Previously undocumented testimonies telling stories of love, laughter, adventure and activism from the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. The significance of the Greenham Common Peace Camp is largely overlooked now, but it was one of the longest political demonstrations in history. Established in 1981 when 36 women from Cardiff marched to an RAF base in Berkshire to protest against nuclear weapons it grew exponentially
despite being dismissed as ‘an eccentricity’ by Thatcher in 1983 it was to last for twenty years. Across those two decades the women of the camp experimented with new ways of living, organising and effecting change; they pioneered nonviolent direct action, exemplified by the ‘Embrace the Base’ campaign where 30,000 women were mobilised via chain letter to encircle the base in peaceful protest. The numbers of women, methods and makeup of the camp ebbed and flowed but a singularity of purpose remained. AUTHORS: Kate is a freelance writer, researcher and educator. She won The Pat Kavanagh Award for her up-coming historical novel and before that, she won The Jerwood Charitable Foundation’s Playwright’s Award. She is the Founding Editor of The Heroine Collective, an online publication with an annual readership of approximately 40k. She lives in Guildford.
Rebecca has worked in television, radio and theatre. She founded Scary Little Girls in 2002 to address the underwhelming roles for, and poor treatment of, women in the mainstream arts. She has worked with CND and the Reclaim The Night march, and has appeared on 5 Live, Radio 4, LBC and Sky News. She lives in London.
Drawing on a unique collection of interviews with 100 Greenham women, scores of unheard voices are gathered together for the first time in print and interwoven with an exploration of the key elements that shaped the movement. The result is a celebration of the army of women who, in liberating themselves, acted as a catalyst for change across multiple fronts and transformed the nature of protest forever. 50 illustrations
