Greenham Common
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Greenham Common is an extensive area of common land in Berkshire, southeast of the village of Greenham on the edge of Newbury. The common is best known as the site of a longstanding airbase, RAF Greenham Common, for which the land was requisitioned in 1942. The base was used by the Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force until 1993.
In the 1980s, Greenham Common was frequently in the news as a “peace camp” was set up here outside the gates of the base to protest the presence of American nuclear-armed cruise missiles; rarely a peaceful peace camp, it was occupied entirely by women.
History
Greenham Common was for centuries a piece of common land. It did not escape military involvement but was used for troop movements during the Civil War and in the nineteenth century.
The airbase opened in 1942 and was used by both the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces for the rest of the Second World War. After the war, the United States Air Force stayed on during the Cold War.
In the 1980s, RAF Greenham Common became a base for cruise missiles, which had the potential to be armed with nucleat warheads, and this sparked massive protests outside the base for the rest of the 1980s.
The Cold War ended effectively in 1989 with the collapse of Communism. The Soviet Union was dissolved, and the last missiles left the camp in 1991 as a result of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
On 11 September 1992, the USAF returned Greenham Common airbase to the Ministry of Defence. On 9 February 1993 the base was declared surplus to requirements by the Secretary of State for Defence and the facility was closed and put up for sale.
In 1997 Greenham Common was designated as public parkland.
Protest camps
The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp held outside the gates of the base throughout the 1980s. At the height of the protest there were some 40 camps spread around the base perimeter.
The camps began in September 1981 when 36 women form ‘’Women for Life on Earth’’ arrived and chained themselves to the base fence in protest against nuclear power. Soon they were evicted by the local council but set a new camp up nearby within days. In February 1982 it was decided that the protest should involve women only, and so it continued to the end.
In December 1982, 30,000 women arrived and joined hands around the base (‘Embrace the Base’) and on 1 April 1983, about 70,000 protesters formed a 14-mile human chain from Greenham to Aldermaston and the ordnance factory at Burghfield. The media attention prompted the creation of other peace camps at more than a dozen sites in Britain and in Europe. In December 1983, 50,000 surrounded the base, sections of the fence were cut and there were hundreds of arrests. In January 1987, although Parliament had been told that there were no longer any women at Greenham, small groups of women cut down parts of the perimeter fence at Greenham Common every night for a week.
Notwithstanding the end of Soviet support, the departure of the cruise missiles and the subsequent closure of the base in 1993, the camps remained at the site until September 2000, claiming that they had to ensure the base was closed and the land returned to the public. By that time though the few remaining protesters had long since been forgotten by the media (and largely by the MoD too no doubt).