The Greenham Common women's peace camp
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The anti-nuclear weapons protest was the biggest women-led movement in the UK since the Suffragettes. It began in 1981 when Ann Pettitt from Wales organised a women-led peace march from the Welsh capital Cardiff to the airbase at Greenham Common, where American nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were being kept. A small group of women decided to set up camp outside the fences of Greenham Common to continue their protest. Women from all over the UK joined the demonstrations, some travelled from Europe and beyond to lend their support. At its peak, thousands of women camped around the base, and some form of protest camp remained for 19 years until all the nuclear weapons were moved and the airbase was decommissioned. It's now an open nature reserve. Ann Pettitt has been telling Rebecca Kesby why the women were prepared to leave jobs and families to sleep out in the cold to try to stop a nuclear war.
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 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:40.0 | Hello and thanks for downloading this witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca |
| 0:46.3 | Keshby. Today we revisit the biggest women-led movement in the UK since the suffragettes. The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was |
| 0:55.8 | established in the summer of 1981 to protest against American nuclear cruise missiles |
| 1:01.6 | being kept at the air base there. It grew from a small |
| 1:05.0 | demonstration into an international symbol for peace. |
| 1:08.6 | Cruise missiles are tonight on British soil. This morning an American Starlifter jet flew into Greenham Common Air Base. |
| 1:15.6 | We are the limit of freedom and it's the freedom we're fighting. |
| 1:21.1 | In September 9zinee.Z1, a small group of women from Wales set up a protest camp at |
| 1:26.8 | Greenham Common Air Base in southern England. It was in response to the UK government's |
| 1:31.8 | announcement that 160 American cruise missiles would be located at the base. |
| 1:37.0 | These were so-called tactical nuclear weapons, much smaller than those previously dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, |
| 1:45.0 | but it signified a dangerous new chapter in the arms race between the USSR and the West, |
| 1:51.0 | and it made nuclear war seem much more likely. |
| 1:54.0 | These weapons were supposed to defend us but of course they turned us and people in Europe |
| 2:02.0 | into a target. |
| 2:03.5 | Anne Petit was a young mother at the time living in South Wales. |
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