ever seen. She was swearing, and telling him to leave. And it was just, oh, my goodness. And he was running around the front lawn picking up his shirts, and his shoes, and his you know. And that, to me was just like, oh, my goodness, you know, I'd never seen - it was all done behind closed doors, and it wasn't, it was right out in the open there. And I'd never seen that. So for me seeing that, and then hearing someone talking about her husband beating her, and her having to climb out the window to get away.
You know, that was just like, you know, do people actually do that? I couldn't imagine. You know, because I'd never seen.
[[It seems to me that there was - a moment where women doing things together became um, not exactly normal, but, but women acting, organising collectively was much more common.|Sue Say When the - I don't know what, so it seems to me that there was - a moment where women doing things together became um, not exactly normal, but, but women acting, organising collectively was much more common.]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well, for me, for me, it was obvious I was never going to go to jail. I was only going - I was never going to jail, because criminals are there. You know, that was one of the things that I was very clear on. If I get fine for something, I'm going to pay it because I'm not... And there was a big debate about that. And it was very interesting for me to hear other women's perspectives - it was like ‘But you’re just playing into the system. If you pay it, you're kind of almost encouraging them to just
continue because they're getting money from you. So there's no, there's no harm to them that way.’
And I was thinking, I'm not going to jail with all those complete, freaky people who kill people and murder people, because that's what people in jail do. Because from my perspective, living in this little village, that's what people were. And actually, the way I ended up going to prison was, was on remand for something that I didn't do. (Laughs). And so it was, and the very afternoon that I'd said in the morning, ‘I'm not going to jail’. So it was quite funny when we were on our way to jail. I was going, I said, ‘I'm telling you, I'm not going to jail’. And I absolutely had no choice, you know, which was just, you know, but I'll tell you about that. Do you want me to tell you?
[[Yes please.|Sue Say Yeah. May as well.]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]They did a hideous thing. And they were making us very, very cold by coming and putting out fires with fire extinguishers, and they passed a bylaw, that you couldn't have any fires there. And we were cold, that's the truth of it, we were cold.
And this particular day, they'd come along, they'd squirt it - but they didn't just put the fire out, they used to squirt the mud. It would, you'd be soaking - you'd be covered in mud, and ofcourse, you've got no fire then to dry. It was a, an attempt from them to to undermine us to such an extent that we would go away. That was what it was for. We weren't going to go away. It was just going to be really unpleasant for us. And that was going to be the end conclusion.
But what actually happened this day, was I had an outstanding charge, and I was going to go to jail anyway, I just decided, okay, I'll go tomorrow - because this is what we used to do - go and hand yourself in. Now, on this particular occasion, they'd soaked us, and there was a big debate going on, and this was the debate - somebody thrown some water at one of the police, and the argument around Main Gate that day was is this violence? We were going ‘No, it's not’. And they’re going ‘Yes, it is. It's violence.’ So that was the debate that was going on. But you know, me, I don't think so. I don't think so. So, this is, with that in mind, this is what happened.
My friend, friend Lesley, and I decided, no, we're fed up with being wet, why shouldn't they be wet? So we got a washing up bowl. Now, lots of people didn't understand. It's vegetarian. We're not having meat here. But people used to send tins of meat stew, and oxtail soup and you know, all that sort of stuff, you know, it's sitting there rotting in a can, we might just as well empty into a washing up bowl mightn’t we. So we emptied all that, and there was some half tins of beans that nobody was going to eat because got mud in them. So we put that in the washing up water and everything else.
And then Lesley then I built the biggest fire you've ever seen in the clearing. And so there's this big fire, and me and Lesley each end of the washing up bowl going ‘Yeah, we'll have them off this time’. So other women were going ‘Yeah! We got a fire.’ So there they came down from Main Gate with their fire extinguishers, with this woman taking the lead, and they squirted all the fire, and they tried to squirt women.
And as soon as that fire went out, Lesley and I stepped out - wooop! The whole lot. Spaghetti in there and everything there was. Now, I've seen it once, there is a shot of a policewoman with one of those flat hats, with a piece of spaghetti going you know, with a mouth wide open - with this piece of spaghetti hanging down like that. Now for me, I would say to this day, hand on heart that was one of the best actions I've ever done. It made me feel so much better. But anyway, she was soaking, Lesley and I crying laughing everybody, else crying laughing.
These police ‘Ooh, you bitches.’ Off they came with the extinguishers, chasing us through the through - there was one woman, what was she called? Arleen from America - ah, she was fabulous, Arleen, and she was there absolutely like this while they were squirting - with her hands up going ‘Under here, don’t forget under here!’ She was hilarious, she got the soap out and everything. She's like this - ‘Come on!’ The police are trying to squirt us down to really miff us off. But we're following them then, we're going ‘Oh, look at all that beef stew, officer’, and they’re getting really fuming.
So they go up to the gate, and they're due to be taken off shift in 5 minutes. And then the other ones are there, and they're like, no lads, it's still the 5 minutes - they left them. They sat there fuming, these police. So they moved just to the right of Main Gate, where there was another piece of concrete, they're standing there. And everyone said ‘Look, all the fire extinguishers are just inside the gate, and they’ve left the gate open’. So I said ‘Okay, I will go into the middle of this group. I'll be the sort of distraction. And you lot can go and get the fire extinguishers’.
And so I went into the middle of these, these sort of four or five police officers and they're all standing facing each other. And I went into the middle and I'm like, ‘Ooh, that smells a bit like beef stew’. And he's just sort of staring at me, because their fire extinguishers are empty now. So they can't do anything. So this was a sort of thing. So I'm going into the middle of them going ‘Oh dear, you’re going to get in trouble for that uniform, aren’t you?’ And I'm doing all of that. They're all focusing on me, and you can feel the fury from them.
Girls grab the fire extinguishers. And the police ran like a pack of girls. They did, it was brilliant. You know, that kind of thing that they always accuse us of - they were like that (adopts high pitched voice) ‘Oh, no!’, and they’re running, they’re hiding behind the police vans. Well, everybody's got a fire extinguisher now, so we are squirting those police down. Because they've done it to us so often. We've got the fire extinguishers, now. It was all out war with these things, it was.
And it was a release of tension. It had been so tense and stressed, and everyone was getting angry, and we were bickering as a group. And that was actually the bit of relief that we needed. And so everybody's chasing around with these fire extinguishers, and we were, we were laughing. The police were hysterical behind the gate - the ones that was supposed to be taking over. These police are now soaking, so we're delighted - they’re soaking with beef stew, and we've soaked them down with the water.
And then out of nowhere, came officer 1087, and he just - to say he full on rugby tackled one of these women with a fire extinguisher, he took her off her feet, smashed her into the gate about four foot up on the gate. She slid down, completely unconscious - another woman went to kind of get round - Lesley, in-fact - went to get round to protect her. And as this policeman came in with his boot, I'm going ‘Officer 1087, don't you think you've overreacted?’ He turned round and goes ‘You're fucking nicked.’ So that was me done.
But he didn't then attack her, but as he went towards her, Lesley sort of put her foot out to protect, so she got arrested for assault. And we all got thrown in the back of the van. There were about five of us, I think, that got arrested that night. We were taken to, to the police cells. The police in the police station were fantastic. They left us cells spoken - we were walking backwards and forwards, but we hadn't seen Stella. Now we're going ‘Stella, where are you? Stella, where are you?’ She was unconscious. And they'd left her unconscious in the van.
Now if it hadn't been for the grooves down the back of the van - she’d thrown up and everything -she'd have been dead. So we were quite lucky in that way. Well, anyway, they carried her in, she was semi conscious. So they put her down as refusing to give her name. So they arrested her for that. So, anyway, the end conclusion was we all had a really good night in the police cells, laughing - they let us out. They said, ‘Look, if you let us take your photos, we'll give you some fresh air’, and we said ‘You let us have the fresh air first, and then you can take our photos’, ‘Okay’. So they let us have our fresh air, so we let them take the photos.
We thought, okay, no problem. So we go up in court, the next morning, I walk up to the, into the dock and they go, you know, I can't even remember what name I was using at the time. But you know, it was - ‘She's accused of throwing excreta and urine at the police.’ And I'm like, ‘What? What?’, and the judge said ‘Take her down.’ And they remanded me for 7 days. And I'm going ‘It was beef stew!’ And he's going ‘Contempt.’ So I got done for contempt for saying ‘It’s beef stew. (Laughs). It was beef stew’.
But so yes, I was remanded for 7 days for that. And then, and then charged for the damage to the, the police uniforms, which actually when it came to court, I did not get done for any - they tried to go for compensation to replace their uniforms. And the judge awarded them £37 for cleaning of five uniforms, which I refused to pay. So I went back to jail. (Laughs).
[[So that's, that worked well - deciding that you werent going to jail, then?|Sue Say So that's, that worked well - deciding that you weren't going to jail, then?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Not! Really not! But I mean, I was terrified. I was terrified. I thought jail was for real criminals. And you know, the first time - there's another story for that one, when I first went to prison. When I first got there, went into a dorm, the night before a pair of scissors had gone missing. And there was this woman in the cell with really long arms, and all the other Greenham women shot over to the other side, because she was saying ‘Oh, I hate Scousers, you know me boyfriend was a Scouser, so I stabbed him to death.’ So Lesley, who is pure Scouser went over to that side of the room . Stella went over to that side of the room, and muggins gets the bed underneath hers.
And I spent all night with my back against the wall, watching - forcing my eyes to stay open, watching for this crazed lunatic woman whose arm was going to come round and slice me with this pair of scissors. Right? In the morning. She was like, ‘Oh, I'm hungry.’ ‘Here, have my breakfast!’ You know, it was it was it was everything. It really was. As it happened, as it happened. She was having a laugh at our expense.
Actually, what she'd done is she'd walked down the street, seen one of those rails of leather jackets and thought, oh, it's not pegged down to the ground and wheeled it around the corner, and there was a policeman there and she got caught. So no, she hadn't murdered her Scouse boyfriend at all. But it woke me up. She was - she'd stolen denim clothes.
The woman opposite me had stolen a pint of flaming milk off somebody's doorstep. She was hungry. She had no, nothing and she nicked a pint of milk. She’d been there 8 months on remand, and it was such an - and the woman over this side was an addict. And it was just like, what in the hell? I expected these to be crazed lunatic women. And I'd gone in with that in mind and realised there were women just like me, they were women just like the women at Greenham. And they were just women. And they had had a lot of unfortunate things happen around them. And one of them was in because the police were shaking her down to try and get her boyfriend to admit to a crime that he’d committed. And it, it didn't take me very long to realise that I'd had this illusion that these crazed women who killed people would be the ones in jail. There wasn't - I think there was only one person I met in jail who I thought belonged there, you know, maybe two.
[[And it was almost all because of poverty, and abusive relationships?|Sue Say And it was almost all about poverty?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah. Yeah. And the things that they'd done to get away from them, or to get out of them. And I think that that was an eye opener as well, because I really thought jail was for bad folks, and it so wasn’t. And actually the bad people in there were mostly the screws.
And I watched the way that they treated women, the way that they would use, you know, 24 hour lockup we were on when we were first there, and I'd you know, and they were taking us from one area in the prison to another, to another, to another, and it was just hideous. They were just being awful.
And we just set about causing as much trouble in there as possible. We, we stopped the searches from happening. But that was more because we were all in a line and the screw was sort of doing the thing, and you have to put your hands up and all this, they were doing that. And one of our crew basically put her hands right over her head - didn’t touch her, and you know, this screw freaked out completely and thought, oh my goodness. So she carries on and does the next person, but this particular woman went down the line and went to the end again - went ‘Me, me me me!’ That was the last time they did searches when we went round through the prison.
But there was a lot of stuff that we did, like they, they the way that they would oppress women was just horrible. They would put them on the ward with all those with the mental health problems, and frighten people. They put me on a deportation wing - I woke up with a whole load of women around my bed shaking it, you know, and this was because we weren't doing what what the authorities were telling us, so they were putting us in dangerous situations - they were prepared to do that.
But actually, you know, it was a lot less dangerous, you know, for us because we would - people would tell us about things that were happening and we’d take it on as an issue. You know, it's like we organised a hunger strike, a rooftop protest. There's so many things that we did. We had a singing protest, where I was told ‘Stop singing, stop singing.’ So we started singing ‘You can forbid nearly anything, but you can't forgive me to sing.’ It just sort of - for them that was a bit of a shocker, I think. Having to manage women who didn't care about their authority. ‘Going to work? No, I don't think so. I’m not working, why would I work for you?’ You know, we were awkward. We were difficult. We made it hard for them. But that in turn made it easier for the other prisoners, because they were focusing on us instead of them. And I think that we did quite a bit of good in there some times with that, because we didn't care.
[[But there's a lot of radical potential to laughing at things together, and being able, like you said, to say ‘We're going to treat this as what it is, which is a political issue and not victimisation of this woman'.|Sue Say But there's a lot of radical potential to laughing at things together, and being able, like you said, to say ‘We're going to treat this as what it is, which is a political issue and not victimisation of this woman, this woman, this woman.]]
[[Which prison was it?|Sue Say Which prison was it?]] Yes. I think we used our humour, and we used our creativity to draw attention to issues in a slightly non conventional way. (Laughs). I think that's probably the fairest way of putting it. Like I said, you know, hunger strike, rooftop protests, singing - continuously singing really takes it out on you, but it really irritated them, which was good for me.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]Holloway. (Laughs). Holloway. I spent a lot of time in Holloway.
[[How many times did you end up going because of Greenham?|Sue Say How many times did you end up going because of Greenham?]]
[[Did they ever split the women up so that you couldn't get up to these shenanigans?|Sue Say Did they ever split the women up so that you couldn't get up to these shenanigans?]] Six or seven. Six or seven. Probably eight or nine. I'm not entirely sure. I'd have to, I'd have to stop and think about which ones. The, the, there were so many. There were so many. Because once you do the first one, I wasn't frightened anymore. I wasn't frightened of what I'd find there anymore. I was more concerned about the way that people were being treated than I was about being there. If that makes sense. So if it didn't stop me doing actions, it didn't stop me doing things. I would just do something else.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Oh, yeah, but I mean, you can split up - they'd obviously split lots of women up, a lot of the time. But that didn't matter, because they split you up - you're not supposed to shout or anything else, but we'd be like, ‘Ooooohhhh’ out the windows, and sort of shouting people across corridors, and we broke all the rules like that - none of us particularly cared.
We would ask people ‘Is somebody okay?’ And women were pretty good in prison, they would pass messages round to check where people were. So there was a hell of a network there that we walked into, really. So we used to use their network to make sure that women were okay. Particularly if somebody had been hurt when we'd been arrested and nobody'd seen them. Then we'd ask around, and people used their network to find out who was who was okay. And they would pass it around and make sure you knew. So that was a good thing.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well, they came to visit me, and that's how they found out I was in prison. They actually - which was quite funny, because I didn't have any warning. I wasn't intending to go to prison. They were just going to come and visit me - make sure I'd got you know sort of towels and you know, my mum used to be one for towels. ‘Bring a towel - a towel is always useful’, you know, and they were, they were really useful, you know, as well as sanitary towels, and as well as sort of, you know, drinks and my mum would always bring me those sorts of things as well as the stuff that she'd bring - jumpers, you know, that sort of stuff.
Well they'd rocked up for their their usual visit. And somebody - my mum had sort of said, ‘Oh, where's Sue?’ And somebody said ‘Oh, they're in prison.’ (Laughs). And mum was a bit like, what the hell? Because that's not something that she’d really thought about. And she rocked up to Holloway, and that's how I found out she'd known - I thought oh perhaps I'll be out by the time she comes to visit. But actually, she'd no - I didn't get away with it.
But she, she came to visit which was a bit unusual as well. She'd never been to prison to visit anyone in her life. My dad had, because he used to be, he used to work a lot in different charities, and one of the charities was people - political prisoners. And so for my dad he was, was, was very proud actually, very proud that I was doing what I felt was right no matter where that led me, so there was never an issue - they were just a bit shocked that I hadn't let them know. But you know, as they found out I didn't really get a chance to let them know.
[[It wasn't on the time table?|Sue Say It wasn't on the time table?]]
[[Did you find the police there were alright?|Sue Say Did you find the - like you were saying the police in the police station in Newbury were, were alright - did you find...]]No. So no, but that was that was how they found out that I was in prison - was that they rocked up at the gate, and someone said ‘Oh, they're in prison.’ Just very casually, (laughs) which was quite entertaining in itself.
[[Did you find the police there were alright?|Sue Say Did you find the - like you were saying the police in the police station in Newbury were, were alright - did you find...]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Hit and miss. Sometimes you would get there, and there’d be - if you were doing a sort of group action, or there were several of you - for them it's easier if they can leave the gates open, and the toilets - they don't have to serve you then, they can just sort of leave it open and you can mix quite freely. And lots of them at the police station were really good. They would just leave you to it, but you get the occasional one. I mean, there was one who we drove absolutely mental - she just flipped. This was - this woman who just kept trying to take our photograph.
There was an eviction, there was a main eviction. And we were all taken to the racecourse to be held, because there were too many of us to be held at the police station. And they put us where there was a bar, what did they expect? There was no alcohol there, but it was a bar. It was set up as a bar, so of-course somebody flipped over and started trying to serve water to all the women. The police really cross about that. And then, you know, we were saying how stuffy it was. So they opened the windows, what were you playing at? What did they expect women to do? Now, of course, straightaway, we can see a window open, and we're thinking do you know, this has got to be an escape, hasn’t it? It's got to be.
So you can imagine, here we are at Newbury racecourse, within 15
minutes they put 25 of us in a room, what do you think's going to happen? So within you know, literally off went people out through the windows - we were running around, the police following and chasing us round - we're going up and down the humps, round past the rails where they they do the racing, we were running up and down. We had these police absolutely going mental. But it was it was one of the funniest - I couldn't run for laughing. It was just so funny, because they were getting so uptight and so cross. In the end, I ran back and climbed back through the window (laughs). It was just so funny the way that they'd done it, because they were so slow and so stupid, really. And you can see we were messing about, no one was making a real escape. They could have just stood there and say ‘Look, stop it women’, and probably we would have stopped, but because they chased us in the way that they chased us - because one or two of them were furious. Well furious policemen is just lovely for a Greenham woman, isn't it? Because you just...
[[It's like have they never been around toddlers? Just..|Sue Say It's like have they never been around toddlers? Just..]]
[[So wind-up-able!|Sue Say And so wind-able!]]Like we were, yes, that's what we were doing. We were winding up the parents and we did beautifully that day. They were just so, so cross.
[[And so wind-able!|Sue Say And so wind-able!]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, well, this one particular police woman was was chasing me for quite a while. And she was fast, but I was a hockey player, and I was quite fast. And so I would run, and she would chase me and then she would slow down. So I would stop, and I'd let her catch up a bit, and then I would run off again, and that really annoyed her for some reason. You know, and of course, she showed it me. Well, the more annoyed, of course, I'm going to keep doing it. And so I’d say ‘Okay, I'm waiting.’ And she'd get you know, sort of 10 feet off, and off I’d go again. She just - up, up she went again. It was very, very funny for me.
For me, it was very entertaining to watch the colour she went alone. But anyway, that was that was that. So she, she was, she was very, very irritated. So by the time we actually got to Newbury to the police station, she was blazing. And, you know, one thing led to another, and we ended up getting released. We got released on our own reconnaissance, but they took a photograph of us as we were leaving. And so the woman that I was with - Stella, when we did this action - we went up to the counter, and we went ‘No, we want our photographs back, you have no right to take our photograph, we want our photographs back’. And so we're standing there arguing for the photographs, and then they shut the shutter down.
So Stella, put a finger on the bell. Oh, and I'm flipping the light switch on and off and on and off, so these police they pull the shutter back up, and he gets a ruler, and it’s one of those old school bells, ding, ding, ding ding, and it's on the far wall opposite, and Stella’s like this. They had the little counters with the sort of, sort of four inch gap, you know, like they have to keep you from attacking them. They had that. So he got a ruler, this this policeman, he got a ruler and he's swinging it past. And just as he swings it past, she picks her finger up, and puts it straight back on the bell. Yeah. And it was like this. (Laughs). With this ruler sliding, her finger going up and down, I'm flipping the lights on and off.
You've got a policeman stood on a filing cabinet reaching up, and all you can hear is ‘Ow, ow, ow’, as he’s trying to disconnect this bell! (Laughs). So it wasn't working very well for them. It was great for us, and all we kept going is ‘We want our photographs back’ and he’s going like this, and this, this going on ‘Ow, ow’. And then suddenly the door opens at the side of me - I'm grabbed and we were yanked back in, so we got arrested again. But we got arrested for violence in a police station because that was the charge that they did - I’m flipping lights on and off and she's doing this. Well we'd already been released. So we already had our charge papers on. And so, we go into this room and they, they start and they sit there and they say ‘Right empty your pockets’, so you have to empty all your pockets. So we emptied our pockets, and this policewoman, we're thinking oh, you sucker.
She's standing there, and she's stuffing everything in the bag. Yeah, and she's stuffing everything in the bag and she puts the seal on, she puts the seal on. And then she comes over and she notices that we’d both got things around our necks. She takes this one off Stella and she just gets this key and she threads it down and sticks the cord that was on right in the bag, and she goes ‘Come and sign’, ‘Haven't checked that, we’re not signing that’. So she had to rip - she's going ‘Get them to the cells’. And we're going to the sergeant, ‘Excuse me, Sergeant. She hasn't let me check my property. You know, so I don't have to sign anything, do I?’ So he’s like ‘No, let her check her property’, so this woman rips this bag open, and she goes through all of the stuff. So she's gone through all of mine and she's written everything down and I'm going ‘Oh, you've forgotten this’, and she's put that on the list. And then she's going through Stella’s, and she’s going through the list. And she goes, ‘Right come and sign’, ‘I’m not signing. I want my bloody photograph back.’ (Laughs). This is like - she's got to write down. ‘Little bit of tissue’. ‘You've forgotten the bit of thread there. You have marked down this,’ you know, making her add...
[[Leaves?|Sue Say Pocket fluff!]]
[[Pocket fluff?|Sue Say Pocket fluff!]]
[[Chewed gum?|Sue Say Pocket fluff!]]Pocket fluff. She's making her add it all, and then as soon as she got to the end of it, she put the seal on, she went ‘Right, sign for your property’. ‘No, I want my photograph’, that was it! These huge policemen come in, grabs hold of Stella, drags her in, and she was like, Are you going to sign yours?’ and I'm going ‘I want my photograph’. So often we - you know, the pair of us thrown in the cell. Well, just as we'd left, we've been going ‘We want to go the toilet’, but I swear to god, she would not let us go to the toilet. We were ringing on the bell all night. They turned the bell off and everything. In the morning, somebody else obviously hadn't been told don't let them out to go to the toilet, so she - they opened the door and let us go to the toilet, and we were locked back in.
And then this police woman comes down, and she, she - you hear her putting the breakfast down - you hear it. And then she walked off. Maybe about 40 minutes, 50 minutes later she comes back down, opens the thing. ‘Here's your breakfast’. Dead smiley. ‘There's your tea’. Well I drank my tea and as I got to the end something went against my lip. I turn it and it was all her nail clippings. She put her nail clippings in it. But she’d left the breakfast - I didn't touch mine. But Stella forced hers in - you could pick up the paper plate and turn it over and nothing moved. It was that kind, it had been left there that long, congealed to the plate. But Stella forced in every single bit. This
woman comes down to the door and she opens the thing and she goes ‘Did you eat breakfast?’ and Stella goes (gasps) ‘Cold egg and bacon, my favourite!’
And this woman went ‘Aaaaarrrrggh’, she actually screamed and shot off. You know that point at which you just think that is the moment - and that for me was the moment, was driving her to that point of actually screaming. I didn't know we could do that to another human being - it was quite bad. But it was, she was trying her hardest to get us. And I think Stella forcing that cold breakfast in was the final straw for her, because she'd wanted to get us well and truly. And ofcourse it wasn't very effective.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[And she didn't know you’d had a wee?|Sue Say And she didn't know you’d had a wee?]]No. No, she was, she was absolutely determined to make it hell. But it was only a few that made it hell. There were a few really, and when they used to have big actions they used to bring in police from all over the place, and some of them were good and some of them were bad. I would say most of them were bad. You know, most of them were bad.
Lots of them had worked on the picket lines and were ready for that kind of aggro, and they went in with that in mind. You know some of them would sort of pick you up when you were in your Gore-tex sleeping bags and throw you, kick you, punch you, you know there were a lot of quite nasty stuff that went on with the police there.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[Do you remember mostly like we've had a good laugh about do you? Do you mostly, is that what stays is the good stuff?|Sue Say Do you remember mostly like we've had a good laugh about do you? Do you mostly, is that what stays is the good stuff?]] The thing, you see, the thing is the bad stuff was often the good stuff in a lot of ways - I know that probably sounds a bit bizarre. But I think I learned so much from the negative things, I learnt to look at things slightly differently. I learned that the challenge is keeping control.
And I think for every time we, we made the police lose control, we took a little bit more of our own power back. Um, we would always be making a point with it, we would always be pursuing the goal - which was to, to make an much of a nuisance of ourselves as possible, cost them as much money as possible.
I mean, like for one, for example, one, one particular incident - there were a fair few women that were inside the base. They’d gone in, um , everybody had got in however they got in. And, but that particular night, the convoy had gone out. And it was just all I can say to you, is it was just luck. But we were asked how we got in. And the story was, ‘Well, we were on the, A, whatever it was, and we saw this big truck and we put our hands out and, you know, it stopped and we got on it, and we said, oh, we're going to Greenham, and he went, I'm going there - hop in. So we hopped onto this, this truck, and they brought us into the base.’ Now it was the - just a story. But it just so happened that the convoy had gone out that night while we've snuck into the base. So we didn't know. And it had gone along that road coming back in. Now, Stella was the Piccadilly Radio correspondent. And she phoned them up and she said, ‘Do me a favour. I was arrested last night in the base, asked me what I told the police.’ And so on Radio - live, they asked her how she got in the base, and she said, ‘I was on the A...And this is what happened. And that's what I told the police.’ Well, well, that started something else there.
They had to send someone over from America to investigate it. It cost them millions, because they had to investigate it. They dragged women over the base and said ‘No, take it back. Take it back. You didn't, did you?’ ‘Oh yeah, we did!’ I mean, they tried everything to persuade women to make a statement that said ‘We snuck into the base, we cut into the base’, and nobody would. Everybody stuck to the same story - it cost them millions, because they had to have the Americans come over, because it's American personnel that were involved in the moving of cruise missiles that night, you know, the practice run. And so they had to come over and investigate whether, in-fact, their soldiers had stopped and picked up hitchhikers. You know, so that's one of the sort of things that, that went really well for us because it caused as much chaos. That's what we were there for.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well, yeah, obviously. Otherwise, how would we get in on top of the silos? But what gets to me is the fact that they weren't even aware. You're telling us that you've got nuclear weapons here, and we - a load of amateur women are strolling all over your base. We had a woman camping there for about 7 days. What the hell? If this was really, you know, if this is the level of security that they have these nuclear weapons under, frankly I don't want them in our country for that, never mind for anything else.
You know, we were not - we learned quite quickly from other women - I'd never, I'd had a fair amount of actual training because I used to play hockey at Aldershot. And so we used the army, army base there, and we were, you know, training for hockey. So I'd had a lot of good training prior to it, but I had never - I'd never, you know, we had to work out that if the soldiers go that way, and then it takes them another 3 minutes to get back, we've got 3 minutes to get across there. Not that difficult, not that difficult. And we were in and out of the base at such a regular, regular thing.
There was so many different types of actions that were taken. There were actions where we went in to cause chaos, there were actions where we climbed up things, changed flags on flag poles, we did so many different types of things to make a nuisance of ourselves. I mean, I had a one particularly nasty experience with an American military man who handcuffed my wrists the wrong way round, who was trying to drag me all over the place and, and he pointed a gun to the back of my head when I was on the ground, and ‘I'm going to shoot you’. And this was just after we'd been told we'd be shot and I thought, well, if I’m the first, I’m the first.
But as it happened, we ended up with a British military of defence police coming over and saying ‘You know, that's one of my citizens - unhand her.’ Which was brilliant - I thought oh good. I shall use this prejudice that they have between each other, because you've got to remember back then, British soldiers were in tents and in the mud, and American servicemen were in houses that had been built for them. And so it was kind of like, you know, your visitors in your own country really was causing tension between the two of them. And we definitely used that. We were like, ‘Oh, you know, these, these - who do they think they are? You come and arrest me’. ‘So take those handcuffs off her’, you know, it was this sort of thing.
And then they didn't have enough, um, they didn't have enough transportation. So they took their transportation as well, which was quite good. So there's lots and lots of sort of things that happened, where we would use the, in, in a sort of politics of the Americans were treated better than the British on a British base. That is always going to be somewhere where you can use, use your, your power, and we used to use that - we used to say, ‘Oh, you know, we want the British. No, we don't want you, you don't have any authority over us. They do.’ I mean, as if they had, but it was it was, it was something that we used to cause that division, and it used, they used to love it. The British police used to absolutely - the base police used to love getting one over on the Americans, especially when they could take their vehicles from them or something like that, which they did often. That's good.
[[And things like learning the procedures of being - when you were arrested, and itemising your belongings, and all those kinds of things, those things you learned?|Sue Say So there was, I mean, things like learning the procedures of being - when you were arrested, and itemising your belongings, and all those kinds of things, those things you learned?]]
[[The kind of strategy of like, you know, using the rivalry between the British military police and the Americans, where did that arise from? Did that just happen kind of organically?|Sue Say But the the, the kind of strategy of like, you know, like using, using the rivalry between the British military police and the, and the Americans, where did that arise from? Did that just kind of... It feels like it all happened kind of organically?]]I learned those - the very first time, I said quite clearly round the - we were actually having some breakfast, and I said ‘Oh, no, I'm not going to prison. I'm not going to get arrested, I'm going to do - you know, I'll get arrested, but I'm not going to go to prison’. And, you know, the discussion occurred amongst different women saying ‘You know that that isn't. That isn't right, because you're just paying them. That's why you're here, then if you're just going to conform.’ I hadn't really thought about that. I just thought, I'm not going to jail with all those crazy lunatics who kill people. So I hadn't really thought through the politics of that.
And then before I had any chance to do any kind of actual, sort of action that I was in control of, a situation presented itself - which was we were fed up being wet. And we thought it'd be nice if they were wet for a change, and that's what we did, and then ‘boomf’, I'm in jail the next day.
So I learned about being taken into custody, and going through the you know, the, the prison humiliation of being, you know, putting your arms up, being stripped off with people sitting typing in an office right
next to you, and all you've got is one little curtain that they pull across, and they made you do star jumps and all sorts of things, and then bend over and look up your bum. It was the most horrendous thing I'd ever been through. I just didn't realise that's what they did, and as for what they made you wear, that was just criminal - criminal. These nighties with little, tiny little flowers on them, and pink knickers, and oh please, it was awful. It was just abusive. (Laughs).
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think it did. I think what women realised when they were there, or certainly I realised when I was there, was the potential of protest. There are hundreds of different ways of doing it. And I learned very quickly from listening to other women, some women lived at Greenham - that was their protest. They never broke into the base. They never did this, they never did that, because this was their protest.
Other women wanted to be more active. Other women wanted to be like camp voice, you know, they were good with, with the politics. They were good with the news reporters, they were good with - you know, that element, whereas other ones of us just wanted to make a flaming nuisance of ourselves. And that's what I wanted, I wanted to make a nuisance of myself, but I wanted to be creative about it. I didn't want to do the same old thing. I wanted to find something a little bit more annoying. I think.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes! And I think that's what I learned, was that you could use your imagination. And you could use it by sparking off - you'd start talking to women say ‘Oh, it'd be great if we could do this’. And then somebody would go ‘Oh, but if we did that, we should do this with it’. And before you knew it, you were off doing it. Because that's what happened. You didn't have these, these sorts of discussions and let's do that action 4 years time. No, it's like, ‘Come on, let's go!’
You know, the times that I crawled through the woods, and crawled right round, and sort of heading towards Yellow Gate, literally big, big sort of through the woods, things so they would not see us approaching the fence. And then we'd have - there were certain characters. (Laughs). There was, there was a certain ‘character’, shall we say, and I absolutely love her to pieces. But she was not the person who took on an action with you. Just because she'd miss it. She wouldn't really realise what was going on. She’d go ‘Oooohhhheeruugh’, and you’d crawl for hours quietly. And she’d go, (loudly) ‘Where are you women?’ (Laughs), you’re like ‘Aaaarrgh!’ I've just spent two hours crawling through the mud for nothing now. So there was, there was sort of some real characters at camp.
There were some people who were very vulnerable at camp. And there were some issues that came up, that were interesting to explore. And we had a woman called Metal Carol, who - every part of her body had bits of metal stuck through it. She had an affinity with metal. She just had an affinity with metal. It was a bizarre one. But if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. She had no infections from any of the holes in her face. She had none. You know, how the hell does anybody do that? But she had a thing about metal. She really did. Yes, she had mental health problems also. Yes, she did. But there was a big debate at one point about her legitimacy for being there. Mostly because she went naked to Newbury train station and tried to get on a train. I think the problem was that she didn't have a fare, rather than the fact that she had no clothes on. But the point is that, then that became a ‘Well, we've got to’, you know, and women were very uncomfortable about looking at the idea of ‘Hold on a minute, who do you think you are to decide who can be at camp and who can't?’
And there was a, then there, there became meetings and discussions about things that actually were nobody's god damn business, there was public meetings about people's relationships, there were, and it was, it was good in the sense of it was good to see where people thought the lines were, you know, where people thought the line of what was a camp. You know, it was agreed that it was vegetarian. So therefore there was no meat eating. Okay, that's fine. But then, what other rules are there? There weren’t. You were women. That was the other rule. You were women. And we were here to fight against nuclear weapons. And so that was the rules. It didn't mean you had to, you know, and non violently. Those were the rules.
And then suddenly, it was like, ‘Well, you know, that person's got mental health.’ ‘Well, haven't we all? Haven't we all got stresses, haven't we all got strains, and we all got our own things going on? At what point do you think that you as a woman have a right to throw that woman off because she has problems?’
And I think that that was an eye opener for me as well. It was like exploring the fact that actually you don't, you don't.
[[Do you think that with those small number of rules, and without a leader, a boss - do you think it mostly worked or didn't work?|Sue Say Do you think that with those small number of rules, that all of that negotiation, and you know, that we don't - there isn't a leader, there isn't a boss here - do you think it mostly worked or didn't work?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think, hhhmmm. I think - looking back at it, I think there were some people who believed that they were leaders. And that was okay. Because the rest of us thought you - you enjoy that. You enjoy that, if that's if that's what you want, you enjoy that. But I think that they were good spokeswomen. And I think that that was more, you know what it was about, rather than being leaders.
I think they were leaders in their own right - as women, but that didn't mean that we were followers, if that makes sense? I think they were good at being the spokeswomen. They were good at being the person who was out there. And often, often being the straight, and straight Christian, white, and politically capable of speaking, made it easier for the world to hear the cause.
Rather than hear some of the women at camp - I think possibly wouldn't have made as good as speakers, in that way. I think they would have often given the viewpoint of the majority of us, but I don't think they'd have done it in a way that other people were prepared to listen to at that time. So I was really good for the leaders, because I was happy about having the leaders, because they were the ones that dealt with the boring press and dealt with the boring, you know, sort of reports, and we could get on with the business of developing ourselves as women, and being as awkward as we could in our in our demonstrations.
[[So as long as they expressed what was happening well enough to the press, then you let them get on with it?|Sue Say So as long as they expressed what was happening well enough to the press, then you let them get on with it?]]
[[And then back in the camp, like you say, what, what's the line between...?|Sue Say And then back in the camp, like you say, what, what's the line between...?]] I think there was a need for that, there was a need for the story to be told. I wasn't ready to tell it. I didn't want to tell it, and I don't think most most women did. But the women that did tell that story, told it on behalf of everyone else, and sometimes there was - there were clashes with that sometimes.
[[And then back in the camp, like you say, what, what's the line between...?|Sue Say And then back in the camp, like you say, what, what's the line between...?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think we explored the line, we explored the line to the fullest. I think that I was most mortified at a meeting that I went to at Yellow Gate, where they were discussing a woman's relationship. Because she had entered into a non-monogamous relationship. And it was upsetting one of the people involved. And so they decided to, to bring this up as a you know, not the women involved - other women, and I found that absolutely fascinating. I think I just thought, what the heck? That's none of your business, or mine. And I, you know, my view at that time was ’Uh-uh-uh’, that's not my business. That's about three women entering into a relationship that is their business, and I was very clear on that for me.
But there were meetings about people who shouldn't be at camp, there were meetings about a lot of things that perhaps I looked at, and I thought, no, I don't think so. I think the only meeting that had any validity was money meetings, and the money meetings went depending on who, who was, who was running them, they went well or badly. (Laughs).
I would say that I loved certain people being at the money meetings, because they would stretch out the hand of love and recognise that some women needed different things, other than boots to make them happy. And I think that, that, that was helpful. If you'd like me to be more specific than that, I would probably say, at the money meeting that I enjoyed the most, was when I actually got a pair of boots that I desperately needed. I also got two bars of chocolate that I really wanted. Um, other women pooled together and went and got a weed, and that was really appreciated because we'd had a really hard time, and it was cold, and it was wet, and we were all depressed, and other women were really quite happy to go and get a bottle of booze, or go to the pub, and some of us wanted a weed. That's the truth of it. And that's what - we did a run. And there was awful trouble the next day about that money meeting. (Laughs).
Because all these things were spent, and you know, when we say there wasn't a hierarchy, there were a lot of people who believed that they were part of that hierarchy. And they would come and tell us ‘That's not a valid thing’, but we'd already got our weed. We'd got our chocolate, I'd got my boots. We didn’t care.
[[So was there an idea that this might bring the whole thing into disrepute?|Sue Say So was there an idea that this might bring the whole thing into disrepute?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think that was the whole idea, that we should be, you know, we should be worrying about how people would expect us to spend the money that they're giving. Well, for us, we thought - you know, we're the ones living in the dirt here. We're the ones living in the cold here. And if we don't want a bottle of beer, and we want something else instead - like a bar of chocolate, then so be it, you know, it was it was lovely. It was like Linda McCartney came, right? And she came with chocolates, and wine, and sweets - and she brought all the lovely things, the things that people didn't - people were really practical, and that was lovely. It was lovely to see those tins of beans rolling in month after month. It was lovely. But really frankly, I wanted a bar a chocolate! I did - you’re sitting in the dirt, you're cold, you're wet. You know, this is not a lifestyle that you'd go ‘Yeah, this is great’. So a bar of chocolate was so appreciated.
And I'm not saying that the beans, and the bread, and the you know, and I mean goodness sake we had, we had miners bringing us coal, which was just fantastic. You know, something as practical as coal was so needed. But Linda McCartney with her booze, and her chocolates, and her guitar was much better for me. But for other women, maybe something different and I think that's the point. Every woman there was different, their needs were different. The way that they managed being in Greenham was different.
Some people would manage it by staying for 2 weeks, going away for a couple of days, and coming back. Some people would manage it by staying for months on it, some people would manage it by doing a demo every day, and going backwards and forwards to jail and to prison. And, you know, everybody dealt with things in a different way. I had phases of when I seemed to be living in the police station, and phases when I wasn't, you know, you, you, you sometimes need a bit of a break, a bit of a step back. But that didn't mean you wanted to leave Greenham, it just meant, actually, I'd like to leave my clothes on one more day.
You know, it's like I was part of the prosecution, which Stella took against the Ministry of Defence police, where we got it through court. They tried to offer us money. They tried to offer us bribes to walk away from that case. But we evidenced that they had done strip searching on a regular basis. They were prosecuted, they were found guilty of it, and forced to pay compensation. And as a result, it opened up the Ministry of Defence - it’s the police for immigration, deportation, it’s all of those prison service - searching people going in, it all became illegal, they couldn't do it anymore. And that was, I think, was one of the most, the biggest things that came out after Greenham.
After the days when we were actually living there, was that case - that stopped them from being able to do that. They were strip searching us for, come on, who's gonna stick a spray can up there, it's not going to happen, but they were doing it to humiliate us. And we, as a result took a case against them which, you know, we won, and so that that precedent was set. And so strip searching is not allowed to be done in the way it was.
Now fortunately for us, one of the police officers who we worked very well with, and had a good relationship with - Ministry of Defence police, moved her job. And she made a statement for us before she went, she went to America. And she wrote a statement, signed statement for the solicitor before she went, evidencing, and she was prepared to come to court. And so therefore, they had to cave - they, the the judge advised them twice, ‘Settle this, settle this, because I'm not gonna be able to find in your favour.’ They were trying to say a personal search wasn't a strip search. Because a personal search, they just took all your clothes off. You know, whereas a strip search, you just take all your clothes off, but there are two different things - apparently. (Laughs) Well they’re not anymore - under the law they're the same thing now. And that's, that was quite significant.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[So in terms of legacy, that is a really practical thing...|Sue Say So in terms of legacy, that is a really practical thing...]]Yeah. In terms of, in terms of what came out of Greenham that will be there forever more changed, is the way that the Ministry of Defence, and immigration, and police officers treat, and sorry - prison officers treat human beings when entering and leaving their facilities. They now have to be a damn sight more careful than they ever used to have to be. They used to search quite regularly. There's been loads of cases that have spun off from that - once we won ours, then a whole load of cases - particularly prisons, there's, there's a few prisons that had a bit of a wake up call as a result of that, that precedent being set.
[[And some solidarity from the woman police officer.|Sue Say And some solidarity from the woman police officer.]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Oh, yeah, that was just fantastic. But she was brilliant. She'd always have a laugh, she’d go ‘Have you done it?’ We’d go ‘Yeah’, or she'd say to ‘Did you do this?’ and we’d go ‘No’, and she'd say ‘Let them go’. Because she knew we'd never deny what we'd actually done. But we used to get in, and so many people got in and they'd say ‘Oh, we found spray cans’ and all this, and we haven't gone into do any damage - we'd gone in without causing damage. And we were doing things to be a nuisance. Like going on the runway, or you know, when the planes would do it, we do all sorts of nuisance things, but not actually commit any damage, because it's very hard for them to get you for trespass. And that's what we used to do.
And in this particular case, we'd get arrested, and they’d go around, find something and say ‘Oh, they've done this.’ And this particular MOD plod she was, because she was the boss, she used to come and say ‘Have you done it?’ We’d go ‘No’, and she’d go ‘Let them go.’ And you know, because she knew - we’d go ‘Oh yeah, well, actually. Yeah, we did’. Or ‘No, we didn't’, and she'd say ‘Right okay, you’re not being prosecuted, off you go’, and she used to release us an awful lot of times because we'd get collared for stuff that we didn't do a lot of the time. And the onus is on them to catch you. But once they've caught you, at least charge you for the right crime and, and that they just palm you off with any anything and everything, which was quite, you know, I had a, I had a couple of absolutely spectacular cases.
[[Please tell me about one..|Sue Say And some solidarity from the woman police officer.2]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]](Laughs). It was, it was a magnificent speech. I'm telling you. You know one of them when I thought - if she’d have come out with the 14, I reckon I’d have got it. If she had swapped it around.
[[So it did actually come out magnificently?|Sue Say So it did actually come out magnificently?]]
[[So in terms of the, that, that example of racism was that - was the like, was it, was in the camp as well? Was there a lot of...|Sue Say So in terms of the, that, that example of racism was that - was the like, was it, was in the camp as well? Was there a lot of...]]Oh, no, it was truly magnificent up to that last line. ‘I demand to have 28 days as well’. No! You’re supposed to demand for me to have the 14 - and we'd have been laughing, I reckon we’d have got it. But no, no, she got that one wrong right at the end. But the rest of the speech was brilliant.
[[So in terms of the, that, that example of racism was that - was the like, was it, was in the camp as well? Was there a lot of...|Sue Say So in terms of the, that, that example of racism was that - was the like, was it, was in the camp as well? Was there a lot of...]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I would say that there were incidents of people being very unaware. I’d had quite a big lesson in how it works, because I was the only black person for a very, very long time in, in Halsall. But then it changed, and it got very multicultural. And I saw when more people came, then I saw the racism. I didn't see it before then - you don't see it when you're the only one, but when there's a sudden influx, which is what there was, as people saw it - what it was was a deal with the local council next door. You've got a whole load of houses, you put all these Asian people in those houses, and we'll get them out of the place where we want to build our, our sort of industrial centre.
And that's what they did - and they had the jobs, and we had the Asian people, and Woking took off because that, they were hoping for this sort of centre to be built in Woking. It was impractical for it to be built in in Woking anyway, and where it was built was the perfect place. But people don't see that, they just saw back then the unemployment was so bad, it was what was needed. And so an influx of Asian people for everybody else was a bit of a horror - for me it was fantastic.
It was this. this opening up of a new culture. And it was right on my doorstep. And people weren't looking at me as if I was some, you know, alien from Mars. So for me, it was a, it was brilliant. It was brilliant, it, it brought to me the different smells and sensations, the foods, that tastes, the clothes, it was a sudden sort of revolutionary sort of example of culture for me. And I really enjoyed that, because I'd just been around white people entirely, you know, I was adopted by white people. And so that was, that was my life I was just around white people - so to suddenly not be was quite good for me.
So going to Greenham, I wasn't really expecting to ever see it at all, but I did see it a lot from the police. Less so from women, less so - but it was there. There were a few incidents that I think I couldn't put down to anything else. Which is sad because it's the last thing that I think of, I think that people are usually put off by my gob, never mind anything else. (Laughs). So, you know, and that's fine. I'll take responsibility for that. I'm not really used to people looking at me from a distance and judging me - no, just wait til I come speak to you - you’ll have plenty of opportunity for that! (Laughs).
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]One of them was - I was trying again to get arrested, that was my goal. And I'd gone - I'm trying to think - Red Gate, Red Gate, I don’t know why I went to Red Gate, but went to Red Gate because there was no way for them to get out. And so I was going to commit criminal damage, and they'd have to drive around to get me, so I'd get a lot done. And what happened was we just started snipping away the fence, and spray paint spraying anything. And they were sort of - you've got to imagine, and it was, it was about 8 foot by 15 foot concrete block. Then there were rolls of razor wire, and then barbed wire at the front, then the fence and then another fence, and we're this side - and they're on this block. Okay, that's what you've got to remember.
They're on this block with a great big - one of those big search lights. And they went ‘Identify them!’, because we're cutting away this fence. And this woman goes ‘It's the big fat nigger from Main Gate’, right and everything went silent. Now the women who'd been at Red Gate, who up until that point, were thinking why have you come to our gate - why are you disturbing us? As soon as they heard that every woman there came over, and everybody was just stood there, and she's going she's shining this light, and I'm just gonna snip, snip, and all you can hear - there was not a word, all you could hear was ‘Ssssssss’ from this spray can, as we were doing this. And these - this, this man's going ‘Get them, get them’, and she's going ‘Yeah, go on. We know who it is, it's that nigger’, you know, this was her.
They then proceeded to drive round and swoop us off, which was quite funny, because they put me in the car next to the driver, and then he went to go and get Stella, and I'm looking at this seat and I'm thinking (laughs) that seems a bit stupid - you've left that running! (Laughs). I wonder if I can learn to drive? So I sort of knew how to drive, but I hadn't got a driving, I hadn't passed a driving test. So I slid into this, of course you do, don't you - so I've got the policeman running after me down the street, and I'm driving around in a big tight circle, because I don't know what I'm doing. (Laughs). So eventually, he sort of dived into the car and sort of, and I just let go of everything, because he's going ‘Stop!’ So I put my foot on the brake. And he's sort of you know, so that went down quite badly.
But anyway, when the case came to court, we decided to defend ourselves - now that particular day Stella was, was somewhere, and she said ‘I'll meet you somewhere. Do us a favour, bring me a weed.’ ‘Why yeah, no problem.’ So we get this weed. It was some rocky - I got some rocky, and it’s in my pocket. And we're in the court and she said - we'd gone to somebody's house, but they’d had a big row, so we had to leave there. So we just wandered around the streets - now didn't think about it. So we're in the dock, and she said ‘You didn't bring that stuff, did you?’ ‘Oh, crap, yeah, I did! Yeah I did!’ She's like ‘Ah, shit now what we're going to do? and I'm like ‘Well I can't eat it, there's no way’, she went ‘I’ll eat an Opal Fruit, I’ll like eat an Opal Fruit, and you pass me it in the wrapper’. So she went like this with an Opal Fruit, and the court usher came over, and the policeman, and she went ‘Oh, I've got ever such a sore throat, I’ve got some Opal Fruits. Is that alright?’ And the magistrate went ‘Yes, that's fine’. (Laughs). So she, she passes me this thing, and so the case starts we're defending ourselves.
And the first, the first guy gets up on, and he says ‘Oh, there was a box there, it was about two foot by five foot and I was stood on it.’ And we thought this was a bit weird. And then the next policeman comes up and he goes, ‘Oh, it was about 15 foot by three foot.’ So we're thinking, oh, yeah, we're going to have fun here, the idiots. So we're asking questions we’re going ‘And exactly what size was the box that you were stood on?’ ‘Oh, it was this size now’. ‘Oh, this magical, mysterious box seems to be changing size’, you know. So anyway, the policewoman comes up, and she's there and it's like, ‘Oh, did you while you were there, here, you know, on this magical box that keeps changing size, did you hear the words big fat nigger from Main Gate?’, and all you heard in the court was (gasps) because you can say it blatantly like that. So, so and she went ‘No’, and this police woman went scarlet. You know that you know when you see the red rising? We’re going ‘Are you sure you didn't hear the words big fat nigger from Main Gate?’ She was going (breathes heavily) ‘No, no, no’, and she's going absolutely red, and whole courts going on (gasps). So anyway it was then ‘Are you sure, as it was approximately 3 inches from your very own ear?’ And she was like, ‘No, no no’. So she was absolutely denying wholeheartedly that she'd said it, but everybody in the court knew she had because she was absolutely scarlet.
And so anyway, the magistrate pauses and he says ‘I'm going to pause this case in a minute’ you know, we were chatting away - sorry, just as we were sort of saying to her But the mouth that said, you know, big fat nigger from Main Gate was approximately 4 inches from your very own ear.’ I passed Stella the Opal Fruit. She doesn't think about it, opens it puts it straight in. I'm laughing me, because I bought a flaming teenth. So she's put a whole teenth in her mouth now. No it was an eighth. So she's put an eighth in her mouth. She's like (through gritted teeth) ‘The size of this!’ I’m like ‘It was you or me, you asked for it.’ So she's chomping away. So you've got to bear this in mind. So this, this magistrate then says, ‘Right, I'm going to adjourn for 15 minutes’, you know, and we thought there's a good chance now because of this magical mysterious box, we’ve got them looking like liars - it's going to be quite difficult.
And then we realised, we don't want to get out anyway, the whole idea was to get arrested for something else in order to do our previous one. But anyway, regardless of that, we come back in after the adjournment. Well, she’s smashed off her head now, absolutely stoned off her head. So I'm carrying on asking the rest of the questions - we've done really quite well. And the judge turns around and he says ‘I'm awarding you, you know,’, he says to Stella ‘Oh, you don't look very well. You know, perhaps you’d better - I will adjourn your case for another day.’ And she's like ‘No, no, no, I'm her witness. She's mine. So no, we will do it now.’
So it comes to sentencing and you will have 28 days, and you will have 14 days. So she's only getting 14 and I'm getting 28 for the same thing. So I'm like what, Stella? ‘Course she's in control now. She does the speech of a lifetime, you know that - rights, human rights equality and all of that. And ‘I demand’ she says, ‘To have 28 days like her’ and I'm like ‘No! You're supposed to argue for me to have 14 days’, but no, she got 14 and I got 28 that was what happened in the end. Yeah, but that was that was yeah our own fault really.
[[That was a great story!|Sue Say So when the - that was a great story! (Laughs).]]
[[So in terms of the, that, that example of racism was that - was the like, was it, was in the camp as well? Was there a lot of...|Sue Say So in terms of the, that, that example of racism was that - was the like, was it, was in the camp as well? Was there a lot of...]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes, yes.
[[And then, and then it stopped or it dwindled away. I don't know if that's your experience? With Greenham, and the wider ramifications?|Sue Say And then, and then it stopped or it dwindled away. I don't know if that's your experience?What Greenham?Well, Greenham and, and the wider ramifications.]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Okay, well, I’d definitely say that's true. Yeah, definitely. That's true in both in both senses. For me, for me, and I think everybody has their own Greenham story. For me the end of Greenham, for me, was I'd been on, I've been on quite a lot of restrictions from camp. Because I'd been in one action after another after another, and it was getting to the point where I was going to end up with quite a long sentence. Because they, they only take you for so long before you get really annoying. So, I was wanting to have a little bit of a calm down time before I got me
whacking sentence. And I got excluded from Greenham for a while - I got exclusion.
And during that we were doing the case of trying to take the case against the police. And we went to Greenham to do some filming with a film crew that had been supporting us through through some of this, who basically wanted to be there when the Ministry of Defence got their comeuppance for what they've been doing. And we went to Greenham that day. Now this was when the Wages for Housework campaign, as far as I'm concerned, took over Greenham, and started to try and make rules that were never in a place, and tried to undervalue and undermine everything - as far as I'm concerned, that was woman. And they did so very effectively. They went around telling women what they were and what, how they weren't good enough. And they'd done, they did exactly what men were doing in society to women, and I was quite revolted by the whole organisation.
I loved the idea of what they were doing. Um, but there was a woman who was wandering around who basically came up to me and said, ‘Wilmet Brown tells me that you're basically you're not black enough to make comments on things’, and it was just like - having a white woman come up to me and tell me I'm not black enough entertained me no end. I found that very amusing, because I thought, one, you know, by definition, this is none of your business, and what are you doing being told by some woman to go and tell other people - what the hell kind of setup is this? Greenham was about women exploring, and expressing, and being themselves, and coming together to unite under one banner.
We're all very different women doing it a different way. What the banner was about honesty, the banner was about truthfulness, the banner was about openness. It was about warmth and caring, and working together and solidarity - not about what that, that campaign brought, which was segregation, and a deep sense of superiority that was so not deserved. And I looked at it and I was quite mortified. And I think the changing moment for me was a woman who was opposed to something that they were doing was actually refused the right to have a standpipe to get her water, and that was the point that Greenham had died for me - that a woman stood there right in front of me and said ‘Oh, we don't give them the standpipe. They're not entitled to the water.’ I reached my hand out for the standpipe, she gave it to me and I walked and gave it to that woman, and she kicked off me for giving that woman the water. And I just thought Greenham is dead.
Greenham is dead if you are refusing a woman water - what is wrong with you? Wages for Housework, people who are oppressed, people who are - who are working for nothing 24/7, are actually standing there refusing another woman water. What the hell? That was Greenham dead for me.
That was not, not what Greenham was while I was there. That was not what Greenham was when I was living there. Greenham was about women supporting, and loving, and caring, and sharing and being awful about things - sharing things they shouldn't, commenting on things that they shouldn't. And learning, learning those lines - learning those, those, the way to do things - learning about from other women, what you say means to them. You know, seeing it from somebody else's perspective. And suddenly, the times I went in going ‘No, ‘cause this’ and I'd come away going ‘Actually, she's right’. It was, it was a learning curve for women. But these women were telling and controlling other women, and I just thought, how can you be allowed? And then I thought, of course you can, because people have given up on Greenham - because they must have done for you to be here. You know, that's, that was the end of Greenham.
[[Were there rules about who was not allowed anymore?|Sue Say Were there rules about who was not allowed anymore? Or was it...]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]As far as I was concerned, there was never any rules about who was not allowed. The only people that were not allowed were men.
[[But had they - did they kind of make it up on the hoof?|Sue Say But had they - did they kind of make it up on the hoof?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I don't know.I think they just were a group of controlling women, who got onto a political kick, and decided to wave their little flag. I think they had no validity at all at Greenham, they had no right to be there when they were depriving other women of the basic need of water - that was just - there was standpipes everywhere. Everybody had a standpipe, if you didn't have it, you'd go ‘Where's the standpipe?’ ‘Oh, it's over there’. Somebody’s get it for you. You'd go and help women with their water. They'd load it up - some people had cars to take them it around to you know, sort of the gates the other side, but, you know, lots of people came to Yellow Gate for water for their gates - they would bring tubs and containers. It isn't anybody right to say ‘No’, we, we sorted it so we could have the standpipe to get the water in the first place. Who are you telling women you can't have that? That’s a basic human right. What are you going to do - tell them they can’t poo in the trees as well? It's like what the hell?
That just was, was the death of Greenham for me was allowing Wages for Housework to go anywhere near. I don't know why women didn't kick off when they first arrived - I don't understand. I was on exclusions at the time when that happened, because I would have been going ‘Who the hell do you think you are, depriving a woman of water? That's a basic need.’ I had loads of arguments with people, people would disagree with me, we would have quite heated debates about things. And then we'd go ‘Oh, someone needs water. Okay.’, and everybody started - off you go together to provide those women with water and you just, you know, you'd be opposed to everything they stand for - doesn't matter. You don't deprive a woman of water, food or Tampax or anything. And that was, yeah, that killed it for me.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah.
[[All the roles.|Sue Say All the roles.]]
[[All, all everything was women.|Sue Say All, all everything was women.]]Yes.
[[So, you know, so everything you know there being absolute pain in the arse, being magnificent.|Sue Say So, you know, so everything you know there being absolute pain in the arse, being magnificent.]]
[[All, all everything was women.|Sue Say All, all everything was women.]]Yes, yes, it was.
[[And so, you know it kind of it just made it - you went whoah! All of these things are possible then?|Sue Say And so, you know it kind of it just made it - you went whoah! All of these things are possible then.]]
[[So you were coming along and doing what they did?|Sue Say Which I suppose includes coming along and doing what they did?]]Yes.
[[All, all everything was women.|Sue Say All, all everything was women.]]
[[And so, you know it kind of it just made it - you went whoah! All of these things are possible then?|Sue Say And so, you know it kind of it just made it - you went whoah! All of these things are possible then.]]Yes.
[[So you were coming along and doing what they did?|Sue Say Which I suppose includes coming along and doing what they did?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, yeah. And I think that - I'd never seen it before, because there were lots of women with different issues, as well as the nuclear. Lots of women came with knowledge that perhaps I didn't have, or understandings that I didn't have. And I learned a lot from sharing experiences. I learned a lot from listening to women's songs. I found that you know, there was a lot of creativity there. There were a lot of - there was a lot of poetry, there was a lot of songs being written. There was a lot of participation with women. Women were encouraged to explore their own identities. They were encouraged to explore their sexuality. They were encouraged to explore their, their political identity. And their, (sighs) their understanding of what being woman was.
Because for me, I would not - I would, I was fighting for the right for women to be whatever they wanted to be. But if that's what a woman wanted to sit at home and be with her husband producing babies and not - then that's fine, as long as women who don't want to do that don’t have to. And that was for me, the biggest issue was about women being able to be themselves, and be true to themselves. And for me, the fundamentals are that care and understanding between women that there always is, when you're walking along the street at night and you see a woman you hurry, she slows and you end up walking together. That is natural. That is something that you will not know that woman she will not know you, but you're walking at night and that's safer. And women automatically have those things, and I think Greenham showed me the extent to which that would go. Women would lay their life down for you. And you realise that that's what it was about. This was about
making a difference. And if you're going to make a difference, you're all in. You can't be partway in. And I think that that ,when I went with my, ‘I'm not going to prison’ thing, I think I went a little bit half hearted. And I think it took me very little time to find that that's not how it works, and that you have to put your whole heart and soul into it. And I loved it. I loved it. I loved the excitement of sneaking around in the bushes. I loved the stimulation of sitting there around the campfire, listening to women talk about their experiences, which was so far different from mine. You know, there were women from very, very poor backgrounds who had had horrendous situations while growing up. There were children who'd been beaten by their fathers, or their husbands or there were people who had beaten their children, or they were - you know, there were women of such a variety there, women with emotional damage, women with suffering women, you know, and women who were on fire, who were there in the centre of their woman-ness, and ready to share it, and ready to show you that there was another way - even if it wasn't for you, showing you another way kind of opens up that narrow perspective that we have. That is our own life. (Laughs). `
[[What do you think happened to all that, after you left Greenham?|Sue Say What do you think happened to all that, then?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I, I'd like to think that like myself, I took it away and aimed it somewhere else. I think that I don't, I don't feel like, I don't feel that I left Greenham at the wrong time. I feel that I left when women were loving each other, and caring for each other, and being furious with each other, and being angry with each other, and being positively awkward at sometimes, because that's what women are. But I, I left at a time when that was still in existence.
It was that coming back after those exclusion, those months of exclusion to see how far away my home had become - that it wasn't anymore. And I think maybe that that's what I needed because they closed the door on Greenham for me - Wages for Housework, killed it, killed it, it wasn't like that - it was full of love and care, and sharing and giving and compassion and passion. And they turned it into some political tool. And they were using it to put other women down, but that wasn't what Greenham was about - Greenham was about supporting other women to be themselves, and helping them to achieve that inner them. And that was what it was about, and they turned it into a political tool. I don't think I can say any...
[[Some of that went out, that good stuff went out, you think, from everyone who had experienced it?|Sue Say Some of that went out, that good stuff went out, you think, from everyone who had experienced it?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think some people got quite beaten by that. But lots of people walked away, because they couldn't tolerate that ruining of something so important, that smashing of that beautiful picture that we all painted. And I think that that was, was very sad. And when I walked away from that, I walked into other campaigns, but I walked into the anti strip searching, and I walked into things that were slightly related - in South Africa house, and, you know, and then the (inaudible) Monday's campaign, and then Faslane, and then Burton Wood, and then, and then and then - I was a political creature.
And I think Greenham gave me the confidence to, to be woman - to be who I was, and recognise that that's not always going to be the same as someone else. And actually, I might have to slow it on down and have a look at the women around me, and try and support them in who they are. And I think that it taught me some really good fundamental skills that I then went and applied in other areas of my life.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Now, that's always a difficult question to answer. I was going to say no. And yes! Because that is the answer. Some women were the ‘dirty, scruffy lesbian pot smoking hippie junkies’, you know? No, they weren't. But this was the image that was portrayed. Were they pot smoking? Yes. Were they lesbian? Yes.
[[Wooly hats!|Sue Say Wooly hats!]]
[[Is it your experience, do you think that straight women and lesbian women used to do things more together, and now they don’t? |Sue Say Is it your experience, do you think that straight women and lesbian women used to do things more together?And now they don’t? ]]Say again.
[[Wooly hatted lesbians.|Sue Say Wooly hatted lesbians.]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yes. And there were lots of, of straight women and lots of you know, there were lots of different women, but people went to type - so they were all women, therefore they've all got to be lesbians. Was that true? No, it wasn't. I would say, I would say probably half to three quarters were lesbian. But I wouldn't say more than that. I really wouldn't.
You know, I was thinking back to some of the some of the friends that I had there, you know, at Yellow Gate - about 11 or 12 straight women I can think of straightaway. You know, the lesbians - probably 20 of them, that I can think of straight away - so not, do you see what I mean, not this massive sort of, you know, they're all lesbians was a bit over the top.
Were we all woolly hatted? I tend not to wear a wooly hat, I had lots of hair so I didn't bother with the hat. Did people wear hats? Do you know, hardly anyone did! (Laughs). So maybe misrepresented with the woody bobble hat thing. I think that was more visitors than that was women that lived there. I think most women that lived there had their own styles, their own images their own anything's. And...
[[Is it your experience, do you think that straight women and lesbian women used to do things more together, and now they don’t? |Sue Say Is it your experience, do you think that straight women and lesbian women used to do things more together?And now they don’t? ]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
Yes, I think that's definitely true. I do think that's true. I think that, I think that when you have a political issue, women tend not to worry too much about the sexuality of those around them. Whereas I think now, it's far more prevalent - people do and, and I've seen a division with people. I find that quite frightening because I have, I have more straight friends than I have gay friends. That's because of the life that I live.
I tend to be around a lot of women with children because I've run play schemes. I've run, and I work with children, and most of the sort of political action that I've done over the years has been because I have my own children. I started a self insemination group in Manchester - called Ness Work, which was also referred to by Olga Maitland in Parliament, she waved my leaflet around going ‘Sodomy, sodomy this is’, because the Ness Work group were calling for people who wanted to have babies but she's going ‘Sodomy!’ - it’s all quoted in the book, it’s quite funny.
[[Olga Maitland?|Sue Say I've never forgotten the name Olga Maitland for quite a long time.]]
[[So do you think that that that shift in, in politics, and a lot of the identity politics, do you see it as - do you think it was, do you think there was something behind it? Do you, do go with a kind of conspiracy theory about, like, with the Wages for Housework and everything? Do you think is was deliberate?|Sue Say So do you think that that that shift in, in politics, and a lot of the identity politics, do you see it as - do you think it was, do you think there was something behind it? Do you, do go with a kind of conspiracy theory about, like, with the Wages for Housework and everything? Do you think is was deliberate?]]Yeah, I love her. She's just fabulous. You know, objecting to my self insemination group. And it was a group for women, it wasn't a group that, and she was going ‘It’s for lesbian women, and they're all going to be committing sodomy, sodomy!’, a sort of a like little technical hitch there but you know, leave her to it. But that - the bluster that there became over that, and it got us the best advertising ever. We had more women hear about that group because of Olga Maitland actually standing up parliament and having a big tizzy about it. If she hadn't done that, we wouldn't have had the sort of, well, we wouldn't have had as many people at the first meeting. And it was very, very successful. And I went on to have a few children, as did a number of others - as a result of that.
[[So do you think that that that shift in, in politics, and a lot of the identity politics, do you see it as - do you think it was, do you think there was something behind it? Do you, do go with a kind of conspiracy theory about, like, with the Wages for Housework and everything? Do you think is was deliberate?|Sue Say So do you think that that that shift in, in politics, and a lot of the identity politics, do you see it as - do you think it was, do you think there was something behind it? Do you, do go with a kind of conspiracy theory about, like, with the Wages for Housework and everything? Do you think is was deliberate?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Oh I think at the time, at the time, I just think they were a pack of incredibly selfish people who couldn't see beyond their own bigotry, and they really needed to sort of sit down, chill out, listen to what other women said. They thought they were the world's authority on everything. They were hilarious. We used to sit back and laugh at them really, but then that was before they did the damage.
When they started going in to very vulnerable women at camp and telling them that they weren't good enough, that was just, that was just so horrible. That was something we'd expect from men - you wouldn't expect that from women. And that really hurt me, because they used their power, their experience, their eloquence, to stamp on the - on vulnerable women. And that's just, that was so far away from my politics, because my politics was about we’re women - we’re women first. And as women, we're very powerful, if we work together on a cause, and we might disagree on 1000 different things, but right now, we're here to change this. We can do this as a group of women, we can change this working together.
And I think that what they did is come in and say ‘Well, you're not good enough, and you need to be doing what we're doing before you're good enough to challenge’ - that is not the way that I think that any human being should be. That's like society that was like what men would been doing to women for years. It was horrible.
[[Some people think that that was, that was some home office or some you know that....|Sue Say Some people think that that was, that was some home office or some you know that....]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]No, I just think there were a pack of really ignorant women. I do not think for one second I think Wilmet Brown was the most despicable human being back then. I can't, I obviously I don't know what she's like now. But what a foul women to go in deliberately to put women down - to tell other women to go and put women down. What the hell are you on? What the hell was going on in your head?
Yes, I'd heard the conspiracy theories, and we used to laugh at it. People say, you know, she's being paid by the state to behave like this - to sort of ruin the identity of Greenham. No, I don't believe that. I just think she was a very stupid woman. A very nasty spiteful woman, who wanted to put other women down. Why would you want to do that? Why not come and join and, and give an add to. She was a destroyer, and that was horrible. She destroyed a number of different campaigns - from I can hear. Back then - that was what they did. They just went in, took over, took the power from a situation, got loads of press...
[[I feel it goes to the point about saying women and can take all of the roles, including the one of...|Sue Say I feel it goes to the point about saying women and can take all of the roles, including the one of...]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Oppressor. There it was. There it was. That was a lesson to me in itself. Because I've been there in it, feeling this lull, and I went away. And 3 months later, this is only 3 months - a passage of 3 months passed. And
they had devastated the whole campaign, they’d devastated the whole idea of being being there. That was just heartbreaking, heartbreaking, and very deliberate because they've gone and instigated themselves at every gate - so that they could, you know, they'd spread out, divide and conquer. It was awful. It was awful.
You know, and that's, that's hard when people are telling you that you're crap, because the one thing about Greenham is that people were going ‘No, come on, we're okay. We're good.’ And when people were struggling, the idea was to kind of get to the root of it and help them. You know, lift them up, not point out those those weaknesses, but point out the strengths, say ‘Ah, listen, we're not all good at everything. But look at this, we're doing this and this is great.’ That was the idea to build, to build, not to destroy.
I feel quite passionate about that, don’t I? I've just realised - I do, I feel very passionate about that - Greenham was about building, it was about making a difference and working together, and changing the world at the same time as looking at yourself and changing you.
[[Do you think that is part of the legacy for you, to carry on believing that and living that?|Sue Say And back to that question about legacy then, what do you think in the end - that that's part of the legacy for you, is to carry on believing that and living that?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think thing for me is there's that phrase ‘Greenham women are everywhere.’ And any woman who can say Greenham women are everywhere understands the concept that you take from Greenham. Because it wasn't about you being in the dirt in that moment, it was about the women who went and did speeches and oh, oh, there we go. I can't believe I didn't tell you about that. I was standing around at the camp one day and somebody said ‘Oh, you know, you haven't been on a talk have you? And I went ‘What do you mean a talk?’ ‘Oh, it's like there's a women's group in Italy, and they want somebody to go and have a little chat’, and I thought oh okay, I don’t mind that - I’ve never been abroad. ‘Have you got a passport?’ ‘Yes, I have’, you know, no problem.
So obviously, there's another woman was there - she was a separatist. This is significant. So I go with this separatist woman. We - I've never been on a plane. So I arrived, what 15 minutes before the flight was due. (Laughs). Yeah, I took this big bag of sweets because somebody said you've got to have sweets for an airplane, and I thought okay. So I rock up, I run through, they let me go, and you know the point at which they stop you just as you're going to go down to the plane, and this, this policewoman or whatever she was started taking out my sweets, and she's opening them, and I'm going ‘They’re just boiled sweets. I've got to go’, and she’s going ‘Well I have to check them’. So I left the sweets ran down, got on the plane. Get there. Well, we're met by a man, which went down very badly with this separatist woman, she did not want to get in this car.
But I was like, I don't speak Italian. We need to get into this thing. So just just suck it up for a minute, will you, I’m going to this woman. So we get out of the taxi. This man's been really nice. He’s just chatting away, and he said ‘Oh, just just hold on’. And these two women came over and said ‘Oh, you know, come with us’. And I'm looking, and there are hundreds of people in suits and evening dresses and all this, and I’m thinking what the hell’s this? We're going along this corridor, and he’s going ‘No we're coming in this way.’ They're all going that way, okay, we're coming in here. So we come into this room that was probably about 20 feet across. And it had, it had rows of seating, and I'd say there were about five, six rows of seating backwards there - it was a bit awkward. I'm thinking this bit of an odd place to have a women's meeting. Anyway, we come in and this woman goes ‘Oh, no, there’s men here, I'm not doing this.’ Buggers off and leaves me in this thing, and I'm thinking, what the hell is this? Anyway, I'm looking at this guy. And I'm thinking, there’s like two or three people here. I thinking that looks like Kofi Annan. That's really weird, that man looks just like Kofi Annan. Anyway, it's very lit up. And this person comes over and goes ‘You're the second speaker, you'll just be introduced.’ I’m like ‘What, sorry?’ ‘You're the second speaker.’ I was like oh, okay ‘So where's the women's group?’ And she says ‘Ha’, and walks off.
Lights, drop, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping all these lights lighting up - rows and rows and rows. It was only the European Peace Conference, and nobody had bothered to tell me that. They told me I was going speaking to a women's group. And here I am now having to stand up in front of 270,000 people. Now, actually, I'm a good public speaker. But nobody told me - nobody gave me a heads up. They said it's a women's group. No wonder nobody wanted to do it.
They also - the other little point they hadn't mentioned was it was a 7 day ticket. I'd only taken stuff for overnight. It was 7 days. So you know. Anyway, that's another story altogether. But yes, it was the International Peace Conference, and I was on the platform with Kofi Annan. I spoke, with translators. There was like this big glass cabinet there. So you have to stop while they translate, and then you have to carry on. And at one point, I'm saying something really serious and the whole place starts laughing. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, keep going, keep going. And I kept going, and I kept going. And, you know, sort of. Anyway, Kofi Annan then goes up on, and he's like ‘What a fantastic speaker. I'd like to pay tribute to the last speaker.’ And I'm like thinking, that is Kofi Annan, that really is, you know, one of those sort of moments where you think I don't think this has happened. But at the end, at the end of it, this, this guy comes up to me and he was Dutch. And he just went, listen ‘I'm just going to tell you what happened. They translated what you said incorrectly. And they said,’ and he repeated to me what they'd said - I'd said something about, the policemen had just squashed me onto the floor. And the heat - it had been translated as I squashed someone on the floor. So everybody was laughing at that. So he was sort of saying that ‘Oh, and thanks for the speech.’ And that was just really lovely.
But the fact that I was then stuck in Italy for 6 days with a separatist who wouldn't stay with the people that we were with because they were male. They had men in the house, so she wouldn't stay there. So we slept on beaches and we did whatever for the for the week with no money. No, no money. No nothing.
[[And you had to to find your separatist way around - whereabouts were you?|Sue Say And you had to to find your separatist way around - whereabouts were you?]]
[[But you can find yourself in quite like crazy things that happen?|Sue Say But you can find yourself in quite like crazy things that happen?]]Turin. (Laughs). We just headed out on the train, we just headed out on a train, and we just got off when we got to the sea. And we stayed there.
[[Very good.|Sue Say Very good.]]
[[But you can find yourself in quite like crazy things that happen?|Sue Say But you can find yourself in quite like crazy things that happen?]]I enjoy - it showed me I enjoy public speaking. I've also public spoke at Glastonbury. I was usually quite good at that sort of, that sort of thing. It doesn't bother me until afterwards - I go to pieces afterwards, not during, which was quite a useful thing, actually. But I didn't really like the idea of speaking, I always thought, you know, it ought to be one of the people who were used to doing it. And I'd very much not taken that role in the past, because there were lots of people who did it, and did it really well. You know, there were lots of people who perhaps did not have the bobble hat image, the lesbian bobble had image, and they were speaking, and people often listen to them more. And I think that was better, that they did speak.
But every now and again, you get one like that, which I thoroughly enjoyed giving. I was dressed for a little sit down chat, I was not dressed for this kind of, you know, which was perfect because I was, I was who I was, and people could see that. So I think that that was actually very good for that particular speech. But there were a number of things that happened like that. But women would trick each other very much. You know, I don't want to do that, who can we con into doing that? And so there, it was always a sort of, it was always done with good humour, you know? And we all looked out for each other in that way.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]And then we got back. I've never been so frightened in my life. I didn't have any Italian at all. And a priest was prepared to help us, but she was having none of that. So it was, it was it was a lesson It was a lesson learned.
[[But you can find yourself in quite like crazy things that happen?|Sue Say But you can find yourself in quite like crazy things that happen?]]
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think that what was important for me about Greenham was the fact that it was, it was like an education. It was like, the best education you'll ever have. Because you do not very often in life, get an opportunity to sit side by side with someone very different than yourself. We all sort of emanate to people who are like us, or who do things like us. We naturally do that. But when you had a campaign like Greenham, which was - the state were going to kill us all. It was insane. They were, they were housing these nuclear weapons that were making us a target for for, you know, other countries to blow the hell out of us. And I think because I felt so strongly about that, I didn't particularly care who I was sitting next to, I knew I had to sit next to someone.
And I think that for me Greenham was about sitting next to someone with your arm linked to them, grounding yourself to stop this from happening. I didn't care whether this woman was an accountant, or a lawyer, or a solicitor or a nurse, or a teacher. It didn't matter to me what colour she was, what country she was from, what religion she had. It was the fact that we were here united as women. And we were going to change the world. We were going to stop this oppression from happening. We were going to stop the state from putting us all - you know, putting our children, and our sisters, and our mothers - hands tied, while they just did this to us. We weren't going to do, that we were going to peacefully say no.
And that was the point - it was about women working in peace, to say no. It was not about aggression or violence. It was about women linking arms with each other. Sitting in the dirt, refusing to move. And no matter what they did to us, you would find women going, why are you doing this? You're oppressing me, you're hitting me, you're hurting me, why are you doing this? And it was questioning the authority, making the police react, making them have to see and justify and acknowledge what they were doing. And I think that the publicity that came from that made it much easier for nuclear weapons to, to be shoved out.
I think that if we hadn't been doing what we were doing, that would have just got so much worse - they would have started housing them all over the place. And I think the fact that we highlighted it, and kept in the news, and kept doing things to make sure it stayed in the news, kept in the minds of people, and I think the fact that we as a bunch of disorganised individuals! (Laughs). You know, we were not a united front. We all did things so very differently. And that was the beauty of it - you can't find something that comes at you in so many different ways. And I think that was it.
There were the letter writers still. But there were the demonstrators, and demonstrations were happening of various types. And in order to change the world, we were prepared to put our lives on the line. Yeah, we were. I knew that they could shoot us, I knew that they could hurt us. Did I care? No, I didn't. If that had to happen to make them stop then so be it, we had to stop them. And so for me, that working together thing, knowing we were all different, knowing that that woman probably would stand up and argue with me for half an hour on one tiny little thing because we don't agree, but she will sit here and link arms with me, and make sure that we stop nuclear weapons, is all that I needed to hear. And I think for me, that is the Greenham women are everywhere.
That's what I took with me, and I took that understanding that all women are different. And that their - somebody’s opposing view to mine has just as much right to express it. And I need to hear, I need to listen. And if she's wrong, in my view, I need to persuade her. And if I'm wrong, she needs to persuade me. She needs to enlighten me, and I need to enlighten her. That's both our responsibilities. So is it the responsibility of those at Greenham to share that? I've told as many Greenham stories as I can my whole life, because for me, they form who I am. They made me see the things that I will accept, and the things that I will not. They taught me lines that I will cross, and lines that I will not. I will never refuse a woman water or food. I will not do that. I will never step over that line. And that's a line that I don't think any real Greenham woman would.
[[Thank Sue Say and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]What would you like to ask Mica May?
[[So, Mica, how did you come to be part of the peace movement?|Mica May So, Mica, how did you come to be part of the peace movement?]]
[[What gate were you at?|Mica May And what gate were you at?]]Accidentally! (Laughs). I was in the process of coming out as a lesbian, living in Manchester and um, a lot of the women that I knew in Manchester were very politicised, and I used to go along to, ah, what was it called - there was a bookshop, a radical left wing bookshop in Central Manchester, and through going there, and I don’t think I actually attended any meetings at that stage, but er, I was talking to the woman who was working in the shop, and she must have told me about a meeting, and I went along to a meeting, and it was about Greenham more than it was actually about peace as a bigger thing, and that was how I got involved.
[[And what year was that?|Mica May And what year was that?]]
[[And had you heard of Greenham before that - or the rumblings of it, or was it right a the beginning?|Mica May And had you heard of Greenham before that - or the rumblings of it, or was it right a the beginning?]]1982.
[[So that was how you heard about Greenham, was that also the first time that you went there?|Mica May So that was how you heard about Greenham, was that also the first time that you went there?]]
[[And had you heard of Greenham before that - or the rumblings of it, or was it right a the beginning?|Mica May And had you heard of Greenham before that - or the rumblings of it, or was it right a the beginning?]]Um, it wasn’t right at the beginning, it was it must have been the summer, so stuff had been going on there already for a little while. I’d heard a little bit, mainly again through the women’s network at the time, in Manchester.
[[Yeah. Are you from Manchester originally?|Mica May Yeah. Are you from Manchester originally?]]
[[So that was how you heard about Greenham, was that also the first time that you went there?|Mica May So that was how you heard about Greenham, was that also the first time that you went there?]]The first time that I went was on the Embrace the Base action. And I went on a coach of, I think it was all women and kids, that went down from Manchester.
[[And how, what was it like?|Mica May And how, what was it like?]]
[[Was it important to you at the time that it was a women only movement or not?|Mica May I was going to ask you about if it was important to you at the time that it was a women only movement or not?]]No. I’m originally from near Birmingham, and I travelled around on a - mostly, I went from Birmingham to Manchester and that was where I came out. And after that I travelled around more.
[[So that was how you heard about Greenham, was that also the first time that you went there|Mica May So that was how you heard about Greenham, was that also the first time that you went there?]]
[[Did you find that in Manchester - when you were talking about the peace movement that you were sort of involved in, and the bookshop, did you find that very different to Greenham, which was all women?| Mica May And did you find that in Manchester - when you were talking about the peace movement that you were sort of involved in, and the bookshop, did you find those gender constructions that you didn’t find at Greenham? I’ve spoken to some people who were part of the CND movement, and they said the men were just...]]It was quite overwhelming, it was really exciting, and it was, we all got up really early in the morning so when you’re doing something - you travel down in the coach altogether, that builds the feeling about it a lot. And so, yeah we were all getting really excited.
It was a long way from Manchester, of-course, and um, then we got there and it was just - when we actually arrived - god I’m really trying to remember - it was like the place itself had somehow assumed this significance, and even though when you got there, and what you saw was disappointing in a way, because it was just a chain link fence, but of-course there were loads and loads of women, and loads of women arriving and dressed up, and embracing the base with all - holding hands and everything, and that feeling of being with so many other women doing the same thing together, and being absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to be doing made it really powerful.
And I was - I was 24 and I’d just never been involved in anything like that before, and I’d always been a little bit of an outsider, and I made myself be funny, which is what most people - you either stay shy and be on the outskirts, or you be funny as a way in, really, and so that’s what I did. But I never properly felt that I was part of something, but this was so big, and the women were so varied, there as no way you could not be within that group, which was lovely.
[[That’s amazing.|Mica May That’s amazing.]]
[[And did you stay there after Embrace the Base, or did you go back to Manchester?| Mica May And did you stay there after Embrace the Base, or did you go back to Manchester?]]It was lovely. And to feel that feeling of strength and camaraderie at the same time as knowing you were doing the right thing - goddess, heroine, it was all in one go, it was brilliant.
[[And did you stay there after Embrace the Base, or did you go back to Manchester?| Mica May And did you stay there after Embrace the Base, or did you go back to Manchester?]]
[[And how long did you live at Greenham altogether?|Mica May And how long did you live at Greenham altogether?]]No, we went back - it was a day trip, and it was after Christmas that the Manchester group - there was going to be a peace march in Manchester but nobody from Greenham would come and speak at the peace march, and having been there, I understand, because the number of requests all the time were so massive, and so people, and also people were prioritising being there, and the Manchester group said ‘Well, every woman is a Greenham women, every woman is a Greenham woman, so somebody from here can go, stay there for a little while and come back and speak at the march.’ So I said ‘pick me, pick me!’
I was very keen, and I was chosen. And er, so I went and I stayed for a week, and it was cold - there was snow, and I remember being, I could sleep with my hat on, and the place that I slept I had no sleeping bag, but somebody had given me a really lovely down sleeping bag - which is a bit rubbish when it’s damp, which of-course it was. So that was - but there was this hotel, they called it the ‘hotel’ - there was a washing line, and the was pallets with straw on top, and loads of blankets, and everybody put their sleeping bags in there, so that’s where I slept. But it was cold, because it was long, and it was only plastic over the top, so even less insulation than a tent, and then but I just had a fantastic time, and I got home and I went to my flat, and I got in the bath, and I had to have the window open because I was already claustrophobic being indoors in the house - after just a week!
(Laughs). When I was in the bath with the steam, and er, but I was fairly clean when I went and said the speak - which I can’t actually remember. I remember walking along in the march but I can’t remember anything abut speaking. But I can’t remember if I stayed a couple of days at home, and then I went back off and that was it, but I didn’t even unpack my flat - other people sorted my flat out for me, because that was it - I’d gone, I’d left, living at Greenham.
[[And how long did you live at Greenham altogether?|Mica May And how long did you live at Greenham altogether?]]Six months. About,I think it was February when I moved, because that’s when the march was, and in the August a group of us went off and travelled around Ireland in a Morris Minor van, and I was in that group so that was when I left.
[[Was that ‘83?|Mica May Was that ‘83?]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I lived at the Yellow Gate, which at that time was known as the Main Gate.
[[At that time did it have a set personality, or was there a message behind why you chose it, or was it just where you ended up?|Mica May At that time did it have a set personality, or was there a message behind why you chose it, or was it just where you ended up?]]
[[How old were you?|Mica May How old were you, did you say?]]It was where I ended up. The only ones where there were people living there at the time when I moved there, there was Main Gate and what was already known as the Green Gate. But the Green Gate was called the Green Gate because it was in the woods, not because of there being any - the rainbow thing, which came later. And it was while I was living there some women went and set up on the other side and I think opened the Blue Gate, but there wasn’t a great deal of choice. I used to go and visit the Green Gate, but I liked the buzz and the liveliness of what was happening at Main Gate, at the Yellow Gate.
[[Can you tell me a bit about the decision making process at Greenham? How were your choices reflected? Did you use a talking stick?|Mica May I found that...longchat..and the talking stick.]]
[[Do you remember how many actions you went on at Greenham?|Mica May And the actions that you mentioned, how, is there a rough number - do you remember how many you went on?]]I was 24. Yeah.
[[And did you, so did you know anybody when you went down there, or did you just make friends?|Mica May And did you, so did you know anybody when you went down there, or did you just make friends?]]
[[Were you scared?|Mica May Were you scared?]]I did not know a soul.
[[Were you scared?|Mica May Were you scared?]]
[[How were interactions with local residents while you were at Greenham?|Mica May And I was also going to ask - relationship with local residents, and if you had any interaction with them?]] I was a bit intimidated. I remember during the week that I went people not being terribly friendly, and I mean they were friendly and welcoming, but they weren’t properly friendly. And I didn’t notice in so far as the difference between that and when I went back, and I remember somebody saying to me people say they are going to come back all the time, and people are coming and going, and that was definitely something that happened at the Yellow Gate - people were coming and going, coming and going all the time, and so you couldn’t sort of give your heart to people who you didn’t know if they were going to go back again. But when I did go back, and I said ‘Right, I’m here now,’ I was welcome very much in, and it was not difficult to make friends at all. Especially if I had my hairdressing scissors with me, and I cut people’s hair!
[[(Laughs). A good way to get in!|Mica May (Laughs). A good way to get in!]]
[[It’s almost like trading cigarettes!|Mica May It’s almost like trading cigarettes!]] ‘Anybody want their hair cut?’ I didn’t know that was going to happen, and I don’t even know why I took my scissors with me - of all the things - I took a rucksack and that was my entire worldly goods, and I took my hairdressing scissors.
[[It’s almost like trading cigarettes!|Mica May It’s almost like trading cigarettes!]]
[[There’s a lot said about the art that was created. You’ve talked abut hairdressing, um, and did you see a lot of that when you were there?|Mica May And there’s a lot said about the art that was created. You’ve talked abut hairdressing, um, and did you see a lot of that when you were there?]] Yes! (Laughs). Yeah, I cut really short hair, and everyone liked the way it felt, but of-course it meant the police couldn’t get hold of your hair when it was really short, so there was several different reasons, but the sensory - touchy thing of it was really nice. And then seem of the women criticised me for making everybody look like they were from Belsen. But you know, because there was a lot of disagreements as well as agreements.
[[And what made you decide to stay?|Mica May And what made you decide to stay?]]
[[Can you tell me a bit about the decision making process at Greenham? How were your choices reflected? Did you use a talking stick?|Mica May I found that...longchat..and the talking stick.]] Oh, there was no, I just - it was a feeling, it wasn’t a thinking, really. As soon as I was there somebody showed me how to sign-on in Newbury - was it Newbury? Yes, must have been Newbury, and um, that was kind of it. I’d gone back because I just couldn’t mot be there, it felt like it was the hub of the universe, and in-fact I remember this one woman Jill - she moved, she’d been living in New York - right in Manhattan, and she said ‘Well I was bored with New York, so where else could I come? It had to be here.’ And it felt like that - it really felt it was the most important place in the world for that little time, to those of us who were there. It was so vibrant.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]The weaving of the webs and all that was happening a lot. People were doing that sort of thing all the time - you couldn’t, I think there was the feeling of doing this action, sort of ferment, almost volcanic - the energy rising of everybody being there and doing the same thing together, and that is a creative feeling. But you couldn’t paint because everything got wet, and if you were worrying, which we were about being evicted a lot of the time, then everything was getting lost all the time - you couldn’t write because of that.
I ended up coming away without any contacts for people, except those that I was with when I left, because you didn’t have paper, because it got lost or wet and just fell to pieces. So to make anything - any externalising of that feeling, a statement of it, had to be some sort of sculptural thing and that’s why I think the kinds of art that was made was the sort of stuff that it was. And there was also - I mean we knew that what we were doing was transitory, that we were making things with leaves and twigs, which is - they would disappear, and because we were getting more and more aware about the ecological stuff as well as peace at the same time, we were also not wanting to make things that were going to damage the earth. Because there was the base with this death making thing to kill the world, and so we didn’t want to be involved in that, we wanted to make things that would not damage it - would be gone easily and not, you know, that thing about leave only footprints.
[[ If you don’t have anything to write with, or it gets wet and lost, how could you keep in touch with the women you met?|Mica May That’s so interesting, I’ve never heard that interpretation before of the arts being so important. And I also have wondered after speaking to a couple of other women, they’ve not kept in touch with any of the women that they were there with - which makes so much sense, how would you be able to? If you don’t have anything to write it down with, or it gets wet and lost.]]
[[Were there children at the camp?|Mica May How, a lot of people, and this is (inaudible), talked about a baby being born at Greenham, I was wondering if you saw any children at the camp?]]Yeah. I’ve found women almost accidentally in the time since, and I left with a group of women who, I’m not in touch with any of them anymore, we squatted in London and things just fell apart a bit - we were not united by that common bond anymore I suppose, and we all started to want to do other things, and I certainly wanted to be able to do something with what had happened to me, because it was transforming and because we were squatting and moving around, that took a lot of energy, and so another part of the reason why it all fell apart.
And then when I moved up here I met somebody who I’d known there, but by and large - there was a woman who was in Ireland who I met again - almost accidentally meeting people. And Facebook hasn’t really helped, because people rarely say on Facebook that they were involved in Greenham. Strange, and I think what happened after - culturally, in the wider culture made us not particularly want to even talk about it, I think. I felt a bit silenced.
[[Oh, that’s really sad. But really interesting that that was how you felt, and do you feel that the media at the time, and like you say - afterwards, that that made you retreat and not want to talk about it?|Mica May Oh, that’s really sad. But really interesting that that was how you felt, and do you feel that the media at the time, and like you say - afterwards, that that made you retreat and not want to talk about it?]]
[[Are there still prejudices that prevent Greenham from being talked about openly?|Mica May What I found really weird..long interviewer speech]]I think also we were a bit misunderstood, and the media did that of making you into these, and I’ve said being a heroine and a goddess earlier - but making us into something that we weren’t, really. And people would come and - while we were living there - women, especially women with kids would shake my hand and say ‘Thank you for doing this for us.’, which was lovely, but I said to them ‘I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it - I’m just doing it.’ And it wasn’t for anybody else, so there was that - you know women can only be two kinds of person, and you’ve got to be sort of bleeding and damaged and always of-course doing it for somebody else, and I did not want to be connected to that stereotype of you know, I’m happy enough to be a nurturer, but I was not going to be the sacrificer of myself. And anyway, it was too much fun to be sacrificial! (Laughs).
[[That’s really interesting, and did you find that a lot of women would come up to you say thank you for doing that?|Mica May That’s really interesting, and did you find that a lot of women would come up to you say thank you for doing that?]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah. And men.
[[Oh really?|Mica May Oh really?]]
[[That’s really interesting.|Mica May That’s really interesting.]]Yeah, because men used to come and visit.
[[That’s really interesting.|Mica May That’s really interesting.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, yeah it was common, and then of-course when we moved away I was in the squatter community, and a lot of the women had been there, and a lot of the men had been at mixed peace camps, so there was no particular need to talk about it, but then as my life moved on it did become something that was not exactly shameful, but it was a bit like my dirty past. And I do think the media at the time - that would have been the mid ‘80s - everything started to get very glamorised, so maybe it’s to do with just that.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah. And I do think - I think because it was a women’s action, I do think that was a lot stronger. You know, if you watch a quiz on the telly, nobody ever know the answers about women. Even women don’t know the answers abut women. Women’s stuff just gets forgotten, so it’s so much more - I think once it was over we were actively being squashed. Not consciously, I don’t think - but there was some squashing because it was such an outburst of powerful female energy, and even though - the missiles did get taken away, but who knows whether it was the action that was the reason for that or not, but I think it was a big igniter in women’s consciousness around the country, and I think that therefore had to be stopped.
[[Do you think that is one of the reasons that Greenham hasn’t been historicised in the way that the miners’ strike has.|Mica May I agree. I also think that’s probably one of the reasons that it hasn’t been historicised in the way that the miners’ strike has.]]
[[Did you have to deal at the time with tensions around sexuality and gender?|Mica May I agree, I think it’s - I was having this convention in another interviewer, and the lady brought up the conversation around gender, and kind of representations, and she was like ‘We had these conversations at Greenham, we did it all, like why are people forgetting?’]] Exactly. They were at the same time, and we noticed a difference in the way that the police responded. Because of the miners’ strike they became a lot more violent. So it was exactly the same time.
[[Yeah, and also led by men - but also it was part of a national story - of industry, whereas the Greenham thing is anomalous in the way it’s part of, still a contentious movement - the peace movement, yeah and I think maybe that’s one of the reasons, and that it was led by women and made up entirely of women.|Mica May Yeah, and also led by men - but also it was part of a national story - of industry, whereas the Greenham thing is anomalous in the way it’s part of, still a contentious movement - the peace movement, yeah and I think maybe that’s one of the reasons, and that it was led by women and made up entirely of women.]]
[[Also, the miner’s strike had quite close links with politicians, but Greenham didn’t?| Mica May the miner’s strike and whatever, but had quite close links with politicians, but Greenham didn’t.]]Yeah.
[[Also, the miner’s strike had quite close links with politicians, but Greenham didn’t?| Mica May the miner’s strike and whatever, but had quite close links with politicians, but Greenham didn’t.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]...but I do remember people coming and visiting, and they would say ‘Who’s the leader?’ And we’d all say ‘Me!’ Or we’d all say ‘Her!’ On purpose, but you know, and it was fine, but there was also meaning in that - it was completely anarchistic, we did have meetings and discuss things that were important, but there was nobody telling anybody what to do.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I don’t think I would have been interested in going if it hadn’t of been. I mean I was coming out as a lesbian, so there was definitely that about it, but, and interestingly it wasn’t a hotbed of sex, and it wasn’t a hotbed of celibacy either, you know there was people got together and had their hot sex, which you do when you’re in the beginning of a relationship - you know, and then you could hear it! (Laughs). Because we weren’t living in walled buildings, but it was - that wasn’t why people came.
And somebody - I remember a woman who had been in prison coming along and saying she had come because it was a peace camp and she needed a bit of peace, and she had totally not comprehended that...but you know, why shouldn’t it also be, because peace is that too. So fair enough. I think it was so much more interesting, because men were doing everything, and that was really boring.
[[And did you find that in Manchester - when you were talking about the peace movement that you were sort of involved in, and the bookshop, did you find those gender constructions that you didn’t find at Greenham?| Mica May And did you find that in Manchester - when you were talking about the peace movement that you were sort of involved in, and the bookshop, did you find those gender constructions that you didn’t find at Greenham? I’ve spoken to some people who were part of the CND movement, and they said the men were just...]]
[[What were relationships like with the men at the base?|Mica May Yeah, and it’s frustrating that until it’s happening to men (inaudible). And with relationships with men we’ve already talked about it, the relationship with the police, but also the relationship with the bailiffs, or the idea of bailiffs at Greenham or the military as well, if you had any thoughts on those? ]]I remember speaking to people from Greenpeace, who said ‘You know, it’s only ever the men who get to do any of the radical actions’, and we did while I was living at Greenham, we did go and visit Faslane, and spoke to a woman who was there, and the way she was talking it was clear it was the men who did everything. And she was a bit, she was really curious about how we were able to anarchisticly decided things, and have the people who wanted to do it, do it, and the people who didn’t want to do it didn’t have to do it. And the ones who didn’t do it didn’t have to be the bottle washers either, so you know, but yeah it was just so much more interesting because it was different, but it was also about me, automatically. And yeah I hadn’t been involved in the peace movement previously - it hadn’t been attractive, although the idea of a peaceful planet, of-course that’s attractive, but the movement was not.
[[Can you tell me a bit about the decision making process at Greenham? How were your choices reflected? Did you use a talking stick?|Mica May I found that...longchat..and the talking stick.]]
[[What were relationships like with the men at the base?|Mica May Yeah, and it’s frustrating that until it’s happening to men (inaudible). And with relationships with men we’ve already talked about it, the relationship with the police, but also the relationship with the bailiffs, or the idea of bailiffs at Greenham or the military as well, if you had any thoughts on those? ]]We didn't have a talking stick at the meetings I went to, they hadn’t been invited yet I don’t think. I think there as a talking stuck just before I left, and I didn’t really understand it, um, and we used to have rows sometimes at the meetings, and sometimes - because those little personal stereos had just come in, and we had little cassette players, but because you were wearing a hat, you could actually have your headphones in secretly, and nobody would know - and some people, did attend the meetings and sit there nodding, but they were nodding to music, not to the decisions being made. So there was even anarchism going on in that.
But, the decision making, some people would have an idea, and it would depend on the bigness of the idea - you might just tell a few people and go and do the thing that you did, so a few of us just went and slept in the base overnight, because that’s what we were going to do. We didn’t need anybody’s permission, we just did it. And we left stuff in the base so that they knew that people had been there - we left things that made it obvious that we had been there all night long.
[[What did you leave?|Mica May What did you leave?]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Can’t remember. We didn't leave a sleeping bag, maybe we did leave a blanket or something, and evidence of a fire! Probably did leave a blanket, because that would have been a wool blanket, and it would have just decayed away if it wasn’t taken. But, um, and I do remember it was very important to leave something.
And other things that there were bigger actions that wee happening, and when I went down there had been the over Christmas the New Year’s action, that had already happened, and there was going to be the beginning of the court case, and I think that’s why Manchester was starting to get more involved, because of wanting to be able to support the court case as it went along. But there were other actions that as a result of that we knew that women may be going to go to prison, and then women were sent to prison because of it. And so bigger actions, where we thought there was a possibility we might be going to be sent to prison, we did - that was the sort of thing that got talked about more at a meeting, and some women would say ‘Well I can’t go to prison because I’ve got kids’, and some would say ‘I really don’t want to do this’, and other women would say ‘That’s totally fine by me’.
And I did actions that never led to me going to prison, but I think I had a civil action against me for one of the things, but I can’t even remember what it was now. But again it was just, you kind of said yeah, I’m in, and then you would be in, and you may have - you know it wouldn’t be meetings as such, but you would have to work out how you were going to do a thing, but that’s what they were, it they were just little informal ‘Come on, let’s go and talk about this’. And you would go and talk about something and work out how you were going to do it.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I have no idea! I just don’t even know, I can’t remember - little ones, big ones, they were happening all the time. I remember we had a naked blockade of the base because we thought the police wouldn’t want to touch us, which was true. We kept our boots on in-case they dragged us, we wouldn’t get our feet grazed, but they would drag you so you banged your knees still, that was annoying. And we had a snagging blockade, because we thought that love would be something nobody could object to - but of-course they did. So, and you can probably tell that I was much more likely to be involved in things that had a lightness and a sense of humour about them, and that was the sort of thing I was attracted to, so that was the sort of thing I ended up doing more often.
[[And did you enjoy doing that?|Mica May And did you enjoy doing that?]]
[[And were you - you said you were arrested once?|Mica May And were you - you said you were arrested once?]]Yeah. It was scary but it was exciting. Adrenaline is a good drug. And then after actions we would all feel like shit the day after, because it’s a drug and you come down and you feel dreadful - sometimes for three days if it’s a really big action.
[[And were you - you said you were arrested once?|Mica May And were you - you said you were arrested once?]]
[[Can you tell me about your experience of non-violent direct action?|Mica May Yeah. Just, well a sense of humour - like you said. Um, you’ve kind of answered this about non-violent direct action, duh duh duh, and um, ...]]Yeah. A few times. I remember being held in the cells in Newbury, overnight sometimes and they’d dump us out in the middle of the night, and at the other side of the base so you had to walk all the way back, but I was never dumped on my own on the other side of the base. I know some women were, and I think that depended who the duty officers were and just how misogynistic they were, I guess.
[[From the women I’ve interviewed, the actions of the police just seemed quite petty?|Mica May From the women I’ve interviewed, the actions of the police just seemed quite petty?]]
[[Can you tell me about your experience of non-violent direct action?|Mica May Yeah. Just, well a sense of humour - like you said. Um, you’ve kind of answered this about non-violent direct action, duh duh duh, and um, ...]]Yeah. I remember, we had these links with um, Holloway Prison - we were doing quite a lot of stuff around women in prison and the fact that the majority of women in prison are there because they’ve been abuse, or they’ve nicked to feed themselves and most often with about their children. So we had links, we started - I don’t know who did it, but whoever did it, we started to have connections with the Women in Prison group, and we had set up a little camp outside of Holloway Prison, which was only an ordinary width of pavement. And I remember this one policeman was being really petty abut us being there, and we’d moved out stuff so that people could walk by, but he was doing us for obstruction. And Jill, who was the one from New York that I’d mentioned earlier, she called him ‘A wanker’, so he wrote it down in his little book, and I remember her going to court for having called him a wanker, because that was - I can’t remember what, there was some sermon-ology that he used which made it into a case - offensive - I don’t know if there’s an offensive language, I mean there were no hate crimes at that time...
So anyway, we were there in court, and Jill, she was 40, so she was a proper grown up! (Laughs). Says Mica from considerably older position - but she’d been involved in a whole load of art stuff - political art in New York, and she’s dead now a lot of people are dead now, but I remember she addressed - I think it was a judge, not even a magistrate, and she said ‘Your Honour, who, I did call him a wanker’. He said that she had shouted it. She said ‘I used the same tone of voice that I’m using to you. I do have a voice that carries, but I don’t ever have to raise it.’ And you could really see that the judge was thinking ‘Aye,aye’, and she said ‘And to call somebody a wanker is merely saying that they masturbate. Who among us has not masturbated?’ (Laughs). And the judge goes bong, case dismissed! That’s the sort of thing that happened.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I didn’t understand what non-violent direct action was at all. I didn’t understand what it even meant, and why you couldn’t slap somebody’s hand off you, and why you had to simply allow yourself to be dragged away. The passivity of it, and I guess one of the things that we started doing with the naked blockade and the snogging blockade was we remained passive in that we didn’t stop anybody from dragging us away, because by that point I did understand it. But we also thought we’re not going to be passive about this, because they are women, and we can’t be because we’re expected to be, so we mustn’t be completely passive, and I think that also elevated things to a different level of creativity, because you have to think outside the box.
[[So you're not even meeting male violence on its own terms, you’re doing something completely different?|Mica May And also a different level of consciousness, to say like actually there is a power in not being passive, but in ‘I won’t interact with your violence’. I find that really powerful, and really powerful about Greenham that it created in a sense, that you’re not even meeting male violence on its own terms, you’re doing something completely different.]]
[[In your process of learning, were there pressure points where you started to understand more?|Mica May Would you, what was your thought process at the time - from going from not understanding non-violent direction action, not understanding what it was, moving to understanding it. What was - were there pressure points when you started to understand more?]]Yeah. Yeah, and I think that that was a, a very powerful consciousness raising for all of us. There were some women who had already done consciousness raising things, but most of us had not. And there were some women who had done stuff within the peace movement, and there were women who’d done women’s groups, with the women’s movements, and so those things came together. And then there were all the others of us who had never done anything like it before, but then that raised consciousness that happened - we were putting everything together, and that’s what really feminism is about - the connectedness, now that’s what makes it so radical - it’s not like the Labour Party and where they, and especially at the moment it seems extremely blinkered and single track, with what was happening with our minds, we were seeing the connectedness of things, and how everything was, well we didn’t blame it all on the patriarchy, and I don’t know that it is necessarily all the patriarchy to blame, but that particular power structure that is all about climbing to the top and trampling all over everybody else underneath you. I do think that that is probably a lot of the reason of why we’re in this mess, you know, ecologically speaking - because the planet comes last, doesn’t it?
[[And people who are working - and women and children come last in those conversations?|Mica May And people who are working - and women and children come last in those conversations.]]
[[In your process of learning about non-violent direct action, were there pressure points where you started to understand more?|Mica May Would you, what was your thought process at the time - from going from not understanding non-violent direction action, not understanding what it was, moving to understanding it. What was - were there pressure points when you started to understand more?]]Not that I remember but perhaps there were, um, but it was - I think it was more like as if my life had been a jigsaw, and as time was going on in being there and being exposed to people with such different lives and who’d got such different experiences, and soaking it all up, it was as if the picture on the jigsaw was becoming visible, and that it allowed me to see - what life is, what this world is, how everybody works, and I read something just today on Facebook, and it was a guy that was talking saying ‘The government’ - it was an article about gaslighting and narcissism in relationships, and he was saying it happens not only in relationships, the government is doing it now and that sort of connecting is exactly the sort of connecting that we were doing back then, and I’m certain that that is why the movement had to be quashed, because that level of awake-ness about how we are all being drugged through the telly and through the drugs into not thinking and not taking an action and not having any action, and gaslighting even has a name now which it didn’t then, you know it is being done - we’re being told that what we know to be true is not, and yeah...it’s interesting that gaslighting is something that I was imagined would only, could only happen to women.
And I guess that one for the things that is both good and bad is that people are recognising no, it happens, and people use it to enforce power, and anybody who has power will use it on anybody that has less power, and it is the perfect tool if you’re a politician, and of-course it’s gone on forever - that’s what 1984 is all about.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, always at the bottom of the pyramid.
[[In your process of learning about non-violent direct action, were there pressure points where you started to understand more?|Mica May Would you, what was your thought process at the time - from going from not understanding non-violent direction action, not understanding what it was, moving to understanding it. What was - were there pressure points when you started to understand more?]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Didn’t really have any connection with the guys in the base at all. They would go in in their busses, and it was like they were scared to even look at us. So we did kind of play with that a little bit with witch badges and doing witch stuff. I remember there being a big thunder storm one night, and the lightening went around the base, around and around and around the base, and it was um, it was forked lightening, none of it was earthed. It looked like dragons in the sky. We were all out there, yelling and whooping and getting soaking wet, and properly behaving like crazy women. I am not surprised those poor squaddies in the base were terrified. I think we were pretty scary when we’d got something on us, like that, and I also remember, I had the little badge that said witch on it, and I don’t remember what his name was - the Tory politician from Newbury came up to speak to us, and I spoke to him, I can’t remember what it was I said, but I do remember it appearing in the paper the following week that when he went he was spoken to by one of the witches, and he’s never been ill before, but he lost his voice as a result! And I do remember thinking ‘You’re an idiot, just shut up’ so maybe I did make him lose his voice!
[[What a claim! |Mica May What a claim!]]
[[That’s incredible! But also that he believed it - that’s amazing!|Mica May That’s incredible! But also that he believed it - that’s amazing!]]That was really funny. And then people came up looking for the witch that had cursed him and made him lose his voice and then again, everyone’s going ‘It’s her!’
[[That’s incredible! But also that he believed it - that’s amazing!|Mica May That’s incredible! But also that he believed it - that’s amazing!]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I know, because you don’t expect them to believe in ‘woo-woo’ people like that, do you? (Laughs)
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well there were a few local women who let us go to their houses for baths, and were really, really supportive. But mostly, I didn’t have anything really bad happen - people used to call us ‘kippers’, people used to sniff because we smelled like woodsmoke, as we were walking down the street - and people would shout names after us like ‘Lesbian’ and we’d say ‘Yeah, and? But, we didn’t go to Newbury on our own - we would always go in a group, partly because it was a damn sight more convenient - somebody would have a car and you’d go together in the car, because it was a long way to walk back.
But it would have been scary to go on your own because there was distinct hostility, and lots of the pubs wouldn’t let us in, lots of the cafes wouldn’t let us in, you know, and when we were queuing to sign-on, there were definitely people would say ‘Woooo, what are you doing?’ And it was like ‘Well you’re in the queue behind me, I’m saving the world, what are you doing?’ Because we were not abashed by people saying things like that, because we were fired up with the radicalism and what it was that we were doing, but again we weren’t on our own.
[[Do you think that bolstered the Greenham community?|Mica May Do you think it it was - like you said, the community that you were in, kind of bolstered?]]
[[And the people that were kind in Newbury, how did you meet them? Or did they come to Greenham?|Mica May And the people that were kind in Newbury, how did you meet them? Or did they come to Greenham?]]Gave us power and confidence, and safety in numbers, definitely.
[[And the people that were kind in Newbury, how did you meet them? Or did they come to Greenham?|Mica May And the people that were kind in Newbury, how did you meet them? Or did they come to Greenham?]]
[[How did you get supplies to the camp?|Mica May Yeah, I wondered about the general domestic admin of the camp. I was asking somebody about tampons, and I was like ‘Well where did you get them from?’, she was like ‘The shop!’]]I think mostly they’d come and visit, and they’d come and say ‘I live locally’, and then somehow or other we found out where they lived - they’d have given their address, and somebody would be taking a car and a few of us would go and have a bath.
Oh yeah, I was ill actually, and I went and stayed at somebody’s house. Yeah, yeah, because I was too poorly.
[[How did you get supplies to the camp?|Mica May Yeah, I wondered about the general domestic admin of the camp. I was asking somebody about tampons, and I was like ‘Well where did you get them from?’, she was like ‘The shop!’]]
[[|When did you leave Greenham?|Mica May When did you leave? Was it 1983?]]We had our dole trips, so we did have money, and people would bring a lot of food, so we actually had a reasonably good amount of disposable income, because we weren’t paying rent, we didn’t get any rent only, so that wasn’t an issue, but we got a lot of food donated, and people would arrive with, coming for a sort period of time, and they would often bring food and drugs and alcohol, so there was - we were not going short as far as those kinds of things were concerned. And we just went into Newbury and bought the things that we wanted so we might buy particular food that we might want, or if we were going to make a meal we might, because sometimes you would make - usually there would be a big meal being made - everyday, but people would also go off and make a little fire, and if they wanted something else, or a bit of space, a bit of privacy, so then you’d buy your own food, probably. Or there was a place where loads of food was kept, and you would take some.
[[|When did you leave Greenham?|Mica May When did you leave? Was it 1983?]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It was still the same year, and it would have been August.
[[And did you not go back after that?|Mica May And did you not go back after that?]]
[[So this question may not be relevant. How much do you think the camp was infiltrated or sabotaged towards the end?|Mica May So this question may not be relevant. How much do you think the camp was infiltrated or sabotaged towards the end?]]No.
[[Why?|Mica May Why?]]
[[And do you feel that there is a legacy of Greenham within the feminist world?|Mica May And do you feel that there is a legacy of Greenham within the feminist world?]]I’ve got no clue. I really didn’t experience that, and maybe I’d already gone by the time anything of that type, but no idea. It’s not something that I experienced at all.
[[Do you feel that there is a legacy of Greenham within the feminist world?|Mica May And do you feel that there is a legacy of Greenham within the feminist world?]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I’m not sure, you know. We were up and down to London a bit before, to the Holloway thing, and some of the women who were living in London, they would visit as well, so we’d go and stay with people for a few days. But when, well when I left and we were squatting and we were living in London I became very involved with that, but I didn’t have transport, and so to actually get back was quite difficult. When I used to be living there I would get the coach from London to Greenham or from Greenham to London, if I was going on a trip - or we wold go in a car. But yeah, it was just awkward because from Newbury it was a long walk to get to the camp itself, but it did also feel a bit like - by the time I was leaving, the biggest, there was starting to be more women moving out, so Greenham for me wasn’t necessarily there at the camp, it was to do with that group of women that I was with, and there was a whole big women’s squatting community in Hackney, where it was that I was living, so Greenham was there.
[[So this question may not be relevant. How much do you think the camp was infiltrated or sabotaged towards the end?|Mica May So this question may not be relevant. How much do you think the camp was infiltrated or sabotaged towards the end?]]
[[Do you feel that there is a legacy of Greenham within the feminist world?|Mica May And do you feel that there is a legacy of Greenham within the feminist world?]]I think feminists are a bit ashamed of Greenham.
[[Do you think?|Mica May Do you think?]]
[[Is it important for future generations to learn about Greenham?|Mica May can you explain why you think it’s important for future generations to learn about Greenham?]] Yeah. I think now it’s probably getting a little bit more kudos again, but I think during the ‘90s it was a bit of a dirty secret, a bit of a guilty thing, and I certainly didn’t really talk about it among the feminists I was around, but then feminism took a real nose dive anyway, so maybe the whole thing was all part of one thing that was happening about the lash back against it, so I’m not certain, I’m not certain. Definitely when I look at the other things I’ve done in my life since, I can see how connected to my life at Greenham they were, they are, definitely everything I’ve done since has been informed by it, absolutely. But I don’t know that anybody has - I do remember bumping into somebody and she talking about how everybody had gone straight with their Greenham stuff that they’d learnt - we were becoming counsellors and therapists and stuff like that, and that’s not really going straight is it?
[[Not at all.|Mica May Not at all.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]That’s still very much work to help people transform their love. I mean I was a therapist for some time and I was working with people who had been sexually abused and ritually abused, it was proper heavy end stuff. I think a lot of us were doing that kind of work. And a lot of other kind of ways of just not going along with the mainstream - continuing to challenge the status quo, if not necessarily visibly. But certainly in Todmorden where I live now, there’s a lot of women who were at Greenham then and farming, and living on the land, and carrying on the legacy in that way - being close to the land, there’s all sorts of different ways that we have interpreted what we experienced there.
[[Do you think it is connected that many Greenham Women went on to become counsellors?|Mica May Yeah, I think there’s something to say about therapists and counsellors, and it’s what you’ve said before about I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for me, and I wonder if those two things are connected as well? It’s not a caring profession, but it’s a much more empathetic profession than most others. I don’t know. Because the other women I’ve spoken to have done - they’re counsellors or they’re therapists, and I can’t help feeling that is connected in someway.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I definitely think that the transformation that I experienced through living at Greenham meant that I was aware that people’s lives can be transformed, and I think I wanted more of that. And while I was theraping, some of the work that I was doing was really really raw, but it still didn’t feel sacrificial of myself to do it, and when it did start to - because I wasn’t getting external support - then I stopped doing it. Um, but there was that - actually people would say to me ‘How can you do this work, how can you bear it hearing such horrible stories from people?’ And I would say ‘Because it’s amazing to see - to know how people have found themselves, and the the resilience of people, that’s just an absolutely inspiring thing to be I involved in.’ But the line between those makes it very clear - in that to see somebody getting hold of their life, and not necessarily going from being abject to being completely powerful, but certainly being part of that journey, it’s really inspiring.
[[Yeah, people would expect you to internalise what they were saying to you, but why would you? You’re a professional. Obviously I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been very hard and taxing in a professional sense, but why is it expected that you as a woman would therefore...|Mica May Yeah, and I find it interesting that from hat you’ve said people will talk, people would expect you to internalise what they were saying to you, but why would you? You’re a professional. Obviously I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been very hard and taxing in a professional sense, but why is it expected that you as a woman would therefore...]]
[[Did you enjoy being a therapist?|Mica May Did you enjoy being a therapist?]]That’s exactly what women do though, absorb everyone else’s shit and deal - it’s everybody else’s shit, and often as well by internalising it and then having passive aggressive behaviour - everybody, well not everybody, but lots of us have been around a mother who like simmered as she made the Christmas dinner! You know.
[[Did you enjoy being a therapist?|Mica May Did you enjoy being a therapist?]]
Yeah, I was a therapist for nearly 20 years in the voluntary sector, in Manchester, and I really enjoyed it. and when I stopped doing it I really felt like I’d lost my identity, but I had to because the support systems, the charity I was working in closed down, before that for a while the support systems within it crumbled, and I was doing such heavy work that I couldn’t carry on, so yeah, I really missed it when I stopped. But now I run the only company of women plumbers in the world!
[[How did you come to do that?|Mica May Yes, I saw. How did you come to do that?]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Accident! Again! No clear plan ever. No, my partner started Stop Cocks - in 1990 she trained as a plumber - she left being a teacher and she trained to be a plumber and, because she’d always wanted to be, and always had been very practical, and she carried on - many women at around about the same time me - late ‘80s, were training in manual trades, but a lot of them, and I knew quite a few of them when I lived in London, but many of them just didn’t carry on doing it, and when there had been the GLC in London, the GLC employed a lot of women, but as guestings changed as well - when the GLC collapsed, but Hattie always worked for herself, because when she started working as a plumber nobody would give her a job, so she thought ‘Right then’, because she had bills to pay, so she set up working for herself, and her company was immediately called Stop Cocks - it’s not a name that’s been made up for Twitter, it’s a name that has come out of her very much Carry On influenced sense of humour!
But um, so she was a Stop Cocks woman plumber for a long time. But when she got a computer, and she set up - had a little website, women started contacting saying ‘How do I become a plumber?’ And she looked at all the different ways she might be able to do it, and they were all over the country, so she thought I can’t employ them, because they’re over the place, and most of them didn’t know how to be a plumber, and they wanted apprenticeships, and she thought ‘If I have one apprentice, then all my energy is going to go into that one woman, and that would mean that she could therefore not support all of the other women that wanted to become plumbers, so she looked at different ways to do it, and she joined an entrepreneurs’ network at the same time, and they were saying to let people know about what you’re doing - gather your tribe around you, and go where the tribe are, but they're so scattered , there is no tribe of tradeswomen.
So she started writing newsletters and one by one contacting women, but again that took tons of energy, and I was with her by this point that she was starting to do this, and I was a little bit helping, but not so much because I was still theraping, but I guess my feminist perspective on things had an influence all along really. So from trying to contact women individually, she thought that’s just taking too much time and too much energy and I still have my own living to make, so she thought ‘No, I’ll just make myself more visible, and that started happening at the same time as websites became easier and cheaper to produce, and then what has really made the difference has been social media, which is one of the things I particularly do within the business - I mostly do marketing. I mean I do answer the phone to people when they ring as well, and hand out advice to people all over the place - who are wanting to become plumbers, and do interviews and do articles, but it’s mostly marketing. And social media has really made it possible for women in the industry to become very, very much more visible.
But I’m constantly being drawn to the campaigning Mica from my Greenham time, and it’s important to have that, but we’re a business and we’ve never had any funding from anybody for the business, so the business always has to be able to stand on its own two feet, but that gives it massive independence. Recently we’ve started - we’re just now doing our third conference, and we do get sponsorships from within the industry to be able to do that, and I lead organising that, so we do get little tiny bits of funding as sponsorships, but that’s specifically for the use - to be able to promote the conference, and it is the only opportunity for women plumbers to get together. At the first conference there were women there who had never seen another woman plumber, even though they’d been working in the industry some time. Only one in a hundred plumbers are women, and there are a hundred thousand gas engineers in this country - there are five hundred women gas engineers, and it’s similar number with electricians to the gas engineers, and in-fact an electrician came along to the last one and she crewed, because she wanted to be able to do something, but on her own - you can’t do it on your own - I was able to devote two weeks to it because Hattie was doing the plumbing, and it was just part of running the business.
[[What an incredible thing.|Mica May What an incredible thing.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I mean I’m - Hattie is the one who makes, and she is the galvanizing force, but that’s not the stuff that I do - I am brilliant number two, and not number two - second, you know, I think forget leaders, they’re not important, having somebody who will get the shit done is at-least as important, and that’s what it is that I do - I make it all happen.
[[Sounds fantastic.|Mica May Sounds fantastic.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It’s good. Finally we’re getting some recognition, and having been plodding away, and not recognised, and not paid for all the things that we’ve been doing all this time - the whole business has been supported just by Hattie plumbing for a long time, and now there are enough women around the country who are Stop Cock plumbers that we’ve got the business is more than standing on its own feet financially, and is starting to pay us a little bit, but Hattie still does plumbing, and you know we’re hoping to get her paid speaking gigs and stuff like that, to be able to properly pay us, so that she doesn’t have to plumb anymore. Because she’s 55, she had planned to stop at 40, because your knees go when you’re a plumber.
[[Oh I bet. Yeah. A world I didn’t know existed (Laughs)!|Mica May Oh I bet. Yeah. A world I didn’t know existed (Laugh)!]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well we got a message on Facebook the other day from a woman whose 9 year old wanted to be a plumber - Molly, and um, all the other girls at school were laughing at her, and she said ‘She’s really gone down in the dumps, and can you send her any encouragement?’ So first I was just doing it with our own plumbers, but I thought this has to go wider, so I took her name out and I put something on Twitter, this is why we need to a company of women plumbers, and there’s some guys as well - everybody’s sending in messages of support for her as well. But somebody said ‘We should do a tour of schools’ and there is this thing where people go along and say ‘Draw me a firefighter, and draw me...’ and then they bring out women don’t they? But somebody said ‘We should have a national tour of construction women’s tour’ and I thought okay, well come to the conference, we can set up a group and you can organise that. Because I’m not going to organise that - I’m doing enough action, but I will facilitate it happening for somebody else to make that happen.
[[I think that’s a fantastic idea.|Mica May I think that’s a fantastic idea.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Yeah, and we probably could get some funding for it as well.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well I saw the baby being born!
[[Did you?|Mica May Did you?]]
[[Was the midwife onsite already? Was she a Greenham woman?|Mica May So was the midwife onsite already? Or was she a Greenham woman? ]]Yeah, he must be a proper man now. There were a lot of children - quite a lot of the women that I knew had children. Some of the women had their children with them some of the time, some of the women were there sometimes because they always had their children with them, and yeah I was there when Jay was born. In fact my friend whose name is Jay, when Sarah was giving birth to Jay she got tired, and the midwives helping her got tired and Jay was holding her, because she’s a big woman - at the moment he was born, and her name is now Jay, which it was not at the time - she was called Hex at the time.
[[Was the midwife onsite already? Was she a Greenham woman?|Mica May So was the midwife onsite already? Or was she a Greenham woman? ]]
[[That's incredible.|Mica May Yeah, I just always found that story just completely incredible.]]No, I think they were in contact with the Radical Midwives, and they came out specifically, because Sarah had contacted them quite deliberately, and she was very clear that she wanted to give birth at the camp. Even though I think she had to go into hospital just after - I think she was quite poorly, and I think Jay was too.
[[What a thing.|Mica May What a thing.]]
[[That's incredible.|Mica May Yeah, I just always found that story just completely incredible.]]I was totally gobsmacked myself. She was involved in loads of actions throughout her entire pregnancy.
[[What a thing.|Mica May What a thing.]]
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I didn’t appreciate how cool she was at the time - to have done that, but looking back..
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I think it’s really important that women’s history is no longer lost, but I also think, I get very frustrated that because of the way that women’s history is lost, each generation has to learn things afresh, and each generation is inventing the wheel, so no wonder we’re not getting as far as we should, and so by it being brought back out into awareness, we can start - people can learn from our mistakes and take it to the next stage, and the next stage and the next stage rather than everyone just repeating the same mistakes over and over.
And if we’re going to evolve, which I sometimes wonder when I look at what’s happening in the world if we are going to give ourselves any opportunity to evolve at all, but if we are, we absolutely have to start learning this, it’s stupidness, it’s madness to do the same things again and again. But if people don’t know then we will.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]We did. And I remember, and I think the current debate around gender, it is extremely divisive, and it’s not only - it’s divisive between transsexuals and transvestites - to use the old terminology, because people who have gone through the process and actually changed their physical bodes are being left out of this entire debate. But I do remember somebody turning up and saying ‘I’m a woman’ with polka dot peep-toe high heeled shoes on, and a matching polka dot dress, and we said - ‘And so how are you going to cope in the mud?’ And I also remember a gay guy - friend of mine staying ‘You see, it’s the bloody lesbians who are doing this, not us - we couldn’t even go and do it, because we wouldn’t have anywhere to plug our hairdryer in.’ And it - the gay men were not capable of doing it, because their culture was taking them to be in a different way - it was not possible for other groups to do it - it was a certain bunch of radicalised women who were rejecting what we were told women had to be like. It wasn’t only lesbians by a long chalk, by a very long chalk, actually, but it was women who were radicalised to a very particular degree, or who went and who became very quickly radicalised because they saw something that they needed and wanted, and recognised, and had been looking for on some level. And I’m sure that that’s what happened to me - that there was a gap, that I got there, and it was like ‘(makes sucking sound), Oh yeah, I’m getting that now’.
[[Thank Mica May and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]What would you like to ask Diana Derioz?
[[What made you decide to join Greenham common?|Diana Derioz what made you decide to join Greenham common?]]
[[How did you cope with having children at the camp? What arrangements were there for them?|Diana Derioz how did you cope with having children at the camp? What arrangements were there for them?]]
[[Were you at a particular gate?|Diana Derioz were you at a particular gate?]] Well, I've been a pacifist all my life. I went on Aldermaston marches when I was in my early teens with my mother and my brother. And I had been on a lot of different demonstrations - I was used to it. And then I set up Totnes Women for Peace at the Totnes Women's Centre, which our women's group had set up. And we did a lot of demonstrations with that - local demonstrations. I've got photos of that in here. And then I went to the first big Greenham demonstration, which was the women joining hands round the base, which was in 1982. And that was it. I mean, after I went on that I was, I was, I was hooked as they say, because it was just amazing meeting you all those women that were so keen, and so fired up to do this work.
And I've always been anti-nuclear, which, of course was the Aldermaston marches. And it was part of that, the whole cruise missile thing, the fact it was an American base on our common land. And the fact that it was women - because I'd been on a lot of mixed demonstrations, and there'd been a lot of violence, um, which was mainly led by the men. And I thought it could be very different - women could do it differently. And indeed Greenham common, was years and years of passive resistance. And that's how it won, because we were persistent, and we were stubborn, and we stuck with it. So I lived part time at Greenham for 2 or 3 years, and my mother went to prison. I went to court, I was fined.
[[What did you go to court for?|Diana Derioz What did you go to court for?]]
[[How were decisions made at Greenham?|Diana Derioz So how were decisions made at Greenham?]]I went to court because I was caught with a friend clipping a hole in the fence, which we regularly just to show them that their fences were quite useless. It took a few minutes to clip a hole in the fence and just go in, you know, and we did it all the time - it was part of our, our daily, daily work there, really - was, was showing them that the fences didn't work.
In fact, there was a wonderful demonstration called the Black Cardigan. And basically we, we had - all the peace groups got messages saying, we're going to have a party this weekend, bring a black cardigan. And the black cardigan was code for bring a pair of clippers. So we all bought these huge wire clippers - none of us have ever used wire clippers in our lives before. Went up to Greenham all wearing black - black cardigans. And then we stood outside the base, and we had soldiers the other side looking very nervous because they knew something was going on, but they didn't know what it was - they thought we were having a party, so they weren't very prepared. And then at the moment that someone said ‘Right, now!’ We all stepped forward and began clipping the wires that held the fence to the posts.
And the, the soldier opposite me said ‘Oh my god they’ve started bringing down the fence. They're armed...’ well they didn’t say armed, but ‘...they've got tools, and they know how to use them’ and a minute later the whole fence, the whole area of fence that we were around, just folded down gently as if it was meant to. And then we all sat on the fence. And we brought down a lot of - I mean most of the fence that day. But it was really funny because I'd never used this before, but it was like cutting butter. It was like cutting butter, it just went ‘choom, choom, choom’. So we had a lot of wonderful actions.
There was an Easter bunny party, which was we made a big hole in the fence in several different places. And we all went in, and there were several Easter bunnies - women dressed up Easter - fluffy bunnies and chicks. And we just ran around with soldiers pursuing us, and we were put into a big hangar - there must have been at-least 100 of us, I imagine. And then they picked us up, and took us one by one and put us into jeeps and buses and carried us up out of the base. One of the interesting things here was that the engines always broke down when we were around, it was really funny. We always used to say ‘Put energy into telling the engines to break down’, you know, we do a lot of that, or ‘Put energy into an invisibility spell’ - several times when I was caught, and I ran for it and flung myself down in the bushes right near the fence I would say, ‘I'm invisible. I'm invisible’, and they never found me. So you know, we really believed in these spells.
But anyway, the jeep broke down and I said to the bloke that was driving the jeep, ‘Have you noticed when we were around, things break down?’ he said ‘We have noticed.’ Because you know when the cruise missiles used to come out of the base, which was usually in the evening - the whole point about cruise missiles was you bring them out of the base, you take them somewhere, and that's where the cruise missiles will be fired from. They're not fired from the base, they're fired from other places. So no-one can - so their missiles can't find us apparently. And so every time they came out of the base, often they would break down and have to - in-fact, I was there once when the whole thing broke down, and they had to tow them back into the base again. But if not, we would follow them in tiny cars all the way, and then we'd follow them back. In fact, they realised very quickly that it wouldn't work. You know, it didn't work because they're - all their strategies were been ruined by us.
And another thing that we often did was we would padlock the gates. And of course, there were, I think 12 or 13 gates around the base, and they all had to be open for all their stuff to come and go, and we would padlock them - often padlock ourselves to them, and so they spent a lot of time removing them, removing people. I've got a lovely letter here actually about an action that I did. I know I'm talking very fast - I always do. I always get overexcited.
I’ve got a lesson that I sent - it was an Easter action at Greenham, and I sent it to my children. And I say ‘The week Greenham over Easter’, and that was April ‘83. The week of Easter was a bit tough. The weather was icy, far colder than any have been when I've been here before. The first night Fenella - who was my 3 and a half year old - and I froze, although we cuddled together for warmth, because the ground was so bitterly cold it crept into the sleeping bag. The next night we got hold of some straw and packed it underneath the tent which helped. The tent stood up well to its first trials. We had sleet, hail, rain and gale force winds, some holiday - exclamation mark.’ My children were in France with their dad, my sons, and I had my daughter with me. ‘The second day there joined a blockade of the Green Gate, which consisted of sitting with about 200 other women, which was, which was peak hour. Sometimes we're only about 20.
And we sang songs, spoke to the television and press, wove webs for keeping cars out. The blockade started at 5 in the morning and continued for 24 hours. At about 3 in the afternoon, the police came up the road with a purposeful tread, and we all lay down and began to sing feminist peace songs. And our favourite song was (sings) You Can't Kill the Spirit: It is like a mountain. Old and strong. She goes on and on and on, you can’t kill the spirit’ etc etc. We sang that a lot, and we sang it as a round. So we were singing songs while we're on the ground.
[[Keep listening..|Diana Derioz What did you go to court for? 2]]
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]At that very moment, as if orchestrated for us, the hail began to fall and continued for about 15 minutes and then became rain. The police started picking us up, and dumping us in the gutters at the side of the road, which were flowing with rain, and then turned back to get more but they reckoned without the energy of the women who we immediately got up and went back and sat down again. This went on for about an hour, and the police - all 20 of them were busy picking up some 30 women and weren't getting anywhere they paused, looked around red faced with exertion and realised they’d got nowhere, and hadn’t a chance of removing all of us. Clearly they had orders not to arrest us all. So they gave it up. It was an amazing exercise in nonviolent resistance.’
Now that happened all the time. And it was about nonviolent resistance. We want the, we want the common back for us and we're going to do anything, anything we can to make life difficult for you. I felt very sorry for the police. Because they were the ones that had to do everything this side of the fence. The other side of the fence there were British officers and American officers. And they made absolutely sure we never saw or had close contact with any of the American officers, because they were terrified of an international incident if one of the American officers got too close to us. So most of the soldiers we saw on the other side, were British soldiers patrolling the fence just to keep an eye on us. And in fact once I- well often we would talk to them but once I talked to one of them said ‘Hey, how you doing?’ He said (whispers) ‘My mum's coming up for the demonstration this weekend.’ And I thought that was so, he was so sweet - he said ‘Really looking forward to seeing her’! (Laughs).
Another time I work in the middle of the night and I could hear rain - what I thought was rain pattering on the, on the top of my - I had a bender by then. We made benders with er, sticks that we found, or branches that we managed to bend, and then we put plastic over it - several layers of plastic. And then we put blankets on the inside, because if you were in there for any amount of time, condensation would start to drip on you. So it was to keep us dry. And then I heard a policeman this side saying to the soldier on the other side, telling him off roundly, because he was peeing on the benders. And often you would get this - that the police would actually stand up for us when we were asleep at night, because they were patrolling on this side of the fence. It was a very interesting dynamic. And if ever there was a big demonstration, the police would have to join hands on this side of the fence, and stand between us and the fence. So a lot of the actions that we took were at night, when there weren't people around, and no police.
[[So what do you think the police and the lawmakers learned from Greenham common? And perhaps reflected...|Diana Derioz So what do you think the police and the lawmakers learned from Greenham common? And perhaps reflected...]]
[[And what happened to you when you went to court? |Diana Derioz And what happened to you when you went to court?]]There weren't a lot of children there. I went up for long weekends - I went up Fridays. I drove up from here - it was about 2 hours to Greenham from here, to Newbury. So I would drive up on the Friday afternoon, because I was working - I had a knitwear business in the women's centre. And then we would camp overnight, and then we would do the demonstrations on the weekend, and then we'd come back on the Sunday evening.
And Fenella would sometimes go with me but not always. Sometimes she would stay with her dad, because it wasn't - you know, I mean, that was very rare for her to be there when it was that cold - all the winter demonstrations I did without her. And she came to a lot of the big ones, because some of them were great. I mean, we had a wonderful - um, a dragon, we called it dragon day, where we all sewed banners, and I’ve got pictures of them here. Sweet or knitted - I knitted my banner because I knitwear for the women for peace. And then we all went up with our banners. We spent the whole day sewing them all together until we made a long, long dragon. And that was taken in exhibition all around the country, which again, you see, we did some amazing actions.
And guess what, there were no press there that weekend, because it wasn't a violent protest - or it wasn't, there wasn't confrontation. They only came from the, for the protests when there was some form of confrontation. Which I thought was such a pity, because it was so creative and it was so beautiful - but it did go into the Carry Greenham Home video. Did you know about that?
[[Yes, I had heard about that.|Diana Derioz Yes, I had heard about that.]]
[[No, I dont know about that.|Diana Derioz Yes, I had heard about that.]]Peggy Seeger came down and sang the song that she written - Carry Greenham Home, which is wonderful. And Beeban Kidron was there. This was her first film. She was still student, I think. And she filmed her, and she filmed a lot. She was there when my mother was in court. And I spoke on camera at that point. And, er...
[[So your mother was with you at Greenham as well?|Diana Derioz So your mother was with you at Greenham as well?]]
[[How do you feel about the way Greenham is being represented in popular culture, in films, in books, in plays?|Diana Derioz So how do you feel about the way Greenham is being represented in popular culture, in films, in books, in plays?]]She, yeah, she came to all the major demonstrations with me. And then before I went to live there, this was. And then she was in court for dancing in the base. She climbed over the fence at night. We talked about this together, and because I had children, I couldn't afford to go to Holloway for - I think she went for 3 weeks in the end - 2 weeks? So we decided she would do it. I mean, she decided she would do it. We didn't, because I thought it could be really difficult. She was 63 at the time.
But she did it. I was there when - the night before she went. It was really interesting because she was really strong. And then that night we were sharing a room in in one of the supporters houses in Newbury, and she trod on her glasses and broke them, and she sat on the bed and cried, and it was because she suddenly realised she would have glasses that weren't functioning properly, um, for her time in prison, which could be really difficult. And in fact, we managed to mend them with sellotape.
[[Did you go and visit her in Holloway?|Diana Derioz And what was life like? Did you go and visit her in Holloway?]]
[[Do you talk with your children about Greenham?|Diana Derioz What kind of questions do they ask you when you're telling them the stories?]]I wasn't able to. My sister lived in London, and visited her and I've got - again I've got a letter from her here about her time in Holloway. And she did passive resistance while she was in prison, and got everyone very annoyed. All the women did while they were there.
[[May I see the letter, please?|Diana Derioz Would you like to share something...]]
[[Do you talk with your children about Greenham?|Diana Derioz What kind of questions do they ask you when you're telling them the stories?]]Yeah, of course..
(Diana hands you a newspaper cutting with a photograph and some text.)
[[(Look at the photograph)|Diana Derioz So your mother's name is?]]
[[(Look at the text)|Diana Derioz That's an interesting headline.]]My mother's name there - Bersha Heathcote (spelt phonetically). There's the women dancing on the base. So they climbed over the fence with blankets - over the barbed wire. That's my mother. And that's, that was them dancing on the bunkers at dawn inside the base. So they all went, and I can't remember how many were but you can see there there are quite a lot of them. 50? 80? And they all went into court on the same day.
[[Were they all sent to prison?|Diana Derioz Were they all sent to prison?]]
[[(Look at the text)|Diana Derioz That's an interesting headline.]]‘Gran’s Strip Ordeal’ - that was the local Herald Express. Which is what happened when she went into Hollo..into, into Greenham. And that’s my letter again. So that's a bit of her letter there where she says... oh, I can't really read it. Anyway, she, she demonstrated while she was in prison, she refused - she did passive resistance, she refused to be strip searched, and they made a huge fuss about it. And, you know, she said the whole thing about Holloway was humiliation. They worked on humiliating people. So that's why they would do strip searches, and they would regularly try and humiliate them.
So it was a horrid experience - it really was awful. And then I went to court for, as I say, cutting a hole in the fence. And that was something else I wanted to show you.
(Diana Derioz offers you some photographs and posters to look at..)
[[(Look at a photograph of a banner)|Diana Derioz Banner]]
[[(Look at a photograph of a courtroom)|Diana Derioz Courtroom]]
[[(Look at a photograph of a campsite)|Diana Derioz Bender]]They were all sent to prison. Yeah, it was the first big demonstration and the first time they got into the base in like that, and the first time they decided to make an example of them all. So Ursula had - a local paper wrote about her and she wrote a letter.
[[(Look at the text)|Diana Derioz That's an interesting headline.]]
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I went to court in in Totnes, because we made a point of bringing Greenham home, which was - that was our banner for the Totnes Women of Peace, for the for the dragon day.
[[(Look at a photograph of a courtroom)|Diana Derioz Courtroom]]
[[(Look at a photograph of a campsite)|Diana Derioz Bender]]
[[(Look at a poster for a demonstration)|Diana Derioz First demonstration]]That was our courtroom after my trial. So some people came down from Greenham, some women friends of mine came down from Greenham, and they sprayed ‘Greenham women everywhere’, ‘Bring Greenham home’, and ‘Take the toys from the boys’ all over the courthouse and it was there for a couple of weeks. And all the kids going to Keviccs, the comprehensive, had to walk past the courtroom, so we thought it was very good.
[[(Look at a photograph of a banner)|Diana Derioz Banner]]
[[(Look at a photograph of a campsite)|Diana Derioz Bender]]
[[(Look at a photograph of women joining hands)|Diana Derioz Arms Around The Base]]That was my bender. I called mine ‘Chez Moi’ - at home!
So they would get rid of them - every now and then they would come, and they would clear everything, and then they would - and so we'd have to start all over again. We started in tents and we ended in tents.
[[(Look at the photograph of a banner)|Diana Derioz Banner]]
[[(Look at the photograph of a courtroom)|Diana Derioz Courtroom]]
[[(Look at a poster for a creative action - bring mirrors to turn the base inside out, trees to plant, candles for silent vigil, and instruments for songs.)|Diana Derioz So that's a poster there saying bring mirrors to turn the base inside out. Trees to plant, candles for silent vigil, and instruments for songs.]]I was at Orange Gate. I started at Green Gate, but it was very damp - it was in the woods and I just thought no. I woke up one morning and the whole of my tent - I was covered, my feet were in a pool of water, it was too damp for me. They were very stalwartly, the Green Gate, and so I went to Orange Gate, and I was there, which was just one gate around from the Main Gate. The Main Gate was just full of reporters all the time, and I couldn't stand that.
[[How was your relationship with local residents?|Diana Derioz And so you’ve spoken about your relationship with the police. How about the relationship with the locals, with the local residents?]]
[[How were the daily activities at the camp organised, or at the gate? You know, who did the cooking?|Diana Derioz And so how were the daily activities at the camp organised, or at the gate? You know who did the cooking?]] ''"We are the Witches" from the Greenham Songbook, performed by Carolyn Francis.''
We are the witches who will never be burned,
We are the witches who have learned what it is to be free.
We will rise up from the flames,
Higher, higher and higher!
Fires strength we will reclaim
Higher, higher and higher
We are the witches who will never be burned
We are the witches who have learned what it is to be free.
The flames of love are burning bright,
Higher and higher and higher!
Flickering dancing in the night.
Higher and higher and Higher !
We are the witches who will never be burned
We are the witches who have learned what it is to be free.
Weave your power with the wind,
Higher and Higher and Higher!
We will change and we will spin.
Higher and Higher and Higher!
We are the witches who will never be burned
We are the witches who have learned what it is to be free.
Cleansing fire burns strong and sure,
Higher and Higher and Higher!
Consuming evil, making pure.
Higher and Higher and Higher!
We are the witches who will never be burned
We are the witches who have learned what it is to be free.
(Lyrics via Celia; May 2020-05-20 In the Ravnstrup Women's Peace Camp songbook. "We are the Witches" is dated Greenham 1983.. No information about author and composer.)
[[Sing another song.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
<audio src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/witches.mp3" autoplay>''"The Ballad of Freda Geese" by Christina Li.''
Don’t look there officer
You don’t have to know
What the women of Greenham do
Until we want you to
You armed yourself with geese
You kept them in a cage
You thought they’d be enough
To keep us at bay
Don’t show us where they are
Don’t forget when we’re enraged
We’ll open your fences
And break down the gates
Don’t look there officer
You don’t have to know
What the women of Greenham do
Until we want you to
We didn’t get the fruit we didn’t soak it in rum
We didn’t cut the fence so that the other group could run
We didn’t wrap the geese in a blanket for the wire
And we’re not distracting you
while they can run for the other side
Don’t look there officer
You don’t have to know
What the women of Greenham do
Until we want you to
Don’t look over there officer
You don’t have to see
The women are laughing and letting
The geese be free
Don’t look there officer
You don’t have to see
The birds flying and
And resting when they please
[[Sing another song.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
<audio src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/the-ballad-of-freda-geese.mp3" autoplay>''"Peace camp Newbury Berkshire" by the women of Greenham Peace Camp, performed by Jenny and Flo Crowe.''
[WARNING - EXPLICIT LYRICS]
What are the things that you hear the women say
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss is confidential -
I can't stand this bloody Smoke
pass the joint I want a toke
Who's that in the bushes, hope it is not a bloke
What's that on the road, has a reo dropped it's load
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
What are all the questions the visitors will ask
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss you'll surely ask -
How many of you are there here?
It is cold and are you queer?
Where do you get your water from
do you shit in the gorse, will you die for your cause
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
What are the things that the media will ask
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss they'll surely write -
How d' you make this sacrifice?
Can I talk to someone nice
How do you feel now that you are failed?
Would you pose by the gate
Hurry up it's getting late
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire.
What are the names that the vigilantes call us
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss they'll surely yell them -
Smelly counts and dirty hags
Doped up lesbians and slags
Communists and traitors to the flag
Queers and witches, dirty smelly bitches
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
What are the words you'll hear the nightwatch whisper
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss you'll her next morning -
What was the noise from in the base?
Should we wake them just in case
I shouln't tell you this but did you know ...
Have you seen any cubs?
It is time to wake them up
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
What are the mistakes that some visitors will make
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss you'll maybe make them -
Cooking bacon on the fire
Complaining that the weather's dire
Leaving bogroll everywhere
These are the mistakes that some visitors will make
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
What are the bugs they say Greenham women have
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss you'll surely catch them -
Herpes, crabs, and biting fleas
diahhoea up to your Knees
Trench mouth, small pox, veneral disease
ringworm, aids and scrabies, dysentery and rabies
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
What are the clothes you'll see the women wear
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss you'll never wear them -
Blankets being worn as coats
Longjohns, bells and jangling notes
dangling scarves and jumpers all smelling of wood smoke
muddy woally socks, sweaty welly boots and docs
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
What are the mumbles that you'll hear the Grannies say
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
I'll tell you some of those I know
and those I miss you'll have to shout them -
Wedge your zimmer in the gate
Do your knitting while you wait
Hand me those bolt cutters before it's too late
Wrap this shawl around my shoulders
I'll hide them from the soldiers
at the Peace Camp, Newbury, Berkshire
[[Sing another song.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
<audio src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/peacecamp-newbury-berkshire.mp3" autoplay>''"Like a Mountain / Can't Kill The Spirit" by Naomi Littlebear, covered by Christina Li.''
Nobody can push back an ocean
It’s gonna rise back up in waves
And nobody can stop the wind from blowing
Stop a mind from growing
Somebody may stop my voice from singing
But the song will live on and on
You can’t kill the spirit
She’s like a mountain
Old and strong
She lives on and on
Nobody can stop a woman from feeling
She has to rise up like the sun
Somebody may change the words we’re saying
But the truth will live on and on
You can’t kill the spirit
She’s like a mountain
Old and strong
She lives on and on
[[Sing another song.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
<audio src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/like-a-mountain.mp3" autoplay>''"We Are a Gentle Angry Women" by Holly Near, sung by Claire Ingleheart.''
We are a gentle angry women
and we're singing, singing for our lives.
We are a gentle angry women
and we're singing, singing for our lives.
We are the dreamers of new visions
We are dreaming for our lives.
We are the dreamers of new visions
We are dreaming for our lives.
We are the ones who cares for our children
and we're caring, caring for their lives.
We are the ones who cares for our children
and we're caring, caring for their lives.
[[Sing another song.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
<audio src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/we-are-a-gentle-angry-women.mp3" autoplay>We didn't see them. We didn't see them. Unless we did a demo - a march. I mean, I did a march from which started in Cornwall and went all the way to Greenham. And I did, I did bits of it. I did days here and there all the way up. And I did the last bit that went through, um not er - what’s it called again? I’ve lost its name, you know, anyway, the local town, and we were very unpopular. And we had marvellous supporters there - who made their houses available to us when we needed them, and gave us lots of support. But on the whole, the press was so awful. I mean, the press was just...
[[In what way were they awful?|Diana derioz In what way were they awful?]]
[[So how and why do you think the decision was taken for Greenham to become women only? |Diana Derioz So how and why do you think the decision was taken for Greenham to become women only?]]We spent a lot of time around fires - sitting around fires, but trying to avoid smoke - it was always smoky. So the smoke would come in your face, you would move, and then it would go ‘errrr’, and then it’d go in that face over there, so you can move back to there. I've never spent so long avoiding, trying to avoid smoke.
But conversations were absolutely wonderful. I've never taken part in so many creative conversations, you know - because women were from everywhere. We had American women, we had Australian women. We had local women. We had women from all over the country - like myself from Devon, and we talked about what was going on where we were and, and the kind of, and what our peace groups were doing, and our plans for the future. And any other protests we were doing at the same time. And also, um, we had the miners’ wives came down, because the strikes were happening, of course - that were coming to an end at that time. And that was amazing as well, because they said ‘You know, we thought it would be the worst thing in the world that the mines would be shut down, and of-course we were all oppose to Maggie Thatcher shutting down the mines.’ But in fact it was shitty work you know, it's the worst work you can do going down coal mines, and they said ‘It's changed our relationships with our husbands - they’re not exhausted and ill any more. They're helping in the house. They're, they're having a relationship with children.’ And ofcourse, what happened in the valleys - they became tourist places, they became green instead of being these coal tips, you know. And that was interesting seeing that change over happening, and talking about that with them.
So yeah, so we were round fires, we were sitting around fires we had, we had pits to go to the toilet, which were not good. And I think now you know, because I've lived in, in I lived in New Zealand for 7 years at the beginning of this century, and we, we were a solar powered community. And we had compost toilets, which were just amazing. You know, they had, we had bark mulch, it was never smelly, it rotted down, we did it in big blue bins, and you would fill the bin, and then you would put it aside. And then I think it was as much as a month later, you could put it over the trees, and it had all rotted down. I mean, and it made me really understand about compost toilets. Whereas all we had was this pit in the ground with a with a plank going across it, which was very, you know, very, we were all worried about falling into it.
And then the helicopters would come over at night often, and circle with their search lights - deliberately to humiliate us, and to wake us up if we were asleep.
[[What medical facilities were there at the camp?|Diana Derioz And so what medical facilities were there at the camp?]]
[[Were people very stressed with being disturbed at night, and not able to get their proper sleep? How did the community cope?|Diana Derioz I just wondered whether people were very stressed with being disturbed at night, and not being able to get their proper sleep because of the evictions, and just wondered how the community cope?]]Oh, they just said the most awful things about us. You know, they made up stories. They made out that we were, we were violent and we were everything - well, you know what social media's like now, although I don't take part in any of it, um it was like that - the press were like that, they were gutter press. They just told stories against us all the time. Obviously the papers like the Guardian that were very good, but, and they believed it, they believed a lot of it because - so every now and then they would come past the Main Gate, and they would throw their rubbish out, for instance, or they would throw bins out, or you know, um, which is a bit dispiriting.
But then we had this marvellous support from, from the peace groups all over the country that would descend with vans and cars, and anything they had - and they would just bring out everything they had. So they gave us sleeping bags, they gave us boots, they gave us clothes, they gave us waterproof, they gave us Gore-tex, Gore-tex sleeping bags, which were - you remember I said I, I woke up with my feet in water? Well, it was a Gore-tex sleeping bag, so my feet were in water, but they were warm. And that was the Gore-tex because it breathes, you see. And we couldn't have afforded those things. We didn't afford those things.
And I first ate Greek yogurt at Orange Gate, and I remember thinking this is divine. I’d never eaten it before - and that was a group that brought that, and then people would turn up, like Julie Christie turned up with a van from Wales, and full of goods for us and, and Tony Benn turned up several times, you know. A lot of politicians came down. Paul, Linda McCartney came down with a van as well. A lot of well known people that really supported us and that was, that was a wonderful, it kind of made up for the bad press, because they knew what we were doing, especially other women knew what we were doing, you know.
[[So how and why do you think the decision was taken for Greenham to become women only? |Diana Derioz So how and why do you think the decision was taken for Greenham to become women only?]]
[[So how do we get young people interested now, young women interested?|Diana Derioz So how do we get young people interested then, young women interested?]] Do you know, I haven't the faintest idea. I think probably if anything came up we went to the local doctors, and the local dentists. Must have been - I can't remember anyone getting hurt, or being ill. And of-course, I was only there for the weekend so I wouldn't - long weekends.
[[Were people very stressed with being disturbed at night, and not able to get their proper sleep? How did the community cope?|Diana Derioz I just wondered whether people were very stressed with being disturbed at night, and not being able to get their proper sleep because of the evictions, and just wondered how the community cope?]]
[[How was your relationship with local residents?|Diana Derioz And so you’ve spoken about your relationship with the police. How about the relationship with the locals, with the local residents?]]It was incredibly stressful at the Main Gate, because they had lots of press, so they also got the most, the most, um, what's the word, I can't find the word - but women that were a bit ‘eeeuughh’, you know, liked drama. So there was lots of drama going on at the Main Gate all the time. But you know, people who didn’t like it moved away to one of the other gates. On the whole the other gates - of-course there were the weekends, so there were the weekend demonstrations - the big ones, like the Arms around the Base, and the Black Cardigan and the Dragon. And there were many more.
But on the whole, we were women sitting around a fire, cooking food for each other, and telling stories, and singing songs, and it was fantastic.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]That was very early on. I think the march that took place coming down was mixed. And then they had a mixed camp for a short time. And then the men got very confrontational, and the women asked them to leave - is what I remember. I can't, you know, don't quote me on that. (Laughs). But that is what I remember is that the women said, ‘Look, why don't you go down to Portland Down?’ - where there was another camp, ‘And we'll make this a women only?’ And then it became women only from then on, and the Hands around the Base, I remember - which was the first really big demonstration, was women only. And from then on it was women only, so boys came to demonstrations. My younger son came to a couple. But on the whole, it was for that reason, it was because even though there was confrontation, there was far less - it was much more about passive resistance.
[[How have the experience at the camp changed your relationship with men or authority figures? |Diana Derioz And so how have the experience at the camp changed your relationship with men or authority figures?]]
[[So how do we get young people interested now, young women interested?|Diana Derioz So how do we get young people interested then, young women interested?]] Well, you know, I realised very early on - my mother was a pacifist all her life, and my father was in the army - the Indian Army, and then the Australian Army - because my mother was Australian. And they were always in conflict about that. And I thought, here I am, you know, supporting my mother on this side - the women, and there are soldiers on the other side - my father. And I thought that's really interesting.
So I think that was what part of my struggle was about, you know, the war. The way men go to war, the whole, the whole war effort, the whole fact that we could feed every child in the world if we weren't spending the money on arms. You know, I get really mad when I hear about things like cruise missiles. The money we put into armaments is just criminal. And, you know, I don't I don't need it. I don't understand it. I really believe in passive resistance. And even though people say ‘If it weren’t for the war, you know, we would..’, I think, well, you know, look, what Gandhi did with passive resistance, you know, he got the Empire out, it was amazing. And that's why Greenham worked as well, because it was passive resistance. It wouldn't have worked otherwise, I think.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]There hasn't been much - I've been amazed at how, you know, as women, we're not good at pushing ourselves. We're not good at making, I mean, that's changing - I really understand that. But we're not good at saying ‘Hey, look over here. There’s stuff going on over here’, you know, and I think that's why to a certain degree, it's, it has got buried - as you said there's hardly anything that's available. There aren't ongoing exhibitions, there aren't ongoing theatre performances - it’s quite amazing. And yet it worked. I mean, it worked. We got the American army out, you know, which is pretty extraordinary.
Of all the demonstrations that I ever did, and all the dozens of marches that I've done against GM, against, against climate change, against, and working for Amnesty International and sending endless emails to fascists all over the world - particularly to America, I often felt none of that did anything, you know, whereas Greenham, I had that sense of it worked, you know, it actually worked, and it was worth it. It was worth every minute. And it showed how passive resistance can work.
[[Why do you think it hasn't been reflected more in popular culture? |Diana Derioz So why do you think it hasn't been reflected more in popular culture?]]
[[So what else do you think needs to be done in order to see it represented accurately in popular culture?|Diana Derioz So what else do you think needs to be done in order to see it represented accurately in popular culture?]]It's hard to tell. I think the answer I already gave - that women haven't been really good at, at um - they hide their lights under bushels, you know? I think it must be that, because otherwise you would have thought it would be far more, far more um, I mean, Carry Greenham Home - I took the video round the whole of Devon and into Cornwall, to peace groups and showed it, and then we had discussions in the circle - talking about Greenham and what life was like there. And that was great, that went on - I did that for years after, after I'd been living there. And it was a way of keeping it alive. And having the video was fantastic for that. With all I mean, have you seen the video?
[[No, I haven't.|Diana Derioz Yes, I have.]]
[[Yes, I have.|Diana Derioz Yes, I have.]] It's very creative. You know, it's very exciting. And there's the music in it, and everything about it was very vibrant and very alive. And the peace groups used to think ah, at last - something is, something is changing here, you know?
[[So what else do you think needs to be done in order to see it represented accurately in popular culture?|Diana Derioz So what else do you think needs to be done in order to see it represented accurately in popular culture?]]
[[Why do you think it is that the Suffragist movement - um, young people seem to know about that, but not about the Greenham common women?|Diana Derioz So why do you think it is that the Suffragist movement - um, young people seem to know about that, but not about the Greenham common women?]]Well, I would love to see more books about it. I would love to see more, um, I would love to see a good film - other than Carry Greenham Home made about it, and I would really love to see a theatre piece. That's why I asked you right at the beginning ‘Are they going to do a theatre piece?’ I think it would make amazing theatre. You know, the whole, the quiet sitting around the fire, and the conversations that we had, and then, you know, the ‘Right we're up for another, you know, going through into the base, cut a hole and in we go’ - and then coming out and, and back to the fire again, cook another meal. You know? It was very interesting that contrast between the two all the time.
And we got press from all over the world. I mean, I remember being interviewed by East German, East German television, you know, and, and we had people from Russia. So it really did fire up the imagination of a lot of people - all these women's sitting in camps for years and years and years. It was an amazing thing to do.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Hhm, that’s an interesting question. I mean, we we talked when we set up the Women's Centre in Totnes, and it was the most successful Women's Centre of its time, because of the way we set it up. We set it up with a women's bookshop at the bottom, and workshops. I had - we had Greed Shoes, who was making shoes, and I had my knitwear business. And there was someone making smocks, Andrea making smocks, and we had a carpenter in there. And then the top we had meeting rooms, and in the back we set up a cafe, which interesting is a small French cafe now actually, in the centre of town, on the plains. And we thought we were you know, we were the first among the first feminists, even though we were reading all these feminist writers like Adrienne Rich, and wonderful, wonderful writers - Dale Spender. Um, and they all talked about how every time there was a movement, it came up, and then it was suppressed.
And then it had to start all over again. So we were constantly starting again - as if nothing had ever happened before. In fact, Dale Spender wrote a wonderful book saying ‘Women have ideas, and what men have done to them’. And it was all about women, women writers who were famous in their time. And then the minute they died, they were buried by male scholarship. I mean, it was really - well, we all know that now. I mean, Women's Hour now has constantly someone new who's just been discovered, who, who, who discovered something in her time, was a scientist, was an engineer, who was a this that and the other, and her brother took the credit - her husband took the credit, her son took the credit. There was always someone else that took the credit, or her partner took the credit. I mean, Marie Curie is one of the few, and that must have been because her husband allowed her to have the credit, you know, but it's quite extraordinary the way this has happened.
And of course, the reason the Suffragettes are so famous is because we didn't have the vote. We had no say, we had no power. And it's that sense of, of power that we got back at Greenham, I think. There was something else in your question that interests me that I haven’t addressed yet.
What was the rest of the question? Oh yes, young women, young people today, I mean, look what they're doing, you know - I was walking on Aldermaston marches, they're going on marches for for climate change, which I think is absolutely wonderful, and quite right, too, because when you're a teenager, you have lots of energy. You get the sense that you've got absolutely no power, you're told to do O’ Levels and A’Levels when you want to be doing dozens of other things, you know - expressing your life force. And climate change is a great thing for them. And the whole movement around guns in America, you know by those young schoolchildren who were so amazing. And again, you know what happened in New Zealand and the fact that they instantly changed their gun laws - I just thought that was so wonderful - I lived there for 7 years, so wonderful as an example to America who had, I mean, they have these school shootings every year, and sometimes twice a year. It is unbelievable.
If this was happening in England, I would have chained myself to the door at 10 Downing Street, I wouldn't allow it to happen. It is extraordinary. And what women have had to put up with over there, you know. There was a wonderful demonstration in America years ago, where women went to the Pentagon, and they brought baby shoes with them, and they put baby shoes all the way around the Pentagon, and it was to show how many children, and and tiny children - toddlers had been killed with guns, and it was an amazing demonstration. You don't hear about it nowadays - god.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]You know, I mean, the police were amazing. I have huge respect for the police still, they were amazing. They really were. I mean, but then I've never been black in London. I remember walking through I think it was Brixton in London with an Australian friend of mine from Greenham - we'd gone up for something. And a young black man was walking in front of us, and the police car stopped, two policemen got out and they started accosting him. And so we went, we carried on and we went up to them. We said ‘Excuse me. Why are you accosting this man?’ And they look very embarrassed, and they said, ‘We're just finding out...’ and they couldn't think of anything to say - they'd just seen a black man on the street, and they were, and he was young - it wasn't anything to do with knives or anything. They were just accosting him, stopping him, and they got back into the car and went away. And I've never been stopped and searched. And they didn't ask us to produce our credentials or anything. And I thought that's what life is like for our, our people on the streets. You know, it's extraordinary, really. Sorry, what was the question?
[[So what do you think the police and the lawmakers learned from Greenham?|Diana Derioz So what do you think the police and the lawmakers learned from Greenham? ]]
[[Sorry, I've forgotten too..|Diana Derioz]]But, there was one time when I was arrested by the police at Greenham, and it was the time in-fact that I was, that I went to court for - which was a friend of mine and I had, had done a hole in the fence. And then we were immediately arrested, and taken in the van and all the way to the station. The men in the van were laughing and joking about us, and saying ‘Eeurgh, isn't that an awful smell? What do you think it is? I don't know, but it's pretty...’ that kind of thing.
And I said, with my best English accent ‘Why do you think you're going to get away with this? How do you think - why do you think you can treat us like this and be this rude?’ And one of them said ‘We're SPG’, which was special, special police brigade or special, maybe SGP - I can’t remember, anyway something like that, but they were special forces. And they kept them away from Greenham as much as they could because they were such a violent, um I was going to say uneducated - I don't know if they were educated or not, but they were awful. They were truly awful, left such a bad taste in my mouth. It was just awful.
I complained, I put in an official complaint, but of course, I don't think it went anywhere. But it was the only time in all those years that I was treated with total disrespect, you know, and, um, and I felt often that there were police that had daughters and mothers and sisters that were there, you know, and that many of them were sympathetic. Like that policeman who spoke up about that man peeing on my bender. You know, that was lovely. I remember going back to sleep feeling safe. And that was really nice.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]At first we all went to court in Newbury, and then they got overloaded. And we asked at the same time, if we could go to court in our local boroughs, because we wanted to bring it back, so it would be - so that I wouldn't be tried over there, I'd be tried in Totnes. And so local people came and protested, the local peace group came, the courtroom was full. They heard my speech - because we always stood up and gave speech about peace. And then I was, I was given a fine, which I refused to pay. And then I would have gone to prison, but the local peace group said ‘Look, you know, you can't afford to go to prison with your kids. So why don't we pay for you?’ and I paid with a cheque on a piece of wood this big - about 3’ long, and the cheque, I just painted the whole check, as it would look. And it's perfectly legal, and handed it over to the police when they came to get it. So I don't know how they cashed it, goodness knows.
[[how much was the fine?|Diana Derioz But how much was the fine?]]
[[That’s a good story.|Diana Derioz That’s a good story.]]I can’t remember. It wasn't a lot. It wasn't a lot, maybe £125, something like that. I don’t know.
[[So you painted a cheque on a piece of wood?|Diana Derioz So you painted a cheque on a piece of wood?]]
[[But in those days, it would have been quite a lot of money to find? |Diana Derioz But in those days, it would have been quite a lot of money to find?]]Yeah, it was a way of protesting to the end, you know.
[[And presumably it was cashed?|Diana Derioz And presumably it was cashed?]]
[[That’s a good story.|Diana Derioz That’s a good story.]]Yes.
[[So you painted a cheque on a piece of wood?|Diana Derioz So you painted a cheque on a piece of wood?]]
[[And presumably it was cashed?|Diana Derioz And presumably it was cashed?]]Oh, I'm sure they cashed it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, otherwise they would come back again.
[[That’s a good story.|Diana Derioz That’s a good story.]]
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]I know. There were lots of things like that!
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It was always, I mean, most of it was women getting together and acting on consensus. It was always consensus, as far as I could see. I mean, I do remember going to meeting at the Main Gate about a demonstration that was going to happen that day. And one of the women there said, ‘There aren't any women, there aren’t any local women here, you know, what's going on?’ And another woman who I knew a little and really liked, she said ‘You don't understand, you know, every woman here is here because she believes in Greenham, you know, whatever, wherever she comes from, or whoever she is’. And that was lovely, because you would often get this sense of, um, that there were people who lived there all the time, and then there people like me who were part time, and then there were people who came on the big demonstration - as far as I can said was concerned everyone makes sacrifices, you know, it was difficult for everyone. And for a lot of people who lived there all the time it became a way of life.
That was their life. It wasn't, it wasn't as if they were giving up an awful lot - although I'm sure some of them were. But that sense of belonging to your gate was really lovely. So we would get together and decide what we were going to do that weekend. And if there was a big demonstration, whether we were going to go on it or not, whether it was going to take part in all the gates or not. Um, and I love that - I love the consensus. I mean, I was already part of the Women's Centre where we did everything by consensus.
[[And so it was a very effective method?|Diana Derioz And so it was a very effective method?]]
[[Can you tell me more about consensus?|So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and today?she interrupts]]Very effective, incredibly effective. I don't remember ever having situation where there was anything that was unresolved - we always managed to resolve what needed resolving. It was really great. I still believe in consensus - takes longer, it does to take longer consensus, because you've got to get everyone's agreement.
[[Can you tell me more about consensus?|So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and today?she interrupts]]
[[So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and now?|Diana Derioz So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and now?]]When I lived in um, New Zealand they have MMP, which is proportional representation. And their Green Party not only had 7 members in Parliament because I've always been Green. But as well as that our local MP was Jeanette Fitzsimons, who was head, who was co head of the Green Party. They did what the Greens in Germany do, which is one male, one female - always, they always have two, a couple who are heading the party, which is what I think Labour should do. I think it'd be absolutely great if they had a man and a woman.
Anyway, so whenever there was an issue that was important to me, like GM food, which by the way they completely banned - any seeds, any anything in New Zealand, nuclear power - completely banned, and they've banned all American submarines and, and ships from fuelling in New Zealand. They have huge policy on safe waters around a no fishing area, because they've got a lot of unusual dolphins and whales. And whenever there was an issue that affected me, there was always someone who stood up in Parliament and spoke for me. Do you know, in all my years living here in Devon, I had never experienced that - because our local MP is Conservative. I voted Labour sometimes, Green always, and never got the sense of being heard in, in Parliament because it was a - and same now, we have a Conservative well actually she just left the Conservative party, but she's very conservative.
And I'm very much in favour of MMP - proportional representation - it means everyone feels represented, you know, even if you've got a right wing, you know, um, a Nigel Farage party - a UKIP member in there, it’s only one or two you never, it’ll never be more. And, you know, even UKIP supporters have a right to be supported, you know. So I just um, want to say I think, I think that's really important. I think that way of living, and that way of working is really important for government, but of-course they don't like it, because they have to talk about things more. And they, and they don't have that sense of confrontation to the same degree. I mean, you must have listened to Parliament. I mean, they just yell at each other, and they just go ‘Boo boo’, or ‘Yeah, yeah’. And they talk through each other, it’s like a boys club. It sounds awful. And I just think we've got to get equal representation.
[[And how do you think we'll get that?|Diana Derioz And how do you think we'll get that?]]
[[So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and now?|Diana Derioz So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and now?]]
I think the more women there are in Parliament, the more likely we are to get MMP, to get proportional representation. We've just got to keep pushing for women. You know, even, even though we've only got a Conservative MP, she is a woman and I'm glad about that, you know, I’ve forgotten her name temporarily, you know. But she's very vocal. She's an ex GP. And she talks on National Health, but the trouble is, aargh, she's, a Conservative! She could be doing doing such wonderful things with National Health, you know?
[[So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and now?|Diana Derioz So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and now?]]
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Well, you know, there was a group that came down to talk at our Women's Centre. No, I think it was in Plymouth, and a lot of us from the Women's Centre went there. And they call themselves The 300 Group and it was run by, and again, I'm having a senior moment. I can't remember names. But anyway, she's still a member of Parliament. She's great. And she had set up this group.
And she was going around the country, and was called The 300 Group, because 300 would have been half the amount - there was 600 MPs then. And we still got, I think it's 45 out of 645, or something like that, are women. I mean, we are very low, as you probably know. And she was going around the country trying to encourage women to stand for their local, local, to, local MPs. And a friend of mine stood as Green for several years. She was great. She never got elected, but she was great. So we've got to do more of that.
My children are very aware, and, and my grandson will be very aware of all of this, you know, because I talk about it a lot with them. And, and that is lovely - knowing that it's going to pass down, and knowing that they they're all really aware of all the issues that are important. You know?
I did a lovely trip with my son down to, down to South of France to visit his dad a couple of years ago, and we talked all the way. And it was just lovely because he asked me all those questions - he asked me about my mum, and her actions, and about my actions. And I know my mum loved the fact that I was going on all the actions, and that I would carry on that work after her, you know. And in fact, after she went to prison, she didn't go up much anymore. And it was me going part time. But of course I fed it into her all the time. So that thing of passing it down from mother to daughter I think is incredibly important.
[[And to grandchildren? |Diana Derioz And to grandchildren?]]
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]And to grandchildren. Yes, very important. Because it went on for a long time, and in the end, you know, at the end of it, it was very quiet. We didn't have a big reunion - which we should have, and walk on the - we should have walked on the common together. And I think I might even have been abroad when that happened. But it was many years later.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Hhm. The impact has definitely lessened over the years, but I carried on, I always carried on it. I did a lot of local actions. We did - we had someone, a teenager locally who died of toxic shock syndrome. And they were linking it then to tampons. So our, our Women's Centre went into chemists and put on the side little stickers on all the tampon packets saying ‘This can cause toxic shock syndrome’, because there was an additive - not only were they not cotton, they were other things. But they had an additive they’d put into tampons, to make them more absorbent, and they believed that it was that - so if women didn't change a tampon, they had a chance of going into toxic shock syndrome, which was a fever that killed you. That worked: they changed it. I mean, I don't know if that worked, but women were doing it all over the country. So I think what did it was that.
Another thing was we heard that, I heard that the local barber under the Civic Hall in Totnes was giving away - is this okay? Are we okay with time?
[[Yes, please tell me more..|Diana Derioz So how did your Greenham experience impact on your personal life then, and now?2]]
[[I need to speak with someone else before I run out of time|Campfire]]The local barber under the Civic Hall in Totnes was renting out porn videos, but hardcore porn videos to his clients. He was a barber. And so we, a Greenham friend of mine, Miranda, and I went late at night at about midnight with pots of paint - white paint, and we - did we spray, or did we paint? I think we painted the local video shops, the front windows and the barbers on on the pavement in front, saying ‘Porn is sold here’. Or ‘Porn is rented here’ - for the video shops. And the next day there was a huge fuss about it, and one of the local - the owner of the top video shop said ‘Great, great, great publicity - I'm going to rent twice as much out tonight.’ And of course they didn't have hard porn - they had very soft porn. And the barbers had a visit from the police that very day, and he was closed down. So they must have found the videos. So again, we really kind of ‘Yay, that worked!’
And then I belonged to Amnesty International for many years, and did urgent action which is sending videos, um, which is sending emails to - to help people who are prisoners of conscience, and to I mean, I sent a lot to the governor of Texas because of-course, there were young black men on, on, on death row all the time. And they - and Texas is one of the main states in America that just got rid of them all. Didn't, didn't pardon any of them. The governor never pardoned anyone, of-course the governor at that time was brother to George Bush, Jeb Bush, I think he was called.
And then one day I realised that actually, and I was also raising money by going - putting things in cafes to get money for them. But then one day, I realised that actually I was writing to fascists. I was writing these heartfelt emails to fascists. Again I didn't feel I was doing much good, although I think Amnesty International is wonderful.
So I've carried on doing that kind of work, you know. Went around all the greengrocers in Totnes to ask them not to stock South African food - fruit and veg. And that worked - all of them except one at the very top of town stopped stocking any fruit and veg from South Africa. So that was good. And Ruth and I, Ruth was my friend who was South African, she had a stall every, every Friday on the market, which was, you know, which I helped with occasionally. She's now back in South Africa - I miss her.
So there are a lot of things like that, that we constantly - it’s probably a lot more than I've forgotten about. But it's just a way of life, in a way - protest. You know? I write letters now I write letters online. You know whenever there's anything I don't like, I'll just write a letter about it to someone. I mean I'm really worried about Palestine, it's getting worse and worse, and the fact that Netanyahu’s got back in, and and that he's going to legalise the, the, the settlements is such bad news. I mean basically they're raising Palestine. I saw a demonstration last year, and there - it was in the streets of the Israelis, and an Israeli was asked question, and he said ‘Palestine? Palestinians? Who's that? What's that? No such a place, no such a people.’ And I thought, oh my god, they just erasing the name, and they're erasing the people completely. It really is, you know, not only apartheid, but genocide. It is just appalling. So yeah, that's - I give a lot of energy to that.
There's always something isn't there?
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]That was the first - the poster about the information about the first demonstration around the base, with all the gates around the base. And that was on the 21st of March 1982.
They all had different - at first they all had different, like Green Gate, I think was the women's gate. Main Gate was main gate, but all the other gates had different, and then they just got called by name - by colours.
[[Yeah, so the Artists’ Gate - that will be poets, painters, dancers, actors?| Yeah, so the Artists’ Gate - that will be poets, painters, dancers, actors?]]
[[(Read the poster headline): ‘In the evening a blockade of the base is planned for a maximum of 24 hours. This will probably take the form of women being chained to each, and to the gates, with a minimum of 20 at each gate’.|Diana Derioz ‘In the evening a blockade of the base is planned for a maximum of 24 hours. This will probably take the form of women being chained to each, and to the gates, with a minimum of 20 at each gate’.]] Yeah. It’s a lovely idea.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]That’s right. Yeah. (Laughs). There you go - ‘Greenham common women's peace camp - an international action’.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]Arms around the Base. That was wonderful. When they actually said ‘They've joined hands, they're going all the way around. That's it. We've done it.’ I mean, that was a lot of women. Look how many women in that small stretch. There were thousands of women there that day.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]It was always very creative. I mean, the fence got covered in people's - especially that day when all the women came - but we were constantly making webs and making little tapestries from what bits of wool, and leave, and people love photos, dolls, teddy bears all sorts.
[[Thank Diana Derioz and speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]What would you like to ask Alison Napier?
[[Would you start by telling me why you went to Greenham, and I suppose what your arrival there was like - how you got there?|Alison Napier Would you start by telling me why you went to Greenham, and I suppose what your arrival there was like - how you got there?]]
[[Can you tell me about Non Violent Direct Action?|Alison Napier I would never stand up in a court of law and say ‘I was zapped in 1983 by the US Airforce, therefore, you know, I’m not very well’. But it was very shocking, covert aggression towards what was a peaceful protest. Um, so those were things that the state from both sides of the Atlantic were doing.]]Well I was living in um, Aberdeen at the time, which is 530 miles from Greenham, and I was a student. And um, I kind of went to Greenham by accident. And I was studying sociology, and that was my introduction to politics, and through politics that was my introduction to feminism, and through feminism that was my introduction to coming out as a lesbian. And that was my introduction to just meeting loads and loads of interesting women who went horse riding and joined the Tory party and that kind of thing.
So I was kind of around the Women’s Action group and Lesbian’s group and fellow students, other women who weren’t students in Aberdeen - probably from Lesbian’s Group, actually because that was a pan-Aberdeen group, you didn’t have to be a student. So that made it more community based, I guessed. And I hadn’t really consciously heard of Greenham, but I was known as somebody who had a minibus license, and I occasionally drove groups of youngsters up and down Scotland to community centres and that kind of thing, and so somebody I knew approached me and said ‘A few of us are going to go down to Greenham, would you drive our minibus for us?’ And I had to ask what Greenham was, and where it was, and discovered where it was. So that was kind of how I first found myself going to Greenham.
I wasn’t involved in peace groups particularly, um, I went with a group of like-minded women who needed a minibus driver, and it probably wasn’t quite as divorced form the proceedings as that makes it sound, because we all had a lot in common, and you know learnt about what was going on, but my politics weren’t really peace politics, they were probably angry feminist politics that hadn’t quite morphed into peace politics yet. So that was how I first went to Greenham - by sharing the driving of the minibus, overnight from Aberdeen, for 530miles, to Greenham, and arriving sort of in the morning some time, having stopped at Southwaite services for a banana and a plate of chips - that sort of thing.
And just this disparate group of women, and maybe a couple of kids arrived at Greenham, and were instantly made welcome and that was a major turning point in my life I would say. Suddenly there were loads and loads of women with values that you just couldn’t disagree with. And I learnt so much, I think about the state of the world, generally - a huge subject, and nuclear weapons and England, nuclear weapons and Scotland - which is a different situation, but no less toxic. Although I think we’re quite keen to get rid of ours, but England doesn’t want them. But we won’t go down that route (laughs), that’s a whole other subject. So yes, that’s how I first went to Greenham, I had a minibus license and they needed a minibus driver.
[[Which gate did you arrive at, do you remember?|Alison Napier So which gate did you arrive at, do you remember?]]
[[How did you find people’s reactions to Greenham? Did your family and friends support you at the time? Or did you come up against resistance from people you knew?|Alison Napier How have you found, how did you find people’s reactions to Greenham? Did your family and friends support you at the time? Or did you come up against resistance frpm people you knew? ]]We arrived at Yellow Gate. Which I think was called the Main Gate, but they didn’t want to distinguish them necessarily between main and lesser, so yes, Yellow Gate, um, and I can’t remember if we went for a specific event or action, um, but it probably was, given that it had been organised - a trip down from Aberdeen for 530 miles, she said again. But my recollection of the very first time we went is blurred into recollections of loads and loads of the other times we went. But the thing I remember from all of those visits - certainly from Yellow Gate was women round the fire, just shoo-ggling up to make space for whoever has arrived, the kettle going on and you know the mugs get rinsed with a bit of water from the kettle, and tea is dispensed, and ‘Where are you from?’ And just really friendly.
[[How often did you end up going then, did you stay over or did you just visit?|Alison Napier How often did you end up going then, did you stay over or did you just visit?]]
[[What was day to day life at Greenham like, what were the day to day interactions with other women like?|Alison Napier the day to day dynamics were, basically? Sort of, what day to day life was like, and what the day to day interactions with other women would have been like?]]
[[Did you always go to Yellow Gate, or did you move around?|Alison Napier Good. So I wanted to just - I was thinking about you talking about the way Greenham could absorb differences of opinion because of its breadth, really, and its diversity and its - I was thinking about the different gates. Did you have much experience, because they all seem to have different personalities, did you always go to Yellow Gate, or did you move around?]] When we were doing weekend trips down from Aberdeen, we would just be staying a couple of nights. After I finished at university I went down many more times and stayed for much longer - stayed for, probably the longest I stayed was two or three weeks maybe, and then got caught up in court cases, and prison and things like that.
[[Did you go to prison?|Alison Napier Did you go to prison?]]
[[Did the authorities behave responsibly? Did you feel like in general there was a sort of hands-off approach, or a limit?|Alison Napier That’s amazing. Is there anything that - we’ve heard different stories from some women that the police, and the army - in-particular the American army did - that were frightening. Did you feel there was some people that could act more off-grid, in a sense and be more frightening, or did you feel like in general there was a sort of hands-off approach, or a limit?]] Well, almost. Because the prison was actually full - Holloway was full of Greenham women, it was fab. And um, so when me and the little cohort that I was with were sentenced to seven days for non-payment of fine for, I think that was trespass, yes that was the trespass, um, they had to hold us in the cells underneath Newbury police station. Which is actually illegal, um it’s not meant to be used as detention, so it was a small cell, um with nothing in it other than a big, a small kind of bottle glass strip of window at the top, and a bed about half the width of what I’m sitting on just now.
[[And how long were you in there for?|Alison Napier And how long were you in there for?]]
[[[[That’s like solitary.|Alison Napier That’s like five days in solitary.]]Um, well we got out after five days for good behaviour - there wasn’t really a lot we could do to be bad! (Laughs). But er, small confined space by yourself.
[[That’s like five days in solitary.|Alison Napier That’s like five days in solitary.]]
[[You know the idea of the non-payment of fines, can you tell me a bit more about that - was that a definite policy at Greenham? How did you come to reach decisions like that?|Alison Napier You know the idea of the non-payment of fines, can you tell us a bit more about that - because that was a definite policy wasn’t it, at Greenham?]] It was five days in solitary, it was 23 and half hours in solitary - we got out for half an hour and we were allowed to walk round this yard thing, which was really bizarre, it was like something out of a film. I knew I was - I’d taken a book with me, I knew I was going to prison, I had no intention of paying this fine. Um, and you know, it’s a whole thing - take your shoe laces away and that kind of stuff.
But one of the things I do remember was loads of other Greenham women who knew, obviously, who was in prison at any given time, and they would stand outside on the pavement, because we were at a basement level, which is why the glass window - it’s a bit like Oscar Wilde, the tiny little patch of blue that prisoners call the sky, or something like that, so that bit of glass was at foot level if you’re on the pavement outside.
So the women outside would be singing songs round and round Newbury police station, and it was just fab, it was just astonishing. It was quite amazing.
[[That’s lovely.|Alison Napier That’s lovely.]]
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]It was. And I’d taken Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook with me to read, which is really, really big and thick.
[[That’s perfect.|Ailsa Napier That’s perfect.]]
[[Yeah, that’s a keeper that one, isn’t it.|Ailsa Napier Yeah, that’s a keeper that one, isn’t it.]]
[[Did you read it?|Alison Napier Doris Lessing]]I thought that’ll keep me going (laughs).
[[Yeah, that’s a keeper that one, isn’t it.|Ailsa Napier Yeah, that’s a keeper that one, isn’t it.]]
[[What took you away from Greenham? After - when did you stop going eventually, what happened?|Alison Napier what took you away from Greenham? After - when did you stop going eventually, what happened?]]So um, yes, so that was my experience of prison. And it was illegal, and of-course the press weren’t interested in its illegality, but the only paper that took it up, because it wasn’t just me, there were quite a few of us, being sometimes held in those conditions, um The Morning Star took it up as a cause. I don’t know that it got terribly far, but at-least it was publicised that we were being held illegally. It wasn’t a cause I wanted to rescue, because I felt there were a whole range of things that were illegal that were going on - being held in a police cell for five days didn’t really seem top of the agenda. But um no, it was just one more thing wasn’t it.
[[What took you away from Greenham? After - when did you stop going eventually, what happened?|Alison Napier what took you away from Greenham? After - when did you stop going eventually, what happened?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Well that’s a very interesting thing isn’t it, because there was no committees and nobody came and said ‘Well we’re meeting in 20 minutes, and this is the agenda, have a quick look at it, and Amber will be taking the minutes’. It was never like that. I don’t know how it was agreed. Maybe it was osmosis, maybe everybody just happened to be absolutely clear that this is what they were going to do, but then some people did pay fines.
I mean I didn’t have four kids at home and a mortgage, so I was in a position to take this as far as I could, and I think for me, and for an awful lot of other women, it was actually a very, very empowering thing to do. Because you've done something that you’ve been told, from being a kid, you’ve done something you’ve been told is bad, and you’re told what your punishment is, and you say ‘No’ and so they take it to the next level, they say ‘Well, we wanted you to plead guilty, but you’ve pleaded not-guilty, so now we’re going to, you know, charge you and give you a punishment’, and they say what you have to do now is pay a fifty pound fine’, and you say ‘No’, and everyone’s going, the magistrate’s going ‘Oh, shocking, shocking’, and um it’s like you just stand up for what you know is right, to what is effectively the state, and in this country that is all the state will do to you - they will, um, try to take your money, and you say ‘No’, so then they say they’ll take your liberty, and you say ‘Well, okay’, and they’re sort of, who’s won there? It’s an incredibly empowering thing.
[[You’re sort of taking their money too, if they have to incarcerate you?|Alison Napier And you’re sort of taking their money, if they have to incarcerate you.]]
[[Good point.|Alison Napier Good point.]]Yeah, the taxes that we all ended up paying.
[[Good point.|Alison Napier Good point.]]
[[That sounds very empowering.|Alison Napier That sounds very empowering.]]But to feel that you can just not be cowed by what the state is telling you to do. You’ve already broken the law, whatever you think of the law, you’ve broken the law. And to realise that you can break a bad law, and retain your power, I suppose, um, and say ‘Well okay, you’ve done you worst in this country - you put me in a box for five days, and then I came out of the box, and I did it all again.’ There’s a terribly overused word - empowering, but it was very empowering.
[[That sounds very empowering.|Alison Napier That sounds very empowering.]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]
It’s like nothing the state can do can ever actually frighten you again.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]There was no limit at all - the local police were very rapidly out of their depth, and they brought in the Met, and they had the, um, their shoulder number badges covered so that you couldn’t identify them. They came in on horses when we were all siting down doing non-violent direct action, really, we were sitting in the road, and they galloped their absolutely massive, massive horses towards us, and then they would scream to a halt like that, about that far away from you. Very, very frightening. So I don’t think that was, what don’t I think that was? I don’t think that was a good thing for them to be doing.
And they were violent, they were violent, and they could be violent because we had no means of identifying them, and of-course this is all pre-mobile phone days. Sometimes wonder what it would be like if everybody was filming things on the phones and taking pictures of people, um, there probably would have been far more comeback - I hope there would be far more comeback. But I would be very surprised, I have absolutely no idea, but I would be very surprised if any police officers were ever reprimanded for excessive aggression and violence towards a group of women that were sitting in the road. But they were very rough, and they pulled women very roughly. They pulled women by their earnings, which gave me a real shudder - I don’t wear earrings, but the horror of pierced ears, and that was awful to see. So that was our British police.
British army I don’t recall being very much in evidence. The American army or airforce people at the other side of the fence, some of them looked about 7 years old - clearly they weren’t, but they seemed terribly young and fresh faced and ‘This isn’t what I joined up for’, to be on the other side of a razor wire fence looking at thousands of women who are just singing songs at me, you know it’s probably much more threatening having that than having to challenge their own idea of why they were there, and what they were doing, and what they were guarding, and why they were actually guarding this, and then suddenly it being noon, everyone’s saluting and there’s little trumpets playing somewhere. Utterly bizarre.
But in terms of what they actually did, and the fact, Susan my - Susan said to mention this, there was a lot of talk of ‘zapping’ - I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned ‘zapping’ to you? Obviously it’s something else that’s utterly unprovable probably, but a lot of women became quite unwell.
[[What is zapping?|Alison Napier Tell us what that is a bit more, because I’ve read about it...]]
[[Can you tell me about the evictions?|Alison Napier Can you talk us through what the process was then - of being evicted?]]It may have been sort of like radio waves that they were just sending out, and I think recently - in the past few months the Americans based in Cuba have been complaining that everybody in the embassy in Cuba seems to have been going down with - and so they’re blaming the Cubans for zapping them, but er, so, I don’t know how that could be clarified. But very often people became inexplicably unwell. Um, and I’m at a curious point in my life, I was diagnosed with cancer 3 years ago, then it went away, and now it’s come back.
[[I'm sorry to hear that.|Alison Napier I'm sorry to hear that.]]
[[I'm sorry. There is just so much we don't know.|Alison Napier Gosh yes.]]Yeah, non-violent direct action - I hadn’t heard of non-violent direct action either, and some people were a bit sort of sniffy about it I think, because - I’m not quite sure, it was difficult, I think it was equated with ‘Let’s change the world by writing letters to our local councillors’ or something like that. It was seen as something you shouldn’t really need to have to do, but I think that was maybe later. But we did do, not proper workshops in Aberdeen about it, but just little practicings - the main thing I remember about it was just not to resist so you become a dead weight.
[[So you relax your body?|Alison Napier So you relax your body?]]
[[Ah okay. So practically it feels quite hard to move you.|Alison Napier Ah okay. So practically it feels quite hard to move you.]]Yeah. And then you become a dead weight.
[[Ah okay. So practically it feels quite hard to move you.|Alison Napier Ah okay. So practically it feels quite hard to move you.]]
[[Did this surprise the police, did the first few times it must have happened, they must have been like ‘What are you all doing’?|Alison Napier Did this surprise the police, did the first few times it must have happened, they must have been like ‘What are you all doing’?]]So the police have to drag you, they’ve got you underneath your shoulders, your arm pits, and they just have to pull you, and you’re incredibly heavy.
[[Did this surprise the police, did the first few times it must have happened, they must have been like ‘What are you all doing’?|Alison Napier Did this surprise the police, did the first few times it must have happened, they must have been like ‘What are you all doing’?]]
[[Did you train each other? How did you get trained?|Alison Napier Did you train each other? How did you get trained?]]Yes, and if they released you a little bit, then you just flopped back down again, and also women would be linking arms. Now I don’t know, maybe I had the top of the range training in NVDA, or not, if such a thing exists, er I think we were kind of, sort of making it up as were went along.
We knew that we weren’t going to be violent or fighting back, or resisting arrest, because we knew that we probably would be arrested, and it was made quite clear, or we made it quite clear to each other - this is probably speaking about the Aberdeen contingent again, that arrest was very probable, and if you weren’t wanting - nobody wants to be arrested - but if you wanted to avoid being arrested, that was absolutely fine. So it was really important that you take steps to not be in the position where you might be arrested.
And there was no hierarchy amongst that, there was no ‘Look at us, we’re big and brave and tough, and we do’t mind being arrested’, it was just very clear that everybody was at different points in their lives. I mean if you’re a mum you can’t be arrested, if you’re a single parent you can’t be arrested. Um if you’re particular jobs, you can’t be arrested. So I think our NVDA training was quite ad hoc.
[[Did you train each other? How did you get trained?|Alison Napier Did you train each other? How did you get trained?]]
[[Can you tell me a bit about the legacy of Greenham in your life?|Alison Napier what’s the legacy of Greenham in your - the rest of your life?]]Well I think um, do you know I can’t even quite remember that. We may have done it in a group - I can’t tell you who organised it, it wasn’t me that organised it, um, we maybe spoke about it on the minibus going down. Had a chat at Southwaite Services. I honestly can’t remember. Maybe people at the camp were speaking about it.
[[So it’s much more of a collective oral, um, information swap? Rather than a formalised or a written...|Alison Napier Rather than a formalised or a written...]]
Yes, and I think a lack of things being formalised was one of the huge aspects of it for me, and I, at the risk of sounding like an ancient, cynical, geriatric, you can sometimes hear about maybe other little protests that people are trying to do now - because people are much more frightened now, that’s my sense - I might be wrong, and just a bit more fearful of breaking the rules, um, but can be very organised in terms of planning where their protest is going to be and how it’s going to be run, but there was nothing like that. I mean, and yet hundreds and thousands or women all arrived in the same small corner of Berkshire. We didn’t even have email. It was quite, quite incredible.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think it was very easy to ridicule Greenham at the time. I’ve always been interested in what the press does, and the press was shameful. The press is still shameful, but the press was shameful in the fact - occasionally we’d get dramatic photographs, like a million women embracing the base - that’d be a dramatic photograph, but in terms of the issues - it’s just the same now, the press want the dramatic photograph, but the issues are ‘That’s a bit boring, nobody’s interested in that - we want to see the dramatic pictures, or the dramatic headlines’. Um I remember the Daily Mail had a dramatic headline which went something like ‘Wooly headed, woolly hatted, lentil eating lesbians’, and I quite liked the alliteration in that, I thought that was quite a good headline. In terms of the truth, it wasn’t technically wrong, I guess, maybe the ‘wooly-headed’ was a bit unfortunate, but everything else in it was true, I guess.
But there was no discussion about the issues, but this was the 1980s, and we were in Mrs Thatcher time, um, and the mines were being shut down, and poll tax had come into Scotland to see if we liked it, which ofcourse we didn’t. And it was a very oppressive anti-... just anti-humanity time, it was a very cruel time, I think.
[[There doesn’t seem to a be a lot of national recognition of Greenham, historically. I wonder if that’s in part deliberate, because it’s such a dangerous thing to learn about in a way?|Alison Napier I wondered if that’s in part deliberate, because it’s such a dangerous thing to learn about in a way because it gives you...?]]
[[Could you imagine Greenham happening now?|Alison Napier Does that mean it couldn’t be reproduced do you think? Make it hard to replicate? Could you imagine it now?]]
I think it is a dangerous thing to learn about. I think also the fact that it was such a nebulous, or it wasn’t organisation, there wasn’t a leader, there wasn’t a website - partly because such things didn’t exist anyway, but there wasn’t one newsletter necessarily that was going out. So the press didn’t know who to speak to. If they wanted to speak to somebody they would turn up at the gate and whoever was there would speak to them, and it might be a radical-lesbian-anarchist-pacifist-separatist, or it might be somebody who was wanting to stand for the Labour Party in the next council elections. It could be anybody, so they had such a wide range of, of, I guess soundbites coming at them - the press. And they would choose the most extreme as well - it’s like in any photographs of a demonstration.
Even today - the camera will go onto the person who's got half a head of green hair and fifty thousand tattoos, they won’t show the mass of ordinary - whatever that means - people who have also come on the demonstration, and you’re already, you’re othering it, you’re making it something that isn’t what ordinary people who are watching televisions would even consider going on. Um, it’s quite interesting - a slight diversion, but in Scotland I am one of many, many people who would really like Scotland to be an independent country, and there are an awful lot of marches happening for independence. There isn’t one person organising it.
But there’s a sort of collective group of people who are organising it. I’m not involved in it, but I’ve been on a couple of the marches, and they’re incredibly good humoured and they - they will get one photograph of a great extreme of blue and white flags going up the main drag in Edinburgh or wherever, um, and the issues don’t really get discussed, and I’m seeing parallels, I think - I see parallels. So I think coming back to your question, I think the media has a lot to answer for, but I think in a sense as well, the way Greenham was organised, in inverted commas, didn’t lend itself to its being clearly documented, um, it was - there was a sense that everyone just dispersed to all corners of the globe.
[[Does that mean it couldn’t be reproduced do you think? Make it hard to replicate? Could you imagine it now?|Alison Napier Does that mean it couldn’t be reproduced do you think? Make it hard to replicate? Could you imagine it now?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]That’s a very interesting question, a very interesting question. Can I imagine it now? I think it would be incredibly different, I think social media would completely transform it - it would be all over Facebook, and instant photographs of police brutality would spin around the world in three seconds, um, it’s difficult to know what would happen now, I mean it’s not that there aren’t things that need to be challenged and protested about.
I think that what’s happened in the last 20+ years has trapped an awful lot of people into not feeling thy can step out of their lives to do something abut their planet. Even things like I was able to sign-on and go away for two or three weeks - you used to be able to sign-on and then take a holiday from singing-on, so you could miss signing-on for a fortnight, so you could go away for a month. Today you can’t do that. You have to show that you have applied for seventeen jobs every three days, if you don’t you get sanctioned, and then you lose your money, and then you lose your home - if you’ve got a home, so it was much easier.
It was just coming to an end, I think - at the time we were going to Greenham, but it was easier to step out.
I was a student for a while, but I didn’t have a student debt - you know we got a grant, we got our fees paid, it was easier to do something different. And then you would rent somewhere to live and you would get housing benefit, and nobody would say ‘Oh get your foot on the property ladder, quick.’ You know, people in their 20s have got mortgages, and I think a mortgage is one of the greatest tools of social control that there is. I resisted it myself until about 2 years ago, so guilty as charged! (Laughs).
And that’s housing policy - so you could say that housing policy in the United Kingdom has dictated who is able to protest, because you can’t rent affordable and securely, it is not an option anymore. But you’re not here to discuss housing policy! But everything is linked. I think that’s the point - it’s all linked. One of the symbols of Greenham was the spider’s web, and it’s all linked. Welfare rights benefit systems, housing, it’s all linked. Student debts - it’s all linked.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think I partly got burnt out. I was living in Aberdeen and going up and down to Greenham.
And back in Aberdeen a few of us were - we called ourselves Aberdeen Women for Peace, and we were producing newsletters and leafleting in Union Street - that’s the main street in Aberdeen, um, and we were talking to councillors, to - we were trying to flag up Aberdeen city’s anti-nuclear policies, and I think it was a Labour councillor - I can’t remember the details of it now, but um, challenging councillors to - especially Labour councillors, because this was in the days when Labour was definitely anti-nuclear, um, to actually you know, act on their principles and to tell the people in Aberdeen what their plans were for if there should be some kind of nuclear disaster or nuclear attack, or and they had a nice wee bunker under the council buildings in Aberdeen, and then they had an early warning system, somewhere up a hill out in the countryside.
And we organised things like - I think they organised a sponsored bike ride from the nuclear site in Aberdeenshire - which is quite fun. And then we had another little peace camp, which the press came to - at another of the Aberdeenshire early warning systems, really just to publicise things that were going on.
[[So did you feel like your activism transferred more to a Carry Greenham Home model, rather than having to go to Greenham?|Alison Napier So did you feel like your activism transferred more to a Carry Greenham Home model, rather than having to go to Greenham?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think it did, yes. We were sort of straddling both, well the distance was silly, but I think I just got very tired. I think quite a few of us got very tired, and I retreated into what can only be described now - somebody else described it, not my phrase - a political domesticity. That might be the woman who wrote Patience and Sarah, or Ladies of Llangollen. Um.. Lesbian literature lesson!
And so yes, and then I became a vegetarian cook, that was why - armed with my degree in sociology I became a vegetarian cook and worked in a couple of different places. And then, but the links were still there.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]And you find yourself thinking of all the different things that might have contributed to that over the years.
[[Gosh yes.|Alison Napier Gosh yes.]]
[[There is so much we don't know.|Alison Napier Gosh yes.]]I would never stand up in a court of law and say ‘I was zapped in 1983 by the US Airforce, therefore, you know, I’m not very well’. But it was very shocking, covert aggression towards what was a peaceful protest. Um, so those were things that the state from both sides of the Atlantic were doing.
[[Do you think people know how radical Greenham really was? Do you think it has been suppressed?|Alison Napier So I suppose my question is, is that partly why we don’t remember Greenham in the same way? Do you think that partly it’s quite a radical piece of history, and it’s useful to obscure that in some ways?]]
[[There doesn’t seem to a be a lot of national recognition of Greenham, historically. I wonder if that’s in part deliberate, because it’s such a dangerous thing to learn about in a way?|Alison Napier I wondered if that’s in part deliberate, because it’s such a dangerous thing to learn about in a way because it gives you...?]]I think, when I was at Greenham I met an awful lot of very incredible women, and one of the, of the incredible women I met was called Naomi Griffiths and she sadly died 2 years ago, but she and I were firm friends from then until two years ago when she died. And she took different things from Greenham, and she was based in Cumbria, in-fact. And she did various things, but she also went to Nicaragua and um, worked as a health educator there, and I went out with her on a couple of occasions. And so that all came from Greenham.
And then having gone to Nicaragua twice and seen a whole other bit of the world, I then came back probably again, a bit traumatised and shell-shocked at the state of the world because it was obviously in the middle of the Sandinista America war um, and I came back and stayed in London in a squat and volunteered in a homeless hostel.
You don’t need my life story here.
[[No, it’s all really useful.|Alison Napier No, it’s all really useful.]]
[[All of that sounds like, you say it’s definitely a path that Greenham set you on, in a sense?|Alison Napier And all of that sounds like, you say it’s definitely a path that Greenham set you on, in a sense?]]But from that, that then became a job, and then that became anther job, and then I had a job who said ‘Why don’t you get a qualification in this social care type work?’ And I became a social worker, which is what I kind of am.
[[And all of that sounds like, you say it’s definitely a path that Greenham set you on, in a sense?|Alison Napier And all of that sounds like, you say it’s definitely a path that Greenham set you on, in a sense?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Yes, Greenham, the people I met, the values I encountered and absorbed, I hope I had a lot of those values already, but I think they got crystalised. I’ve always been proud of when I apply for a job as a social worker, and I have to write down if I’ve got any criminal convictions, and I of-course say ‘Yes I have’!
I was at a lovely job interview, and my criminal convictions were on a piece of paper, and I had it with me, and the person interviewing me asked to see it, and I handed it over. And she said ‘Ah, yes, me too!’ And we just had - the whole job interview spun away, and we were just speaking about Greenham. It was lovely.
And that’s just...the strands.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think a mixture. My sister - slightly younger, she was at university as well, although she was ahead of me at university - she’s younger than me, but I did things a wee bit later than usual. I think she was worried. She wasn’t pro, she wasn’t a Tory, she wasn’t pro-nuclear in any way, but she was worried that this maybe wasn’t the way to do things.
She used to say, when I would come back to Aberdeen, having been at Greenham, and I would be just sort of gabble-y, or wanting to stop people in the street and say ‘Don’t you know what’s happening? This is all awful’, and of-course that isn’t how you change people’s mind. But as a very idealistic 20-something, I really did think that that was how sometimes you had to do things, but of course you don’t. She would say I reminded her of a parrot in a cage and she just wanted to draw a blanket over the cage, so I would still be in the blanket over a cage going ‘bluuurrrghghghgh’.
[[That’s interesting she, her metaphor wasn’t to open the door and let the parrot back to the jungle, it was to quiet the parrot! Go back to sleep!|Alison Napier That’s interesting she, her metaphor wasn’t to open the door and let the parrot back to the jungle, it was to quiet the parrot! Go back to sleep!]]
[[Do you think that you, all the stuff that you represented and got from Greenham, but also as you say those values and that lifestyle of yourself anyway - was that a bit of an eye-opener for your mum?|Alison Napier Do you think that you, all the stuff that you represented and got from Greenham, but also as you say those values and that lifestyle yourself anyway - was that a bit of an eye-opener for your mum?]]But she was lovely, and was very supportive in practical ways.
My mum was amazing, she was very, she was a school teacher, primary school teacher, very conventional, quite, respectable looking person - tweed skirt, and flat shoes, and a nice handbag, and a sheepskin jacket, and she always incredibly supportive - she was just great. She actually fell out with her own sister over it for a few years - her own sister didn’t speak to my mum because my mum supported me. And my mum had a CND badge that she wore on her jumper when she was teaching, and her head teacher asked her to remove it and she said ‘No’. That was fine he didn’t say anything else - he’d done his job and she’d said her bit, so that was fine.
I will always have an abiding memory - she’s not alive anymore - of her coming to a women only disco that we ran above a rather grotty pub in Aberdeen - full of punk-y types, lesbians, women. And my mum came - I don’t think she stayed for the whole thing, but she came and I thought bravo, and so she was great and she was always very, very supportive.
[[Do you think that you, all the stuff that you represented and got from Greenham, but also as you say those values and that lifestyle of yourself anyway - was that a bit of an eye-opener for your mum?|Alison Napier Do you think that you, all the stuff that you represented and got from Greenham, but also as you say those values and that lifestyle yourself anyway - was that a bit of an eye-opener for your mum?]]
[[What was day to day life at Greenham like, what were the day to day interactions with other women like?|Alison Napier the day to day dynamics were, basically? Sort of, what day to day life was like, and what the day to day interactions with other women would have been like?]] Oh absolutely. And she died um, she was 60, of leukemia, and she wrote us - myself and my sister a letter, before she died - to be opened after she had died. And one of the things she said in the letter was that she had learnt so many interesting things from the way I had lived my life, and I thought that was lovely.
[[Oh that is lovely.|Alison Napier Oh that is lovely.]]
[[I’m so glad she wrote that down for you, that’s really lovely.|Alison Napier I’m so glad she wrote that down for you, that’s really lovely.]] That she wouldn’t have encountered at all as a primary school teacher in the far north of Scotland. But she’d heard about Greenham, she went to a women only disco, who does that? And she learnt about Nicaragua, all these kinds of things. She met my friends and people that she wouldn’t have otherwise met, so that was lovely.
[[I’m so glad she wrote that down for you, that’s really lovely.|Alison Napier I’m so glad she wrote that down for you, that’s really lovely.]] Really, really nice.
[[What was day to day life at Greenham like, what were the day to day interactions with other women like?|Alison Napier the day to day dynamics were, basically? Sort of, what day to day life was like, and what the day to day interactions with other women would have been like?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Day to day life was very um, well obviously I have to stress I didn’t live there - it wasn’t my home for months and years at a time. So even if I was there for two or three weeks, I was always dipping in. Um but quite a long dip - there weeks felt like quite a long dip, I guess. The dynamics ebbed and flowed, um, there were some fairly major clashes of opinion, um, there were some very well intentioned but not always successful at reaching collective decisions.
[[(Laugh). Can you tell us a little bit more about that?|Alison Napier (Laugh). Can you tell us a little bit more about that?]]
[[As someone who haven’t - for people listening who perhaps haven’t been in a collective decision making process, what’s that like? What does it mean?|Alison Napier As someone who haven’t - for people listening who perhaps haven’t been in a collective decision making process, what’s that like? What does it mean?]](Laughs). Um, I don’t know where I stand on collective decision making. I think there’s occasionally a case for a benign dictator, but that’s um, maybe not what I should be saying.
[[As someone who haven’t - for people listening who perhaps haven’t been in a collective decision making process, what’s that like? What does it mean?|Alison Napier As someone who haven’t - for people listening who perhaps haven’t been in a collective decision making process, what’s that like? What does it mean?]]
[[Did you ever feel there as any sense of infiltration in the groups? Because obviously it was nebulous, people come and go. Were there any agents of the state, or agent provocateurs?|Alison Napier Did you ever feel there as any sense of infiltration in the groups? Because obviously it was nebulous, people come and go. Were there any agents of the state, or agent provocateurs?]] Well it means everyone is - it’s like consensus decision making, you’re trying to reach an agreement that everybody is comfortable with.
[[Through discussion?|Alison Napier Through discussion?]]
[[Did you find that although there are no leaders, there are sort of louder talkers? |Alison Napier There are no leaders, but there are sort of louder talkers.]]Oh massive, it can go on for hours and hours and hours, and it can get incredibly heated. As I got older and learnt more, I was involved for a while with a Women’s Aid Group, and they operated as a collective, which was good. And team meetings would be collective - tried to come to a collective decision, decisions. But they brought in an external facilitator, and I thought that was really good, and I thought that’s sometimes that I wished Greenham had had.
It was um, equality in its purest sense, but with human beings who inevitably brought themselves to it, and none of us had been brought up in equality in its purest sense. We were all products of where we had come from, and we often - I think everybody can, it’s a real struggle actually, because I think people have to be incredibly skilled and self-aware to be able to function in that type of um, of meeting, um and inevitably people’s voices will get a bit lost, and the louder, more confident voices will be heard more.
[[There are no leaders, but there are sort of louder talkers.|Alison Napier There are no leaders, but there are sort of louder talkers.]]Absolutely, yes yes. And I think often we mirrored quite a lot of the inequalities in society, so there were class divides, sociologist speaking maybe - there were class divides, there were undoubtedly race divides, there were sexuality divides, even within um these individual groups, if you like, there would be divides within these groups - so not all the lesbians agreed with each other, but when did they ever?
And that could be seen as degrees of radicalism, maybe, so people would be taking a political stand to its purest, extremist form, and leave 98% of the rest of us behind, which didn’t make our views any less valid, but it was it was heady stuff, it was heady stuff. It was very, very interesting.
I think there were probably casualties as well. Um I think people did feel left out. Definitely class stuff going on that some people tried to address, but it’s unresolvable. It’s unresolvable at a societal level, it’s not resolvable around the campfire when you’re being zapped by the American airforce, and having your fire extinguished by local coppers.
So I remain, I’m afraid, not a huge fan of collective decision making. In theory I think it’s fabulous, but I’m now 61 years old, and I look forward to seeing it working in practice before I depart this earth.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]That’s very interesting as well. I was not, it wasn’t in my consciousness at all at the time.
[[That anyone would do that sort of thing?|Alison Napier That anyone would do that sort of thing?]]
[[Would collective decision making make it harder to infiltrators to find out anything of use? Because there isn't an overall plan?|Alison Napier I was wondering whether - because you’re right, a lot of Greenham women have said to me ‘They wouldn’t have found out anything, because we didn’t have an overall plan like that’...]]Yes. Or even that maybe it was complete naivety on my part, and probably on other people’s parts as well, that that would even happen. And when it was shown fairly recently to have happened with environmental groups, which the police infiltrated for years, didn’t they?
[[Yes, they did.|Alison Napier Yes they did.]]
[[Did they?|Alison Napier Yes they did.]]There’s not a 5 year plan written down.
Which was its strength.
[[I wonder if there was anything they did to sow discontent, which is possible?|Alison Napier But I wonder - I’ve been at meetings before, where someone with an agenda - not necessarily of the state, but whatever agenda, has deliberately made the meeting factious, has made it break down, and I wondered if there was anything, things - that would be anything you could do - to sew discontent, which is possible? Don’t know if that helps?]]
[[Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?|Alison Napier Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?]]Shocking. I thought at that time, when that first came to light, gosh did that happen at Greenham? I mean it would have had to have been a woman that had done it - a burly policeman coming along would have been quite obvious! And wouldn’t have stayed long. So I don’t know is the answer - I don’t know if that happened or not.
Um, quite how much information they would have got - it’s almost like if they’d come in they might have been thinking ‘Oh we’re going to find out what the long term plan is - we’ll hack in’ - of-course there was nothing to hack into. If they’d spoken to twenty people they’d have got twenty different plans, so maybe they wouldn’t have thought maybe this wasn’t something worth doing. I have no idea - but it would be very interesting to know if anybody has come out and said ‘Yes I was an infiltrator’.
[[I wonder if there was anything they did to sow discontent, which is possible?|Alison Napier But I wonder - I’ve been at meetings before, where someone with an agenda - not necessarily of the state, but whatever agenda, has deliberately made the meeting factious, has made it break down, and I wondered if there was anything, things - that would be anything you could do - to sew discontent, which is possible? Don’t know if that helps?]]
[[Can you tell me about your own experience with the legal system?|Alison Napier added question at the end]]I think Greenham was so big, it was big enough to contain lots and lots of disparate views and different groups.
Um, it also cared for people with mental health problems.
[[That’s interesting. In what way?|Alison Napier That’s interesting. In what way?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think Greenham was somewhere that some people felt was a safe place they could go to. Um, they perhaps didn’t come with a huge anti-nuclear, well thought out feminist agenda, um, but it was a safe place and there were - my subsequent training was mental health, and I can look back and I can identify specific individuals who were clearly what we would call not-well, but normal politics of metal health could be another study - women and mental health - and where it intersects with conformity and that sort of thing.
So I think Greenham was a place where people who in another context might have - their behaviour, their views could be seen as problematic, were just able to be absorbed. Um, I hate the word tolerated, but I guess that’s what it might have seemed like to some people. But certainly it could be - it wasn’t always - it could be a safe place for people, for women, who just wanted to be away from mainstream life for a little while.
[[And maybe whose behaviour wasn’t so fair, to rub along with society made it unsafe for them. Or society made it unsafe.|Alison Napier And maybe whose behaviour wasn’t so fair, rub along with society made it unsafe for them. Or society made it unsafe.]]
[[Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?|Alison Napier Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?]]Yes, yes. And that wasn’t universally the case. There were a couple of people there with severe metal health problems, and again polarised views would happen - some people were thinking ‘This woman is clearly very ill, we maybe need to get her to a hospital’, and somebody else would be saying ‘She just needs a safe place - somewhere to speak and talk and be listened to’, um, and it’s not that straightforward either.
[[Do you know if some women who met Greenham Women in prison would then later come to the camp when they were free?|Alison Napier Interesting. I did hear - I don’t know, you might not know anything about this at all, but I know some of the women who went to prison said that they, they - a woman that came out of prison sometimes had heard about Greenham from the Greenham women going to prison, and would then come to the camp. I don’t know if you know anything about that? Maybe not?]]
[[Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?|Alison Napier Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?]]I don’t. Um, it doesn’t surprise me at all, because I think Greenham politicised an awful lot of women. Um, and I was, at times, I was very aware that there were links being forged with the miners’ wives, and um, that was - I thought that was really, really good, um, and I think a lot of, I think a lot of women just came to Greenham to see what it was about, and absorbed a lot of views and opinions and attitudes that maybe they hadn’t come across before. Or had their own ideas validated, you know, which hadn’t been allowed maybe, before.
[[Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?|Alison Napier Do you see where Greenham has influenced things now? Do you see where women might have - what affect it might have had?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think, I don’t know that I could generalise about that. I would doubt there was any woman who went to Greenham whose life wasn’t affected by it. Um, I mean mine certainly was. I don’t know what direction it would have gone in had I not gone to Greenham. Because it didn’t particularly have a direction at the time, I don’t think.
Um, and I hope it’s given a lot of people the sense that they can kind of do what they want. Um, you can just do what you want. I think that’s really important for people to know. And it frightens me that so many people don’t know that.
I’m not practicing as a social worker at the moment - I haven’t for two or three years, but I work with social work students, I work with different Scottish universities and students who are training to be social workers. And they’re very young, and they’ve never heard of Greenham, and they’re quite alarmed at the thought that somebody might go to prison for their belief.
Now I don’t sit down and say ‘Hello, I’m Alison - your practice teacher, I went to prison for my belief’ to them, but you’re talking about values and you’re talking about the state, and you’re talking about the law, and you’re talking about how far would you actually challenge something that you believed in? Which you do have to do as a social worker, and the levels of anxiety, and timidity I think, and I push them a little bit to see what occurs!
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I was mostly at Yellow Gate. I can’t now remember the different themes - personalities is a good word for it, I think, the different personalities of the different gates.
[[Were you aware they had them, at the time?|Alison Napier Were you aware they had them, at the time?]]
[[If you saw Greenham made into a piece of art, or performance, or whatever, what form would you want that to take?|Alison Napier if you saw Greenham made into a piece of art, or performance, or whatever, what form would you want that to take?]]Yes I was, I’m wondering, and digging into memory that isn’t really there anymore, but there may have been one that didn’t allow the boy children or something like that - one that was more extreme in its politics than the others. But I think Yellow Gate was quite, um, quite a mixture - it tended to be where people arrived. It tended to be where the press came, and because it was the main entrance to the base.
But I stayed at another couple of gates which I now can’t remember - Blue, Green possibly, in a sort of less busy time - just sort of staying in a bender and listening to the birds singing, that kind of thing, as opposed to going out there.
[[If you saw Greenham made into a piece of art, or performance, or whatever, what form would you want that to take?|Alison Napier if you saw Greenham made into a piece of art, or performance, or whatever, what form would you want that to take?]]
[[If you had just one or two memories of Greenham, what would they be?|Alison Napier If you had just one or two memories of Greenham, what would they be?]]Well there was a very large what you call the bin lorry, which we call the muncher. The kind of lorry local authorities have for collecting rubbish, and they’ve got a great big scrunch-y thing at the back, and everything that goes into it just gets scrunched up. And I - the police, the local police would be there to support the council because it was the council carrying out the evictions. And they basically just took things like sleeping bags, and pulled the tents down and poked the benders apart and took stuff out.
They were trying to clear the site - I mean that was their job, they were doing their job, they were trying to clear the site. Um, and my, I think my abiding memory of it is just the viciousness of it, and the petty cruelty of it, and the - they had a fire extinguisher and they would put the fire out. And I think fires are such symbolic things, aren’t they? Again, you could do a whole project on the role of fire in women’s lives.
And the fire would get put out. And immediately that they’d gone people would start getting the fire sorted out again, and there were stones around it - I mean it probably looked different every time you went, fires generally have stones around them - and they would kick the stones, and I thought you really hate us, ‘Why do you really hate us?’ So those were the evictions, and then they just left a scene of devastation and off they rumbled to the next gate I guess.
[[And this would happen several times a day sometimes, wouldn't it?|Alison Napier And this would happen several times a day sometimes, wouldn't it?]]
[[Was it a break the spirit sort of thing?|Alison Napier Was it a break the spirit sort of thing?]]Yes it did. You would just get set up again and back they would come. Um I don’t know what the rationale for it was, I don’t know who was in control of it - well it was the council, but, er...
[[Was it a break the spirit sort of thing?|Alison Napier Was it a break the spirit sort of thing?]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Yes, it was a very naive forlorn hope, but again I guess if you’re in county hall Newbury, whatever, their main council buildings are called, that’s all you’ve got really, isn’t it ‘We want rid of those women because they’re spoiling the view, and making a mess, and being vegan, and flying their lesbians flags, and it’s just not what we want in rural Berkshire, so let’s get rid of them’, and that was all they had really. All they had was aggression. I don’t recall anybody from the council coming up and trying to negotiate or anything. Or, ‘While you’re here can we make your life any easier?’ There was nothing like that.
So yes, they were really quite shocking, and obviously then you see things on television about refugee camps and Calais, which is real. You know we largely had somewhere else to go, if your sleeping bag got destroyed somebody would bring another one, but it opened my eyes I think to what people have to go through, so yes.
Something else I thought of but it slipped away.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]It would be very colourful. Lots of colour in it. It would have music in it. Um it would have lots of laughing in it. Um, and yes, it would have fun in it.
And that might not have come out of anything I’ve been saying abut arrests and prison and...
[[Where did the fun come into it?|Alison Napier Where did the fun come into it?]]
[[Do you think it’s important that Greenham is remembered by subsequent generations?|Alison Napier Could you explain why you think it’s important that Greenham is remembered by subsequent generations?]]I think the fun came into it at an absolute woman to woman level. So you sit down with a complete stranger who might be from, I don’t know London, Holland, or she might have come from Alaska. And you just have a conversation. And it usually starts with ‘Where have you come from?’ And the next question was sometimes “How long have you been here?’ And that could be 20 minutes or 4 years.
And just, I think because everybody was just here with a similar, but never identical purpose, um and awful lot of the rubbish that we talk about with - to people when we’ve just met didn’t have to be engaged with. Um, and I think that was the main thing - just that the relationships that instantly formed.
[[Was music a big part of that?|Alison Napier And was music a big part of that? You mentioned song and music...]]
[[If you had just one or two memories of Greenham, what would they be?|Alison Napier If you had just one or two memories of Greenham, what would they be?]]Yes the protest I associate with singing, and er, I, my partner at the time - a long time ago, had a fabulous singing voice, and she would come down, and she would just start singing, and then everybody else would start singing, and we were all singing these Greenham songs.
[[What sort of things?|Alison Napier What sort of things?]]
[[Oh lovely.|Alison Napier Oh lovely.]]The Greenham song - the old song ‘You can’t kill the spirit’, and some of them were traditional sort of American peace songs - Woodie Guthrie and all that sort of stuff.
[[Oh lovely.|Alison Napier Oh lovely.]]
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]So yes, lots of song um, and.. the woman I knew who was my close friend for 20 - 30 years, 30+ years ago... Naomi, at her absolutely fabulous humanist funeral, the Greenham quilt was there. And her coffin was resting on the Greenham Quilt.
[[Oh please tell me about the Greenham quilt, what’s that?|Alison Napier Oh please tell us about the Greenham quilt, what’s that?]]
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]Well I don’t know a lot about the Greenham quilt, but later I could tell you somebody who does, I could point you towards somebody who does.
Yeah. But a quilt was made. I wasn’t involved in it at all. Lots of images and um just all sewn together like quilts are, and it’s held somewhere in one of the Women’s Archive-y places, possibly in London, I don’t know. Um.
[[And is it in memoriam to the Greenham women, or the Greenham protest?|Alison Napier And is it in memoriam to the Greenham women, or the Greenham protest?]]
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]Yes, yes, I think it is. And it can be sort of loaned out for some people doing an exhibition, obviously it was loaned out for Naomi’s funeral.
She was a stalwart of Greenham. And so it was there, and then we went to a village hall for afterwards, and a wonderful mix of local people and Greenham women, and somebody from America, and Nicaragua, just all of her life was there.
And somebody started singing a Greenham song, in this WRBS...what they’re called in England, but you know the local, rural people’s had laid on this wonderful event and spread after the funeral, so it was just this fabulous mix of local people and other people, and then a women called Rebecca - Rebecca Johnson started singing a Greenham song, and I thought that’s lovely, and then I thought I wonder what Naomi would think - she’d probably be rolling her eyes and thinking ‘No!’
But er, yes, the Greenham quilt was lovely.
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]It’s important because everyone, but particularly women, but everyone, has to understand that you can affect change in your world. And it’s important because I think the world now is in a desperately bad way. Um, I don’t think wise people appear often enough to have their voices heard. I don’t think wise people’s voices are heard so much now, and they have to be.
Um. And I would love young people to believe that they can step out of the terribly narrow tram lines that their lives get channelled into. And it doesn’t matter what some influencer on Instagram says they should be wearing or doing to their nails this week, it doesn’t matter, um, image doesn’t matter - I guess. Um, to step away from that and to believe that you can influence and make a difference, but the stage before that is to see that a difference has to be made, because I think there’s not much in the -mainstream media certainly - that even would suggest that there’s that much wrong! In slightly smaller print - oh another rainforest has gone, or another war has started, or another tens of thousands of refugees have ended up somewhere where nobody wants them there either. Yes that’s all there, but it doesn’t seem to...
It’s the contradiction between suddenly everybody is so connected, but nobody is really touching each other. Everybody is - this interview could go round the world in two seconds if you wanted it to, um, but...
And then in another 5 minutes time another one would have gone round the world with someone who speaks about, I don’t know, why you should buy that vegan shampoo as opposed to that vegan shampoo. Everything is desperately important for four seconds, I think that’s my sense. And then the next desperately important thing is desperately important for four seconds, and on it goes. And I think Greenham made time for people to speak to each other, and to explore their own idea, and to take their ideas back to their communities to do with what they would. I don’t know if that’s the answer to your question or not!
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think the fire - sitting around the fire with a group of women that you’d never really met before. I always used to carry a pen knife with me, and I would just always be whittling tent pegs, before another muncher would come and take away - I would always be whittling tent pegs.
I play the recorder and I met a woman who also played the recorder, and neither of us knew the same tunes or music, but we played our recorders together and it worked. So that was lovely. I remember that. Um, and I think just the scale of it, that’s - the scale of it, which I’ve never seen ever since then, and probably won’t.
I mean I know a million people marched against Brexit, but a hundred thousand people marched for Scottish independence, but you have to go where the police let you, and that was a Mrs Thatcher law, and I think protests that I see now are really quite manicured - you have to get permission, you have to have stewards, and now thinking about that, can you imagine Greenham asking for permission! ‘Well you have to have at-least one steward for every two hundred women, and they have to wear a high-vis jacket’ it really just wouldn’t happen would it. And ‘You can only go here, and you can’t go there - but not on a bank holiday’, and that’s how protests are nowadays, you have to get permission to march or to protest, and if there’s too many of you in the wrong place there’s a law against that as well. So people won’t do it, and I think that’s the difference - people won’t do it, whereas we just did it, and that’s the power.
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I didn’t finish it! A longer sentence I’d have got through, but I finished it when I got home.
[[That’s perfect.|Ailsa Napier That’s perfect.]]
[[Yeah, that’s a keeper that one, isn’t it.|Ailsa Napier Yeah, that’s a keeper that one, isn’t it.]]I was arrested twice. One was five days in a police cell.
But the other time I was arrested was for obstruction and obviously found guilty of that by a Newbury magistrate. But I appealed that one, I appealed it at Reading Crown Court, and won the appeal. And again - the days of legal aid and a very, very good barrister called Geoffrey Binnedman/Bindman, um, which my little solicitor in Aberdeen had found. So I think in a small way we slightly radicalised this little solicitor in Aberdeen, who was at a small legal office selling houses and doing whatever else solicitors do, and I stumbled in smelling of woodsmoke saying ‘I’d really like to appeal this charge’.
[[So what was the obstruction you were charged with? And why did you appeal it? What were your grounds for appeal?|Alison Napier So what was the obstruction you were charged with? And why did you appeal it? What were your grounds for appeal?]]
[[So what were you doing? Was it a sit down..|Alison Napier So what were you doing? Was it a sit down..]]I didn’t think I was causing the obstruction, I felt nuclear weapons were causing the obstruction, and if that wasn’t going to fly, then the police are causing far more of an obstruction than we were.
[[So what were you doing? Was it a sit down..|Alison Napier So what were you doing? Was it a sit down..]]
[[And you managed to get yourself off that charge with those arguments?|Alison Napier And you managed to get, you managed to get yourself off that charge with those arguments?]]Yeah, we were siting down in the road whilst they were driving the nuclear weapons through the gates.
[[And you managed to get yourself off that charge with those arguments?|Alison Napier And you managed to get, you managed to get yourself off that charge with those arguments?]]Yes.
[[That’s amazing...|Alison Napier That’s amazing...]]
[[Yeah! Can you tell me a little bit more about how that went across, because that’s amazing. |Alison Napier Yeah! Can you tell us how, what the, how that was received, over - just a little bit more about how that went across, because that’s amazing.]]It is amazing!
[[Yeah! Can you tell me a little bit more about how that went across, because that’s amazing. |Alison Napier Yeah! Can you tell us how, what the, how that was received, over - just a little bit more about how that went across, because that’s amazing.]]
[[The judge basically couldn’t prove that you were more of an obstruction than all of this other stuff?|Alison Napier The judge basically couldn’t prove that you were more of an obstruction than all of this other stuff?]]Well it was all quite unreal, um, and it was just - it was all, in a sense it was almost as if, I didn’t really know what was happening, because I’m not a lawyer, um , and it was all just very technical legal arguments, I don’t - I don’t quite know how it was. But a few of us were driven - I think it was Naomi in-fact who drove us um, Reading Crown Court, and um, lots of legal people speaking to each other, and bits of paper were passed around with little maps on them and er, it was thrown out.
[[The judge basically couldn’t prove that you were more of an obstruction than all of this other stuff?|Alison Napier The judge basically couldn’t prove that you were more of an obstruction than all of this other stuff?]]
[[That’s really cool!|Alison Napier That’s really cool!]]Yeah, the obstruction that was taking place on that occasion was hundreds and hundreds of police people, hundreds and hundreds of Greenham women, and huge big articulated lorries driving very, very slowly nuclear weapons in USAF Greenham common. They couldn’t pin the obstruction on me. That was quite nice!
[[That’s lovely. Well congratulations on that.|Alison Napier That’s lovely. Well congratulations on that.]]
[[That’s really cool!|Alison Napier That’s really cool!]]Thank you very much.
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]My finest legal moments.
[[That’s lovely. Well congratulations on that.|Alison Napier That’s lovely. Well congratulations on that.]]
[[Thank Alison Napier and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/the_gates.JPG" width="400" height="400" alt="Black and white illustration of two coiled dragons, a flower, and a rainbow, titled The Gates by Kayleigh Hilsdon">
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''In the distance, you see the glow of a campfire. Smoke rising. Figures gathered. You begin to walk closer.''
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1. This is a text-based conversational game. Controls are simple. Scroll down to read the text. When you are offered a choice, which will be in different-coloured text, simply click on the action you would like to take.
2. When a conversation has come to a natural end point, you will be invited to speak with others around the fire, or sometimes to continue the conversation further. If you do not want to initiate another conversation at that time, you can say goodbye and leave from the campfire. No individual conversation is very long, and you can have as many conversations as you like.
3. CONTENT WARNING - Some of the themes discussed may be sensitive or triggering. Your emotional response is respected. It is fine to leave at any time.
4. You can exit the game quickly at any point, by simply closing your browser or tab.
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All responses are the unedited, verbatim words of Greenham Women, from interviews conducted as part of the project "Greenham Women Everywhere". You can find out more about this from the link below, or when you leave if you don't like spoilers.
Whether you know who the Greenham Women are as you approach, or whether they are strangers to you, you are welcome at the warmth of the fire.
These are real conversations. There is no save or return, there is no "back", there is no index. This is now.
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''A little way ahead, you can see the campfire.
Closer now.''
[[Take a seat around the campfire.|Campfire]]
[[Find out more about the Greenham Women.|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]
[[Leave.|Credits]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/motherhood.JPG" width="400" height="400" alt="Black and white illustration of an anatomical heart, wreathed in dandelion heads, some seeds blowing away, titled Motherhood by Kayleigh Hilsdon">
''You walk away from the campfire, and you are welcome to return.''
All responses are the unedited words of Greenham Women Ailsa Johnson, Penny Gulliver, Sue Say, Mica May, Diana Derioz, Alison Napier, and Becky Griffiths.
Interviews were conducted by Jessica Layton, Isabelle Tracy, Sara Sherwood, Tricia Norton, Rebecca Mordan and Josephine Liptrott.
The campfire was conceived, designed and created by L H Trevail.
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[[Return, and take your seat at the Campfire|Campfire]]
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Illustrations: “Legacy” "Motherhood", "NVDA", "The Gates" and "Women Only Space", by Kayleigh Hilsdon.
Portraits of Greenham Women by Christine Bradshaw, with treatment by LHTrevail.
Songs:
"We are the Witches" from the Greenham Songbook, performed by Carolyn Francis.
"The Ballad of Freda Geese" by Christina Li.
"Peace camp Newbury Berkshire" by the women of Greenham Peace Camp, performed by Jenny and Flo Crowe.
"Sarah's Song" by the women of Greenham Peace Camp, performed by Jenny and Flo Crowe.
"Like a Mountain / Can't Kill The Spirit" by Naomi Littlebear, covered by Christina Li.
"We Are a Gentle Angry Women" by Holly Near, sung by Claire Ingleheart.
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[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
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Web Support:
Scary Little Girls - Ampersand Industries
Greenham Women Everywhere - JKC Marketing
Accessibility Consultant:
Chloë Clarke
Scary Little Girls Support:
Vanessa Pini
Becky Barry
Christina Li
Becky John at 92 Minutes
Further Reading:
Other Girls Like Me by Stephanie Davis
Greenham Voices: An Anecdotal History of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp by Kate Kerrow and Rebecca Mordan
Walking to Greenham by Ann Pettitt
Greenham Common: Women at the Wire by Barbara Harford and Sarah Hopkins
Orange Gate Journal by Ginette Leach
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[[Find out more about the Greenham Women around this Campfire.|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]
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Commissioned by Scary Little Girls, for Greenham Women Everywhere.
Greenham Women Everywhere is funded by Heritage Lottery South West.
Read full interviews and others, and find out more about the women you have been speaking with, here:
<a href="http://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/oral-testimonies/">http://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/oral-testimonies/</a>.
Greenham Women Everwhere Site:
<a href="http://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/">http://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/</a>
Scary Litte Girls Site:
<a href="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/">https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/</a>
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<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/slg-logo2-300x181.png" width="300" height="181" alt="Scary Little Girls Logo, white on black: The words Scary Little Girls in an elegant font.">
<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/HeritageFundEnglish_logo_white.png" width="400" height="200" alt="Heritage Fund Logo, white on black - the words Heritage Fund, and an image of a hand with its fingers crossed for luck.">
<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/ACEgrand_jpeg_white.jpg" width="600" height="200" alt="Arts Council England Logo, white on black - the words Supported Using Public Funding Arts Council by England, with Arts Council England in a little circle to the left hand side. ">
<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/thumbnail_greenham_boltCutter.png" width="300" height="300" alt="Greenham Women Everywhere Logo, white on green. A green circle with the words Greenham Women Everywhere in bold white capital letters. In the centre of the circle, in white cut-out, a Greenham Woman with bolt cutters, looking over her shoulder, and looking mighty cool.">What would you like to ask Becky Griffiths?
[[Can I ask you first how you became part of the peace movement?|Becky Griffiths Can I ask you first how you became part of the peace movement?]]
[[Can you tell me a bit about how the camp was run on a day to day basis - all the usual chores and cooking.|Becky Griffiths Tell me a bit about how the camp was run on a day to day basis then - all the usual chores and cooking.]]Um, I was involved with the local CND group where I lived in Kendal. Yeah, so there was just like a little local peace movement, but I don't know why it just was, felt right. So I went to meetings and they planned to go to a Greenham action, Embrace the Base action in December 1982. And so the coach, yeah, we all went down on a coach.
[[And that was your first introduction to Greenham Common?| Becky Griffiths And that was your first introduction to Greenham common?]]
[[What was that day like?|Becky Griffiths What was that day like?]]That was my first introduction to Greenham. Yeah.
[[What was that day like?|Becky Griffiths What was that day like?]]
[[And how long did you stay|Becky Griffiths And how long did you stay?]]It was amazing. Yeah, but I mean, I can't, I don't remember the journey there or back, but I remember getting to the main gate and seeing this amazing looking woman with like a walkie talkie, just sort of like organising stuff. And I was just sort of blown away by it and (becomes emotional), it feels quite emotional, weirdly, I don't know why - I wasn’t expecting that. But anyway, she looked amazing, and it looked amazing.
And there were all these women there, and all these people there, you know, I hadn't - I don't think I'd known what to expect. And I hasn’t really been on any mass demonstrations at all. So it just - there were hundreds of women there, and it just seemed so exciting. Surrounding the base seemed incredible and powerful. And I just thought, I've got to come back. I've got to come back and be here. I don't know why I’m emotional! (Laughs).
So I was you know, I was really thrilled by it. I felt really thrilled by it. And I thought it would be, yeah, I just knew I had to be there and not be in my other life up in Cumbria and doing my A’ Levels. So I just thought this is it. This is it. I've got to come back. And that was sort of - I can't remember the date of it, was it the 12th of December? It was December, anyway. And then I went home and I said to my mum ‘We have to, I have to go.’ And she was like ‘What about your A’ Levels?’ And I was like ‘Yeah, well, the world's going to blow up. There's no point in doing A’ Levels, you know, I’ve got to save the world.’ So I was sort of quite you know, I was quite literal, and slightly teenage about it all, but just felt it was absolutely where I should be.
And I think I spent Christmas at home, and then she drove me down. She drove me down from Cumbria, and we sort of made a tent out of plastic, and that was it. So I stayed there. And then the silos action, I was involved in that, and that was, yeah, that was it. That was sort of a week later, I think. So once I was there, I was sort of straight in really.
[[And how long did you stay|Becky Griffiths And how long did you stay?]]
[[And at Greenham and were you based at any particular camp or gate?|Becky Griffiths And at Greenham and were you based at any particular camp or gate?]]Um, I probably lived there, completely full time lived there for about 2 years, and then came and went a bit - so I started living, the whole squatting scene around South London - Brixton and Stockwell. And I lived there. And so I was there some of the year, some of the time. And I'd be at Greenham for a week, or London for a week. So probably 2 years solidly. And then for another year or so was coming and going. And also I was involved and lived briefly on an off at the camp in upstate New York - Seneca. So I went over as part of a Greenham women's kind of solidarity with the American camp, and ended up um, living there, sort of over the same sort of period. So I was in two or three places at once, really, yeah.
[[And at Greenham and were you based at any particular camp or gate?|Becky Griffiths And at Greenham and were you based at any particular camp or gate?]]
[[And how important was it that Greenham was a women only space? Was it important to you personally?|Becky Griffiths And how important was it that Greenham was a women only space? Was it important to you personally?]]Yeah, I was always, well, when I moved there, there was only the main gate and then quite shortly afterwards, Green Gate was set up. But I lived always at Main Gate, which then became Yellow Gate. So yeah, that was my kind of world.
[[And how important was it that Greenham was a women only space? Was it important to you personally?|Becky Griffiths And how important was it that Greenham was a women only space? Was it important to you personally?]]
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I don't know if I had gone there thinking it was important, but it became really important. Um, I was thinking about that today. And I think as a very young woman, it probably would have been very different if there were guys around. I don't know if I would have - this is no sort of commentary on guys in particular, but I don't know if I would have felt as safe as I felt. And I think it was complicated enough. (Laughs). But if there were guys there as well, that might have been even more complicated.
So um, and also, I was coming out as a lesbian, and so I think, arriving somewhere where there were women, where they were gay women - the first gay women I'd ever seen, you know, because I'd lived somewhere where nobody was gay, except for perhaps me and how terrifying is that? So um, I think that was great. It was such a liberation for me, and I think I would - just wouldn't have had that in a different environment. So yeah, I think decision making was different. And, I don't know, but maybe the response to us was different because we weren't guys, or I don't know. I think it was important. And I think probably from all of those reasons, really.
[[So sounds like an important place for women to express their sexuality, form relationships with other women?|Becky Griffiths So sounds like an important place for women to express their sexuality, form relationships with other women?]]
[[And what was the relationship like between the women of the camp and the men around - the military, the police, the bailiffs?|Becky Griffiths And what was the relationship like between the women of the camp and the men around - the military, the police, the bailiffs?]]Definitely. Yeah, I mean, I think. I don't know. I don't know. I think definitely it was - was it predominantly? I don't know if it was predominately lesbian, but certainly everyone I knew was a lesbian. So yeah, I think it was and I think, to come, to be somewhere where that wasn't an issue, and in fact, everybody was incredibly positive was such a privilege, really, I don't think people get that now - you have to find - but it may be a slightly easier world for people, but I think it was, yeah.
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Um, I don't know, I can't really remember anything formal about rotas. I think people just did stuff. And I, I suspect as is with any world, people sort of fell into things that they liked doing. So some people were great at cooking, and some people were great at keeping the fire going, or, you know, so I think it never - there didn’t feel like there was any tension around that. Possibly it might have gone over my head, but I feel like my memory of it is is that I can't remember any conflict about the day to day running of it, and it seemed to work.
[[So what about the way that decisions were made - collectively, was there ever any tension created?|Becky Griffiths So what about the way that decisions were made - collectively, was there ever any tension created?]]
[[Can you tell me about your involvement in the non violent direct action campaigns.|Becky Grifiths Tell me about your involvement in the non violent direct action campaigns.]]Yeah.
[[How was that dealt with?|Becky Griffiths How was that dealt with?]]
[[How important was creativity to the work done at Greenham - the use of song, the art, the crafts?|Becky Griffiths How important was creativity to the work done at Greenham - the use of song, the art, the crafts?]]So, that was quite, that was a different thing. We tried to make decisions by consensus. So there was a camp meeting, and decisions were made about actions. Decisions were made about money, because we received loads of donations of money coming into the camp, and there were decisions to be made about what to do with that, or, or if we're spending on that, did we all agree with that decision? I think decision, and some discussion about um, how we were going to respond to court, and our plans for being represented, or what we wanted to say in court. And also there was a lot of media attention. So there had to be some kind of decision making about that.
And obviously, people didn't always agree with each other. So there was definitely tension about that. I think the, possibly the things that people got most anxious about were money, and how money was spent. So I think some people felt it should be spent on some things that other people felt perhaps shouldn't be. So yeah, that was probably the trickiest. I think in terms of actions and stuff, people might not have agreed with actions, but as long as they were within a kind of non-violent code, which we'd all sort of agreed with anyway, then what, one person chose to do was fine, even if someone else wouldn't have chosen to do it, so.
[[Could you explain why you personally think it's important that Greenham is remembered as subsequent generations?|Becky Griffiths could you explain why you personally think it's important that Greenham is remembered as subsequent generations?]]
[[What finally led you to leave Greenham? |Becky Griffiths That was the answer. Yeah. And I agree with you. So what finally led you to leave Greenham?]]Different for different groups of people, I think. So I think - the bailiffs are like a whole other thing, but with the sort of local police, I don’t remember, it being that - you know, they knew us, they sort of knew, you know, especially when the camp’s been there for a few years. And the sort of central group of women have been there for a long time, people sort of know each other. And so I think I don't really remember any kind of violence really.
The difficulties came, I think, when there were big actions, and police were drafted in from other places, but I'm sure - any, you know, that whole battle of war graves stuff is all about that, isn't it? Policemen from all over the place coming in with no connection to people, and no consequence because they're not there in the next day either. So I think certainly local police, I didn't feel any particular antagonism - they were doing their job. So they kind of got down with the whole non-violent thing and realised that we weren't going to sort of, you know, throw things at them or attack them.
And the bailiffs were a bit different because they, yeah, that was - I think there was more kind of violence there from them, I think they were kind of quite happy to sort of throw people's possessions in the muncher - you know the big dustbin thing. And yeah, so I think there was a bit more conflict about that. I think people were trying to retrieve things, there was bit more getting in the way of them, and therefore them pushing us out of the way. So I think that was slightly - a different confrontation really, and I don't think they had any, I mean, I think the police have a sort of a standard of profession around how they behave in conflict. Whereas bailiffs on the other hand, do not - so I think that is a sort of different story.
The military sort of tended to ignore us, I think, really, if they could, and yeah, I think they were sort of probably a bit fascinated by the whole thing. I think I remember early on having quite friendly conversations with American military about why we were there, and what we were doing. And I remember being caught inside the base by an American soldier. And um, yeah, it was a friendly, you know, it was a
relatively friendly interaction really, it wasn't difficult or antagonistic.
[[What about the local residents? What was the relationship like with them?|Becky Griffiths What about the local residents? What was the relationship like with them?]]
[[Do you think Greenham was a vehicle for women to claim some power from traditionally male dominated bodies like the government and the military? Was that an important aspect of the camp?|Becky Griffiths Of-course. So do you think Greenham was a vehicle for women to claim some power from traditionally male dominated bodies like the government and the military? Was that an important aspect of the, of the camp?]]
I think that was difficult. There were some local people who were involved in the camp, you may have already met them, but there was like somebody called Barbara who lived nearby and let us have baths and things in her house. And Sarah stayed in her house for a little while after the baby was born. And then there was somebody else, there's two or three local people who were really helpful and friendly, linked to the local Quaker Meeting House where we would go and just kind of, I think that was hot water there as well. But anyway, so there were some local things that were good.
And then I think a lot of it was quite contentious - people were, didn't know who we were. There was a lot of quite difficult press about filthy lesbians, and, and you know, we were living outside - you look very different from the rest of the world when you're living outside. You’re wearing a lot of clothing. We looked very different because we, you know, we did our own hair and you know, I mean, people just looked alternative, and I think Newbury is not an alternative town. It's a small conservative English town. And these, and these were not small conservative women, so I think that was difficult.
Occasionally people would shout from cars as they went by, it was more slightly, just slightly, slightly antagonistic attitude when we were in town. I don't really remember anything awful though. Yeah, I think it was we were not of their world, and people don't like difference sometimes. And people don't like sort of like political challenge. And so I think that was, that was the conflict, really.
[[You’ve just mentioned Sarah, the woman who had a baby. Were you there when her baby was born?|Becky Griffiths You’ve just mentioned Sarah, the woman who had a baby. I believe you were there when her baby was born?]]
[[How do you think Greenham and women were portrayed at the time in the media?|Becky Griffiths how do you think Greenham and women were portrayed at the time in the media?]]Yeah.
[[Can you tell me about that day?|Becky Griffiths Can you tell me about that day?]]
[[How incredible, wow. Do you remember there being children at the camp? What do you think might have been the challenges of having them around?|Becky Griffiths How incredible, wow. Which leads me on to another question I was going to ask. Do you remember there being children at the camp? What do you think might have been the challenges of having them around?]] Well, she I mean she had been living at the camp for I don't know how long, as long as all of us. And she - longer - and she decided she was going to have a child, and that she was going to have her baby at the camp. And one of the women who was living at the camp had been a midwife. Anyway, so that was good!
And so yeah, the day came. We had built a special bender, which you've, I'm sure people have described them - the things that we lived in, and we'd built one. And she went into labour. There was a lot of boiling of water, like there is in the films, no idea why, but we all boiled a lot of water on the fire. And she had the baby - had Jay standing up. So she had her lover holding her up on one side. And I think her friend on the other, and the midwife keeping an eye on everything, and I just remember it being quick and easy. And she, I mean, obviously, probably wasn't easy for her, but it seemed very quick, and she was very calm. And out he came. It was amazing. We saw he saw him being born and caught, and then that was that. And I think then later that evening, she then went to stay at a nearby house, just so that she could you know, be warm and clean. But she was determined to have him at the camp. So yeah.
[[How incredible, wow. Do you remember there being children at the camp? What do you think might have been the challenges of having them around?|Becky Griffiths How incredible, wow. Which leads me on to another question I was going to ask. Do you remember there being children at the camp? What do you think might have been the challenges of having them around?]]
[[Was there any medical treatment available? What happened if people were injured or got ill?|Becky Griffiths Was there any medical treatment available? What happened if people were injured or got ill?]]There were children at a camp, yeah. There were - not tons. Jay, obviously. And then there were - was somebody who had twin boys, who came and lived at the camp. They were young, sort - god I couldn’t even remember how old they were, but they would have been 6 or 7, something like that. I think it probably is quite hard because you know - there was somebody who went to the local school and then lived at a camp, so she was very young. But she was living at Greenham, she wasn't there with a parent. Yeah, there weren't tons of children but children did come, and I think children came more weekends. So there was somebody who lived nearby who had triplets, girl triplets, who used to come. Yeah, so they were around, I think it would have been a hard place because it's cold, you know, in the winter it’s cold, muddy, so yeah.
[[Tell me a little bit about the living conditions that must have been harsh in the winter?|Becky Griffiths Tell me a little bit about the living conditions that must have been harsh in the winter?]]
[[Was there any medical treatment available? What happened if people were injured or got ill?|Becky Griffiths Was there any medical treatment available? What happened if people were injured or got ill?]]It was, I think I, yeah, it was, I mean, I don't remember it being a hardship particularly but I was happy to be outside, and so it was fine for me. So I don’t feel distressed by that - you have to wear a lot of clothing. Um, and, you know, the life of the camp was around the fire, for obvious reasons. It's warm, and you know, it's miserable if it rains and rains and everything is muddy. There were times when it was extremely cold, but I think, yeah, you just get used to wearing a lot of clothing. And those benders, you can get them quite warm if you light lots of candles, so they’d get really warm inside. Yeah. So I liked it.
Other people might say something different, but I liked it, and I loved my little bender and we made quite a comfortable bed in there, and so it wasn't, it didn't feel - I mean, I was so young as well. I think it all just felt like I didn't really know anything else. It was great fun, you know?
[[Was there any medical treatment available? What happened if people were injured or got ill?|Becky Griffiths Was there any medical treatment available? What happened if people were injured or got ill?]]
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Um, I - somebody got bitten by snake once. Yeah, there were adders out on Greenham common because it was quite open heathland in places. So somebody got bitten by a snake once - can't remember who. I got a kettle of boiling water by accident across one of my knees.
And so I think on both those - certainly for me and for snake lady, we got taken to - somebody drove us down to A&E in Newbury, and they were fine, just patched us up and sent us on our way. But I don't remember anybody being ill ill, apart from that. So, yeah, I think we would have tried to deal with things ourselves. And people were quite into herbal medicine as well, and alternative therapies, so I think there would have been certainly some attempt - having said that there was somebody who was very mentally unwell once. Yeah, and I don't think we dealt with it that well, I think because we had a sort of alternative view of mental health.
And actually, she just needed some help and we were a bit slow to respond to that. I mean, there's so much controversy about treatment and mental health. I think, you know, that might still happen today, but I think she was unwell, and we didn't really know how to respond, I think. But didn't want to sort of hand her over to the clutches of the patriarchy. So you know, there's that whole kind of when you're feeling your way, with an alternative world it's it's difficult.
[[Of course. So do you think Greenham was a vehicle for women to claim some power from traditionally male dominated bodies like the government and the military? Was that an important aspect of the camp?|Becky Griffiths Of-course. So do you think Greenham was a vehicle for women to claim some power from traditionally male dominated bodies like the government and the military? Was that an important aspect of the, of the camp?]] Yeah, I think it was I mean, I think we were very consciously trying to be diff - be have have a sort of woman dominated view not of the world. I'm not really interested in how the world is run entirely. But it's certainly a different response, and a different power structure, and a different, yeah, I think a different view. And I think the military is still male dominated, and that kind of approach to the world is still male dominated. So I think trying to do something different, and trying to make decisions differently, or behave differently, was definitely about female empowerment.
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Yeah, I, well, I was involved in a lot of non violent direct action. Yeah. So the first thing, you know, I'd moved down there and very quickly realised there was a sort of plan afoot to go on to the silos at New Year's, the morning of New Year's Day on in 1983. And I was desperate to be involved. And there was a big discussion, because we thought they might shoot us - people thought that they might open fire, because we were going right into the heart of the thing, you know, we're going on to the missile silos. So I think nobody knew what to expect. And so there was some discussion about that. And because I was 17, there was some discussion about whether I should be allowed. And there was a girl younger than me who was 15, so I made the cut and she didn't, unfortunately for her.
So yeah, it was great. We had a, we made a plan. We went and sat opposite. We'd had a whole thing that we're going to put up ladders, throw carpet over the barbed wire, climb up and over. And then just I think run, there was no real plan after that. So um, we got there. We were all sitting there. And there was a photo journalist with us who took a picture which had a flash. So we suddenly were possibly spotted. So we all had to sort of slightly earlier or faster than we'd planned. And then I went up the ladder. I remember coming over and hitting the ground, and then just running, and running, and running and not really - I don't think we knew what we were going to do if we got there. We hadn't got a plan. Or I don't remember there being a plan. But we did get there, and we just climbed up onto this thing, and that picture of the women in a circle singing - we hadn't planned - I don't remember us planning that - I just remember it spontaneously happening, because I don't think we thought we'd even get that far. I think we thought we'd get stopped before then. And actually, managed to get up there - they were on us quite quickly, you know, they were already kind of driving towards us as we were running. So um, we didn't get that long. And then, yeah, so I think that just all happened quite spontaneously.
And then we all got arrested and taken to various jails. I got taken to Reading and was stuck in a cell with two women for the weekend. I think they didn’t really know what to do with us. And then they charged everybody, and bailed us all. And then yeah, we went to court, 3 or 4 weeks later, I think - can't remember - for breach of the peace. And that was the first of all of the actions that I did. And then there were sort of loads, from tiny little things where we'd just go and annoy them by cutting holes in the fence, or er, I think that same year in 1983, we did a teddy bears’ picnic on the base, which was on my 18th birthday. And we - I was the back end of a pantomime cow. (Laughs). My friend was the front end, and we just went on into the base dressed up as giant animals, and took a picnic, and had a picnic, and then got arrested. I don't think they charged us, I think they just threw us out. Sometimes they’d just throw you out because it was too much - too annoying. And also, trespass by itself wasn't really kind of chargeable, I think they could only charge with you something if you'd broken something, or had committed criminal damage getting in. So then they were left with civil charges like breach of the peace, but I think it was just too annoying to have that many breach of the peace cases going through court.
So there were lots of little things like that that I think never got charged, or I don’t remember getting charged. But yeah, criminal damage - painting things, did a lot of painting of things.
And my mother and I, my mother came to live at Greenham about a year after I had gone there, and she and I and a group of women broke into the base one night, because there was, we’d decided we were going to liberate these geese that they'd put in as guard geese. So it sounds really mad. But basically, there was this little building site quite near the fence. And it was related in some way to the silos, we didn't really know what - because it was, wasn't a functioning building when we broke in. But they decided because people kept breaking in near there and painting it, that they were going to put a pen of geese outside as guard, to alarm them. So we broke in, there were three older women, my mum being one of them, and two - us two, two of us who were younger. And so we cut the fence, went in, we'd got these raisins that we'd soaked in alcohol the night before in an attempt to get the geese drunk, so that we'd be able to get them out easily and quietly. Of-course, they didn't eat the raisins. But anyway, we managed to grab these geese. And then at the point that we'd got the geese, and were hiding, the police turned up, and must have seen the tail end of us disappearing, but we were still inside base. And me and the younger woman got up and walked to the police, and we were like ‘It was us, we just cut a hole in the fence.’ And then I think there was sort of muffled goose noises in the background. And we sort of did a whole sort of comedy cough thing. So the geese got out, we were arrested me - the two, me and the younger woman who was with me, we were were arrested and taken somewhere in the middle of the base. And after that had all died down, the old, three older women came out the way we'd gone in with the geese, and let them go on the canal in Newbury the next day, I think. And I got charged with it - I think I got charged with criminal damage, I think, because we'd cut through the fence and various bits of razor wire to get there. Yeah.
So things like - yeah, we did things like that. And then when the missiles arrived, we had a sort of rolling kind of telephone tree around the launcher leaving the base and going up to Salisbury Plain and coming back again. And so a group of us waited. The launchers had gone out, and so a whole bunch of us were waiting by the roadside at the Greenham end, because we knew when they came back, they'd have to stop in the road in order to be able to turn into the base - it was quite a sharp turn. And so they did, and then we all ran and climbed onboard or I thought we'd all run and climbed on board. And I turned round and it was only me, everybody else was still in the road, and the launcher set off and drove into the base with me on it. And then I got arrested, and taken to court. And, er, but they, and they did charge me, but I argued that I had no intention of going into the base, and it was in fact, them that had taken me into the base, and therefore they shouldn't - they couldn't charge me. They couldn't convict me. That was the only, that was my big moment in court.
So yeah, lots of - I mean, there was a constant stream of, you know, eccentric ideas that people will go, we're going to go and do this today, or we're going to blockade that, or we're going to - so yeah, I think that was sort of happening all the time, really. And yeah, people got arrested, charged, not charged. You know, the whole thing really.
[[How many times did you find yourself incarcerated because of these arrests?|Becky Griffiths How many times did you find yourself incarcerated because of these arrests?]]
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I went to prison for the silos action - we all did for about 2 weeks. Because you have to agree to be bound over to keep the peace. And so our argument was that we were keeping the peace, and therefore we weren't going to be bound over, because we're already doing that. That was the whole function of the action. And so I think almost all of us went to prison for that for about 2 weeks - was it 2 weeks? Something like that. And I was in Holloway, and then um, I went to prison at least twice more. I can't really remember. One was to Bullwood Hall, which was horrendous. That was the youth custody, it suddenly occurred to them that I was under age, and so they sent me to youth custody, which was terrible. And one was to Cookham Wood, but I can't remember what they were for now. Some - criminal damage, one of them's criminal damage, painting things - painting vehicles, I think. Yes. Can't remember what they all were. But anyway.
[[And what do you remember about actually being inside?|Becky Griffiths And what do you remember about actually being inside?]]
[[Was there ever a time when you were involved in the direct action, that you were really frightened for your safety?|Becky Griffiths Was there ever a time when you were involved in the direct action, that you were really frightened for your safety?]]It's mostly boring. That is the thing about prison. It's really boring. Literally nothing happens all day. And you're in a tiny space. It's, yeah, it was interesting for me as well, because I'd come from a very, you know, rural world up in Kendal - small England, and then lived at the camp, that was it, the entirety of my life, really. And so I suddenly met women who were from whole different world, you know, and different, you know, different experiences, different cultures, different - and it definitely opened my eyes to, you know, the kind of experience of women in the legal system, and who that works for, and who it doesn't work for, and who ends up in jail and why. And you know how many women are in there really because of economic crimes that are about being poor and trying to manage and, you know, it's all it was quite - that was a real eye opener for me around sort of class and race that I hadn't really sort of - I'd begun to think about, but I hadn’t seen so kind of vividly displayed really, so I think that was really interesting. Kind of life changing, really seeing that world.
[[Was there ever a time when you were involved in the direct action, that you were really frightened for your safety?|Becky Griffiths Was there ever a time when you were involved in the direct action, that you were really frightened for your safety?]]
[[In terms of political activism, what do you think has been learned from Greenham? And do you think this has had an impact on other generations involved in political activism?|Becky Griffiths In terms of political activism, what do you think has been learned from Greenham? And do you think this has had an impact on other generations involved in political activism?]]I was not afraid of anything when I was that age, I think - you know, when you're 17 you're going to live forever aren’t you? So I, you know, I don't remember being scared really. I don't remember being scared. I think I was probably too much the other way, really.
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Yeah, well, in a couple of different ways, really. One was definitely ‘filthy lesbians’. The other was kind of like, there was a whole thing about we'd been infiltrated by Russians, and it was all kind of like communist plot. And then there was a whole other thing that we were just silly. Our thinking was woolly, we didn't have any proper political kind of analysis, and we were just kind of over emotional. You know, bordering on the whole hysteria thing, you know, women are hysterical creatures. So there was that, I think, so it’s all of those things, I think.
[[Did you have any experience yourself of dealing with the media while you were there?|Becky Griffiths Did you have any experience yourself of dealing with the media while you were there?]]
[[Did you think misogyny was probably the main driver behind all that?|Becky Griffiths Did you think misogyny was probably the main driver behind all the..]]I mean, I did talk to the media. My sort of - it was a revelation to me that you could be at an action, see what had happened, say clearly what had happened to a reporter, and then read about it in the paper the next day, and it be a completely different thing. And the same I think that sort of definitely taught me a lot about reading newspapers even to today. And also, you know, that the police description of an action was so different from ours. And, and yet, somehow the facts were sort of the same. The facts were the same, but it was how they were reported, and what people said about them. And that was kind of an eye opener to me, you know, again, I had no real experience of - I hadn’t done any media studies. I didn't really sort of have any sense of that. To see it vividly was quite interesting.
[[Did you think misogyny was probably the main driver behind all that?|Becky Griffiths Did you think misogyny was probably the main driver behind all the..]]
[[To what extend do you think the camp might have been infiltrated, you know, in terms of people wanting to sabotage the work that you were doing?|Becky Griffiths To what extend do you think the camp might have been infiltrated, you know, in terms of people wanting to sabotage the work that you were doing?]]I think misogyny, conservatism, establishment, you know, all of that. Really anti, you know, homophobia, the whole story, really. The press and the people who get to say what history is have, are generally of a particular political persuasion.
[[And male.|Becky Griffiths And male.]]
[[To what extend do you think the camp might have been infiltrated, you know, in terms of people wanting to sabotage the work that you were doing?|Becky Griffiths To what extend do you think the camp might have been infiltrated, you know, in terms of people wanting to sabotage the work that you were doing?]]And male. Yeah. And people who have power don't like it being challenged. And yeah, so I think, yeah.
[[To what extend do you think the camp might have been infiltrated, you know, in terms of people wanting to sabotage the work that you were doing?|Becky Griffiths To what extend do you think the camp might have been infiltrated, you know, in terms of people wanting to sabotage the work that you were doing?]]
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I have heard people say that, in later years. I never had any experience of it. Everyone I met seemed passionately to believe what they were believing, and do what they were doing. So I never met anyone who I didn't assume was completely genuine. I have no reason to think otherwise. People disagreed with each other. I'm sure we sabotaged ourselves all the time, but it wasn't external.
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Yeah, I think that was absolutely central to it. I think doing the actions that we did, we try to do things that were funny and creative and playful. I think we made loads of amazing banners all of the time. And those were constantly evolving and changing, and people sang all of the time. And those songs were constantly evolving and changing. And you know, nobody had mobile phones, or tablets, or wireless or any of that. So I mean, we sort of made our own world really, and I think that's part of it, the conversation and creativity, the sparking off each other. That's definitely - that's how a whole world, a full world is, isn't it? I think.
[[Sing a song for unity and morale.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Wow, I don't know. I think - what's been learned? That’s quite hard, isn't it? I think feminism existed long before Greenham turned up. So I don't think, you know, Greenham invented feminism, but I definitely think there was a sort of consolidation, and kind of adding to that history that was good, that women were able to organise. Why would there be any doubt but anyway, that women do organise and can create, you know, a protest, and that that protest is effective. And so I think that is an ongoing thing.
Has it created anything for future? I mean, there were kind of environmental protests that kind of led on from it, but I don't know. I don't know that is a difficult question to answer, I think. I think there's been a kind of third or fourth wave of feminism, whatever that is in the last 5 or 6 years, but I don't know if that links to that or not, or - it all feels quite kind of online digital now rather than in the world actually in each other's presence. I don't know. It's a funny time, I think.
[[Why is it, do you think that the Suffrage movement has been celebrated and discussed, whereas the peace movement really hasn’t?|Becky Griffiths Why is it, do you think that the Suffrage movement has been celebrated and discussed, whereas the peace movement really hasn’t?]]
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I think I, I well I sort of - I didn't leave in kind of one kind of decisive ‘I'm off’ kind of a way. But I think I was still growing, and exploring in the world, you know, and I had started to come up to London, and see life here, and I’d started to - and I become involved in the peace camp in America, and lived there over the same kind of - towards the end of my Greenham period I was living on and off in America at the peace camp there. So, and then I think I just yeah, it wasn't kind of one thing - I think I just kind of carried on forwards with my life. And that was increasingly outside of the peace camp, really. And I was still, yeah, still finding myself still kind of exploring and then eventually went to college and blah. So yeah.
[[Was your experience of the American Peace Corps different from your experience at Greenham?|Becky Griffiths Was your experience of the American Peace Corps different from your experience at Greenham?]]
[[And once you’d once you left, what did you miss most about it? Or how did you feel about it looking back?|Becky Griffiths And um, once you’d once you left, what did you miss most about it? Or how did you feel about it looking back?]]Yeah, they did a lot more talking - a lot more talking. It was quite funny because I think I went there with two British women, and we were quite frustrated by the kind of extent of the talking, and desperate to just go and do stuff, you know. So I think it was definitely - we had a different approach, I think, and I think there's probably cultural and social reasons for that. You know, the American police are armed. And I think American protesters had more violent response, so I think perhaps we came to it with a sort of specifically British ‘I’ really, and wanted to take actions and wanted a bit more - I thought were a bit more anarchic. They were definitely more organised. There were lots of rotas for this, that and the other and, you know, it was all on a much bigger scale as well. And so yeah, I think we kind of - more anarchic, more wanting to just kind of jump in and be a bit daft. So it, it I thought we brought something to it. But yeah.
[[And once you’d once you left, what did you miss most about it? Or how did you feel about it looking back?|Becky Griffiths And um, once you’d once you left, what did you miss most about it? Or how did you feel about it looking back?]]
[[Fair to say you were empowered by Greenham?|Becky Griffiths Fair to say you were empowered by Greenham?]]I've always felt great about it looking back. I've, I don't know. I mean, I think we did change the world. I'm not sure if I could quite put my finger on how, or the extent of that, but it felt like we had, and I felt like we sort made the issue really live. And the missiles went, and, you know, I haven't been back. But I know that the fence is down, is the fence down? And so it's land again. And that was all we ever really wanted.
So that felt, you know, it wasn't all we wanted, but it was one of the things that we wanted. And so that felt quite positive. I sort of feel like it was the making of me in some way, that I had, you know, begun my life in a way that I was free, and that I could create myself, and that I was surrounded by strong women who had political opinions, and that led me to be the person that I then became. So I think I felt so lucky. I felt so lucky to have just arrived at the right time, and just run with it really.
[[Fair to say you were empowered by Greenham?|Becky Griffiths Fair to say you were empowered by Greenham?]]
[[Is there one moment or emotion, or word, or memory that sums up your whole experience of Greenham at all?|Becky Griffiths Is there one moment or emotion, or word, or memory that sums up your whole experience of Greenham at all?]]Totally. Yeah, I, I hope everyone was but I certainly was.
[[Is there one moment or emotion, or word, or memory that sums up your whole experience of Greenham at all?|Becky Griffiths Is there one moment or emotion, or word, or memory that sums up your whole experience of Greenham at all?]]
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Freedom, I think.
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]I don't know. So this is a totally off the cuff response. But I think, I wonder if it was because what women were asking for - one of the things that women were asking for in the Suffrage movement was so establishment, you know, we want to be able to vote, we want to be able to vote in your system that you've made. So all we want to do is join your system.
And I think the Greenham women's kind of movement was not that at all. We didn't want that system. We didn't, we weren't interested in those rules. And so I think maybe it's a harder thing to quantify. And the success of it is probably harder to quantify as well, you know, you campaign for the vote, you get the vote. That's how that's measured. You campaign for an anti-nuclear world, or for peace, or for, you know, equality, and that's harder to measure. Because actually look at the world we're in - those things aren't achieved in the same way. So maybe that's why the - I don't know, I mean, I think it's probably a mixture of those things. We wanted something wilder, we wanted something less easy to measure.
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]Well, it's an amazing part of of protest history. It’s a sort of really hugely successful kind of protest. It had so many links to you know, feminism and environmental politics. And because it was have incredible women who did incredible things. So I think that that piece of history, or herstory is what should be in the world. You know, people's history, women's history. Could never be bothered with all that King and Queen shit, you know, I want to know what people did. And protest history is important and women's history within that is important because that is people's history.
[[Thank Becky Griffiths and speak with another woman around the campfire.|Campfire]]''"Sarah's Song" by the women of Greenham Peace Camp, performed by Jenny and Flo Crowe.''
They can forbid nearly everything
But they can’t forbid me to think
And they can’t forbid my tears to flow
And they can’t shut my mouth when I sing
They can forbid nearly everything
But they can’t forbid me to think
And they can’t forbid the flowers to grow
And they can’t shut my mouth when I sing
They can forbid nearly everything
But they can’t forbid me to think
And they can’t forbid the sun to shine
And they can’t shut my mouth when I sing
[[Sing another song.|Fire 1 Sing a Song for unity and morale.]]
[[Speak with another woman around the campfire|Campfire]]
<audio src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/sarahs-song.mp3" autoplay><img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/women_only_space.jpg" width="400" height="400" alt="Black and white illustration of a wreath of sinuous branches, strung with fine, strong cobwebs, titled Women Only Space by Kayleigh Hilsdon">
Forty years ago, women around the UK descended on Berkshire in beautiful indignation, beginning an extensive campaign of non-violent actions against nuclear weapons being stored on Greenham Common. They created an exclusively female space - Greenham Women's Peace Camp - and thrived together, pushing those watching to question war, sexual orientation, and gender roles. Their stories inspired tens of thousands of women around the world - Let their stories inspire you.
All responses are the unedited, verbatim words of Greenham Women, from interviews conducted as part of the project "Greenham Women Everywhere".
Find out more about the women you are speaking with around this campfire:
[[Ailsa Johnson |Ailsa Johnson Info]]
[[Penny Gulliver |Penny Gulliver Info]]
[[Sue Say |Sue Say Info]]
[[Mica May |Mica May Info]]
[[Diana Derioz |Diana Derioz Info]]
[[Alison Napier |Alison Napier Info]]
[[Becky Griffiths |Becky Griffiths Info]]
Now..
[[Take a seat around the campfire|Campfire]]
[[Return to the introduction|Welcome]]
[[Leave the campfire, and view the credits|Credits]]
Leave the campfire, and visit the Greenham Women Everwhere Website:
<a href="http://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/">http://greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk/</a><img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/ailsa_johnson.png" width="400" height="400" alt="Stylised photograph of Ailsa Johnson, smiling, with a sea view behind her. Photgraph by Christine Bradshaw, treatment by LHTrevail.">
Ailsa visited Greenham several times and stayed over
night for one night. She visited with her local CND group. Since
Greenham, Ailsa has continued working passionately as an activist
against nuclear weapons. She feels that the threat of nuclear weapons is
just as present now as it was then. Ailsa’s strongest memory is the day
she visited when she saw the convoy came out with the weapons. Ailsa
vividly remembers the songs which she felt kept the morale up.
[[Back|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/penny_gulliver.png" width="400" height="400" alt="Stylised photograph of Penny Gulliver, in a doorway, leaning lightly against a wall. Photgraph by Christine Bradshaw, treatment by LHTrevail.">
''Penny Gulliver'' was 21 when she went to Greenham and stayed for a
year, she refers to it as "doing a shift". She stayed at Blue Gate and
was at the camp during the evictions, being "ransacked" by the police
and nightwatch. She recalls the enjoyment of political discussions with
women, recounts actions that were scary and exciting such as painting
out the lights on the runway to try and stop the Cruise missiles
landing. She talks fluently about the legacy of Greenham, the impact of
the protest, taking action and going to prison and the echo of that
across her life.
[[Back|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/sue_say.png" width="400" height="400" alt="Stylised photograph of Sue Say, speaking dynamically, with outstretched hand. Photgraph by Christine Bradshaw, treatment by LHTrevail.">
On ''Sue Say'''s first evening at Greenham, she heard a woman talking to
a soldier on the other side of the fence. It was that powerful
conversation that kept her at Greenham, protesting nuclear missiles but
also exploring the multitudes of different ways to be a woman by meeting
and talking to "many shades of women". Sue went to prison many times,
took the government to court for illegal strip-searches and won and in
the process changing the law. She talks about the radical potential of
laughter and creativity and the unconventional methods she and others
used to draw attention to issues. and the strength in unity at Yellow
Gate.
[[Back|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/micah_may.png" width="400" height="400" alt="Stylised photograph of Mica May, moving expansively and with great energy. Photgraph by Christine Bradshaw, treatment by LHTrevail.">
''Mica May'' came to the peace movement accidentally while living in
Manchester and visited Greenham for the first time for the Embrace the
Base action. Describing it as a transformational experience, Mica lived
at Yellow Gate in 1983. In this interview, Mica meditates on the
artistic practices at Greenham, the creative actions which she took part
in and the importance of women-only spaces.
[[Back|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]''Diana Derioz'' has been a pacifist all her life and set up the Totnes Women for Peace. In 1982 she went to the first Greenham demonstration of women’s hands around the fence. She had been on many mixed demonstrations which were often violent and thought that women could do it differently. She lived at Greenham part-time for nearly 3 years. She took part in all of the actions including: The Black Cardigan Demonstration, Easter, Dragon Day Bunny Party. She read a very interesting letter she sent to her children about the Easter Action she attended with her 3 three old daughter in April 1983. Her mother attended all the demonstrations and was arrested (aged 63) for dancing on the base along with 80 other women and spent 3 weeks in Holloway as examples. She has a press cutting about her mother “Gran’s Strip Ordeal” as Ursula refused a strip search. Diana was arrested and insisted at being tried in her local court supported by many Greenham women. She speaks very eloquently about the creative conversations with women from around the world (including the miners’ wives) sitting around the fire and trying to escape the smoke. She talked about how the women put “energy” into the vehicles breaking down when they were being removed or making us invisible when trying to hide. “We really believed in those spells” as they always seemed to work.
[[Back|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/alison_napier.png" width="400" height="400" alt="Stylised photograph of Alison Napier, smiling, leaning on a gate. Photgraph by Christine Bradshaw, treatment by LHTrevail.">
''Alison Napier'' was a sociology student in Aberdeen when she was
asked by some friends if she would drive a minibus for them down to
Greenham. She visited many times afterwards and was arrested twice, the
first time she was held illegally in the cells under Newbury police
station for 5 days and the second time, convicted of obstruction. She
appealed on the basis that the police, military and lorries containing
nuclear weapons obstructed the road far more than she had by sitting
down and she won. Although she never lived at Greenham she remembers
vividly the violence of the police, the importance of NVDA and most
importantly, the fun.
[[Back|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]<img src="https://scarylittlegirls.co.uk/campfire/becky_griffiths.png" width="400" height="400" alt="Stylised photograph of Becky Griffiths, standing in a room of copper stills. Photgraph by Christine Bradshaw, treatment by LHTrevail.">
Having been involved in her local CND group, ''Becky Griffiths'' first went to Greenham Common for the Embrace the Base action when she was seventeen years old. She describes arriving by coach at the main gate and being overwhelmed by the sight of hundreds of women gathered together, knowing it was where she had to be. She moved to Greenham soon after and lived there full-time for over two years at yellow gate. She also lived briefly at the The Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Senaca, New York, having visited as part of a Greenham women’s solidarity trip. She took part in various actions, breaking into the base to dance on missile silos or have a teddy bears’ tea party on the day of her 18th birthday. She was arrested several times for her part in such actions and served time in prison. She describes feeling very lucky to have been at Greenham, surrounded by strong, political Women.
[[Back|Find out more about Greenham Women.]]
↶↷
In the distance, you see the glow of a campfire. Smoke rising. Figures gathered. You begin to walk closer.
-----HOW TO PLAY-----
1. This is a text-based conversational game. Controls are simple. Scroll down to read the text. When you are offered a choice, which will be in different-coloured text, simply click on the action you would like to take.
2. When a conversation has come to a natural end point, you will be invited to speak with others around the fire, or sometimes to continue the conversation further. If you do not want to initiate another conversation at that time, you can say goodbye and leave from the campfire. No individual conversation is very long, and you can have as many conversations as you like.
3. CONTENT WARNING - Some of the themes discussed may be sensitive or triggering. Your emotional response is respected. It is fine to leave at any time.
4. You can exit the game quickly at any point, by simply closing your browser or tab.
All responses are the unedited, verbatim words of Greenham Women, from interviews conducted as part of the project "Greenham Women Everywhere". You can find out more about this from the link below, or when you leave if you don't like spoilers.
Whether you know who the Greenham Women are as you approach, or whether they are strangers to you, you are welcome at the warmth of the fire.
These are real conversations. There is no save or return, there is no "back", there is no index. This is now.
A little way ahead, you can see the campfire.
Closer now.
Take a seat around the campfire.
Find out more about the Greenham Women.
Leave.