Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp: Protest Against Cruise

The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was a protest camp outside RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, England, set up in 1981 against the planned deployment of American nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Lasting until 2000 and run by women from early 1982, it became one of the best-known protests of the late Cold War and a landmark in the history of feminist activism.

Background

In December 1979 NATO adopted its “double-track” decision: to deploy 572 US intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe, including 464 ground-launched cruise missiles, while offering arms-control talks with the Soviet Union, which had been deploying its own SS-20 missiles. In 1980 the British government announced that cruise missiles would be based at Greenham Common, a US-operated airfield near Newbury, and at RAF Molesworth.

The decision revived a peace movement that had been strong in Britain since the Aldermaston marches of the late 1950s. Membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) grew rapidly in the early 1980s.

Founding the camp

In August 1981 a group called Women for Life on Earth, initiated by Ann Pettitt, set off on a march from Cardiff to Greenham. About 36 women, with some men and children, walked roughly 110 miles (about 180 km). When they arrived on 5 September 1981, several chained themselves to the base fence and asked for a televised debate with the Ministry of Defence. When this was refused, they stayed.

In February 1982 the camp became women-only. Campers lived in tents and makeshift shelters known as “benders” in harsh conditions, facing repeated evictions by bailiffs and the local council. Over time separate camps grew up at the base gates, named after colours of the rainbow, such as Yellow Gate (the main gate), Green Gate and Blue Gate.

Protests and actions

The largest action came on 12 December 1982, when about 30,000 women came to “Embrace the Base”, holding hands around the perimeter fence. On 1 January 1983 dozens of women climbed the fence and danced on the missile silos under construction. On 1 April 1983 CND organised a human chain of some 70,000 people linking Greenham with the nuclear weapons sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield.

Non-violent direct action was central. Women cut the fence, entered the base and tracked missile convoys when they left for exercises. Hundreds were arrested and many were imprisoned, often after refusing to pay fines.

Women also took legal action. In November 1983 a group of Greenham women filed a lawsuit in a US federal court in New York against President Reagan and other American officials, arguing that deploying the missiles was unlawful. The courts dismissed the case, but it drew further attention to the camp.

Life at the camp

Daily life was hard. The women had no mains water or electricity, cooked on open fires and endured cold, wet winters on the edge of the base. Evictions were frequent: bailiffs and police removed tents and belongings, and women rebuilt their shelters, sometimes the same day. Some local residents formed groups opposing the camp, and campers reported harassment from passers-by and some soldiers.

The camp was organised without leaders, with decisions reached through meetings and discussion. Women came for a day, a weekend or many years, and supporters around the country sent food, firewood and money. Songs, webs of wool woven into the fence and other symbolic acts became trademarks of the protest, and visitors arrived from across Europe, North America and beyond.

Missiles arrive and leave

The first cruise missiles arrived at Greenham on 14 November 1983; eventually 96 were based there. The camp continued through the 1980s, though numbers fell after the peak years. The INF Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in December 1987 required the elimination of all such missiles. The last cruise missiles left Greenham in 1991, and the US Air Force withdrew in 1992.

The camp formally closed in 2000. Much of the former base was returned to public use as common land, and a commemorative peace garden opened on the site of the original camp in 2002.

Legacy

Supporters credit Greenham with keeping nuclear weapons on the political agenda and showing the power of sustained non-violent protest. Critics at the time, including much of the press and the Conservative government, saw the women as naive or unrepresentative. Historians generally see the missiles’ removal as a result of superpower diplomacy, while acknowledging the movement’s influence on public debate.

The camp also had a lasting cultural legacy. It became the subject of books, documentaries, plays and oral history projects, and the experiences of its women are preserved in archives such as the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics. The control tower and missile shelters still standing on the common are reminders of the base’s Cold War role.

Timeline

• 1979, 12 December: NATO adopts the double-track decision.
• 1981, 5 September: Marchers from Cardiff arrive and set up the camp.
• 1982, February: The camp becomes women-only.
• 1982, 12 December: About 30,000 women “Embrace the Base”.
• 1983, 14 November: The first cruise missiles arrive.
• 1987, 8 December: The INF Treaty is signed.
• 1991: The last cruise missiles leave Greenham.
• 2000: The peace camp formally ends.

Why it matters

Greenham Common was a defining image of the 1980s nuclear arms debate in Europe. It brought thousands of women into political action, influenced protest movements worldwide and transformed a nuclear base into public land.