The Greenham Common women's peace camp

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The anti-nuclear weapons protest began in 1981 and lasted nineteen years. Also the first transgender priest in the Church of England, WW2 Polish refugees in Africa, plus why lesbian mothers caused such a stir in the 1970s and was the untimely death of Mozambique's President Samora Machel an assassination?

Photo: Women from the Greenham Common peace camp blocking Yellow Gate into RAF Greenham Common , 1st April 1983 . (Photo by Staff/Reading Post/MirrorpixGetty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson.
0:04.8	Each week eyewitnesses to dramatic and important moments from the past, including this time
0:09.9	the remarkable story of Second World War Polish refugees who ended up in Africa.
0:15.4	The Africans were always very friendly to us and what surprised me was how nicely we were treated.
0:21.4	The white Rhodesians of course absolutely objected to having Polish refugees on their land.
0:28.6	Plus the lingering mystery over the plane crash that killed Mozambique's president Samora Michelle 35 years ago and the first
0:36.0	transgender priest in the Church of England.
0:38.6	When people go to church, they don't want to be thinking of the most intimate details of their minister's medical or gender history.
0:49.0	That doesn't need to be in their heads. They're going to church to do something with God.
0:54.7	All that to come, but we're going to begin by plunging straight back into the heart of the
0:58.6	Cold War.
1:00.0	By the end of the 1970s, the simmering tensions between East and West were overlaid with the very
1:05.2	real threat of nuclear conflict. Against this backdrop Britain saw the emergence of the biggest
1:11.2	women-led movement since the suffragettes.
1:14.0	The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was established to protest against American nuclear
1:18.4	cruise missiles being kept at the base there.
1:21.2	It grew from a small demonstration to an international symbol for peace.
1:25.2	Rebecca Kessby has been speaking to one of the original Greenham common protesters.
1:29.7	Cruise missiles are tonight on British soil. This morning an American starlifter jet flew into
1:35.4	Greenham Common Air Base.
1:38.6	In September 9xie and 80 is a freedom we're fighting.
1:42.1	In September 1981,
	...

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