Saturday, December 12 1982 was my fortieth birthday -and I spent it at Greenham Common!
That weekend there were at least 30,000 people - mostly women, but some men as well - who travelled down to 'embrace the base' and to blockade it with a sit-down proLest.
We joined hands right round the base, tied symbolic objects to the wire fencing, dragged parts of it down and sang songs. The police looked on bemused.
What had started with 36
marching from Cardiff to the spot Newbury chosen to house American Cruise Missiles, from September 1981 became a focus of anti-nuclear campaigning for the next five y cals.
Indeed a small remained in place until the missiles were removed in 1992 and the last women only finally left in September 2000. The silos were dismantled, the land transformed back into a common and now a commemorative and historic site is being constructed to
the Greenham struggle. Women only
The strength of the camp was the fact it was almost exclusively When women blockaded the base, cut the wire fencing, refused to budge whatever the police and local thugs tried to do, the state did not know how to handle it.
Police from outside the area had to be drafted in because local police became over sympathetic. Newbury Council secretly changed the legal status of the land yet still they could not get rid of the peace
The women survived conlinous narassmenl, allacks on their tents, court cases, fines and imprisonment.
Still they remained, providIng a permanent reminder that, as Tony Benn used to say, 'Britain was the 51st state of the United States', housing NATO's nuclear arsenal at Greenham Common.
Much of their success can be put down to their creative Tactics and direct action. Although they made links with parts of the Labour Party and many trade unionists, like the suffragettes before them they were not inhibited by a sense of 'how things should be done.
Some of this approach, stemming from radical femimIsL, or separatist strands of the women's movement, was frustrating for socialists.
For example, it wasn't usual to vote on anything - decisions were arrived at by conSCusus.
We sometimes called it 'the tyranny of structurelessness, as those who spoke loudest and longest usually got their way. But there can be no denying the impact they had in raising the issue and keeping it in the spotlight.
Their model of direct action was an inspiration to many including against Pit Closures; indeed many of visited Greenham during and after the Miners' Strike of 1984-5.
The Greenham were also a beacon beyond Britain inspiring the peace camp at Comiso in Italy, another Cruise missiles site, and later peace camps including, most successtully, at Faslane in Scotland. Although they made links with parts of the Labour Party and many trade unionists, like the suffragettes before them the Greenham women were not inhibited by a sense of 'how things should be done'. The Peace Movement
When Tory monster Michael Heseltine visited Newbury Council, the women blockaded the council building. Questions were asked in Parliament about what would happen to women if they entered the camp. Heseltine replied they would be shot. As a result 17 Labour MPs visited Greenham Camp to show their solidarity.
Nor were the protests confined to Greenham. Support groups were set up in all sorts of places, visits as well as local solidarity protests.
CND itself, including Labour CND, with hundreds of local branches, organised large demonstrations against nuclear weapons in general and Cruise missiles in particular.
In Peckham, South London, where I lived, a particularly successful CND group always brought local feeder marches of several hundred supporters to the main demonstrations.
The group made links with local trade unions, showed anti-nuclear films, got resolutions through local Labour Parties to force Southwark Council to become a 'nuclearfree zone' and staged a public opening of the local nuclear bunker.
They even pressured Southwark Council to support the Greenham camp and Dass a resoluuon accine nou to employ Tarmac, or any other company, engaged in the building of the silos to house the missiles.
Many on the left were critical of the 'woman only' basis of the camp, scathing of the mystical culture adopted by some of the women.
But it was right for socialists and socialist feminists to support it and give it solidarity as it was a focus of activity and direct which national CND often lacked.
The Greenham women still have much to teach us. Today, for example, we cannot determine precisely wien Issues and actions the movement against the effects of global warming will adopt.
But we have to be prepared to work with all sorts of strands of opinion in this developing mass movement and put forward our socialist answers from a position of support within it. WESAY CRUISE NO TO MISSILES
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Philip Kane Four quence of a debate with