by Celia Burgess-Macey
This personal memory and reflection relates to the Women’s Peace camp and two protests I attended at Greenham Common.
The women’s peace camp began in September 1981 after a Welsh Group called Women for Life on Earth went to Greenham Common to protest against the decision of the British government to allow cruise missiles to be stored there. I visited in 1982 but the occasion I remember best was in 1983 when we embraced the base.
From the WLM I know that the political is also personal. My commitment to peace came from my mother, Sylvia Austin. My mother was a staunchly Methodist Christian woman who was not afraid to express her beliefs. She was a lifelong pacifist having been deeply affected by the death of her favourite brother in the First World War. She joined CND in the 1950s. I also joined and wore my CND badge to school and in one of my early confrontations with authority, was told to remove it. My mother had accompanied me on CND marches in London in the 1970s. So my presence at Greenham was a source of pride to her. I told her I would pin her photo on the fence, which I did.
I have badges I kept over the years from various marches and campaigns including my first CND badge and my mother’s World Disarmament campaign badge which she wore on her coat till her death at age 95.
In December 1983 I was teaching at William Patten school in Stoke Newington in London. This was down the road from Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Letitia Barbauld’s Unitarian Church in Newington Green. I identified with these early feminists and with my own nonconformist upbringing (my suffragette grandmother Beatrice Harland and my father, Frank Harland Burgess, were Unitarian) and the challenge to authority that they represented.
In 1983 a young teacher at the school had resigned to go and live in the Peace camp. We were all very impressed as she stood up in assembly to explain to the children why she was leaving. I went to the Peace camp to encircle the base taking symbols of those I loved to tie to the fence and to visit my colleague.
Another motivation for my attending the protests was fear for the future generations. Becoming a mother had been a source of great joy. I had been diagnosed with endometriosis and told that I probably wouldn’t get pregnant. I endured two operations and Tanya Katharine was born in 1978. I knew she would probably be my only child. I wanted her to live in a world free from nuclear fear. I pinned her photo on the fence. I knew that other women had taken toys and babies clothes to Greenham. I liked that idea. So I also took one of Tanya’s babygrows and attached that too. The image reminded me of the vulnerability of humanity and the contrast was shocking when such items were placed on a military structure.
I was a child of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and was born towards the end of the Second World War just before Hiroshima.I had grown up very aware of the human tragedy of war. Women only protests had become more important to me after experiencing the male dominated climate of socialist politics.
I went to Greenham with my friend Janet whom I had met in the antenatal class in 1977 and her son was born one day before Tanya. At Greenham Janet and I linked arms in defence of our children’s futures as we surrounded the base with many other women. There was singing and dancing and it was all very powerful and non-confrontational. I definitely preferred this women only space and the absence of male ego.
But when an armed American soldier confronted me from the other side of the fence, his look of hate triggered something in me so I started shouting at him. I was shaking with rage-at him, at the army, at the politicians, at my ex-partner and the whole patriarchal mess.
Women led me away from the fence. I lay and looked at the stars and felt great peace.
Janet and I have been friends together since we met in antenatal class in 1977. We joined Extinction Rebellion and went on protests together. We helped to plant a garden on Waterloo Bridge and she was arrested. It reminded me of Greenham in some ways.