Spirituality and Social Change at Greenham Common Peace Camp

Spirituality and Social Change at Greenham Common Peace Camp
Christina Welch
Abstract
This paper explores the spirituality of, and experienced at, Greenham Common Peace Camp,
Berkshire, Southern England (1981-2000); a camp established in protest against the sighting of
nuclear weapons at Greenham air base. Although spirituality is alluded to in much of the discourse
on the nuclear protest site at Greenham, it is at best marginalized in favour of socio-politics.
However, there is evidence to suggest that spirituality played a significant role for a number of the
Greenham protestors, informing their socio-political protests through poetry, song and prose, as
well as visually - with eco-feminist thealogy a potent theme. Through examining existing discourse
and by interviewing protestors, this paper concludes that spiritual action for social change at
Greenham Peace Camp requires further attention in order to elucidate its significance.
Introduction
In this paper I begin to explore the spirituality of, and at, Greenham Common Peace camp
(1981-2000); begin because the research is by necessity partial, and partial because there is only a
very little written about this particular aspect of the camp. Although much has been produced about
the peace camp at Greenham Common in books, journal articles and the media, the focus has
predominantly been upon socio-political issues – perhaps unsurprisingly given the political and
military climate in which the protest occurred; the 1980s marked the height of the second cold war
(1979-1985), and was a period defined by an increase in militaristic activity by the US and the
Soviet Union after the latter's invasion of Afghanistan.
Although a fair amount of material has been produced about the peace camp at Greenham Common
and the protestors there (Blackwood 1984, Emberley & Landry 1989, Fairhall 2006, Finch 1986,
Harford & Hopkins 1984, Jones 1983, Kidron 1983, Kippin 2001, Laware 2004, Liddington 1989,
Pettitt 2006a, Roseneil 1995, 2000, Schofield & Anderton 2000, Sellers 1985), a notable gap in the
discourse concerns spirituality and faith-based action for social change. In existing work tantalising
glimpses of spirituality at the camp appear from the alleged personas of the protesting sites (the
New Age Gate, the Religious Gate) through songs that sang of the spirit and mother earth, poetry
and prose about witches and the Goddess (Jones 1983: 83, Pettitt 2006b, Jones K 2007), to odd
tangential comments about ‘growing spiritualization of the camp’ as the years went by (Jolly Ud).
Further, the standing stones memorial to the camp, which echoes Neolithic monuments such as
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Stonehenge, indicates that spirituality was potentially a crucial aspect of Greenham Common Peace
Camp. According to a press release by the Greenham Common women, the stones would ‘endow
the area with a spiritual and healing influence’, whilst a text board sited there would provide
historic information on the camp ‘in a setting which encourages spiritual contemplation’ (Schofield
& Anderton 2000: 250). In addition, I have spoken with a number of camp protestors specifically
about their experiences of spirituality at Greenham and their contributions have been invaluable in
suggesting that spirituality was important for many women at the camp. However, before seeking to
confirm the suggestion that spirituality was a significant part of the camp, if discursively
marginalized in favour of socio-politics, a definition of spirituality is required. Spirituality herein
then refers to the definition proposed by Elfie Hinterkopf (1998). Hinterkopf who, by drawing on
psychotherapeutic models, defines spirituality as “a unique, personally meaningful experience [that]
does not necessarily involve… adherence to the beliefs and practices of an organized church or
religious institution”. Further, the camp requires some historic contextualization.
Greenham Common Peace Camp: a brief history
Greenham Common in Berkshire, Southern England, as a piece of land had a not inconsiderable
social and military history. Long a site of human use with artefacts dating to the Neolithic times
(Anon 2003), it was used during WWII as a military air base by British and American forces, and
made available in 1951 to the US. During the Cold War, the Greenham Common air base became
home to ninety-six (plus five spares) American Tomahawk ground-launched, nuclear-tipped Cruise
missiles that could be used in the event of a nuclear war (Schofield & Anderton 2000: 240). Each of
these missiles had a nuclear yield of between fifty and one-hundred-and-fifty kilotons making them
up to sixteen times more powerful than that which was dropped on Hiroshima; in effect there were
enough cruise missiles sited at Greenham Common air base to destroy the world. The first of these
missiles arrived on November 14th 1983 and was met by the Greenham Common Peace Camp
protestors.
The protest camp at Greenham Common was established in September 1981 after thirty four
women and four men arrived at the Berkshire site having marched one-hundred-and- twenty miles
from Cardiff, Wales, in protest at an ever increasing nuclear threat. The Women for Life on Earth
march took ten days and on their arrival, several of the women chained themselves, suffragette
style, to the camps’ perimeter fence. Despite there being no facilities, many of the marchers decided
to set up camp; lighting a fire and sleeping rough, even into the winter (Pettitt 2006a).
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Over time, and with publicity in the wake of further fence chainings, other peace protestors joined
them, and Greenham Common Peace Camp as an entity came into being. In February 1982, not
uncontentiously, men were asked to leave to leave the site and the camp became women only (F
2006, M 2006, Pettitt 2006: 273, Roseneil 2000: 145). This move fitted with contemporary feminist
thought, where women often became wimmin to avoid patriarchal designations, and where men
were, on the whole, the enemy – journalist and social commentator George Monbiot has recently
written about the deliberate destruction of a male protestors’ campsite by Greenham women in 1983
(Monbiot 2006a).
The peace camp at Greenham Common consisted of several sites, known as gates as it was initially
by the main site entrance gate that the protestors camped. Yellow Gate, the only site with running
water, was the first camp established and the last to go – remaining until September 5th 2000
(although the last of the missiles had all been removed by 1990 [anon 1993]). It was situated at the
main gate of the camp where the USAF headquarters was positioned and bordered a potentially
busy road; the A339 allowed for both supportive horn-hooting and verbal abuse to be levelled
variously at the Greenham Common protestors by passing motorists. Initially called Main Gate, as
more gates appeared, colours of the rainbow were used as designators to ensure none of the gates
were prioritized over the others – a clear indication that Greenham Common Peace Camp set out to
buck the trend of normative society by attempting to establish from the start a non-hierarchical
protest camp. Green Gate (termed the camp of intellectuals in the book by protestor Caroline
Blackwood [1984: 21]), was established in January 1983 and was sited close to Yellow Gate, and
the missile silos on the south side of the airfield. Blue Gate (New Age Gate) and Orange Gate
(Music Gate) appeared that summer on the north and the east of the site respectively – Orange Gate
being close to Crookham Common. Red (Artists Gate), Indigo (Forgotten Gate), Violet (Religious
Gate), and Turquoise Gates were set up by the end of the year. Emerald Gate was established in
1984, while Woad and Rainbow Gates, the last gates to sited, came into existence in 1985. The
irony of these “beautiful and delicate” names was not lost on protestors, for as Caroline Blackwood
has noted:
nothing could be grimmer and less beautiful than these police-guarded gates
which cut into the menacing grey of the steel perimeter fence with its nine-mile
circumference and its concentration-camp coils of barbed wire (1984: 2).
Each gate developed its own flavour; Turquoise was vegan, while Violet Gate was known for its
well-dressed carnivorous campers. Orange Gate, being well back from the road was deemed secure
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for children and older women, while Green Gate became, ‘seriously lesbian’ (Fairhall 2006: 45-6).
Green Gate was also perceived of as New Age and/or mystical. Ann Pettitt, a founder member of
the camp and one of the Cardiff walk initiators, described Green Gate as a gate for, ‘women who
liked to commune with all sorts of sprites and spirits’ (2006a: 145), others have termed it, ‘Cosmic,
where women interested in spirituality… clustered’ (Cadden in Roseneil 1995: 80). Certainly then
there were women overtly interested in spirituality at Greenham Common Peace Camp; there were
some Neo-Pagan witches at the Yellow Gate (Glast in Roseneil 2000: 81-2) whilst Orange Gate was
known as the religious gate and often peopled with Quakers. Blue Gate too had regular Quaker
meetings, while at least one gate was ‘taken over by a Catholic outfit for a day of ongoing
communion’ (M 2006). However, it must be noted that these perceptions were generalisations, not
everyone at Green Gate was interested in spirituality (feminist or otherwise), although it must be
said that they were particularly creative with their shit-pits, which were sometimes dug in the shape
of a dove or women’s symbols (Roseneil 1995: 81, 87).
Protest Action
The first major blockade at Greenham Common air base came in March 1982 when thousands of
women tried to stop preparations for the development of the site. Arrests, court cases and prison
sentences for the protestors brought large scale publicity; not just in Britain but worldwide. Thus, in
December of that year, the Embrace the Base protest, which brought an estimated thirty-five-
thousand women together to link arms and surround the base, had supporters from every continent.
This became the largest women’s demonstration in modern history and included support from
politicians including Glynis Kinnock to celebrities such as Yoko Ono. Several years later in 1987
Ono donated sufficient money for the purchase of some land by the women, enabling a caravan to
be permanently sited at Greenham Common Peace Camp (Laware 2004).
Many of the protestors sang as they blockaded the site. Popular protest songs included, You Can’t
Kill the Spirit, which notably appeared in the contemporary novel, The Growing Pains of Adrian
Mole, by Sue Townsend. Published in 1984, the teenage protagonist’s mother, after her divorce from
his father, became a feminist and briefly joined the Greenham Common Peace campaigners (1984:
78). The inclusion of the protest camp, and arguably its most notable chant, in this widely read
popular novel reflected the notoriety of Greenham Common Peace Camp in contemporary British
society. Typically vilified by the press for its ‘smelly lesbians…destructive witches…[and] a lot of
silly [sex starved] women with nothing better to do’, the protestors were often though to be ‘in the
pay of the Soviet Union’ or just plain ‘unsavoury’ (Blackmoor 1984: 2-3), Townsend however, cast
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Adrian’s mother as a typical woman who found liberation and empowerment in the Greenham
experience, an understanding often reflected in oral testimony (Blackmoor 1984, Cherrington 1984,
Pettit 2006, Roseneil 1995, 2000).
You Can’t Kill the Spirit was a particular favourite with the Greenham Common Peace Camp
women, and was written by Naomi Littlebear Morena, a feminist North American Indian musician
of Chicana descent (Nicholson 1982). Interestingly archived diary entries from Yellow Gate women
indicate that both Aboriginal Australian and North American Indian spirituality informed the
protest. The Rainbow Serpent myth appeared as an article in an undated Greenham Common
newsletter. Linking both Aboriginal Australian and North American Indian spirituality, the article
emphasized the Rainbow Serpent as a ‘universally-respected divinity’, a guardian of humanity, and
a metaphor for menstrual cycles, and as such an important symbol for Greenham Common Peace
Camp women (Knight Ud). Author Chris Knight, drawing on what she termed the ‘Aboriginal
Holocaust’, stated that the Rainbow Serpent also represented ‘the dragon [that was] slaughtered by
some patriarchal hero who established the present world order from which we are still
suffering’ (Knight Ud). However, as a phoenix from the ashes, the dragon, she argued, is stirring
from her sleep allowing, ‘the Australian Aboriginals and the American Indians, together with
traditional people and women everywhere [to have] the last word’ (Knight Ud) – oppression in all
forms, as will be evident throughout this paper, was not only deemed patriarchal, but legitimated a
variety of spin-off protests.
1980s Feminisms at Greenham Common Peace Camp
At this point it might be helpful to give a brief overview of 1980s feminisms; movements which
informed much of the activity at Greenham Common. Emerging in the 1960s, with a radical edge in
the early 1970s (Graham 1995: 26-7) second wave feminism as it has been described by Linda
Woodhead, a sociologist of religion, as ‘a highly essentialist understanding of men and women
[focused on] the liberation of women from male oppression, or “patriarchy”’ (2001: 67). Perhaps
one of the best examples of the brand of feminism can be seen from the following quote by Kat.
Kat, a lesbian with a Quaker background, joined the Brighton Peace Camp, a short lived satellite
camp established on February 15th 1983 in support of forty-four women arrested at Greenham
Common for invading the airbase. The arrested women were part of a contingent of one-hundred-
and-forty-four who on January 1st of that year had cut through the fence, linked hands and danced
on top of a missile silo. Kat, in a recent interview, stated that her ‘thoughts (at the time) were very
linked with seeing weapons and nuclear bombs as ..[a] form of male violence’ (cited in Carroll
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2005: 5). For many of the Greenham Common Peace Camp women, nuclear missiles were as much
a form of male oppression, as women’s typical exclusion from positions of power (Margaret
Thatcher, the British Prime Minister of the time, being an obvious exception here although one
where the allegation of patriarchy could arguably apply [Wilkinson 2001]).
One of the leading lights in radical feminism was the feminist philosopher Mary Daly, whose name
and theology I found written in a letter to Yellow Gate women from Greenham Common Peace
Camp supporters in Utrecht, Holland. Daly was notable for her outspoken critique of women’s roles
in the Christian Church, and for her far-reaching views on women in patriarchal Western society.
Many aspects of the camp can be read through her brand of feminist meta-ethics. For example, her
writings on the mythological connections between women and weaving can be seen in the four and
a half mile long serpent that was sewn by over two thousand women in June 1983, and threaded
around much of the perimeter fence. This action has been described as an attempt to ‘unweave the
prevailing dis-order [of patriarchy]’ (Daly 1991: 417) and certainly echoed not just Daly’s theology
of the domestic but the understandings of Knight in her Rainbow Serpent article.
However, for Pettitt, the use of ‘traditional female arts…[was more a secular then a spiritual protest
and], produc[ed] a military enraged by cross-stitch that impeded their view, driving them to hysteria
by embroidery’ (2006: 306). However, the use of the 9 mile long fence as a canvas to indicate
opposition to patriarchy regardless of whether the protestors understood their actions as spiritual or
not, was a common feature of the camp. Attaching everyday and personal items to the fence, such as
baby clothing, teddy bears, ribbons and family photographs, (Griffith 1995: 108, Sjoo Ud) acted as
signifiers of women’s ongoing everyday lived experience, in opposition to the destructive
patriarchal threat within, and outside, the base (Dominelli 995; 139, Schofield & Anderton 2000:
244). Alongside the personal items attached to the fence, the Greenham women placed symbols
such as peace doves and spider webs. These symbols resonated with creation and re-creation myths,
notably Noah’s Ark, and Indigenous Grandmother Spider legends such as that by the Dine Nation of
North America. The later legend was one of several tales that feminist philosopher Melissa Raphael
has drawn on in relation to her exposition of 1980s feminism, which noted the importance both of
female domestic arts, and female deities, to feminism at this time (1996: 149).
Woodhead also notes the importance of the female deities to second wave feminists, and certainly
the significance of the Goddess as a figure of opposition to the normative Christian God in regard to
female empowerment. The court oaths sworn to the Goddess by some of the arrested Greenham
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Common protest women underpin this assertion. After refusing to take the normal oath and in
response to the magistrates, ‘You don’t wish to take the oath in the accepted form?’, the response by
Sarah Green of, ‘It is acceptable to me if it is the Goddess’, was not untypical (cited in Harford &
Hopkins 1984: 50). In addition figures of the Goddess were regularly brought into the courthouse
by Greenham women to support those arrested for their protest action (F 2006).
The camp protest song Reclaim the Night can also be seen to link the notion of patriarchy with the
normative Judaeo-Christian monotheistic male God. Although verses talk not of war, they address
the topics of rape and exploitation simply because women are, ‘made from Adam’s rib’. As well as
reemphasising adverse links between patriarchy and women via normative Western religion, this
protest song and other examples of patriarchal oppression that will be touched on later, demonstrate
that for some of the protestors, women’s issues were arguably as, if not more important than the
nuclear threat (Monbiot 2006b). As such it is important to recognize that the camp meant different
things to different women; there was no singular Greenham Common experience, and it must be
stressed that whilst for some anti-patriarchy included taking an anti-Christian stance, this was by no
means widespread. One woman I interviewed told me that as she cut through the wire fence to
protest on the missile silos, she had a vision of Jesus emerging from the tomb. For her, protesting at
Greenham Common, and this piece of protest action which resulted in arrest and a term in jail, were
informed by her spirituality, and this particular vision gave her the strength to continue to protest at
the camp after her release from Holloway women’s jail against what she understood as restrictive
and life threatening patriarchal systems (H 2006).
As well as noting that religiosity at the camp was not uniform, it is also necessary to note that clear
cut distinctions between what was socio-political protest and what was spiritual protest was often
artificial and arbitrary – the spiritual was typical political and visa versa especially in regards the
experience of community, or the ‘yeah, yeah’ moments as theologian Judith Plaskow terms them
(1992: 202). Penni Bestic, a Greenham Common protestor echoed this understanding of
community, noting that ‘there was something very magical about [Greenham Common]…if I’m
honest, it wasn’t just about the politics, it was about the woman’s energy’ (cited in Roseneil 1995:
59).
Eco-feminism; the Goddess and/in/as the Land
A notable feminism that combined the political and spirituality was Goddess Spirituality. Deeply
involved in this form of feminism were the European artist and writer Monica Sjoo (now sadly
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departed), and Miriam Samos, otherwise known as Starhawk, a prominent North American neo-
pagan Witch. Both women are mentioned in archived camp correspondence as feminist movers and
shakers of the time who were actively involved in supporting the camp.
One piece of action taken by Starhawk and Sjoo (echoing the initial Cardiff protest) involved a walk
across the military zone of Salisbury Plain to Stonehenge; probably one of the most famous
Neolithic and bronze age megalithics in the world. According to the walkers, Stonehenge was
fenced off from the general public in an act of patriarchal oppression and the walk was to highlight
the need to free the stones. Around one-hundred Greenham Common protest women met at Silbury
Hill, a man-made Neolithic mound on the Plain described in archived camp correspondence as the
‘squatting goddess’, close to the ancient ritual sites of Avebury and West Kennett. The walk was
timed to coincide with the full-moon at Stonehenge, and began at Avebury on Beltane, a major
Celtic and neo-pagan life-rite festival; both significant events to neo-pagan Witches. Significantly,
the women slept ‘on [the] belly’ of the Goddess before embarking on their protest to liberate
Stonehenge.
Starhawk regularly ritualized on the walk to magically empower both the women on this protest,
and those encamped at Greenham Common (Sjoo Ud; 1992: 59-63). As well as the significance of
magic as a force for change in neo-pagan Witchcraft, Starhawk’s Goddess-based ritualizing tapped
into thealogical conceptions of sacred power. Theologian Elizabeth Stuart has argued that for many
thealogians, ‘the universe pulsates with unseen forces’, sacred energy that can be ‘drawn on and
focused’ magically by women, and that Greenham Common was ‘the most prominent recent
manifestation of women’s magical arts’ (2004: 230). In addition, such ritualizing echoed the small
gestures make a big difference culture that was prevalent at the time; a culture than enabled
everyday women to take potentially revolutionary action for world peace.
In the protest action of Starhawk and Sjoo, notions of the Goddess, and patriarchal use and abuse of
the land are clearly combined. The close links between the domination of nature and of women can
be found in much feminist writing of the time, especially in eco-feminism. Theologians such as
Ynestra King (1989) and Rosemary Radford Ruether (1992) argued that the nature/culture,
women/men, private/public dichotomies were related and that “the domination of women has
provided a key link, both socially and symbolically, to the domination of earth” (Ruether, 1992: 3).
Clearly linking patriarchal power relations with the normative oppression of women in society, and
with man’s [sic] dominion over nature, eco-feminists stood up for the subjugated. Described as
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‘material and spiritual… about personal and planetary survival’ (Kirk 1997: 8), eco-feminism
allowed:
grassroots women, housewife activists and sisters [to] work voluntarily to sustain
life and to fight the powers that put life in jeopardy… using models of caring
relationships for sustainable living and as important sources of political
empowerment (MacGregor 2004: 57).
This empowerment and sisterhood of women, and right to life approach of eco-feminism was
common at Greenham Common Peace Camp but perhaps most clearly exemplified in one specific
newsletter image. The front cover of the Chant Down Greenham songbook plainly shows the links
between men, the mechanistic and division, and between women, the natural and unification. The
women and child on the image hold hands and are surrounded by signifiers of peace and images of
nature, including the Rainbow Serpent – a figure that also appeared on the Salisbury Plain Walk
poster. The men meanwhile hold weapons and are surrounded by symbols of death and destruction.
To contextualize Greenham Common Peace Camp and second wave feminism further, it should be
noted that one cannot ‘do justice to the nature of feminist awareness in the 1970s and 1980s without
attending to the personal anxiety, doubt, fear and anger that the politics engendered’. Women were
typically expected to be nurturing parents, yet in the wake of 1960s counter-culture, they should
also be ‘sexually bold’, and even successful in the male-dominated workplace (Luhrmann 2001:
131-2). As such there should be little surprise that the role models many feminist choose were, in
the words of anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann, ‘ugly goddesses’ – the dark goddesses, the powerful
hags, strong women. It was, she argues, these Goddesses that spoke to the Greenham Common
protest women; women who typically removed many of the markers of patriarchally-inscribed
femininity; women who Sasha Roseneil, sociologist and camp activist, claims removed themselves
from their private domestic sphere, to the public glare of the world’s media, and swapped their posh
frocks and heels for the practical clothes of the outdoor life (1995: 170).
Carolyn Merchant’s 1980s work, Death of Nature, is an example of an eco-feminism that
exemplified the ugly goddess route. Merchant linked the hierarchical mechanistic approach to the
world that developed during the scientific revolution, to the long standing oppression of women,
and notably highlighted the witchcraft trials as an example of this connection. This connection was
also picked up by the Greenham Common protest women where the use of the term witch was
common currency, appearing frequently in newsletter articles and used visually on the cover of
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newsletters. Several protest songs that referred to witches included, Witch which claimed ‘there’s a
lot of witch in every woman today’ and also, We are the Witches. The line from this song, ‘we…
will never be burned’ gives clear weight to Luhrmann and Merchant’s concepts of a Witch as
powerful ugly goddess oppressed by patriarchy, while, ‘weave your power with the wind, we will
change and we will spin’ exemplifies the links highlighted earlier, made by Daly between women
and weaving.
Another ugly eco-feminist Goddess in the Merchant mould was the Goddess of Metal who featured
in an undated newsletter. Large in size with many arms, she is shown angry because of man’s (and
the word is used deliberately) attempt to dominate nature, but is also shown smiling at the thought
of her revenge. In this innovative character the link between patriarchy, and the oppression of
women and the land as Mother Earth, is overt and strengthens the case that eco-feminism was an
important aspect of the camp.
I located another striking example of such eco-feminism in archived Greenham Common Peace
Camp material in the form of a mounted photograph. The image was included amongst the personal
correspondence of Yellow Gate and appears to have been a treasured possession alongside letters of
support by peace campaigners worldwide. The photograph was of Caimpapple Hill, an ancient
ritual site and burial mound dating back to at least 3,500 BCE, part of the Bathgate Hills in West
Lothian, Scotland. What is significant is not the photograph particularly, although as an ancient
ritual site it echoes those on Salisbury Plain, but the typed information on the reverse, which reads:
Caimpapple Hill, West Lothian ~ originally an important site of matriarchal
spirituality, whose structures trace the emergence, in stages, of patriarchal forms
of worship. The tomb was raided in the 1940s.
Further evidence of the significance of eco-feminist matriarchal spirituality at Greenham Common
Peace Camp was I suggest, also evident in the non-violent protests that took place on Robin Hood
Ball, a Neolithic enclosed causeway and ritual site on Salisbury Plain. An undated newsletter article
concerning one such event by Yellow Gate women on March 19th 1989, sheds much light on the
politics of feminism of the day – the linking of the land with women, and the belief in an historic
matriarchal religion; an attitude obvious in the Caimpopple quote.
Most notable in the article is that the author, Beth Junor, states that matriarchal times can be
specifically dated (from about 4000 – 3500 BC) and that Robin is the god of the witches, with his
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