[News report] The first American cruise missiles are now in Britain. It was early this morning
at Greenham Common RAF base in Berkshire that a United States star lifter landed with its cargo of
missiles. [Archive commentary] The women's peace camp at Greenham also represents the disquieting
voice of rebellious women, a sisterhood of dissent. Ann Pettit was one of the women
who'd started the whole thing.
We decided to call it a peace camp and decided to stay
asking for a public debate between everybody in this country about the sighting of cruise missiles.
Decisions about nuclear weapons, and about military things in general, they're all taken by men.
It just seems right that it should be women. At that point in 1981, we had two children.
We moved here to west Wales because we wanted to run a small holding, grow vegetables.
The possibility that the Cold War would escalate into a nuclear war began to seem more and more likely.
The government was sending out leaflets called 'Protect and Survive',
and issued a film about what we should do.
[Archive] A cupboard under the stairs. That is another good place for a refuge. Put boxes of earth
or sand on the stairs. Start collecting them now. [Ann] We were meant to make a makeshift little den in our
house, or hide in the cupboard under the stairs with a few tins of food, and you thought, what,
are they insane? So many protests have taken the form of walking. Think of the salt marches in India,
the marches in Selma in America led by Martin Luther King... It just is a natural form of political
protest. I began to have visions of women walking down the road with our banners and our placards.
I'd managed to get a little mention of the march in conventional women's magazines like
Cosmopolitan, I seem to remember, and there were women who had seen these and jumped at it, and
thought, yes, this is for me. Most of them, women who had never done anything like this before.
So we walked from Cardiff, the capital of Wales, to Greenham Common. The press were not interested,
trying to get on the front pages of newspapers was, well you know, I was told to get lost, I don't
know how many times. We had to do something more dramatic, and we decided to chain ourselves up to
the gates of Greenham when we got there. We had to stay a night, and another night, a week, two weeks...
Gradually, the support did come in. [News report] Thousands of women surround the American airbase at
Greenham Common in a peaceful protest against the siting of American cruise missiles in Britain.
[Ann] It was the biggest women's demonstration ever, I think, in this country. I think it's a brilliant
title, actually: 'Embrace the base! Embrace the base!' Sort of 'give love into the base'! We decorated the
fence as well. I remember seeing a woman had hung her wedding dress on the fence.
I suppose relations with the police had begun on quite a sort of courteous basis but they got
quite violent, really.
[News reports] Security at Greenham Common has been substantially increased here tonight...
- At one time, a group of about 15 women struggled with soldiers before being arrested.
- The Greenham protest forced Mrs Thatcher to abandon her plan to let
Ronald Reagan station nuclear missiles on British soil.
[Ann] The fact that it was
a movement of women who made some leaders see sense, it did change things.
I'm very proud of what I did, really.