00:00:00.000 - 00:00:26.500

So, Judy, how did you come to be at Greenham? How did that happen? Well, I was travelling and I went to Australia and I was working in a magazine factory, packing magazines, and I used to read them while I was packing them. And I read this article about Greenham and I thought, oh, when I go back to the UK I'll

00:00:26.500 - 00:00:56.560

go and visit there because it just sounded really interesting. And I don't, I can't really remember when I went to live there. I went for the Embrace the Bass, which was, I think I came back in the winter before that, like, so I'd been back about a month in the UK. And I think I'd seen,

00:00:57.740 - 00:01:28.700

I'd seen the UK differently while I was away. I'd sort of realised some stuff about colonialism and how the British had behaved and I remember coming back to the UK in the way that, because I came back on a plane from India and the way that the Indian people were being treated who had arrived, presumably they were joining family or something, I was just thinking, oh God.

00:01:30.680 - 00:02:00.540

And it felt like a very grey and miserable country to belong to and I think one of the brilliant things about Greenham was it was such a laugh and we just had so much fun there. And so I'd thought I'd go and visit, so I went to that Embrace the Bass and I was just amazed by that, by how many people there were there, because I'd

00:02:00.540 - 00:02:35.860

been out of the country for, I don't know, a year and a half. So I'd felt like I didn't really know what people's thoughts were and I hadn't expected it to be anything like as big as that. It completely blew me away and made me feel very hopeful. I'd always been, I remember watching, what was that film, was it When the Wind Blows? It came out in probably the 70s and I remember

00:02:35.860 - 00:03:02.460

watching that and being really freaked out and just thinking this is a really important thing and being involved in sort of some demonstrations and stuff. But it just felt like there'd maybe been a sea change in the way people thought about it when I went to that Embrace the Bass thing and I thought, oh I'll come back and see

00:03:02.460 - 00:03:31.680

what it's like when there's not loads of people. So I think I moved in maybe January or February of the next year I moved to Yellowgate and I found it quite difficult to start with because it felt like it was quite a tight group and I'd not really been there before. And I think the day that I arrived some women had just got out of prison.

00:03:32.560 - 00:04:03.280

I don't know what action that was. But it gradually started to feel more like a place to be and as Jane was saying it was just amazing the different people that you met there. Because I mean she was an amazingly politically aware person for a 17-year-old but I don't think

00:04:03.280 - 00:04:28.180

I was for someone my age. But I just learned so much stuff from just listening to what people were saying about how the nuclear industry worked and how that related to nuclear weapons and the whole militarisation thing and there were some people who were very, very well informed like I don't know Rebecca Johnson who would just be talking and just be able to quote loads and loads

00:04:28.180 - 00:05:00.860

of stats and stuff and you'd be like. And it felt like a very exciting and creative place to be and like there was some alternatives being made there and that felt like oh well maybe this country is quite the exciting place after all which was really great. So you'd had quite close together an experience of thinking I'm not sure I don't I don't want to be

00:05:00.860 - 00:05:32.540

part of this place or I'm not sure what kind of a country it is and then yeah okay this this is yeah. Yeah yeah I mean I think I was in my head was in a bit of a state of flux because I'd travelled around and seen people living in lots of different ways and seen poverty in a way I'd never seen it before because I was a privileged middle-class kid and I think that all made me very

00:05:32.540 - 00:05:57.620

ready to be there at that particular time in my life. I didn't have any kids or any responsibilities I hadn't got a job to give up so it was really easy for me and I thought I will go there for a little bit I didn't think I was going to go there and live there. And because I'd been working in Australia I could go and sign on in Newbury so I had got an income to live on so I could stay

00:05:57.620 - 00:06:34.660

there and then I was like I don't know there just seemed to be so much to do there always it was like there was always stuff happening. How old were you at the time? I think I was probably about 24 something like that I'm so crap on dates and when was that Embrace the Base was that 82? I think that was 82. So I'm born in 1957 so 60, 22, 23, 24, 25.

00:06:36.480 - 00:07:08.880

So and did your parents not mind what you were doing or anybody else? Well I suppose for my parents it was probably like oh well she's safe back in the UK now because I'd been all over the place and in those days you didn't ring up or you know you got a letter sent post-restant or something so I think probably it felt to them probably oh well she's back and

00:07:09.540 - 00:07:38.700

whatever I mean I think they probably would have preferred it if I had come back and got a job but yeah I mean they I think they were a bit my sister got involved in it as well so that probably was a bit of a you know I think well after I was there for a while it probably felt more of a

00:07:38.700 - 00:08:03.740

thing and I think it did freak them out when I went to prison and it freaked them out when my sister got arrested I think but not in an awful way I mean they were very supportive from a moral point of view but I don't think they never came visited.

00:08:08.620 - 00:08:36.840

Hoping that perhaps it might stop us if it wasn't encouraged maybe? Yeah I think they kind of just were a bit non-plussed by it really. Yeah I mean I don't know. They didn't express to me anything like don't you think you should stop living there anymore

00:08:36.840 - 00:09:03.520

or anything like that but I'm sure they hoped that that would happen. And so do you remember where you you just turned up at Main Gate, Yellowgate? Yeah I think I had a tent. I can't really remember I know I know at some point I had an orange

00:09:03.520 - 00:09:29.640

tent that was on the right as you went up the main road and then that got then I moved out of that and I made a bender down in the woods and then that tent did get firebombed at one point because people used to come from Newbury and they'd like usually just shout abuse and stuff but occasionally they'd drive up and throw

00:09:29.640 - 00:09:59.420

burning things and that tent got burnt down and that but I think that was later because I think I don't know I know that bender was where Sarah had Jay because she wanted to have him in that bender because it was quite hidden although it was pretty close to the road it was quite hidden by trees and things so I wasn't living in it at that point and um

00:10:02.200 - 00:10:34.360

So do you want to tell us a bit about Sarah and Jay? Well Sarah was I mean she would been there I don't know she was there when I got there I I don't know she was and she was pregnant and she really wanted to have the baby at camp that was really important to her and uh which she did do and uh the midwives were great about it actually

00:10:34.360 - 00:10:59.440

because they you know they were like oh yes I think we can manage in here you know in this bender like the size of a peanut but they were like yeah yeah we just need to make sure that it's hygienic and it's been to you and they just come they're just they must have just been the bog standard ones from Newbury because they had like normal midwife uniforms on as far as I remember

00:11:01.800 - 00:11:27.200

and uh I bet they were loving it well I suppose yeah and then I think when as soon as she'd had him she did go somewhere else because they were worried about him getting cold at that point but um yeah it's amazing isn't it I mean at the time you know it wasn't really on my radar that whole pregnancy and giving birth thing I just sort of thought oh yeah if that's what she wants

00:11:30.060 - 00:11:51.880

they probably thought she's going to do this anyway we should be there I think they were kind of a bit into it and she was really lovely Sarah she was very very softly spoken but a very determined person she was she was great at discussing

00:11:51.880 - 00:12:14.660

things with people because she never got aerated she was always like really uh but don't you think this and I can remember sitting around the fire discussing things with because loads of journalists used to come all the time at that point to Yellowgate and oh god

00:12:18.960 - 00:12:37.480

you know they were always it was always very difficult to engage the actual person is that because obviously they're looking for a story or looking for a person who's going to pronounce on the camp's opinion rather than engage with you on a personal level about what you think and what they think

00:12:39.660 - 00:13:10.980

I couldn't I think that was one of the things that I learned a lot about when I was at Green just about how the press works and how stories get changed and the way that I can really remember one time when um Sarah Hipperson was ranting at some journalist like she just went off on one and was just like

00:13:10.980 - 00:13:39.200

talking at him for about five minutes without stopping for breath just making point after point after point after point and uh and then she stopped and he said okay can you say all that again for the cameras like as if she hadn't said it already because the camera wasn't on and like he didn't need

00:13:39.200 - 00:14:02.740

to engage with it in any way it was like very interesting to me all that stuff about how the media worked so did you feel like uh the so I think a lot of women have felt it was like a an enormous education did it feel like

00:14:02.740 - 00:14:29.680

did you feel like oh I don't really know what's going on here or well at the camp generally did you feel like you you knew less or that you had other experiences about what was going on with the bigger politics or even I think I definitely knew a lot less than some women there there were some women there who were very very informed about stuff um

00:14:31.620 - 00:14:58.420

and had got like like knew the whole kind of strategy of the American Air Force and knew what the British strategy was supposed to be and had actually gone and read stuff and uh but I suppose I felt like I felt powerful when I was there and

00:15:00.720 - 00:15:32.600

I think I was at a point in my life where I felt like well I could do anything I wanted to do um and that helped that I'd felt like I was learning all the time I don't think I felt like I didn't know what was going on I mean I knew what I was there for but it's not a situation I'd ever been in anything really like that before just that whole way of

00:15:33.340 - 00:16:11.400

trying to work out ways to get a message across in a situation where that was quite hard and I mean there was some very there was some very funny kind of there was a lot of joking about it which was really great but also that moved into the way that we did things so I remember I remember spending a long time one day making a

00:16:11.400 - 00:16:39.700

sign to put up because they had a sign on the inside of their gate that said what the what the kind of um I don't know what it would be it was like their kind of mottos USAF mottos on this thing and it was all about honour and being quick to react or something I can't really remember and I remember spending a long time trying to mix and paint so it looked similar to theirs

00:16:39.700 - 00:17:02.820

and making one for us that said some different things and I remember one I don't know who that was meant to be for you know what I mean because it's like once you got up to that point at the gate it was only Americans going in so they're unlikely to change their mindsets but there was this one woman Jane

00:17:08.020 - 00:17:38.100

I can't remember Jane might remember she was older and she had a van and she had this idea that on American Independence Day I think it was or maybe it would I can't remember when whether there was a Martin Luther King day at that point but anyway she'd got this old ghetto blaster thing and she'd got that speech I have a dream speech on this

00:17:38.100 - 00:17:59.960

thing and she'd put it up really really loud so that when they slowed down at the gate to show their ID they had to hear this speech but you couldn't really hear it at all it just went and it went on for all of like half a day she had this thing on until her van batteries were virtually drained just going

00:18:05.600 - 00:18:36.420

but I mean we all had our own kind of little things that we thought oh I'm going to do this today oh god do you get any sense of where that it's kind of symbolic it's like a lot a lot of the actions were like were symbolic yeah art and were funny yes well there was a lot I think there was a I felt that some of the best actions were when they just

00:18:36.420 - 00:19:06.440

totally took the piss out of that whole idea of you know British militarism and the state and which is all totally connected with a colonial history and men prancing about in ridiculous clothes and all that stuff that to take it all seriously I mean it is really serious but that isn't what's serious what's serious is people dying or not having enough food because we're

00:19:06.440 - 00:19:35.720

spending money on that stuff but I think also it's quite good if you're frightened if you make a joke out of something that really disempowers it and uh I was just thinking that um you know you're saying I hadn't really experienced this before and so then I'm listening and I'm thinking well has there ever been anything like it before or after really

00:19:36.380 - 00:20:07.180

for that mix of of learning and also then just thinking about um you know where does that mixture of art and and um humor and um symbolism in the actions and you were saying taking the piss as I was hearing that I was thinking well is it is it really because this is although there's all the other politics this is all women over here and those are all men over there and that's part

00:20:07.180 - 00:20:38.260

of the the store of things we have to deal with masculinity yeah yeah yeah I think that's true and I mean I think that I have had felt like there's been echoes of that in things like there's a peace group in Sheffield that as it happens is mostly women that has got some sorts of those ideas about making stuff that will show an idea which often turns out to be

00:20:38.260 - 00:21:00.100

making stuff in traditionally women's crafts ways which are you know as we all know not judged to be worthwhile in the same way that forging a rifle or whatever you do with a rifle is it's like I think uh

00:21:04.360 - 00:21:35.700

one of my favorite ones was um teddy bear's picnic one where women are dressed up as teddy bears except that got a bit loose and um we were going we'd got various bits of picnic and we were I can't remember when it was I suppose it must have been sort of Easter time and uh we had to climb we had these two ladders that other people had put up for us they weren't going

00:21:35.700 - 00:21:57.420

in and then we had there was barbed wire on the top and you had to get over the barbed wire but when you had like a tail and stuff it was quite difficult to get over and then once you were over it was like it was good and we just danced about and then we sat down for this picnic and uh there was quite a few different ones different picnics going on

00:21:58.160 - 00:22:24.940

and my sister was in a different one and she said to me that um they got found by MOD with dogs and uh these dogs were obviously not that well trained because they were like trying to give them some food from the picnic and the dogs were like just the MOD guys were trying to get the dogs to behave you know be like

00:22:25.800 - 00:22:58.600

scary dogs and they were just wanting to have some of the picnic and then they started rolling these boiled eggs down the hill and uh one of the MOD men said starving children in Africa could have had those eggs but yeah we got we were all like dancing around and then

00:22:58.600 - 00:23:15.580

i can't remember what happened after that i think they just arrested us and chucked us out and never nothing else happened i think but that was very funny what was that your experience of the different gates

00:23:17.540 - 00:23:47.800

um well they did feel like they kind of built up a character as time went on i mean at first there was only yellow and then um me and a woman sue we went round to orange for what we kind of had two things one was we wanted a holiday from just that kind of incessant stuff because

00:23:49.120 - 00:24:14.640

you know that thing of visitors like there's a song that says where'd you get your water from and that is one of the questions that you just did get very like it became very hard you know to it's that thing where you become part of a group and it's really important when you're in a group not to to to be open to people coming in and everything but it's actually very very hard to

00:24:14.640 - 00:24:42.240

sustain that when people are coming all the time and asking exactly the same questions and anyway we wanted a break from that but also it's like yellow was on that side and they could just take to do whatever they wanted to do on the other side take things out bring back in and we and uh we were sort of wondering if it'd be possible to move around to there as well so we

00:24:42.240 - 00:25:13.300

went for a week's holiday and i can remember them being quite itchy about it they kept coming and asking us if we were staying there and we were like oh well we'll just do it for a holiday and then and then we packed up and then a few weeks later we did actually go back and set up there and that was it was nice at orange gate there was like there was a gate there but it

00:25:13.300 - 00:25:37.260

wasn't used that much so um it was peaceful in a way not as like cut off as green was and there was some gypsies living down the road from orange like on a bit of land a bit further down who um they were good they used

00:25:39.700 - 00:26:05.480

they had these lurches things that they would go rabbiting in the base so whenever they wanted to rabbit in the base they'd shoot the lights out first so then that was nice because then it was darker because it was always really light all night there used to be this nightingale at yellow gate and i can remember thinking

00:26:05.480 - 00:26:33.540

fucking nightingale i wish it had shut up it was just so yeah so i'd orange i really liked living there um and there was quite a lot of space to put benders and things up and i lived there for a bit and then it felt like we weren't really in the place we needed to be because it was along that back road that they were bringing

00:26:33.540 - 00:26:57.860

stuff out all the time so then we moved round to violet and then we moved to indigo and i stayed at indigo until i left and that was um that was quite tough for indigo because basically there was the verge and that was it because on the other side of the road was the golf club

00:27:02.300 - 00:27:32.660

i know i remember one time i was outside in front of indigo gate in the morning i used to do tai chi in the front of the gate and this golf club guy drove past and his mercedes wound down the window complete bloody nutter but yeah indigo was a bit mad because there was a very thin verge and you had to be on there and um

00:27:33.340 - 00:27:59.020

there was the mod had a um that gate was used quite a bit at one point and they had uh their own little shack on the other side and at one point they kind of started copying us and they'd put a little thing up on their outside their house thing that said lazy d shack and they they used to fry up eggs and things but

00:27:59.020 - 00:28:24.200

then they obviously had got told off one time because that was all taken away and they weren't allowed to do it anymore so they started making themselves at home yeah yeah and sometimes occasionally because the road went quite close to the base inside sometimes soldiers would come and torture you and there was this woman mabel who oh god she was amazing she i don't know

00:28:24.200 - 00:28:53.260

she must have been well into her 80s because i remember her son really didn't like her coming because he felt that it wasn't safe and stuff and we were all a bit worried about her but she used to come i don't know every couple of months or something and um stay over and i can remember her being at the fence talking to these soldiers and just telling them off like and she was like

00:28:53.260 - 00:29:19.600

your nana you know they couldn't say anything to her they were like kind of a bit shame-faced when she was saying you shouldn't be doing this because that was another thing that you learned about about the whole thing about the way that it worked to be in the army and how you had to pay to get yourself out and how that wasn't an option for most of the people in there and the punishments

00:29:19.600 - 00:29:49.400

they used to make them do when they'd done something naughty like run around the base with a rucksack full of bricks and stuff like just madness that whole kind of it's like all of the factors of british society coming together in this one place you know gypsies golf club yeah yeah nana's young lads who've got no jobs yeah apart from the army yeah yeah

00:29:49.650 - 00:30:13.270

yeah yeah well that was um that was where i was when that thing about the permanent evictions was happening and um yeah there were various methods annie had made these this bender that was

00:30:14.330 - 00:30:37.970

it was a kind of collapsible bender that you could pick up and walk away with well that was the theory it was like slats of wood in a kind of tepee shape tied together so that they'd kind of flatten out so you could just pick it up and go off with it and then liz gals made this bender on wheels she was american and she'd heard about how you could

00:30:37.970 - 00:31:04.950

claim sanctuary in a church and she made she made it was like two two quite big pallets and quite small wheels really and then the bender on the top and the thing what her idea was that she when they came to evict she would push the bender down the road to the church that was near to blue gate and claim sanctuary there but the problem was it was

00:31:04.950 - 00:31:30.650

actually quite heavy so it sort of needed at least two women to push it and one of the problems with being at indigo was that you just didn't have enough women basically trying to keep somebody there all the time was really difficult and uh so i think in the end they did evict that bender but it was very funny while she was pushing it up and down the road

00:31:33.050 - 00:31:55.150

i don't know if she ever actually went to the church because once you were on the highway they didn't do anything to you anyway so i don't know what the response of the church was and how about the um concertina collapsible engineer well that lasted for a little while but then they got that one day i think there was some days if they because they used to usually

00:31:55.150 - 00:32:18.870

go to blue gate first and someone if blue gate had a woman to spare they would get someone to come up and tell us but if they didn't then they'd come to us because so blue gate got it worse because they got no warning but then after they were doing it all the time you kind of gave up on that so you knew that you weren't going to manage to keep anything so you were just sleeping out in

00:32:18.870 - 00:32:51.730

Gore Texas and stuff but um they managed to get and we had another theory at one point which was that if if stuff belonged to other people like visitors that they wouldn't be able to evict it and i can remember we had some chairs that a woman from Kent had written her name and address on that this is the property of um Pearl Norman but um they did evict them unsurprisingly

00:32:56.230 - 00:33:26.870

so what happened when you got arrested and ended up in prison um well that was a no names action which was um because they'd um they'd sent her down for i can't even remember how long it was now some ridiculous amount of time two years or something it was some something really horrendous and um i can't even remember

00:33:26.870 - 00:33:50.690

why i mean partly they hated her because she was married to a vicar and she was obviously stepping over some more lines that weren't acceptable um but uh it was one of those things where they'd invoked all sorts of you know official secrets and

00:33:50.690 - 00:34:23.730

conspiracy things and um we did an action where we didn't give our names so we knew that they'd have to charge us and send us down straight away because they couldn't bail us and we didn't speak at all uh which the point of that was supposed to be to get some more coverage of that

00:34:23.730 - 00:34:50.750

what had happened to her i don't think it was highly successful on that front um so had there come a point where this had simply become a media war it's like they're getting too much coverage we've got to prevent them from getting coverage so we have who knows i don't know i mean it i imagine we were quite boring by that time because you know things don't

00:34:50.750 - 00:35:23.590

stay interesting in the media do they i'm sure there was some stuff discouraging but like and there was always quite negative stuff about filthy lesbians you just lie around in the mud and stuff like that um i don't really know i mean you were always trying to think of ways that you would cast a new

00:35:23.590 - 00:35:53.330

light on something or get to people that you haven't got to before and stuff uh but who knows i don't know so you were doing the no names action yeah um so we went in the base but we didn't um there was some women cut the fence for us and let us in so that we weren't found with anything on us and um

00:35:55.330 - 00:36:26.630

and then well we just went to prison well we went we went to court and i remember the uh the clerk saying to the magistrate because we weren't speaking madam you have to be satisfied that they can hear and i remember making eye contact with her and uh she said and me grinning and her saying i am satisfied and she didn't crack a smile at all yeah

00:36:30.710 - 00:36:58.090

yeah so then we got i can't remember 14 days i think it was so it was did you feel quite was that just contempt from the magistrate really just had no time for you or do you think just doing a job what did it feel like i think i mean what we'd imagined was that they would be pretty fed up because they'd have to find

00:36:58.090 - 00:37:24.670

basis for x number of women in prison at no notice and i think she was quite fed up but i imagine that she sort of day in day out i mean she was a magistrate in newbury she would have spent so much time i mean we're all down there all the time there was you know because women used to come and go and give fake names and you know so they they spent they must have

00:37:24.670 - 00:37:45.830

wasted hours of court time i can imagine that must have driven them up the wall like jane was saying that one because there was that the clerk i think he was called norman i can remember one day being at court for some reason i can't remember sat there and he he was walking through the lobby shouting for you to people

00:37:45.830 - 00:38:09.710

freed of people and he had to do that because it was you know illegal not to but he was really cross that he had to run around shouting and obviously freed of people wasn't there i mean she was probably back in australia or something like bart simpson yeah it was a lot like bart simpson

00:38:12.450 - 00:38:36.390

oh god oh dear so anyway you were you did the no names what what was the actual action that you did can you remember oh you're going to we just went in the base i can't really remember i think we just went in the base and walked around until someone picked us up

00:38:37.970 - 00:39:05.470

and then where were you sent to prison um well we went to holloway to kind of get processed and then they took me and a few others to cook and wood but there were people were sent all over because they obviously didn't have enough spaces i mean although nowadays they'd pack people in much more wouldn't they so i mean it's much worse now than it was then

00:39:08.150 - 00:39:37.010

uh so i can remember going into holloway and getting like you had to you had to strip and then you had to go like this and twizzle around so they could see if you had anything on you or any birth marks or anything like stand with your hands raised above your head and then then then they said you could have a bath and it was like it must have been there since the suffragettes

00:39:37.010 - 00:39:58.210

it was like a metal bath with feet and they gave you about like i don't know four inches of water or something but it was quite nice to have a bath because obviously it was quite difficult to have a at greenham although we had bath women that we went to their houses and that's all i can really remember about

00:39:59.830 - 00:40:21.250

that and then then we went to in this van which i've always like those prison vans i've always thought differently about those since then because when i see them i always think oh there's people in there who are looking out and that's like their chance to look out

00:40:23.770 - 00:40:51.570

and um then they kept us away from other prisoners they just put us in cells together so that we didn't get to speak to anybody and they and they didn't either didn't give us any exercise or i think the one time they did they did all the women from camp together and they didn't have anyone else so they

00:40:51.570 - 00:41:12.630

tried to make sure we never spoke to any other prisoner why do you think that was well i think they thought that we'd be a bad influence in terms of discipline and power and taking power and probably to a lesser extent that we might

00:41:13.990 - 00:41:41.770

make some links that might carry on and learn things off each other yeah which did happen yes yeah so they were right on that one yeah and then when we when we got out they wouldn't give us a travel warrant i remember because they said we can't give you a travel warrant because you haven't told us your name

00:41:43.550 - 00:42:11.150

so they made us so we had to hitch back and i remember this guy picking up three of us up that were going back to this to camp and uh he said oh you know wherever you come from and he was and then list he said i think it was list he said shall i tell him and we are here and she explained it to him and and i think he took us miles out of his way in the end but that

00:42:11.150 - 00:42:36.690

was quite a intro i had quite a few because i used to hitch all the time then i had quite a lot of interesting discussions with people when i said i lived at greenham did anybody ever say out of my van or lorry or car uh no but there was one person who was like really really angry who he didn't chuck me out but i kind of thought it might have been better if he had

00:42:36.690 - 00:43:06.390

i mean he didn't like attack me or anything but he was verbally quite aggressive my experience was they always knew exactly where you were going if you were near enough if you were near enough yeah well and also the way you smelt i mean because i remember one time i was in london in sister right and i was sort of around the

00:43:06.390 - 00:43:29.590

corner from somewhere and and someone came in and said oh it smells like someone from greenham's been in here and i kind of went yeah it's me and she was so embarrassed which i hadn't been mean to embarrass her because i could see that you did smell quite bad you know like i mean your hair was all smoked and even if you washed every day your

00:43:29.590 - 00:44:00.730

clothes were like really smoky so you couldn't sort of not make it be like that so the general aroma was smoke rather than unwashedness that probably well yeah i overpowered the all the others well it was you could wash i mean it was quite easy to wash you could heat some water on the fire and in orange gate it was easy to wash and also ruth at orange gate

00:44:00.730 - 00:44:38.930

made a shower which was very nice um but we had when we were indigo there was like women who lived in mostly in newbury or some in thatchham i think who were like bath women and our bath woman was called audrey and she she did one time come to visit us but i think she found that pretty difficult but she used to like so i think we used to go maybe once a month once every couple of

00:44:38.930 - 00:45:02.890

weeks god i don't know i couldn't stand that now but it was something not that often and she'd make sure there was hot water and we'd go to the laundrette and wash everything and then we'd go have a bath and then we'd have clean clothes to put on and she used to give us a cup of tea in that and that was i don't think she was involved in any peace groups or anything it was just that

00:45:03.890 - 00:45:22.550

somehow or other women had advertised for that and she did that and that was all she did and i think there were other women who did it who were much more involved but what do you think her motivation was well i mean we did talk to her about that and she i think she felt that

00:45:25.370 - 00:45:48.870

uh i don't i don't know that she sort of totally was against the nuclear thing i think she felt some stuff about the common being taken and i think she felt that when you were doing something on principle you should be respected and

00:45:50.450 - 00:46:16.930

that she was going to support it to that extent and there were quite i think there were quite a few people knocking around who were thought we were an eyesore but still agreed that they didn't want american weapons next door to what was the general vibe if you went down to town to shop or did you feel

00:46:18.650 - 00:46:39.730

generally like you were not wanted or how did it feel uh well i didn't go to newbury very much um i mean some people were okay i suppose if you're going to to the shops people don't

00:46:39.730 - 00:47:06.390

usually refuse to sell you things do they i do remember being spat out in the street um and i sort of feel thatchham was a bit nicer there was a there was a second-hand shop in thatchham which liz used to call the old people's service store and i can remember going there and that they were nice in there but um

00:47:10.110 - 00:47:37.690

it wasn't like we didn't really kind of go shopping or anything very often i suppose we'd go and get some milk and stuff if we'd run out maybe but we kind of mostly managed on what people brought you know there was such a sort of weird selection of donations and things i i remember when i lived at yellowgate there was a van drew up from

00:47:37.690 - 00:48:01.730

something like fortnum and mason and there was about 40 boxes full of tins of linda mccartney asparagus soup which linda mccartney had donated and we just ate this soup for day after day today

00:48:06.270 - 00:48:40.030

oh god so when it was time for you to leave how do you know it was time for you to leave um well i kind of didn't really i mean i think probably i'd i'd sort of gone past my cell by date really i think the last there was that 10 million women action which i was very worried about because there was a lot of discussion around that that

00:48:40.030 - 00:49:10.090

felt to me like it turned into lunacy like that like women were saying oh well you know that means one in six women in the uk has got to come we can do that and i was just thinking no we can't do that and that whole idea about getting bigger and bigger being the way to go and um i can really remember sue saying do you think we're flogging a dead horse

00:49:12.650 - 00:49:30.350

i can just you know like there were always those huge meetings that went on for hours and you were kind of used to that because everything had to be debated and then there'd be another meeting and it turned out to be a completely different lot of women who'd come to a completely different conclusion then you'd have

00:49:30.350 - 00:49:59.190

to have another meeting i mean we've all been in those meetings haven't we something about it worked though it did because there wasn't um uh i think there wasn't a feeling that you had to get to a point where that was what you were going to do or say or whatever because of that no leaders thing and because you could might do what

00:49:59.190 - 00:50:19.510

one woman's idea was and then another time you do what someone else's idea was and it there was i think there was a lot of space for people to just say what they felt without someone else feeling they had to argue that they didn't really feel that

00:50:23.330 - 00:50:57.310

but there was also kind of a lot of like these raging things about money like who needed money for what and then there was this thing of a money woman where for one week if you were the money woman you had the money and people had to come to you if they needed some and they weren't you weren't supposed to be making the decision about it but sometimes you were and uh i can remember

00:50:57.310 - 00:51:29.210

being money when it was complete pain in the ass because people would say to you i need this for particularly i don't know some crappy thing they just felt they were entitled to that no other woman had and i and then arlene got the money book and threw it in the fire in the middle of which is probably a very good thing but it did work i mean that but also there were loads of

00:51:29.210 - 00:51:53.970

where you just thought oh well that was mad but i know why i'm here i know what i'm doing so i'm just going to not take any notice of that i've gone off track now what did you say to me well i took you off track because i i said about the way things kind of didn't work but you were actually talking about uh when you decided it was time to go okay yeah maybe a bit past yourself but yeah

00:51:53.970 - 00:52:19.870

10 million women i mean i think those meetings worked fantastically well in some ways i can remember one at yellow gate at that big piece around the side of yellow gate where there must have been i don't know they're probably about 50 women there in a circle which you know usually you'd say oh we can't do that you've got to have small groups that report back or something

00:52:19.870 - 00:52:47.710

but we did that and everyone was just lying down listening to each other and it it was a meeting that worked there were other meetings that i felt didn't work like there was wages for housework came and stirred things up um and there were there were times when it felt like different gates had got different ideas about what should be happening and then

00:52:47.710 - 00:53:10.830

that made it difficult but there was also loads of stuff that wasn't wasn't discussed in a meeting it was just like you know particularly in the winter i mean you had to try and cook before it got dark and then you'd be sitting there and talking about stuff and ideas would come and it would turn into a plan

00:53:11.550 - 00:53:33.410

from just chatting which is another way of organizing yeah yeah yeah organic yeah yeah and then you know you might say oh we're doing this do you want to join in no one to say oh i don't think you ought to be doing that or well occasionally that did happen when there was arguments about who was a legitimate

00:53:33.410 - 00:54:04.810

target when someone put sand in a petrol tank of a one of the contractors who was self-employed and it ruined his vehicle there was an argument about whether that was or wasn't uh legitimate but in general it wasn't like there there wasn't an idea that you would say oh i i think that's a really bad idea about something that someone was doing you just

00:54:04.810 - 00:54:25.830

thought oh well i'm not doing that but they're doing it and that's fine so it felt quite free in comparison with a lot of groups where it somehow feels like it's very important to have a party line i can remember you know every channel four used to have the Labour Party conference on and it was

00:54:25.830 - 00:54:57.530

composite motion this and you know that was the way things were done and it all had completely hierarchical rather than uh you could do that i'm not going to yeah yeah so so yeah so that that for me felt a bit like oh i feel a bit like we've lost our way a bit here and then there was also the miners strike which was happening at that time and um annie had organized this thing of walking

00:54:57.530 - 00:55:34.490

from various valleys in wales to hinkley point to try and make some links about if you're not having coal then if you're having nuclear you're you know there's no better potentially a lot worse um in terms of well in terms of everything how that feeds into the military industry and cleanliness and accidents and and so i was involved in doing that which was

00:55:35.490 - 00:55:59.930

actually quite knackering but we were also sort of involved in going down to um picket with because there'd been a lot of links between uh like there was quite a few women from cunning valley who came to orange gate and there were quite a lot of links with various

00:56:02.690 - 00:56:35.890

communities miners wives doing stuff you know there were obvious links there and we went down to patol but we went to stay in cardiff for a few weeks in that summer and went and picketed picketed at patol but and that was quite an eye-opener as well like the way the police behaved to the men

00:56:35.890 - 00:57:06.530

on those picket lines was really violent in comparison to the way they behaved to us although there were single instances of people being really violent to women at the camp it wasn't the norm and the people driving the trucks looked very similar as well like guys with dark glasses like so yeah we did that which was knackering as well and but because i was away

00:57:06.530 - 00:57:37.570

i started just having an opportunity to think about about it and whether i wanted to carry on doing that or not and i just felt like i'd had enough really so then i moved to london i think i thought i'd go back for weekends and things but i didn't i think it felt for a while like it was quite a hard grind getting enough women because there

00:57:37.570 - 00:58:04.410

was a thing about trying not to have one woman on her own at the gate overnight so i can remember having to walk around to yellow to try and get some people to come around so that there'd be enough people to keep that gate open and then i think sometimes we just couldn't do it so i mean i'm not really very clear on the pattern of how it happened but i think gradually

00:58:04.970 - 00:58:25.330

some didn't have women at them anymore what did you do when you went to london um i did a um building and construction course

00:58:28.330 - 00:58:54.770

um and i did lots of those ilia you know for in those days you could do you could pay a pound and do as many ilia courses adult education courses as you wanted to do it was just so amazing so i just i did loads of things like i'd moved i'm moving into a squat of some friends that i knew there was this uh bonington square it was like there was loads

00:58:54.770 - 00:59:24.390

of squats there that it's now turned into housing co-ops um and i think i kind of thought oh i'm living in a house now i need to know how houses work so i learned to do electrics and plumbing and bricklaying and stuff and um then when i'd done that i was teaching at a free school which is like a school where kids choose what they not not

00:59:24.390 - 00:59:43.270

what a free school is now but kind of like as neil where the children choose what they want to learn so i did that for a bit because i'd already got a teaching qualification from before um and then uh

00:59:48.930 - 01:00:20.790

then i was working at surrey dock city farm for a bit and built a windmill there with the plan that i was gonna uh make it generate electricity and light the hen house but i never actually got to that point because we only got to the point where it was generating some power and then um what happened then i think money ran out for me to do that and also a friend of mine was

01:00:20.790 - 01:00:37.690

pregnant and was moving to sheffield and we had this planned co-parent and i was i'd had enough being in london so then i came to sheffield and that's where i am