Greenham Common

GREENHAM COMMON

As the sun rose over the Berkshire countryside on New Years Day 1983, the women peace protesters at Greenham Common were busying themselves opening a door that Her Majesty's government thought had slammed shut on its citizens. A door that the government would have preferred to have remained closed so that the business going on behind it could continue unabated. The protesters, however, had well and truly found a key to unlock it and there was simply no way now of holding them back.

Under cover of darkness and armed with just a ladder and a piece of carpet, 44 women scaled the outer perimeter barbed-wire-topped fence of the missile base and made their way to the partially built missile silos. After clambering up to the top of the 50-feet high silos the women joined hands with each other and in a large circle commenced to sing, skip and dance around. Nothing more, nothing less.

Although the action had been planned and conducted in secrecy so as not to forewarn the base’s security forces, the women were savvy enough to have the whole escapade filmed. The subsequent footage of them happily dancing in a revolving circle on the top of the silo was curiously, beautifully and incredibly powerful. Shrouded in the half-light of dawn and viewed from a distance, the women looked like wood nymphs, prompting vague memories of childhood fairy tales where in dark forests far from the gaze of man, elves and pixies would always celebrate in a similar fashion.

For the women it was indeed a celebration - of themselves, of womankind dancing over what was in effect the stupidity of mankind wrapped up and packaged into the idea of a Cruise missile. As a peaceful protest it once again highlighted what was going on at Greenham and without doubt caused questions to be asked by the government regarding the impact of such actions upon public opinion.

As the police dragged the women one-by-one down from the silo, even though they could be facing jail sentences they could take comfort in the fact that the film footage would soon be beamed across the world and that one photograph in particular of them all dancing on the silo would soon become an iconic image.

Greenham Common was going global.