How the brave sisters of Greenham Common changed the world and defeated the nuclear machine 45 years on

How the brave sisters of Greenham Common changed the world and defeated the nuclear machine 45 years on Armed with nothing more than campfires, tea, and unbreakable determination, a brave band of women marched into history 45 years ago to stop nuclear annihilation. Their 19-year siege at Greenham Common didn't just force US cruise missiles out of Britain - it ignited a feminist revolution whose impact is still felt across the globe today. "Wherever there is injustice, you will find a Greenham woman trying to address it,” says Rebecca Mordan. September marks 45 years since a small group of women walked from Wales to a military base in Berkshire, chained themselves to the fence and refused to go home. What began at Greenham Common lasted 19 years and its reach ran far beyond the wire. They had come to stop American cruise missiles being sited in Britain. Rebecca, who runs the feminist production company Scary Little Girls and wrote the oral history Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices, was taken to the camp as a child by her mother and has since recorded testimony from more than 100 of the women. She said the women never really left the front line and that their fingerprints are on almost every peaceful protest since. She said: "They're basically still involved in all the places where the main injustices of the military, and of humanity, are still at large. "The amount that are social workers, teachers, therapists, nurses, lawyers, loads of them went into the law.We've got people who are Greenham women who are now judges." The march that started it set off from Wales in August 1981. Organised by Ann Pettitt, a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, she wanted the base to become a name nobody could avoid. "We wanted it to be talked about everywhere," Ann said. "We wanted it to arouse alarm of the highest degree. It's not just blast, you know, and flash that kills you - radiation goes on killing and affects the unborn and the youngest the worst." When the marchers reached the base, someone suggested chaining themselves to the fence as the suffragettes once had. The eldest of them, Eunice Stallard, then in her sixties, settled the argument. Eunice said: "I was 60 then, and I wasn't really frightened of anything. We chained ourselves onto the fence. We said we'd stay there until we had a dialogue." Local people brought tents and food and a camp took shape, almost by accident. Jill Raymond, who lived at the camp on and off for nearly two decades, said the weapons were only ever half the story. She said. "Actually, it was about reclaiming the land and reclaiming the common. And that's why a lot of women stayed." By early 1982 the women living at the fence had decided the camp should be women only, thrashed out in a furious meeting. Lynne Jones, then a medical student, chaired it. Lynne said: "I remember standing up and shouting louder than anyone else, saying, ‘look, we're having a row. I don't mind how we decide, but it'd be nice if we made a nice decision. So I'll facilitate if you like.’" Sarah Green, who lived at Greenham for four years, said the camp was a working community rather than a huddle of tents. "We always had a fire going there. We had a welcome tent," Sarah said, describing the little tents, the teepees and a shelter where every visitor was given tea. The image that fixed Greenham in the public mind came in December 1982, when tens of thousands of women joined hands right around the nine mile perimeter fence in an action they called Embrace the Base. Rebecca was there, aged five, holding on with her mother. She said: "That's the biggest women-only action since suffrage. It was huge.” She said the day was about far more than the fence, adding: "I went with my mum, and there were so many mums bringing up so many children, all talking about... how women can have strong friendships that can be as important as any other relationship in their lives, and that they can have an active role outside of the house.” The government mocked the women in public and watched them very closely in private. Michael Heseltine, Defence secretary from 1983, still bristles at the memory, saying: "These peace loving ladies in camp defending us all from nuclear holocaust were seen in a very different light because they were a mob. I was on one knee with this swirling, shouting mob." Rebecca said the ridicule hid how seriously the camp was taken behind closed doors. She explained: "Those women were in and out there every day. They ridiculed them in the press, but they took them very seriously politically, because they were costing them a fortune.” The women's words reached the men whose fingers were on the button and, by the end, even the American president was borrowing their language. She said: "You've got Ronald Reagan using slogans off the women's banners and placards to position himself as a president of peace.” When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the 1987 treaty that began winding down the Cold War, Rebecca said he was asked by the world's press how he could ever trust the Americans. Rebecca said: "Gorbachev replied ‘I wouldn't trust them, I trust the Greenham women. I trust the women of the UK and America to hold their politicians to account.’ So it's this mythology that it didn't have any impact, and those silly women. Actually they had a massive impact even at the time, because world leaders are crediting them and looking at them.” Living at the fence taught the women they could manage without the men who had marched beside them. Rebecca said: "They're learning that they don't need men to look after them. They're not the weaker sex.” And their weapon was persistence rather than force. Rebecca continued: "They made it so expensive, uncomfortable and public to have any so-called secret weaponry on that land, or in this country at all. They made it so hard, it wasn't worth doing in the end." The missiles the women had marched against were covered by the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The first left Greenham in 1989, the last cruise flight went on 5 March 1991 and the United States Air Force pulled out in 1992. But the last of them did not leave until September 2000, by which time they had won back the common itself, now partly a business park and partly open land returned to the public. Rebecca said Greenham methods live on in today's protests, through groups like Extinction Rebellion and the camps that fought lying the HS2 rail line through ancient woodland. She said: "They talked about something called Carry Greenham Home. Anyone can be a Greenham woman. You don't have to be here at Greenham to do it, you're carrying Greenham home with you. "It's the 80s, and there aren't women in the police, there aren't even very many women in the workforce really at that time. It's still that era where it's like, ‘oh, you're a bright girl, do you want to be a nurse or a secretary or a teacher?’" She said the camp pulled hundreds of thousands of women into a conversation that had been closed to them, about their country, their friendships and their own lives. She added: "Suddenly every dining table in the country is discussing, 'Should we have nuclear weapons? What is our role internationally? What protects us, what makes us vulnerable?’ "That’s the spirit of Greenham. That doesn't go back in the bottle." - Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981-2000 by Kate Kerrow and Rebecca Mordan with foreword by Frankie Armstrong is published by History Press, price £14.99.