00:00:00.000 - 00:00:22.320

It was either 83 and 84, or 82 and 83. I think more likely 83 and 84 would have gone till you expect them. So that would have been at the height of the media frenzy, 83 was very much, and then 84 was all about them trying to evict you, wasn't it? Yeah. That must have been...

00:00:22.320 - 00:00:29.420

Oh yes. So you didn't choose easy times to be there. Yeah. So what made you go? What happened?

00:00:30.460 - 00:01:08.360

Well, I read about the walk from Wales to Greenham Common, and I thought that was very inspiring, and so did a close friend of mine. So we went once or twice just to see what it was about, and we really liked it, and we thought we'd really like to go, and that was it. We went together. And that wasn't... what was happening in your life at the time to allow you... Well, I was married, and I had five children, but they were all growing up. The youngest was, what, 20-ish? Rita, I think?

00:01:08.440 - 00:01:45.640

Rachel. Rachel. So, you know, I could go, and my husband and I were not at an easy stage. So my friend and I just upped and off and took tents. Fantastic. And did you... how did you end up going to Greengate? Where did you go first? Because it was quite tribal, wasn't it? Well, you see, I had been for the odd day, and I suspect I'd seen Greengate. I like the look of Greengate, I suppose. I don't know really, but I did like it. Yeah, we liked it there.

00:01:47.200 - 00:02:24.080

So what was it particularly that was... because Greengate has a reputation of being quite sort of spiritual, and for want of a better word, people have described it as hippy, so... Yeah, it was spiritual, yes, and I liked the surroundings. It was nicer than Yellowgate, which was rather sort of on the main road, and Green was lovely, surrounded by trees and everything. Right, okay. And how many women were there when you sort of... I mean, was it a lot of, you know, sort of 20 people? 20. Could have been 20-ish, you know.

00:02:26.720 - 00:02:48.280

And did you sleep in tents? We started off in... we took tents, but then we built a bender. You know about those, I'm sure. So my friend Barbara and I built a bender and we lived in that. And how was that? Lovely. Very cosy. Very cosy bender, so, yeah.

00:02:49.180 - 00:03:07.520

You see, that's not what you expect at all. You kind of think of it as, you know... No, they are very cosy. So I get the impression you must have been quite a tough woman, because I think it's a... you know, you didn't have access to water, you didn't have toilets, obviously, you know. There were shitpits.

00:03:07.980 - 00:03:39.560

Yes, lots of people have talked about the shitpits, yeah. So, and what were the relations like with the rest of the camp? All right, every now and then we'd take a walk right round the base and crawl in at the other camps, and yeah, they were good, yeah. And how did you find out about protests or demonstrations, blockades or things that were going on?

00:03:39.580 - 00:03:48.740

How did we find out? Yeah, was it just... did people just come round and say, this is what's going on? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, word of mouth round. And was that something you wanted to do?

00:03:48.800 - 00:04:09.560

Oh yeah. And what sort of demonstrations did you take part in? Well, we used... one I do remember quite well, because I'll tell you this, it was another woman there called Margaret, and she was... She must have been about 75 then.

00:04:10.040 - 00:04:44.000

75 she was, and it was going to be her birthday next day, so we got up very early in the morning and we all went in the base. And we found a building and hovered round there, and then they caught us and took us into this building and arrested us. And there was a young modplot who arrested us, and we all sort of gave him three cheers because it was his first arrest. He looked rather bashful.

00:04:44.340 - 00:04:57.160

Didn't you? You made him a card, didn't you? Oh yes, I made him a card I think, yes. We decorated the bit where we were with flags and all sorts. Yeah, that was the sort of thing we did, you know.

00:04:58.040 - 00:05:14.860

There was the bicycle protest as well. Oh yes, there was a bicycle protest. We took bikes, we broke into the base and took our bikes in and rode round. It sounds like breaking into the base was relatively easy.

00:05:14.860 - 00:05:26.700

Very what? Relatively easy, was it? Yeah, it wasn't that difficult if you did it at night. You just needed a decent pair of bolt cutters.

00:05:27.480 - 00:05:54.580

And so is that how you did it? You had to get through the fence? You got these bolt cutters and you cut all the way down, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, and then you got in. And what was your relationships like with the MOD police and the military? Well, we were a little bit sort of mocking towards the police, weren't we?

00:05:54.700 - 00:06:04.840

I mean, we weren't cruel, but we did mock them slightly. In what way? Just made up silly little rhymes about them. What were they now? I can't remember, Doug.

00:06:04.840 - 00:06:28.840

Having said that, the RAF regiment were on duty on the base perimeter, and at that time there was very high unemployment, and a lot of young men from less privileged backgrounds than I would say quite a few of the women at Greenham were on duty there, and I felt it was not right to mock them because they were probably doing that.

00:06:28.840 - 00:06:42.420

No, we didn't mock them. Because whatever else could they do? And sometimes there was a certain amount of, shall we say, hauteur, and that was not right. But we never were unpleasant to the police or anything.

00:06:42.540 - 00:07:02.420

We were just sort of mocking them in a laughing, friendly way. And how did they respond to that? They weren't too bad, yeah. So when you got arrested, did you end up going to prison, or did they let you go? Did they charge you?

00:07:02.540 - 00:07:17.220

They charged you, and we refused to pay the fines, so eventually we went to prison. Well, I did anyway. Some people did, yeah. Which prison did you go to? Should be nine times to prison.

00:07:21.700 - 00:07:33.120

Holloway, beginning with R. Oh gosh, my brain, sorry. One in Surrey called Crookham Wood. Crookham Wood. Holloway.

00:07:34.140 - 00:07:39.660

One in Manchester, what was it? Stile. Do you mean Stile? You went to Stile. Risley. Right.

00:07:40.640 - 00:07:57.320

And you and I went together to Newport, didn't we, but that wasn't for Greenham, that was more protest later on. Right. About five prisons, I think. And why did they send you to different prisons? Aren't you supposed to be in a prison that's close to your...

00:07:57.320 - 00:08:05.600

I know. I can't answer that, I don't know. No, just their decision. I don't know. And what was that like?

00:08:06.260 - 00:08:36.040

Very, very interesting indeed. Prison is a very soulless place. I decided to be a bit sort of laid back and, for instance, one morning this screw came in and told me to make my bed. And she said, I'll show you how to do it, it goes in a certain order. And she made it all up, it looked like a sort of three-coloured ice cream.

00:08:36.040 - 00:08:56.780

And then she took it all away and said, I'll be back in 20 minutes and I hope it's done. So I decided just to be rather dim and I sort of fooled about with these blankets and did it in a hapless way. And she came back and I said, is that alright? And she looked at me and she knew I was mocking her.

00:08:58.180 - 00:09:16.080

That's the sort of thing. And if we all had to go somewhere, I was always lagging behind. And what about the inmates, how did they react? The inmates, they were good, they were interested in us. Yes, they were fine.

00:09:16.780 - 00:09:41.960

In what way were they interested? Oh, what did they say? Well, when we went into Newhall prison, we did an action at BNFL Copenhurst on the Wirral, which was more symbolic than anything else. And we walked into Newhall down the passageways to the cells.

00:09:42.660 - 00:09:56.300

And when I got in my cell, of course there's a big notice up as you go into prison, you mustn't discuss with other prisoners the reason why you're there. Well, of course it's the first thing anybody does, why don't they? And, oh, are you green?

00:09:57.680 - 00:10:07.460

Where are you from? Are you CND? I said, well, no. Are you Greenham? They said, well, yeah, sort of, yeah.

00:10:09.160 - 00:10:26.900

And I said, what makes you think that might be why I'm here? And she said, this young woman, she just was really struggling to find out what she wanted to say, but in the end she said, well, you've got that liberated look. And so many of those young...

00:10:26.900 - 00:10:43.040

Oh, God, that's the most fantastic compliment. If somebody said that to me, I'd be delighted. But, you know, it was also sad, Sarah, because so many of those women were there because the system of everything is so disadvantageous

00:10:43.040 - 00:10:58.640

to women from certain backgrounds and with certain life experiences. And there were a number of women in Newhall, certainly, who were there because they'd finally... the worm had turned. And a young lass, she'd burned down her stepfather's pub.

00:10:58.840 - 00:11:13.200

Why? Because he'd been abusing her. A woman who took a kitchen knife to her boyfriend because he'd been beating her up. She didn't kill him, but she was in for GBH and various other things. So a lot of... and quite a number of those women...

00:11:13.860 - 00:11:26.820

Yeah, it was a whole social commentary. It was a whole social commentary. And did some of those women then come to Greenham afterwards, do you think? Well, not that I know of. Not that I know of.

00:11:27.220 - 00:11:41.720

Right. Yeah. That must have been... No, I think her lives were too heavy for her. Too oppressed. You know, too oppressed. And I've heard that there's an organisation called Women in Prison

00:11:41.720 - 00:12:00.380

and that it was some of the experiences that Greenham women had that started that campaign off. As our friend Margaret, who was in her mid-70s, said, and she was sent to Stile at the age of 75,

00:12:01.240 - 00:12:30.180

and she said, well, I went in a peace campaign and I came out a prison reformer. Yeah, that's very... that's very poignant, isn't it? And I think Greenham, it seems that it was more than a peace camp, I think. People talk about it in terms of its network and influence

00:12:30.180 - 00:12:45.940

to the women's movement particularly, but also to prison and to the non-violent direct action that has come afterwards and so on. But the non-violent direct action was there before

00:12:46.660 - 00:13:10.900

and really was why they wanted to set up a camp that didn't have men, because the view was, rightly or wrongly, that men were more programmed and socialised into making violent responses. And the women took on the non... rather as Quakers do, I suppose,

00:13:11.340 - 00:13:26.340

a non-violent approach to these things, and they felt they would do that better in a women-only camp. And do you think that was true? Was that borne out? Yeah, I think it was.

00:13:26.840 - 00:13:38.800

In fact, do you remember that time we were at Greenham, at Greengate, Leah? And there was a big protest, it was a massive demo, and this French woman, she slashed the tyres of the police car. Oh, yes.

00:13:38.940 - 00:13:48.840

Do you remember that? Yeah, and we told her off. We did, because we said, this is not OK. This is against our ethos of non-violence.

00:13:52.700 - 00:14:01.660

I've watched Kerry, Greenham, Hope. Oh, did you? Which was... And I think that really... Because I've got the songbook, the songbook's online,

00:14:01.800 - 00:14:13.900

I've got the PDF, and there's lots of drawings, and it's absolutely beautiful. And it really... So, first of all, it really brings the songs to life, in terms of them not just being songs, but almost being a war cry.

00:14:13.900 - 00:14:31.980

I'm going to get a lot of purring on the recording. So, was that how you felt about it? The songs that, you know, you weren't just singing them, they were a battle cry, almost.

00:14:32.320 - 00:14:40.860

Well, we didn't think in terms of battles. Don't use that phrase. No, I wouldn't actually, just... Or resistance, let's say.

00:14:40.860 - 00:14:48.580

In a way, it was resistance, non-violent resistance. And, you know... We never felt angry. No.

00:14:49.060 - 00:14:59.260

I can't remember feeling angry. It was just funny and... Never felt angry. And... Sorry, go on.

00:14:59.340 - 00:15:07.860

Do you remember that time we went in the base at night, you and me and one or two other women, and we got almost to the area where the nuclear warheads were kept? Yeah.

00:15:07.860 - 00:15:17.580

You know, where there was the famous dancing on top. Yeah. And we nearly... We tried to go into this building, and we were rumbled by this black Air Force man,

00:15:17.900 - 00:15:28.160

you know, American Air Force man, and he just grinned broadly. And we were arrested, but, you know, you could see that he obviously thought it was quite funny.

00:15:28.900 - 00:15:44.920

Well, and I guess because you weren't... You know, what you were doing was proving the defences were... I mean, that mocking and humiliation, I think, was quite... was incredibly powerful, I felt.

00:15:45.120 - 00:15:54.560

I mean, if this is the... If a bunch of women can get that close to a load of nuclear warheads, what about your security? It's poor.

00:15:56.180 - 00:16:05.300

Yeah. Yeah, and I've heard that they didn't used to arrest you actually in the American side of the base, or that...

00:16:05.920 - 00:16:15.620

So women have told me that they didn't want the arrest reports to show that you were actually, you know, in the base, you know, having a picnic or, you know, whatever it was that you were doing.

00:16:15.880 - 00:16:22.740

Is that something that you remember? What's that? Sorry. Sorry. They didn't want to arrest women in the base?

00:16:23.060 - 00:16:30.880

They didn't want to. But they did arrest you in the base, didn't they? Yeah, of course they did. Yeah, they did. I think it was in the American...

00:16:30.880 - 00:16:42.440

Because there was a perimeter that was still British, and right inside was the American side of the base, and they had cells in there as well, didn't they? Oh, right.

00:16:43.000 - 00:16:53.620

I think some women had a very hard time when they were arrested on the base, Lia, because there was one where the plots were bashing her about and fraying her about the room.

00:16:54.980 - 00:17:09.340

But, you know, I can't give you time and date and name for that. So... Yeah, I mean, it sounds like... So what I was going to say is, looking at Carrie Greenham Home,

00:17:10.100 - 00:17:26.260

because the sort of... You know, it was quite an intense... Some of the blockades and some of the bailiffs, the evictions, particularly the scene with the bailiff in Carrie Greenham Home,

00:17:26.260 - 00:17:41.920

is quite upsetting, distressing, and it must have been sometimes quite difficult, from my perspective, to not react violently. Well, I don't know.

00:17:42.000 - 00:17:52.900

I never felt like reacting violently. I thought the whole thing was funny all the time. It was amusing, sorry, but that's how it was to me. It was good fun.

00:17:52.900 - 00:18:09.780

No, we were angry with that woman for slashing these tiles. Yes. Yes, but never angry at the base itself. So what sort of non-violent direct action

00:18:09.780 - 00:18:23.420

was the sort of thing that you engaged in? It was cutting the wires and going to the base? Cutting the wires, and then Jif managed to switch the lights off in the base, didn't she? A friend of ours.

00:18:24.180 - 00:18:36.980

We were out one night round the base, and it was really good because the plods had traditional policeman's helmets so you could see them when they were looming up out of the gloom, but then they eventually went on to flat caps,

00:18:37.020 - 00:18:53.680

but one night we were out, and Jif, a friend, she was really handy. She was very practical, and she shimmied up and managed to break the circuit on the perimeter lights, and they all went out.

00:18:54.500 - 00:19:11.680

Fantastic. A lot of people, people were very enterprising. I think that's the other thing that seems to have wrong-footed the military and the police is how creative you were in terms of your resistance,

00:19:12.100 - 00:19:25.960

in terms of your demonstrations. Totally creative, yes, very. And there was that space for that creativity because everybody at base agreed that this was to be non-violent.

00:19:26.820 - 00:19:40.660

Right, OK. And in part, would you say, because it was women only? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely it was. I'm not saying that women can't sometimes be violent.

00:19:40.660 - 00:19:58.240

That would clearly be wrong, but that was just the ethos, and that was what we did. And so, Diana, when did you start going down? In 1984, I was going down a weekend a month

00:19:58.240 - 00:20:09.580

and sometimes taking my daughter with me. And by then, I came to you at Greengate, didn't I? Because Lear and her friend, Barb's, who died some years ago, they were there.

00:20:10.400 - 00:20:22.900

And sometimes we had coaches down from Derby and sometimes I just went by car and parked it. And I remember once when you were living at Emerald and I got the car parked just off the road.

00:20:23.100 - 00:20:33.140

I'm just going to put my hearing aid in. When I came to that car, my daughter and I were going to go home. Somebody had scratched a huge swastika on the bonnet. Oh, my God.

00:20:33.400 - 00:20:46.420

I know, it was a bit horrible. It was dead creepy. And as well as expensive, because you can't go around dragging a car with a swastika on the hood. And I had to get it all done.

00:20:48.460 - 00:21:10.040

Lear, do you think Sarah would like to see that little album of photographs? Yeah, yeah, it's here. So how old was your daughter? She was about 12 and she absolutely loved it.

00:21:10.860 - 00:21:23.160

You know, if you were at Greengate or Emerald, the kids just used to go rushing around in the woodland and you could just let them. And for them it was like playing, I don't know,

00:21:25.140 - 00:21:34.340

Famous Five or something like that. And you just let them all go off and they just kind of wilded themselves in the woods. That was nice.

00:21:34.760 - 00:21:40.580

Fantastic. I'm just checking if there's any problems. Yes, don't cover. I've got my specs on and I know what I'm doing.

00:21:41.040 - 00:21:51.120

Of course, as you see, we've all got older. Yes, well, you know, I was 15 in 1981, so, you know. Did you know about it? I did, yeah.

00:21:51.260 - 00:22:08.580

My dad was in the military, so it was very... I guess I just didn't know what to think and our family was very traditional. I lived in rural Dorset, so we just had what was on the TV

00:22:08.580 - 00:22:25.400

and I think I was just quite scared by the whole... You know, I was scared by the nuclear threat. Yeah, totally. I just wouldn't have even known how to get it.

00:22:25.440 - 00:22:41.040

I think if it had been more local to me, I would have definitely gone down and had a look. But, yeah, you know, my dad was definitely not a fan. He was ex-military about that time.

00:22:42.120 - 00:22:51.680

I think he was, anyway. But, yeah, it was... You know, the whole kind of... How it was presented was, you know,

00:22:51.680 - 00:23:04.960

what do these silly women think they're doing? You know, what difference is it going to make? And, of course, it did make a huge difference. It was kind of also like a university of the open air

00:23:04.960 - 00:23:16.780

because there was debate, sometimes quite strenuous debate, discussion, disagreement and all the rest of it and you learnt a whole lot about yourself,

00:23:19.360 - 00:23:33.120

about politics, about the position of women and spirituality and a whole range of things. Yeah, it was like a university, wasn't it? Yeah, it was like the open air university,

00:23:33.240 - 00:23:45.000

not the open university. And so would you say it was like a sort of consciousness-raising type of vibe there? Consciousness-raising, Lia, or not?

00:23:46.420 - 00:23:54.020

Consciousness-raising. That sort of, you know, the personal being political type stuff. Oh, yeah, that was all that. Very much there was that, yeah.

00:23:54.700 - 00:24:02.280

And so was it... Would you say it was a feminist... Yeah. Yeah, it was about people learning, you know,

00:24:02.300 - 00:24:08.060

where their feminism lay, because feminism is quite a broad church, well, certainly these days it is. Yes.

00:24:08.880 - 00:24:27.240

Yes, it is and it was, I suppose, but it was very much issues around, you know... You know, nuclear weapons being a rather extreme example of the patriarchy

00:24:28.240 - 00:24:38.540

and that sort of destructiveness, the destruction of the earth, the destruction of future generations, you know, that women have given birth to and so on.

00:24:40.020 - 00:24:51.900

Yeah, it was that kind of vibe. And do you think there was a... Were there some camps that were more friendly for people who brought children down

00:24:51.900 - 00:25:04.400

and others that were less... I mean, not unfriendly, but just sort of less appropriate for... less comfortable for people with children? People with children?

00:25:05.500 - 00:25:17.820

Do you think some of the gates were more friendly towards women with children than not? It's hard to say, because if you weren't living at a particular gate, you wouldn't know about that, what was going on.

00:25:17.820 - 00:25:28.280

You know, if you spoke to women at other gates, they might have a view on that. Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the reasons I ask is because I've interviewed a few women who didn't have children

00:25:28.820 - 00:25:40.060

and they've said that they were... In fact, most of them were at Bluegate, which was a bit... I mean, there weren't many children there living all the time. But it was more children as visitors.

00:25:40.680 - 00:25:49.860

Right, OK. And when did the evictions start? The evictions? They went on all the time.

00:25:50.020 - 00:25:54.380

Were they? Yeah. From when you first went there? From when we first went there, yeah.

00:25:54.560 - 00:26:06.980

The bailiffs would come round and evict everything. And what did they used to do? Did they destroy it or would they take it away? Take it all away in a big, great big van, yeah.

00:26:09.220 - 00:26:20.900

We made up jokes about the bailiffs too. I can't remember the particular one. And were the bailiffs the same people each time? Yeah, yeah.

00:26:21.840 - 00:26:29.880

Sorry, go on. So there was one of the head bailiffs. Do you remember his name, Lia? I can't at the moment.

00:26:30.240 - 00:26:39.000

We had a joke about him, didn't we? I wish I could remember. I can't. And what was your...

00:26:39.000 - 00:26:48.660

Given that they were the same people, did you build friendships? We didn't build friendships with them, but we just mocked them a bit, you know,

00:26:48.760 - 00:26:57.520

like everything else we did. We sort of laughed at them. Because I wasn't ever there when there was an eviction. Because I wasn't actually living there.

00:26:58.020 - 00:27:10.640

But I did get arrested a few times on the base. If we knew there was going to be an eviction, we'd clear all our stuff into... There's a bit near the camp where you could safely put things.

00:27:11.400 - 00:27:14.780

Sanctuary. Sanctuary. Ah, right, OK. That was...

00:27:14.780 - 00:27:19.780

Wasn't that... That was the... Was that the land that Yoko Ono bought? Oh, did she?

00:27:20.040 - 00:27:27.120

Yeah, I think she did. I'm not sure. But there were one or two caravans with some former Yellowgate people in there

00:27:27.120 - 00:27:39.980

for quite a while afterwards. But at that time, you put stuff in the sanctuary, didn't you? So who took these photographs? Because, you know, it must have been quite difficult

00:27:39.980 - 00:27:47.400

to have a camera and get them... Who took the photographs? That's me and my friend that I went with. Fantastic.

00:27:52.860 - 00:28:06.360

There are some in there that I took, but they're colour ones and they're later on. And so was this going on all the time, people putting signs of, you know,

00:28:06.440 - 00:28:15.460

sort of celebrations of life on the fence? Well, we weren't cutting all the time. I mean, you'd cut at night, obviously, and it was dark and you couldn't be seen doing it.

00:28:16.340 - 00:28:23.720

Did they put signs... Unless there was a particular celebration, which there sometimes was. Sometimes you put...

00:28:23.720 - 00:28:31.440

How often did people hang things on the fence? How often did... Did they hang things on the fence? Was that all the time or just some...

00:28:31.440 - 00:28:42.920

No, on the occasion. Were the soldiers... When you put things, you know, pictures, there's some very personal and intimate things here

00:28:42.920 - 00:28:51.680

because the babes would take them off and throw them away? Well, those were on our side of the fence, you see. Right.

00:28:52.620 - 00:29:02.060

So... I don't remember what happened to them. Quite. Because it looks...

00:29:02.060 - 00:29:13.120

When you talk about it, it sounds quite... It sounds quite... calm and reasonably... well, organised.

00:29:13.360 - 00:29:21.960

And when you see the pictures, it looks... It looks quite chaotic. What's that?

00:29:25.200 - 00:29:37.020

That must be an eviction, I think. Evictions were chaotic, weren't they? Yeah, I bet they were. Would that have been...

00:29:37.020 - 00:29:49.900

Sorry. Leah might know that better because I wasn't there on that occasion. It just seems to be a meeting. Oh, the money... Do you remember the money meetings?

00:29:50.220 - 00:29:57.880

Yeah, it could have been... No, it's too big for a money meeting, but... So what were the money meetings? Money meetings were about what to do with money

00:29:57.880 - 00:30:09.260

that had been given, sums of money. And that could cause dissension occasionally. There were some very young women from rather poorer backgrounds

00:30:09.880 - 00:30:24.960

who saw it as an opportunity to go to places, didn't they? They'd not had that freedom before. It could be a bit difficult over the money,

00:30:25.160 - 00:30:34.160

as far as I remember. And was it the money for that particular gate or was it the money for the whole campus? For the camp in general.

00:30:35.760 - 00:30:45.320

And so would the money meetings happen at Yellowgate then? Depends. It could happen at different gates. Right. And how did those conflicts get resolved,

00:30:45.500 - 00:30:53.000

given that it was a collective...? I don't know. I can't remember. I don't know that they did. But it wasn't anything very, very serious.

00:30:53.240 - 00:31:04.220

It was just perhaps the one thing where you could look back and think that was a point of dissension. And were there...

00:31:05.380 - 00:31:16.900

So in terms of the conversations that people had around the campfire, presumably there would be arguments and discussions and things like that,

00:31:17.300 - 00:31:29.140

but no deep conflicts? No. But there did seem to be some later on, didn't there? No, there weren't deep conflicts earlier on, no.

00:31:29.140 - 00:31:41.060

No, I think it was later when the whole thing around Yellowgate came to the fore and different views of... different feminist views

00:31:41.060 - 00:31:52.080

and the whole thing about, you know, racism. That was quite big, wasn't it? For understandable reasons. What was the issue around racism?

00:31:53.460 - 00:32:03.360

Was there an issue about racism? Because there were people who thought that Greenham... I think you were supposed to sign up to a particular view about racism.

00:32:04.580 - 00:32:10.560

Did we? Don't you remember that? No. Gosh, I can't remember now.

00:32:10.760 - 00:32:21.420

But hang on. It's a good thing she's here, isn't it? Well, it's always good when there's two of you. I've interviewed one people on their own

00:32:21.420 - 00:32:28.340

and I've interviewed them in twos, and sometimes it's much easier when people are bouncing off each other. Yeah, well, I'm losing my memory a bit.

00:32:29.000 - 00:32:35.980

I'm 90. I'll let you off. I'm nearly 53 and I'm losing my memory a bit. Really?

00:32:37.340 - 00:32:57.800

Watch it. I was that age when I was at Greenham, yeah. So, what was the sort of age of the women at Greengate? I should say that I was one of the older ones.

00:32:58.500 - 00:33:10.760

Most of them were that bit younger, yeah. Yeah, I was one of the older ones. And what did your husband think about you going to Greenham? Well, he was in support of the whole thing

00:33:10.760 - 00:33:26.440

because he went to prison after going to a camp in the east. What's the name of that camp Julius went to? Oh, Molesworth. Molesworth, yeah.

00:33:27.340 - 00:33:39.540

So, he was in full support. Right. But then there were whole questions about sexuality. Now, that's about wages for housework.

00:33:39.620 - 00:33:49.280

Have you heard of that? Yeah, I've heard the name. And there was a big dispute. I found out when you...

00:33:49.280 - 00:34:13.540

So, that's a kind of declaration about, you know... Did you think it had some merit, this issue? Me, personally, I wasn't really involved in it. It sort of broke upon Greenham in a rather kind of...

00:34:13.880 - 00:34:26.400

Oh, goodness me. It's quite difficult to get my head around it, really. I wasn't particularly involved, you know. No.

00:34:27.640 - 00:34:43.100

It does sound like it did get quite nasty. It did get quite nasty, yeah. And it was very... If you went to Yellow Camp or anything,

00:34:43.420 - 00:34:50.560

some of the women there would say, oh, here come the tourists. Right. Do you remember that?

00:34:50.840 - 00:34:59.100

If you went to Yellow Camp after that row erupted, some of the women at Yellow would describe you as tourists. Really? Yeah, I remember that.

00:34:59.120 - 00:35:09.280

And I remember Jenny getting quite upset about that. This picture, this photo, expresses the sort of general feeling. There's me on top.

00:35:09.860 - 00:35:17.100

Fantastic. And the police, you know, they're not looking angry or anything. No, I... We're just gently teasing them.

00:35:17.420 - 00:35:25.320

So, would these have been the Newbury police? Yeah. Because it wasn't always just the Newbury police. No, because the Met came.

00:35:26.480 - 00:35:31.060

Yes, they did. You know, policing big demos. Can I take a picture of that, Leah? Of course.

00:35:33.820 - 00:35:41.560

And how were the Met different? They were quite fierce. Yes, they were. There's another one over there.

00:35:42.540 - 00:35:54.380

I don't know if you want to get all that. I'll have them both. I'd take all of them if I could. That's a great picture.

00:35:55.160 - 00:36:04.140

They're such good images, aren't they? I mean, you just, you know, at the time... What is that picture? That one there.

00:36:04.760 - 00:36:16.900

It's just a lot of actually quite happy smiling faces. Yeah, that's Leah there all right with her... That feels like the spirit of it. Yeah.

00:36:21.880 - 00:36:27.200

And you're on the... This is the perimeter gate, is it, here? Yeah. You're sitting on the gate.

00:36:27.460 - 00:36:33.340

Yeah, this is the perimeter gate. Fantastic. There we are. Is that you again?

00:36:33.640 - 00:36:54.540

I think so, maybe. So what sort of influence do you think Greenham had on you going forward once you'd decided to leave? Do you think it had an influence on the rest of your life?

00:36:54.540 - 00:37:03.600

When I'd leave? Yeah. Well, when I left, I had been a social worker and I was given a year's unpaid leave to go to Greenham.

00:37:03.780 - 00:37:17.760

It caused quite a stir here in Derby. She was front page news, she was. But when I lived there quite a long time, I realised I just couldn't go back to being a social worker.

00:37:18.300 - 00:37:36.440

It just felt too restricted and things I wouldn't have agreed with. So when I left, I came home for a bit and I just couldn't bear to be indoors all the time. So I found a sort of low-paid job

00:37:36.440 - 00:37:47.920

in a group of people who were doing gardening, a group of young lads. I joined in that for a while. And then I decided I liked gardening,

00:37:48.160 - 00:37:56.640

so I'd try and be a gardener. So I put a little advertisement in the local post office and got one or two replies. And I think it built from there

00:37:56.640 - 00:38:08.240

until I got a proper gardening business, which I then did for the next 20 years. Wow. It's also changed one's view of oneself.

00:38:09.100 - 00:38:20.220

I mean, you said once that when you were sitting by the campfire, there were two women kissing. Yeah. And you were a bit taken aback at first,

00:38:20.340 - 00:38:35.600

and then you said, well, why not? And then I think in the end after it changed, I think it opened up a range of possibilities. You didn't have to be what people thought you ought to be.

00:38:35.900 - 00:38:41.140

You could be. Oh, yeah. I mean, Leah and I had known each other for quite a while and then we got together,

00:38:41.400 - 00:38:58.120

because all of a sudden you'd started thinking very differently about sexuality and the range of what was possible. So then we came here about 32, 33 years ago. We've been here together since then.

00:38:58.940 - 00:39:14.320

Yeah, because everything just kind of changed. And we did. And once you left the camp, was it more difficult to live with a different sexuality,

00:39:16.520 - 00:39:27.800

what I think outside of the camp would be seen as an alternative lifestyle? I think some people were a bit funny with me. Were they? Yes, Leah, they were.

00:39:28.360 - 00:39:43.140

I mean, I don't think you were much bothered, but several people were a bit funny with me. And people didn't always accept that. So we just kept living here and doing our own thing,

00:39:43.380 - 00:39:59.240

and so that was how it was. And, of course, attitudes have changed enormously, and a pair of old women aren't seen as very highly sexual anyway, so what?

00:40:00.220 - 00:40:16.140

People can think what they like. And in general, I think young people have got much more open attitudes than a lot of people of my generation and older, that's for sure. You can see in this picture, I mean, where we are with the police,

00:40:16.280 - 00:40:23.280

the policemen look quite friendly, they're smiling, aren't they? They do, yeah. We're just talking to them. Yeah.

00:40:24.200 - 00:40:30.060

And would you talk to them about why they were there? Why we were there. Why you were there. Yeah.

00:40:30.060 - 00:40:39.060

And what were their views? Well, they just listened. I mean, I don't know if they expressed strong views, but they were...

00:40:41.080 - 00:40:52.060

There's somebody cutting. Let's have a picture of that. That's a fantastic photograph. Could you just move your thumb slightly so that I can...

00:40:54.180 - 00:41:03.800

For some reason, I've got it in selfie mode. That's no good. It's a little bit frightening when your face comes up. Brilliant.

00:41:04.620 - 00:41:15.300

That will be... I think that was part of an arranged date. We would all cut the fence, which we did. They're fantastic pictures. Absolutely fantastic.

00:41:15.600 - 00:41:30.160

I mean, what an amazing narrative of, you know, how you lived and how happy you were. It was great fun, you know. That's the bicycle, preparing for the bicycle action,

00:41:30.420 - 00:41:39.840

having a meeting about it. And then that's it. My friend put on that little hat. That's me.

00:41:40.500 - 00:41:52.780

She got her little bicycle. And we had to cut the fence first to get in. That's Annie cutting the fence. There doesn't seem to be any...

00:41:52.780 - 00:42:04.540

I mean, you'd think that there would be soldiers or something... Well, there will be eventually, you'll see. So then we cut the fence and we go in with our bikes. And you've got a witch's hat on, haven't you?

00:42:04.880 - 00:42:13.120

I think so. There we are. We're inside. And he's laughing, you see. He's arrested that woman, but she's laughing.

00:42:13.200 - 00:42:21.920

Oh, let's have a picture of that. And that's a soldier? It's a soldier laughing because he's arrested. It was all sort of fun, you know.

00:42:23.960 - 00:42:32.020

There you are. She's sort of pretending to shriek, and he's just laughing. That's my friend.

00:42:33.280 - 00:42:40.160

And there's me. That's me and the witch. That's Leah wearing the witch's hat. That's fantastic.

00:42:43.060 - 00:42:53.060

That's brilliant. Of course, in the end, they confiscated the bikes, and you had to go round to the base to ask to have your bike back. Sure.

00:42:54.220 - 00:43:09.180

Yeah. Yeah, that does... I mean, I think the artistic creativity as well, the banners, the songs, the sketches.

00:43:10.100 - 00:43:19.940

We have got a banner up in the loft. It was Derby Women for Peace that was made. Maybe it ought to go on display somewhere, Leah. You know the banner?

00:43:20.320 - 00:43:23.820

Where? It's up in the loft. Where are you going to display it? I don't know.

00:43:23.880 - 00:43:35.580

Maybe somebody would like it to put in a museum or something. Well, the... So, the narratives and the pictures and any artefacts we get, because people have given us bits and pieces,

00:43:36.580 - 00:43:51.500

they're going to go to London School of Economics archives. So, would it be worth them having that, Leah, or looking at it anyway? Going up there now, surely. Well, I might after lunch.

00:43:51.980 - 00:44:01.840

Well, you could lend it and they could give it back to you. That's true. You know, you don't have to decide, now I can come back, it only takes me an hour to get up here.

00:44:01.880 - 00:44:08.120

Where are you coming from? In Leamington. Oh, not so far away, Leamington. So, you know, have a think about it.

00:44:09.100 - 00:44:19.620

The exhibitions, there's going to be 20 exhibitions around the country, pop-up exhibitions, and then there's going to be a permanent archive for LSE. Yeah, because it's a pity for it not to be seen again.

00:44:19.940 - 00:44:29.460

Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, if you wanted to, you could loan it, because there'll obviously be a bigger exhibition in London, because everything is bigger in London, isn't it?

00:44:31.580 - 00:44:44.540

And, you know, I can bring it back if you decide. Or you can say, you know, have it for the archives, and on the understanding we can have it back, because Leah's daughters might...

00:44:44.540 - 00:44:50.980

It's not Leah's... Granddaughter. No, it's none of their... It wasn't anything to do with them.

00:44:51.260 - 00:45:02.280

I was in Derby Women for Peace. Leah was at Greenham. Derby Women for Peace was an organisation that... We were there, we did actions locally,

00:45:02.400 - 00:45:16.400

and we also supported the Greenham Women's Peace Camp, and it was we who embroidered the panels for the... Some of those people are no longer with us, and I don't know where some of them are,

00:45:16.980 - 00:45:28.060

but it's in our house. There's about two women I know who... I still know who might be interested. Not interested in having it,

00:45:28.140 - 00:45:36.920

but interested to know what might happen to it, in which case we can contact them. But it seems a pity for it just to be sitting up in our loft. Yeah, yeah.

00:45:37.000 - 00:45:47.660

And to be honest, you know, how much longer are we going to be here at our sort of ages? Well, think about it. I mean, you know, it can be today or it can be another day,

00:45:48.180 - 00:45:56.040

however you want to arrange it. OK, well... I mean, you can contact those women and say, what do you think or, you know...

00:45:56.040 - 00:46:06.340

Well, what I can do is bring it down, show it to you, you can decide what you want. Then we could contact Gwen. I mean, Barb, some of those women are not alive anymore anyway.

00:46:06.740 - 00:46:15.560

We don't know where Jude is. I know I can contact Sue Hodgkinson. There's about three women I can contact, and that's it. And obviously...

00:46:15.560 - 00:46:25.700

And what happened to all those women? Because there seem to be quite a lot of women for peace organisations around the country, and I don't hear about that anymore.

00:46:25.700 - 00:46:33.660

Yeah. I don't think it's all gone, really. I think people, young people, moved on to things like environmental protest

00:46:33.660 - 00:46:45.760

and tree protests, you know, along by Newbury and things like that. And I think once the missiles had moved off the base and it was the end of the Cold War,

00:46:46.480 - 00:46:56.260

I think it was felt that, you know, that Greenham had done its job. I mean, there's always... But there are, I think, still women...

00:46:56.260 - 00:47:01.260

Are there still women at Menwith Hill? There might be. I don't know. They've been there for a long time.

00:47:02.660 - 00:47:15.400

So that kind of fizzled out. And a lot of women, their lives opened up and they went on to do very different things. And, yeah, yes, we did.

00:47:16.180 - 00:47:29.220

And what did you do after you... When did you stop visiting Diana? Just not long before the camp finished. Once Leah had finished being there.

00:47:30.480 - 00:47:44.100

And we might have gone once or twice again, I think, Leah, but we were involved in protests more locally, like at the BNFL Copenhurst, because there was a thought that the streams,

00:47:44.300 - 00:47:53.740

the watercourses over there, were being polluted by what was being leached out from BNFL Copenhurst. It was a kind of nuclear place.

00:47:54.400 - 00:48:04.780

And we did a couple of actions there which landed us in prison, along with our 75-year-old veteran friend Margaret and her husband, who was a retired priest,

00:48:04.900 - 00:48:17.460

in fact a canon of Derby Cathedral, yay! And he was busy doing his bit for peace, dressed in his black clerical garments, and we heard the police saying,

00:48:17.780 - 00:48:27.000

don't take the canon. He was very miffed. But you can imagine what it would have looked like for the police to have arrested an elderly churchman.

00:48:27.760 - 00:48:37.700

Yes, but not his elderly wife. No, no, that was different. But hey. So, yeah.

00:48:38.420 - 00:48:54.600

So we did those things there and went to prison. Here's a little one, a series. That's my friend, and she's spray-painting that thing. And then the police come along, looking quite friendly.

00:48:55.320 - 00:49:09.960

There she is sitting there. And then he's taking his hat off to her. He's asking her about it and says he's going to arrest her. She's smiling, you see.

00:49:11.320 - 00:49:22.360

And then they take her away. Yes, it's all very... It's not how you imagine... You imagine things to be a bit more of a scuffle.

00:49:22.360 - 00:49:31.220

No, it's snow. It wasn't like that. So do you want a photocopy of that? Oh, God, that would be great.

00:49:31.340 - 00:49:43.320

I'll do that for you. Technology is great when it works. So when's this exhibition? Well, we don't know yet.

00:49:43.860 - 00:50:00.680

We don't know where they're going to be, but we want to make sure that the exhibitions go out of London because, actually, a lot of the women are elsewhere. So we want women to be able to go and see it.

00:50:00.880 - 00:50:16.540

And we also want members of the public to understand what went on and how it was and what the women did. Because I've learnt so much over the last three weeks speaking to women,

00:50:16.540 - 00:50:30.280

particularly about how sort of... You know, there's a Margaret Atwood quote that says, you know, men are afraid women will laugh at them and women are afraid men will kill them.

00:50:31.140 - 00:50:49.540

And I think it's just that mocking that you were talking about that just really comes out really, really strongly. And the creative ways that women used very, you know, female... The web that you had, you know, the wool that you would pass between you

00:50:49.540 - 00:50:59.300

through the blockades and so on. Absolutely, yes. You know, men wouldn't do that. No, no. That's why we didn't want men there, you know.

00:50:59.380 - 00:51:09.280

They wanted to come to Greengate, for example, but they could come and visit, but we didn't want any men living there. They weren't creative in that way.

00:51:09.800 - 00:51:22.000

You know, they would know how to do something but we learnt in our own way how to do something. Yeah. And were there things that you had to learn how to do

00:51:22.000 - 00:51:39.440

in terms of, you know, surviving? Was there, I don't know, things like fixing cars or, you know... It was usually a woman who knew how to do something. You know, there were all sorts of talents among them, yes.

00:51:39.440 - 00:51:51.980

You know, I was thinking about if you want to get in the base, we just sort of did it, but a man would say, you do it like this and spend hours sort of doing it properly. We didn't want that sort of thing.

00:51:52.720 - 00:52:01.440

Yes, properly in inverted commas, because properly is just getting in, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't mind lending this if it would be useful.

00:52:04.420 - 00:52:13.780

Are you sure? Yes, as long as I get it back. Yeah, no, absolutely. They are fantastic, those pictures.

00:52:14.460 - 00:52:37.540

That one of you dressed as a witch is just so great. Yes, it gives you an idea of the sort of whole humour of it. That's when we went to Salisbury Plain and... Was this a sort of green outing where you walked across the...

00:52:39.720 - 00:52:53.880

Yes, and there's the police trying to stop us. There we are, Stonehenge, yeah. Fantastic. We spent the night at Stonehenge, yeah.

00:52:57.660 - 00:53:14.760

God, you can't get anywhere near Stonehenge these days, can you? I know, I know. We just slept by the stones, you see. And was this a sort of...

00:53:14.760 - 00:53:24.560

That's back at Greenham, that's a bender. Is that where you lived? No, that's not my bender, it's somebody else's. It does look very tranquil, actually.

00:53:25.000 - 00:53:35.240

Yes, very. And did you all... Did you have sort of a space around all of this? No, there was a little bit of space around.

00:53:35.320 - 00:53:53.240

That one's particularly in a big space, I think. Is that a soul? Who's that? No, that's a woman. I don't know what she's doing.

00:53:53.580 - 00:54:03.740

I don't know quite what I'm doing. They seem to be... No, that's my tent. And that's me in the bender.

00:54:08.780 - 00:54:15.220

That's for you, Sarah. Oh, lovely, thank you. Fantastic. Oh!

00:54:16.260 - 00:54:25.280

She's having a mad moment. She is lovely. Did you go up in your loft? No, I've just... No, I have these.

00:54:25.500 - 00:54:35.640

I have these in my... Ah, fantastic. You see, it's things like this that I find so brilliant. They're so...

00:54:35.640 - 00:54:49.200

And I get the impression that each gate had their own sort of, you know, the kind of art that they had. Yes, each had their own character. Yes, character, that's the word.

00:54:55.960 - 00:55:09.540

Oh! It's interesting, they're saying here that they want commitments for women to come to Green for two days midweek during the year. Was it quite difficult at times?

00:55:10.320 - 00:55:21.260

Did they not have enough people to do that? It was a bit thin, wasn't it? To support. Was that as well?

00:55:23.140 - 00:55:52.720

If you think that's worth having, I can photocopy that. I remember signing that. Fantastic. It's amazing, all this stuff, how much has been kept.

00:55:53.020 - 00:56:04.940

And I've heard that some women have wanted to, years ago, have had archives of stuff that they wanted to give to museums and nobody would take it. So they just threw it away.

00:56:05.860 - 00:56:17.020

You know, because they were moving and moving. So, yeah, just absolute criminal that people didn't take it. I'd love to have a photocopy of that. That would be great, thank you.

00:56:21.060 - 00:56:38.120

These are just newspaper cuttings. You've probably seen these. So why, Leah, were you on the front page of the local newspaper because you got a year off to go to Green?

00:56:38.220 - 00:56:54.200

Well, a lot of people protested about this. In Derbyshire then, Derby and Derbyshire were then the unitary authority, the authority altogether, and the leader of Derbyshire County Council was one David Bookbinder,

00:56:54.200 - 00:57:14.300

who was quite socialist and Labour. I think it's probably relevant that he was also Jewish because there were rumblings and things. And he and his council,

00:57:14.660 - 00:57:24.980

they agreed for Leah to have this one year's leave of absence, unpaid absence. Unpaid? I mean, having agreed that with her team leader and everything.

00:57:25.740 - 00:57:37.020

But there were people, there were Tories on the council who thought it was outrageous that this should happen, that the council should be so... Yeah, and I got this anonymous letter saying...

00:57:37.020 - 00:57:45.900

Did you? Greenham is hijacked by lesbians, didn't I? Well... There were a few.

00:57:46.360 - 00:57:51.640

There were a few there. You do? Yep. But whether it was hijacked is another question.

00:57:51.940 - 00:58:02.960

And sometimes, I mean, if you were a married woman with children, you couldn't really go and live there. What you could do was support or be part of... Do you remember the food runs that people used to do?

00:58:02.980 - 00:58:15.680

Yeah, yeah. Or go there at the weekend, you know. So, you know, people's circumstances were such, if you were single, either single and straight or single and lesbian,

00:58:17.180 - 00:58:29.960

you had the time to go there. You hadn't necessarily got the commitments, which meant that you had to stay at home, you know. Or like Leah, her children were gone and off her house.

00:58:29.960 - 00:58:42.720

I was just lucky in that way. I mean, had it been a few years earlier, I felt I couldn't have gone because I'd had children. So, when you went, Diana, and your daughter was 12...

00:58:42.720 - 00:58:56.300

Yeah. ...and you were taking part in, you know, breaking into the base and so on, what was your decision-making around what would happen if you got arrested? Well, Sarah was being looked...

00:58:56.300 - 00:59:11.720

She's a Sarah, too, looked after by other people in the Green Gate. There was an occasion when she came in with me when she was about 12, and, you know, we were sitting down on the runway, and then the police came along with Alsatians,

00:59:11.720 - 00:59:28.160

and Sarah went up to them, started stroking this police Alsatian. She said, Nice doggy, nice doggy. And we were sort of cautioned and let out. When it came to when I actually did go to prison,

00:59:28.280 - 00:59:42.380

I mean, there was a time at which, earlier, I'd said to my daughter, she was about 13, Sarah, how would you feel if I refused to pay my fine and chose to go to prison? And she said, Mummy, I don't think I'd like you to do that.

00:59:42.780 - 00:59:55.260

And so I respected that. I thought, well, you know, what's the point of doing this if it's going to make a child unhappy? So anyway, on another occasion, once we were here,

00:59:55.340 - 01:00:09.140

the three of us living here, I did take part in an action. Actually, Sarah was on that action as well. She got cautioned and fingerprinted. And they were often quite fierce when they were fingerprinting you,

01:00:09.140 - 01:00:21.780

weren't they, Leah? They just grabbed your hands and jabbed them down onto the ink. It didn't have to be like that, but it was. And I think there came a point at which she said to me,

01:00:21.840 - 01:00:34.720

It's all right, Mummy, you go to prison. I'll go and stay with Vicky, as one of her school friends. And her parents, fortunately, were quite liberal. And so Sarah went to stay with them for a week.

01:00:35.420 - 01:00:44.020

And I got leave of absence from work because I was working for a justice and peace organisation called the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and they were fine about it.

01:00:44.640 - 01:00:58.600

So I'd just cleared my diary, went to court with my six books and my stuff and was sent down. And did you defend yourself? Yes, we did defend ourselves.

01:00:59.060 - 01:01:13.440

We did defend ourselves, yes. And what was the defence that you used? The defence, I think, was that the nuclear weapons were immoral and that as a responsible citizen,

01:01:13.820 - 01:01:31.860

it behoved me to take a stand against them. And I wasn't somebody who likely broke the law. You know, you're brought up to think policemen are OK and are there to, you know, help you and all the rest of it.

01:01:31.860 - 01:01:48.760

And then you saw a different side of policing and a different side of law-making. So I suppose that was fundamentally it. I think we felt we were, in some way,

01:01:48.840 - 01:02:01.980

occupying the moral high ground on this subject and that it was right for us to do that. And these countries had a long tradition of non-violent protest. Quakers have a long history of it

01:02:01.980 - 01:02:13.780

and, of course, there were a lot of Quakers there. So was religion important at the camp or at Greengate? No, not especially. I mean, there were individual people.

01:02:13.940 - 01:02:24.640

I mean, I would call myself a Christian, but of perhaps a rather more unconventional kind. And for me, how can you be a Christian and have weapons of mass destruction?

01:02:25.320 - 01:02:42.220

It just doesn't hang together. In fact, it's wicked. And I was in the dock on one occasion with a priest and a nun and I didn't think that was particularly bad company on that occasion.

01:02:43.020 - 01:02:58.450

So a priest and a nun had been protesting at Greengate? No, they hadn't. No, this was as a result of taking place in the Ash Wednesday protests. Christian CND and other like-minded organisations,

01:02:58.610 - 01:03:12.890

we gathered outside the MOD on Ash Wednesday in order to write. And we had ash, little bags of ash, and we were putting crosses made of ash on the walls of the MOD

01:03:12.890 - 01:03:34.290

because what happens in churches on Ash Wednesday is that people would go up to the front, to the altar, and they would have a cross of ash put on their foreheads and that's about remembering your mortality and all the rest of it.

01:03:35.030 - 01:03:51.490

And so ash crosses on Ash Wednesday was significant for Christians. And yeah, we got arrested for doing that. We got charged with marking the walls of a building without the owner's consent. And of course our defence in court was,

01:03:51.610 - 01:04:06.170

well, us taxpayers, we are the owners collectively of the building. But they didn't go for that one. Yes, it does sound like if they arrested you and charged you with something that they'd already decided that that was going to happen.

01:04:06.270 - 01:04:21.970

Yeah, and the Oxford intellectuals, of course, had written a biblical text all along one of the long walls of the MOD in coloured chalk. That they managed to do that in the time was really quite splendid.

01:04:26.170 - 01:04:44.590

So protests happened from various different people, from very Christian to no religion to New Age to whatever. And we were all in it together, really. And did you get a lot of support from CND at Greenham?

01:04:45.070 - 01:04:55.750

Did you leave? I don't know. I can't answer that really. I don't know. Because I don't think they were particularly interested when the march happened.

01:04:55.970 - 01:05:09.330

I think they thought that it wasn't really going to be anything and they weren't particularly interested. But as it got bigger, possibly, I don't know whether they had... I never felt...

01:05:09.330 - 01:05:25.730

I mean, obviously, there would have been women from CND who came to Greenham. But CND as an official presence, I never saw. No. And how much do you think class was an issue?

01:05:25.890 - 01:05:36.770

I mean, you talked a little bit about class in terms of the difference between the soldiers and... There was a blue gate. There were more working-class women there, weren't there?

01:05:37.310 - 01:05:52.830

I think so. That was an obvious difference. But did it make a difference? I think probably the women who could best answer that were working-class women.

01:05:53.610 - 01:06:09.170

Because I think it's like if you're black, you notice racism a lot more than if you're white. Do you know what I mean? Because Sue Hodgkinson could answer that question, Leah, because she was at Blue.

01:06:09.390 - 01:06:14.650

I can't hear. Sue Hodgkinson could answer that question because she was at Blue. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

01:06:15.850 - 01:06:27.330

She then went on to train as a solicitor. Do you think Greenham influenced her decision to do that? I think it was part of it. I mean, I think for some working-class women,

01:06:27.750 - 01:06:38.230

Greenham was a complete escape and a freedom that they hadn't known before. That showed up at the money meetings, for example. But it was for you too, Leah. Sorry?

01:06:38.350 - 01:06:44.670

It was a complete escape and a freedom for you too. In another way, yes. In another way. Yeah.

01:06:46.010 - 01:07:03.450

So how did it liberate you two, do you think? It just opened up a whole new world for me, of things I, as you say, lesbianism, and just made me feel free.

01:07:06.210 - 01:07:24.470

And I think it made me feel freer in that respect, that that was, you know, that a lot of conventional thinking and training trains you for heterosexual norms, and those will suit many people very well.

01:07:24.970 - 01:07:45.870

But then I was gradually realising it didn't suit me at all. And also I think the very different way of thinking about religion and very different way of regarding the law as something which might, on occasion,

01:07:47.350 - 01:08:06.410

be used by people with power against those without power, rather than as a, you know, just as a taken, it's not a taken for granted thing. It could reinforce existing power imbalances between people,

01:08:07.110 - 01:08:18.930

and that the courts, you know, did the bidding. I mean, because you once said that the magistrates could choose, but they didn't. Yes, I did, that's right.

01:08:19.130 - 01:08:34.330

That was in Derby. She said, I have no alternative but to send you to prison. And I said, well, you have an alternative, but you're not taking it. Yeah, in the courts we were very free, weren't we?

01:08:35.070 - 01:08:49.610

Describe Newbury Court. Take a dog in or a knitting and just sit there. I mean, that time I was up before the beak in Newbury, there were women putting their booted feet up on the desk in front of them

01:08:49.610 - 01:09:09.050

and things like that, and, you know, it was quite scary. It was very exhilarating. Yeah, exhilarating sounds like a... A lot of those photographs look exhilarating, you know.

01:09:09.050 - 01:09:23.030

Yeah, yes, free and... I don't know. It made you realise there was another way of living other than the traditional and conventional one. Yeah, and those heterosexual norms that you're talking about

01:09:23.030 - 01:09:38.050

I think are also connected or heavily overlapping with that, certainly in the 80s, with the patriarchal norms. Yes, and I see with great sadness that it's all there again. In what respect?

01:09:38.470 - 01:09:55.870

Well, I think the huge pressure on young women to conform to certain ways of looking and certain ways of being, you know, in their bodies and all the rest of it, and with social media being used to reinforce those norms.

01:09:55.870 - 01:10:15.530

I mean, when you think that girls have to go to school wearing make-up, things like that, and it probably takes them ages in the morning to do that. We have someone we know, her daughter has to do that. She can't go to her FE college without being fully made up.

01:10:15.830 - 01:10:23.570

It means she has to get up an hour earlier in the morning. What? I don't know. So...

01:10:25.790 - 01:10:43.250

So, in terms of the legacy of Greenham, if we're talking about girls now, what would you like them to understand in terms of a legacy from the peace camp and the protest?

01:10:44.490 - 01:10:51.550

Because we're going to try and put modules together in secondary schools. Are you? Oh, goodness. No pressure.

01:10:51.970 - 01:11:08.370

No pressure. I suppose I would say it's all right. If you're uncomfortable with the way your life is, if you're uncomfortable with the way the grain goes,

01:11:08.510 - 01:11:26.650

just go against the grain. Sorry. And there are whole realms of possibilities out there that are way beyond having to look like a model out of Vogue or whatever.

01:11:28.070 - 01:11:40.190

There's a whole... And if you want to do that, that's fine, but I think just to think and not think for yourself, be yourself,

01:11:42.210 - 01:11:52.950

and, yeah, you don't have to conform if you don't want to. No. What about you, Leah? What do you think? Yes, I agree with that, yes.

01:11:53.770 - 01:12:04.350

That's right. I think what I definitely get from you in terms of legacy is that liberated free, which is kind of the same thing, isn't it?

01:12:05.610 - 01:12:16.530

Just, yeah, giving yourself permission. Yeah. You can think outside the box. I think it did give you permission to think outside the box,

01:12:17.010 - 01:12:31.690

and the possibilities and the tools were there to do that. And sometimes it made for some very uncomfortable conversations, but, you know, that's fine. And that was good.

01:12:34.290 - 01:12:48.250

That's a picture of me building a little garden, which we called the Life Garden, my friend and I. And it was there for a while, and then one day we found all the stones in it had been kicked around.

01:12:49.470 - 01:13:00.350

And this went on, we put them back, and then it went on, they were kicked around. And then one day I decided I'd wait, wait, hiding, to see what had happened,

01:13:00.350 - 01:13:14.710

so I waited an hour or two, and then this man came along and kicked all the stones out and marched off again. So then I thought, well, I've got to confront him about this.

01:13:14.850 - 01:13:32.510

So the next day I sat on the edge of the garden and waited, I just sort of sat there, and he eventually came and kicked the stones around, and I said, why are you kicking our stones around out of our garden?

01:13:32.810 - 01:13:47.670

And he said, all you women, you're filthy, and you make a great mess of a place, and sort of went on like that. And I pointed out that the base was a mess in itself,

01:13:48.310 - 01:14:04.130

and he stalked off. And then the next time I waited, and he came by and I just sat there, and he just lifted the stones out and gently put them one by one on the side,

01:14:04.590 - 01:14:16.470

and went off again. And then I was going to come home for a bit, so I wrote him a note saying I will be away for a few days, so I won't be able to look after the garden.

01:14:17.530 - 01:14:25.310

And when I came back he hadn't touched it. Fantastic. Well, it's written all down here if you want a story. Fantastic.

01:14:25.670 - 01:14:32.810

Don't read it now, you can borrow that. Or I could photocopy it. Shall I get some lunch on the go? Yeah, that would be great.

01:14:33.030 - 01:14:42.950

I've got sort of soup and samosas and cheese and whatever. That sounds wonderful. Oh, thank you. You're going to be up and down those stairs photocopying stuff.

01:14:43.390 - 01:14:52.010

I'm sorry. It's good for me to keep going. Yes, that felt like quite an achievement. Oh, yeah, it is.

01:14:52.210 - 01:15:04.190

Do you think he was a local resident then? Yeah, he was a local resident, yes. And generally how did the local residents feel about you, do you think? Some of them were very against us.

01:15:04.510 - 01:15:12.950

Yeah, I remember a woman who lived outside Bluebridge, and she was quite hostile. In what respect? I wrote her a poem.

01:15:12.950 - 01:15:40.030

I'll put it. It's not very long. So what did she used to do? She just sort of shouted at us and looked angry

01:15:40.030 - 01:15:53.270

and didn't actually do anything, I don't think. She'd come out and shout. And did you get any response from this? No, I didn't get any response from her.

01:15:56.270 - 01:16:08.290

People were generally a bit hostile in Newbury. In the town, you know, they would shun us. But the Quakers were really brilliant. Yeah, they were wonderful.

01:16:08.290 - 01:16:19.050

Local people. And there were local residents who would offer us a bath or wash our clothes and so on, so there were some very good ones,

01:16:19.210 - 01:16:33.590

but generally in the town it felt hostile, yeah. And why do you think that was? Well, it's just like this man, the whole idea, you know, there were these women, dirty old women,

01:16:33.590 - 01:16:44.730

messing up the place. Not seen beyond that. And were a lot of people, local residents, employed at the base, do you think?

01:16:44.850 - 01:17:05.150

Do you think that was part of it? Maybe, I'm not sure about that. Again, one of the things that has surprised me is the sort of generosity of women towards people

01:17:05.150 - 01:17:15.350

who've shown them hostility. So, for instance, you writing that letter. And writing a note to that man, that must have been... It was quite frightening the second night

01:17:15.350 - 01:17:29.350

when I just sat there all alone, waiting for him to come, it felt quite frightening. Because you didn't know if he was going to be... I didn't think he was going to do anything to me personally

01:17:29.350 - 01:17:41.810

because I thought, well, he's coming and he's going to kick it all around a bit. Yeah, those are really great stories, really great. I feel that I was proud of that because it worked.

01:17:42.010 - 01:17:59.610

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, those are... I mean, I think that type of... I don't know, response to hostilities is something that we could do with more of...

01:18:00.330 - 01:18:13.570

Yes, I mean, it was very... You felt very strong when you did respond in that way, whether it was to the police or anybody else, yeah. Yes, it felt very strong.

01:18:14.850 - 01:18:27.370

Not like the woman who slashed the child's... the police car, we didn't like that. It was just the wrong attitude. Yeah, and I think for a lot of people,

01:18:28.130 - 01:18:42.550

that's an attitude that you'd have to kind of learn to get into. That's not how people tend to respond. Yeah, that's right. And had you been... Were you religious before you...

01:18:42.550 - 01:18:54.550

No, I wasn't religious. I was brought up in the conventional Christian background but I sort of discarded it in my late teens. And later on I turned to Buddhism.

01:18:56.150 - 01:19:16.070

And are you still a Buddhist? Yeah. And so what do your grandchildren and children remember about you? Only Rita, the one who contacted you, remembers it because she was, as I say...

01:19:16.070 - 01:19:24.030

She was born in 1981. She was three, four... No, she was only about four. That's right.

01:19:24.610 - 01:19:36.910

And she came to Greenwood. I took her there on several occasions. I think she remembers that because she slept in the bend. And what she remembers is that there was going to be an eviction

01:19:36.910 - 01:19:54.270

and I saved her a tin of baked beans by putting it in a tree. I think, Leah, you said to me at the time that you felt that some of the women there were policewomen and one of the ways...

01:19:54.270 - 01:20:02.050

Oh, at the beginning, yes, who pretended to be. Yes, that's right. They came and sat round the fire. You could just tell they weren't Greenham women.

01:20:02.230 - 01:20:10.570

I think their hair was different or something. They just didn't act in the Greenham way. That's right. And they had smart jeans on.

01:20:10.950 - 01:20:19.550

Well, none of us did smart at Greenham. We could see through it. We saw what they were. They were trying to hear what we were talking about in a meeting.

01:20:21.730 - 01:20:28.450

That's all it was, really. No, that's great. And I think... So a couple of the women that I've interviewed have said...

01:20:28.450 - 01:20:38.170

I've said, do you think you got any infiltration? They said, oh, yeah, I'm sure they would have sent women to try. But they said, you're either a Greenham woman or you weren't, and they would have been found out really, really quickly.

01:20:38.470 - 01:20:42.990

So that basically is... They were. Yes, it's true, they were.