Liz Khan:
Liz Khan and Sue Finch locked onto concrete to block road at Burghfield Atomic Weapons Establishment.© Cynthia Cockburn
I was working as a childcare worker in a feminist Children’s Centre when the call came out in December 1982 for women to embrace the USA military base at Greenham Common that was preparing to bring nuclear cruise missiles there.
A group of women from work joined 30,000 others on the day. I then joined a local Greenham Common group that participated in actions at there and in my local vicinity, highlighting the evil of the weapons and manoeuvres taking place there and other military bases including Faslane in Scotland.
The USA pulled out in 1992 but Britain still has its own nuclear missiles based on submarines in Scotland.
When the war broke out in former Yugoslavia in 1991, I joined other Greenham women protesting, calling ourselves Women Against War. This group evolved into Women in Black (WiB), in solidarity with women in Belgrade who had taken their form of protest from Women in Black in Israel and Palestine.
The format used in the WiB vigils held in Israel and Belgrade was very similar to the protests we had as Women against War, e.g. placards, leaflets and demonstrations. Wearing black and holding silent vigils were something we easily took on. We felt that the silence was less threatening to the public and people were more easily able to engage with the women who handed out leaflets and engaged in speaking.
We were given permission to hold vigils by St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square, then moved to the Edith Cavell statue just a few metres away. This became the new home for Women in Black London who felt that Edith Cavell’s principles mirrored our own.
Leaflets provide information with specific information about the impact of patriarchy, war, weapon sales and violence against women and refugees.
In 2001, I was part of a small group of women that visited Israel and Palestine. I participated in WiB vigils in Jerusalem and a number of protests about the checkpoints.
I returned in 2002 with a WiB group and participated in a film about Women in Black made by filmmaker Donna Bailey and a Radio 5 team. Once again, I
participated in a number of protests including being a human shield, staying in Palestinian families’ homes that were being targeted by Israeli air attacks, removing road blocks in towns and villages on the West Bank, protecting Palestinian olive harvest from settlers and protesting about the building of the Israeli occupation walls.
On later visits I stayed at the women’s house based on the West Bank that had been set up to monitor and stop human right violations, and joined checkpoints monitoring Israelis detaining Palestinians.
Our vigils in London have continued to raise our concerns at the years of blockading and war on Gaza, and the ever-expanding Israeli settlements.
As a Woman in Black, I have participated in protests at Faslane where WiB started and ended a year of protest at the nuclear submarine base.
I have participated in numerous actions at Aldermaston and Burghfield where nuclear missiles are developed and assembled, including lying down across the entrance in the snow, locked onto a block of concrete blocking traffic for several hours. I have also joined a number of demonstrations as part of WiB highlighting patriarchy in terms of Reclaim the Night marches and opposing militarism and war.
Sue Finch
Like Liz, I lived in Hackney and became part of Women in Black after joining the successful campaign to get rid of nuclear weapons at Greenham Common – that’s how we met and became lifelong friends.
Women in Black began in Israel and Palestine in 1988, after the 1987 Palestinian intifada, with joint vigils by Israeli and Palestinian women to ‘End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza’, and the first vigil in London was held the same year. Six months later, Jewish women peace activists in the USA began holding similar actions. Then Italian feminists visited Israel and Palestine and took the idea home and to former Yugoslavia, where women from Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo held joint actions against the war between their countries, calling themselves Žene u Crnom protiv Rata (Women in Black against War).
The WiB network spread rapidly to the UK, Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Colombia, Uruguay, India, South Africa, Armenia, Russia, Denmark, Finland and beyond, across five continents. There are now 10 WiB groups just in the UK. Liz and I went to Israel and Palestine together, blockaded roads at
Burghfield Atomic Weapons Establishment together, and take part in international WiB conferences every two years, the latest hosted by Armenian women.
As Cynthia Cockburn, our friend from London WiB, wrote in her book The Space Between Us, Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (Zed Books 1998):
A feminist analysis is not a bad place to stand to get a perspective on violence as a continuum – from domestic violence (in and near the home) to military violence (patrolling the external boundaries against enemies) and state violence (policing against traitors within).
Women in Black: Against Violence, for Peace with Justice, Cynthia Cockburn and Sue Finch (Merlin Press, 2023)
This is also the theme of Cynthia’s last book before she died in 2019, Women in Black: Against Violence,for Peace with Justice, and of WiB groups in widely different situations in the world today. For some, especially those living through war, the relationship between gender and militarism is the most important. Other women, living in relative peacetime, choose combatting male violence against individual women, campaigning for the right to abortion and control over their bodies as their centre of activism.
All of us stand on the shoulders of women like Sylvia Pankhurst and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (founded in 1914). Cynthia wrote in the introduction to her last book:
People pass away and memories fade. It is important to gather and present the historical material before it is too late.
Rape, femicide and the social exploitation of women are endemic. Feminist activism to end gendered oppression and violence is urgent and will be strengthened by fostering a greater understanding of the masculinist and patriarchal nature of militarism and war and making the scope and extent of current movements for change better known.
Sadly Cynthia died before she completed the book, and asked me to finish it – luckily women from round the world helped, especially Liz. Now we’re planning the next international Women in Black conference later in 2024 … heartbreakingly peace with justice still needed.
- Women in Black: Against Violence, for Peace with Justice, Cynthia Cockburn and Sue Finch (Merlin Press, 2023)
- Find out more about WiB at: womeninblack.org
· See HOWL TOPICS section for infor