A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #7-26 - The Greenham Common Experience: The Disruptive Practice of Feminist Antimilitarism (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On September 5, 1981, the arrival of a small delegation of Welsh women 
at the gates of the Royal Air Force (RAF) air base on Greenham Common 
did not seem destined to rewrite the history of twentieth-century social 
movements. Yet, what began as a protest march against NATO's decision to 
deploy nuclear cruise missiles on British soil transformed into a 
permanent occupation that lasted nineteen years, an experiment in 
radical communal life, and an unprecedented challenge to the structures 
of patriarchy and global militarism. Greenham Common was not just a 
protest, but a laboratory of ecofeminist resistance that demonstrated 
how the female body, when it reclaims public space and challenges the 
logic of total destruction, becomes a disruptive political force capable 
of undermining the very foundations of the militarized state.

The roots of Greenham Common lie in the climate of renewed Cold War 
tension of the late 1970s. On December 12, 1979, NATO adopted the 
so-called "Dual-Track Decision," a strategy that called for the 
modernization of nuclear forces in Europe in response to the deployment 
of Soviet SS-20 missiles. In Great Britain, the Conservative government 
led by Margaret Thatcher agreed to host ninety-six Tomahawk cruise 
missiles at the Greenham Common base in Berkshire. These missiles, owned 
and controlled exclusively by the United States, posed an existential 
threat: with no "dual-key" system for launching them, British territory 
became a prime target without any effective control over its nuclear fate.

The institutional reaction was virtually nonexistent, but dissent began 
to simmer within civil society. In 1980, four Welsh friends-Ann Pettitt, 
Karmen Cutler, Lynne Whittemore, and Liney Seward-founded the group 
"Women for Life on Earth." Their vision was not only pacifist, but 
deeply rooted in an ethic of responsibility towards future generations. 
They decided to organize a 120-mile (about 193 km) march, starting from 
Cardiff City Hall and ending at Greenham Common. The march, attended by 
about 40 people, mostly women, began on August 27, 1981, from Cardiff 
City Hall and concluded on September 5, 1981.

Upon their arrival, the delegation delivered an open letter to the base 
commander. It read: "We have taken this action because we believe that 
the nuclear arms race constitutes the greatest threat ever faced by the 
human race and our living planet." When their request for a televised 
debate with government ministers was contemptuously ignored, thirty-six 
women chained themselves to the base fence, declaring that they would 
not leave until the missiles were removed. This was the beginning of the 
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.

Initially, the camp was open to both men and women, but in February 
1982, the community made a radical decision: the camp would become an 
exclusively female space. This choice was not driven by abstract 
ideological separatism, but by practical needs and political 
observations on the ground. Activists noted that the male presence 
tended to polarize relationships with the police, triggering dynamics of 
physical violence that women preferred to avoid through passive 
resistance. Furthermore, they realized that, within a mixed movement, 
women often ended up reproducing domestic or subordinate roles, while in 
a women-only space, they were forced to manage every aspect of survival, 
from politics to logistics.

The exclusion of men also served to send a powerful symbolic message: 
the contrast between the male world of military decisions and the female 
world of protecting life. This choice transformed Greenham into a magnet 
for women seeking not only to abolish nuclear weapons, but to overthrow 
patriarchal systems of oppression. The camp became a refuge for women 
from the LGBTQIA+ community, offering respite from daily discrimination 
at a time when lesbian mothers regularly risked losing custody of their 
children.

To manage an occupation that stretched along the base's 14-kilometer 
fence, the camp organized itself organically and non-hierarchically. 
There were no leaders; decisions were made by consensus around 
campfires. Each main entrance to the base housed a settlement, 
identified by a rainbow color to contrast with the base's military 
aesthetic.

The yellow gate was the political heart, serving as a hub for media 
relations and legal battles; the blue gate was known for its "New Age" 
atmosphere, music, and the presence of many young women; the green gate, 
located in the woods, was considered the safest for children and was 
strictly separatist; the purple gate was characterized by a strong 
religious and spiritual focus; the turquoise and emerald gates were 
expansion zones that connected the main settlements along the perimeter.

Daily life was a constant challenge against the elements and repression. 
Women lived in "benders," hemispherical shelters constructed from woven 
hazel or willow branches and covered with plastic sheeting. Without 
running water, electricity, or sanitation, the community relied on 
radical solidarity. Every day, residents faced forced evictions by 
"bailiffs" (court officials) who, supported by the police, threw their 
few belongings into "munchers" (garbage compactors). This precariousness 
became an integral part of their protest: demonstrating that it was 
possible to live with almost nothing while resisting the supreme 
destruction represented by nuclear power.

Greenham Common revolutionized the language of protest through the use 
of symbols drawn from domestic life and nature, re-signifying them as 
tools of psychological and political warfare. The military fence, a 
symbol of exclusion and secrecy, was transformed into an open-air art 
gallery.

One of the most powerful symbols was the spider's web. Women wove webs 
of colored wool across the gates and onto the fences, symbolizing the 
interconnectedness of life and the fragility that, when united, becomes 
strength. They attached photographs of their children, baby clothes, 
flowers, ribbons, and even a wedding dress to the wire mesh, contrasting 
the "materiality of life" with the abstractness of the nuclear death 
contained within.

December 12, 1982, marked one of the most iconic actions in the history 
of global pacifism: "Embrace the Base." Over 30,000 women, mobilized 
through a meticulous telephone and postal network, surrounded the entire 
perimeter of the base, holding hands. In a silence broken only by 
chants, the protesters demonstrated that peaceful determination could 
literally "encircle" the military machine.

The following year, on April 1, 1983, approximately 70,000 people formed 
a 14-mile human chain connecting Greenham Common with the Aldermaston 
nuclear warhead factory and the Burghfield plant. These actions were not 
just demonstrations of numbers, but collective performances intended to 
raise public awareness of the pervasiveness of the military-industrial 
complex throughout British soil.

Greenham's militant creativity often pushed the boundaries of legality, 
entering the realm of radical civil disobedience. On New Year's Eve 
1983, 44 women scaled the fences and danced for hours on top of the 
missile silos under construction, singing songs of peace under the 
incredulous eyes of the soldiers. This act mocked the base's notion of 
"security": if a group of unarmed women could breach the heart of the 
nuclear sanctuary, then the entire narrative of national defense was a lie.

The women regularly practiced "keening," a traditional howling dirge 
that disoriented and unnerved the guards. They dressed up as animals-as 
during the famous "Teddy Bear's Picnic," when they invaded the base 
dressed as teddy bears-to highlight the absurdity of state violence 
against civilian life. When arrested, they practiced "passive 
non-cooperation," making their bodies limp and heavy so that officers 
had to work incredibly hard to move them.

Greenham's strength lies in the thousands of individual stories woven 
together in the Berkshire mud. The activists' testimonies reveal a mix 
of fear, elation, and unwavering determination.

Mary Millington recalls: "The commune itself was beautiful: birch trees, 
butterflies; but the ugliness of the military might was shocking... 
that's where they built the silos. Living in the camp gave me a profound 
connection with the outside world, with the sun, the moon, and the 
weather." For many, the Greenham experience was a rite of passage toward 
empowerment: "I gave many public speeches, which I'd never done before, 
to a packed Manchester Town Hall and even on the Pyramid stage at 
Glastonbury."

Rebecca Johnson, one of the camp's historic figures, recounts the harsh 
repression: "The police arrested me and dragged me into the base... it 
was a terrible time when the first missiles arrived in November 1983." 
Despite the arrival of the cruise missiles, resistance did not subside. 
The women intensified their monitoring of the missile convoys attempting 
to leave the base for nighttime exercises. Through the "Cruisewatch" 
group, the convoys were tracked, blocked, and photographed, preventing 
the base from operating in secret.

The state's response was not only judicial, but also included extreme 
forms of physical and psychological violence. In addition to beatings 
during evictions, in 1984, disturbing reports began to emerge of the use 
of radiofrequency weapons against women. Many residents reported unusual 
symptoms: acute headaches, dizziness, unexplained drowsiness, nausea, 
ringing in the skull, and even temporary paralysis. An investigation 
conducted by the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons detected 
electromagnetic radiation levels well above ambient near the women's 
camps at times of particular political tension. Although authorities 
have always denied the deliberate use of microwaves or infrasound, 
documented evidence suggests that the base may have tested crowd control 
technologies on a civilian population of unarmed women. This chapter by 
Greenham highlights the extent to which the feminist challenge was 
perceived as an existential threat by the military, justifying the use 
of experimental warfare technologies against it.

The shockwaves of Greenham Common did not stop at the cliffs of the 
English Channel. The "Women's Peace Camp" model spread across the world, 
from Seneca Falls in the United States to Madrid to Sicily. In Italy, 
the decision to host 112 cruise missiles at Magliocco Airport in Comiso 
triggered a similar reaction.

In March 1983, inspired by their English comrades, a group of feminists 
founded the peace camp "La Ragnatela" (The Ragnatela) directly opposite 
the Comiso base. As in Greenham, the choice was separatism to denounce 
the connection between male violence, patriarchy, and militarism. Agata 
Ruscica, one of the founders, describes the "disorientation" of the 
mixed-gender demonstrations dominated by political parties, where 
women's demands were stifled. "La Ragnatela" became a space for 
self-awareness and direct action, where Sicilian women, together with 
activists from across Europe and overseas, wove webs of colored wool. 
"La Ragnatela" symbolized the network of relationships, female 
solidarity, and the commitment to "reining in" war and missiles. The 
document "Against Nuclear Power and Beyond," drafted by Catania 
feminists, highlighted how war was merely the supreme extension of the 
daily violence suffered by women: "Aggression, conquest, possession, 
control of a woman or a territory, it's all the same." This 
intersectional analysis linked the struggle against the missiles to the 
fight against rape and exploitation, making antimilitarist feminism a 
global threat to order.

Despite the harsh life at the camp, the Greenham women never abandoned 
formal channels to challenge the state. In 1983, a group of protesters 
launched the lawsuit Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles v. Reagan in 
US federal court in New York. Supported by the Center for Constitutional 
Rights, the women argued that the deployment of the missiles violated 
the US Constitution and international law, putting the lives of millions 
at risk without Congressional consent.

Although the lawsuit did not materially stop the installation, it served 
to internationalize the conflict and embarrass the Thatcher and Reagan 
administrations. The constant pressure exerted by peace camps across 
Europe, combined with geopolitical changes in the Soviet Union with the 
rise of Gorbachev, eventually led to the signing of the 
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987.

Cruise missiles began leaving Greenham Common in 1989, and the last 
device was removed in March 1991, both at Greenham and Comiso. It was a 
remarkable victory for a movement that had been derided as "fringe" and 
comprised of "witches and communists." However, the camp did not close 
immediately. The women remained for another nine years to protest the 
British Trident program and to ensure that the base would never again be 
used for nuclear purposes. On September 5, 2000, nineteen years after 
the march began, the camp closed permanently to make way for a historic 
memorial site.

The impact of Greenham Common cannot be measured solely in terms of 
treaties signed or bases dismantled. Its legacy lies in the radical 
transformation of feminist political practice. Greenham demonstrated 
that feminism, when it takes action in the antimilitarist field, does 
not simply demand inclusion in the system, but challenges its very logic.

Patriarchy has historically used the concept of "care" to confine women 
to the private sphere. Greenham overturned this paradigm, transforming 
care into a form of public and bellicose resistance. Caring for the 
planet, one's children, and the common future became the most political 
act possible, justifying the violation of military borders and the 
destruction of state property. This "militant motherhood" was not a 
return to tradition, but its radical politicization.

Greenham was the forerunner of what we now call "craftivism"-the use of 
manual and domestic labor as a form of protest. Horizontal communication 
techniques, collective leadership, and the rejection of male hierarchies 
have influenced generations of subsequent movements.

The story of Greenham Common teaches us that military power, however 
immense and armed with nuclear warheads, is intrinsically fragile in the 
face of resistance that rejects its codes. Soldiers and police knew how 
to manage an enemy army, but they didn't know how to manage thousands of 
women laughing at them, singing in front of cannons, and spinning wool 
threads on electrified fences.

Antimilitarist feminism is disruptive because it strips power of its 
most precious resource: consensus and fear. By refusing to be 
"protected" by weapons that threaten total destruction, the women of 
Greenham asserted their own political agenda and demonstrated that 
conflict need not be solely destructive to be effective.

Greenham Common remains a testament to the fact that when women decide 
that life is more valuable than national sovereignty or technological 
power, no fence can keep them out, and no silence can stifle their 
voice. It ensured that a specific struggle created a space for 
rethinking themselves, community action, and reality, taken as 
immutable. Their struggle marked the transition from a feminism of 
assertiveness to a feminism of total transformation, capable of looking 
the monster of war in the eye and beginning, with a simple thread of 
wool, to dismantle it piece by piece.

Cristina

https://umanitanova.org/lesperienza-di-greenham-common-la-dirompente-pratica-dellantimilitarismo-femminista/
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