EMBRACE
THE BASE
Born from despair at the
descent into nuclear madness were the women of Greenham Common who by
example were continuing to inspire both men and women around the
world to stand up and let their feelings regarding nuclear weapons be
known.
From the germ of an idea
for a protest, an amazing illustration of what was possible came to
fruition when 30,000 women descended upon the base to take part in an
action. Just two months earlier, copies of a handwritten leaflet had
been circulated calling upon women everywhere to come to Greenham
Common and 'embrace the base'. The plan being for thousands of women
to link arms and form a living, human chain around all nine miles of
the perimeter fence. At the same time, everyone wishing to attend was
urged to bring with them something that symbolised what they loved
most so that the whole of the fence could be decorated with these
items. The distributed leaflet took the form of a chain letter that
asked the reciprocant to make further copies and to send them on to
ten friends.
The response was
staggering; as on a dreary, wet Sunday in December 30,000 women of
all ages and backgrounds joined together in an emotional show of
strength and completely surrounded Greenham Common. By the end of the
day, the fence was covered in ribbons, photographs of children, baby
clothes, bay nappies, and even a wedding dress. As a protest it was a
massively symbolic one, succeeding in showing the stark contrast
between life and love as represented by the women and death and hate
as represented by the military base.
The following day, the
Daily Mirror newspaper put the protest onto its front page with the
simple headline: 'Peace!'. Greenham Common and the subject of Cruise
missiles were now big media issues.
Whether or not any of the
women thought their protest would actually close down the base was
beside the point. For the women of Greenham it was a major propaganda
coup, causing the government and other supporters and advocates of
the Cruise missile plan to launch a counter attack in a bid to regain
the higher ground. Women Conservative MPs such as Lady Olga Maitland
and Anne Widecombe were wheeled out in a bid to show that the peace
protesters weren't representative of all womankind, whilst newspaper
editors adopted overnight an almost blanket policy of depicting the
Greenham women as unwashed, militant lesbians.
The war to end all wars
was heating up.
No comments:
Post a Comment