Women protesting against nuclear Cruise missiles sited in Britain invade the American airbase at Greenham Common
Author: Maggie Murray Year: 1983
Waiting there with them in the dark, the cold and the rain was one of the most exciting moments in my life. I felt I was a small (a very small) part of an effective and imaginative women’s movement.
I was a member of Format, a women-only photographers group who had been tipped off about the planned action by the protestors. We had all been to the camp before. Three of us travelled down to Berkshire to record the protest together with Jill Nicholls who was writing about it for Spare Rib. We whispered and tried to keep dry as we waited. It was a struggle to keep rain off the camera equipment. I ran out of tissues and asked Jill if she had any that I could use. She scrabbled around in her bag and found a Tampax. ‘How appropriate’, I thought as I wiped the camera casing and protective lens filter.
Then dozens of intrepid women emerged from the bushes, banged their ladders up against the wire fence, clambered over it, dropped 2/3 meters onto the other side, ran across the airfield, scrambled up the high silo which housed the nuclear missiles and started to sing and dance in a circle on top of them. We could see the flashing blue lights on the police and army vehicles that chased towards them. It was a moving and thrilling moment.
The photographs we took that morning were used multiple times in many different contexts. Raissa Page’s image of the dancing on the silos became an important symbol – appearing on posters and campaigning material. The picture I took of an 80 year old woman going over the top appeared 10 years later on the front cover of a Sunday colour supplement celebrating the Greenham women. The daughter of that woman contacted me and asked for a print. I loved sending that.
The missiles, the protesting women’s camp and the fence have all gone now. An almost hidden peace garden commemorates the events and there is a small museum covering the history of the Common in the old airfield control tower. The peace camp and the protestors feature in it.