00:00:00.000 - 00:01:31.580

Thank you very much for talking to me today Lauren, this is great. So I suppose my first question is, you mentioned that you were really young when you went to Greenham, what took you there, how come you went in the first place? I had an aunt who was very political, she ended up as an MP, but she was a feminist. I grew up in what is now known as a chaotic household and this aunt was the steady point in my life. Everything I am, any good thing I have ever done is because I had her in my life as a child. The first political march I ever went on was a pro-choice march because she was part of that whole 70s, I mean she was a leading light in the 70s pro-choice movement. I'm the youngest of four, she used to take me and all four of us look back on her as this sort of sanctuary. My mum was lovely but chaotic household, my dad was an arse, chaotic household, whatever, all of which sounds like a side thing but actually it's not an accident the path my life took.

00:01:32.880 - 00:02:52.620

When you're talking about control and violence and all kinds of things. Anyway, my aunt took each of us for weekends and she used to take me and my middle sister together because me and my middle sister went round as a pair. When I was 11 she took us to see The China Syndrome, which is a film with a very young Michael Douglas, who actually appears in this story later, and Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon. It's actually nothing to do with nuclear weapons, it's to do with nuclear power, it's a sort of fictionalised account of Three Mile Island. And on the way home she told us all about Three Mile Island and la la la la. She took us to movies all the time and she didn't have children of her own so she took us to movies that you wouldn't necessarily think to take a child to, which was great, absolutely great. And she had been very active in the anti-nuclear movement, she'd been on the early Aldabaston marches and all the rest of it. So I got all that stuff from her and she taught me so many things.

00:02:52.620 - 00:04:09.640

And actually the other thing she taught me is that you don't have to make excuses for violence and that you can... I did not expect to be talking about this but actually I think it's important. She loved my dad, my dad was her brother. She never once made excuses for him. She never once made excuses for him, even though she loved him, she was always on our side, even though she loved him. She was always outspoken in her political life and she had a very active public political life as well as her private life. And she was a model to me of political and personal integrity. It's really weird, this kind of thing. I've thought about it often in my life, I'm not sure I've ever connected it in that way. I had not expected to be talking about my aunt when I sat down with you. But anyway, so she was just this... in fact somebody's just written a book about her so I'll send you the link. And so she was this sort of figure in my life and I'd learned about stuff from her.

00:04:09.640 - 00:05:33.500

And then I had a couple of friends at school. They were in the year above me and me and my friend who were in the same year, we were involved in sort of the local CND. I mean, I was sort of like I think from 14, 15 and we started up a debating club at school and it was just a secondary modern in Kingston, actually it's a new modern. And one of these two other women, it was me, Wendy, Kerry and Anita and I'm still in touch with Anita, I was in touch with Wendy and Kerry. And Kerry and Anita had been to Greenham and we'd done, I mean it was the 80s, we were teenagers, we'd done like dorky street theatre about nuclear weapons. But it was, you know, props, we were giving it a go. And in fact my first experience of Quakerism was Kingston Quaker Meeting House which has since been knocked down and replaced with the Primark and they've got an environmentally fantastic building elsewhere in Kingston which they rebuilt. They used to have a little yard outside and they'd have a Saturday store every Saturday with Kingston Peace Council leaflets and all the rest of it. And I learnt about Greenham that way.

00:05:35.440 - 00:06:48.620

And Kerry and Anita I think had been once and it hadn't been going very long. And then, because it started in 81 and then there was this action in 82. So it was September 81 and then there was this action and it was sort of spring, spring, what was it called? I can't remember what it was called. And we were like, let's go up. And I was 16 and the four of us, was it the four of us? I can't remember. No, it was three of us. Kerry was already there. Hitched up. So it was my first experience of hitching. And we got to Greenham and it was a massive, massive gathering at Greengate and it was a lot of sort of wandering around and I don't have very clear memories of it. Apart from, again this sounds like a digression but it's not, is that one of the other things that had been happening in my life at that time was I was working up to a fine old eating disorder.

00:06:49.860 - 00:07:58.760

And then I read Germaine Greer, a female eunuch, and then I went to Greenham. And I thought, fuck this. And I keep on, again, hadn't expected to mention that in that conversation with you. But whenever I think of this swerve that I took, and it doesn't mean I haven't had lifelong issues with food, as practically every woman you stop in the street will tell you. But whenever I think, because I always think, I mean, you know, whenever I think of reading the female eunuch saved me from a particular sort of path going down, I have this very particular memory of standing in line for a food cart at Greengate, at Greenham. That first visit, thinking, actually, it's alright for me to have lunch, you know. And it was, it sounds, I don't know if all the, I'm sure, I wonder if half your interviews are like this where you suddenly think, hang on, there are connections to be made here.

00:07:59.440 - 00:09:16.220

So anyway, so that was a thing. So that was in, I don't know, March or something. I think, I can't remember the date. And then there was a blockade of the base that same year. And we went down and, again, it was me and, Wendy went for the day, I don't think she stayed over, I can't remember. It's a very long time ago now. But I did stay overnight. So there was a demonstration one day and then a blockade the next. And we slept over a gate called Turquoise. Which is, well, Turquoise is very quiet. It's very, very rarely had a camp at it at all. I presume you've been to the location? Yes, just quite recently, actually. Right. And it's quite interesting, having known the base so well. Now, I can walk the perimeter as it used to be. But it's not always clear if you're, if you didn't know it before. And to be honest, even if you did, like, there was Blue Gate, and then if you go right into the woods, there's a, there was another set of gates, which they never used. I'll come on to that later.

00:09:17.040 - 00:10:43.380

Turquoise Gate. And then if you went a bit further into the woods, there was a sort of bit where the fence went into a point pointing in towards the base. And Emerald Gate, which wasn't a gate at all, was there because it was right opposite the silos. And so Turquoise was sort of halfway between Blue and Emerald. I didn't take part in the blockade, and then I came home. And then, so I, I was 16 then, I hit 17. I had my first visit to Greenham, I was still living at home. As soon as I hit 16, I'd left home. And I was a lodger in a, you know, the house of somebody I used to babysit for, which was great. And I'd gone to sixth form college, and I was doing my A-levels. And it was the obvious thing in the world to think, fuck this, I'm going to live at Greenham. So I did. And I, I sort of started spending more and more time there. And I thought, actually, no. Well, no, the thing that triggered it, the thing that sort of triggered me, I came to a crunch point, I'd been arrested a bunch of times. And I was 17. And, and it was time for my A-level exams, and I wasn't sure if I was going to go to prison.

00:10:44.800 - 00:12:07.680

And the thing is, I didn't have very much money, as you might imagine. And if I put in for my exams, and I didn't show up to them, I would be charged for them. So, and as it turned out, I did go to prison on that occasion. But I thought, let's, let's just wrap this up. So I finished my course, I finished my A-level course, I withdrew from the exams, so I wouldn't be liable for the money. And I just packed myself up and went to Greenham full time. Were you at a particular gate? There's a certain amount, I mean, there was fellowship, but there wasn't which I wouldn't, it's not what I would have used at the time. But there's also amount of just sort of getting on with it. And some people were really friendly, some people didn't speak at all.

00:12:09.140 - 00:13:18.080

I mean, one of the reasons I got to know Rebecca is because, you know, she invited me on an action. And it was like, fine, whatever. Which was, that was another thing, that was good. And then, as I got to know other women, we set up a gated Emerald Gate so we could watch the silos. And that was with Jane and a woman who was a huge influence on both me and Jane, who died a couple of years ago called Hazel. And, I mean, Hazel was in her 80s when she died, she's a big chunk older than me and Jane. And there was another woman called Penny. And so, was that an Emerald? Yeah, that was an Emerald. And there was another woman called Hero, who's since died. And then I spent time, when we shut down Emerald, I spent time at Blue Gate. Because I had always had, you know, a soft spot for signs of the Albert Hall for Blue Gate. Because Blue Gate got the worst of it.

00:13:18.080 - 00:14:39.860

Blue Gate were nearest Newbury, so when the evictions happened, and I'm sure you've heard all about the evictions, the council trucks had come up from Newbury up, Buries Bank Road, they would evict Blue Gate who had no notice. Somebody from Blue Gate would jump into a vehicle and do the rounds warning everybody. So everybody got a five minute start. And then the council trucks would evict Blue Gate again before they went home. And Blue Gate tended to be younger and working class. And not the people that, you know, journalists would come and interview and all the rest of it. And I thought, well, it's time for me to stop admiring Blue Gate from afar and actually pitch in. And I had a lovely, lovely time at Blue Gate and it was fantastic. And then I think me and some Blue Gators, possibly, and some Red Gators, and we were at, what was it, Violet? Oh, actually me, Jane and Hazel. There was one point when we set up a gate between Green Gate and Yellow Gate called Jade Gate. And this was in the era when the convoy was coming out, because it wasn't a gate at all, it was in the woods. But it was directly opposite the vehicle compound.

00:14:39.860 - 00:15:21.720

Oh, brilliant. You could see when they were going to move. You could see everything. And so I have done the rounds somewhat. How long did you actually live there for then? How long is a piece of string? Because I would say that the answer I give you applies to when I did not have anywhere else. I visited for a while before I gave up any other location. After I left, I did not go back for a while. I didn't go back to visit.

00:15:21.720 - 00:16:42.280

I think I needed a sort of space. But also, I mean, the reason I left is because the INF Treaty had happened and I felt that my particular job there had finished. So I didn't feel the impulse to go back. I mean, we carried on at Oldermaston. So the answer I usually give is four years. That's a good long time. But you were on STV4 and it sounds like you might have visited after. I mean, I was held. I'm terrible with dates. Absolutely terrible. But I think I was on, because I'd been arrested before I moved there full time, because that was one of the impetuses. And it was quite, I get them all muddled up. And the way it worked is, it was quite a long time before you necessarily go to court. They didn't really speed it up much. And there was a period of about seven years when I was on bail for something or other, more or less continuously, sort of overlapping. And that included...

00:16:42.280 - 00:17:06.160

I was going to say, what were they for? What sort of things were you doing? Well, funnily enough, because I'm about to get my DBS certificate, so I'm 53 and it's chasing me years after. So, you know, like I've told my line manager and I've told my premises committee and I've told them, you know, that I can't remember what's on it, quite frankly. Because you're not in a position to keep records. No. But I would say most of them are criminal damage.

00:17:06.520 - 00:17:46.400

What would you have done to have accrued the charges? You mentioned actions and things. What sort of things did you get up to? Well, I think my first one is actually trespass on a railway. Only it wasn't trespass on a railway. I chained myself to a helicopter on Waterloo Station. And it was... I can't... This is the thing of not having records. It was a... There was a whole... I mean, remember, this isn't very long after the Falklands. And we'd gone from this huge period of... And it seems weird now, because in a way, we've been involved in wars all the way through. Yes.

00:17:46.400 - 00:18:03.300

But, for example, there's people in the military who have their entire careers in the military who never saw action. That's not true now. No. But there was a big chunk of time between the end of... During the Cold War, but between the end of actual wars, if you discount Korea and all the rest of it. Yes.

00:18:03.300 - 00:19:00.960

Which, obviously, you shouldn't. But there was a certain period of time where we weren't involved in hot wars, generally speaking. Specific people were involved in specific things, or peacekeeping operations or whatever. But this wasn't very long after... Geologically speaking, it wasn't very long after the Falklands, and they were doing this big recruitment thing. And I don't know. I can't remember. Well, anyway, so there's that. I mean, it was a very minor thing. But most of them, the big one, the one that caused me to give up my A-levels, was an action designed to... It was called a visibility action, because it was like... I'm pretty sure... The difficulty is, is that I was there for a long time, and you do a lot of things, and it's a bit like sort of mix and match.

00:19:00.960 - 00:20:14.720

You might put one court case with one action, and they're not necessarily the same thing. But anyway, I think this is one where basically a bunch of us just kept cutting into the... Did a big public entry into the base as a way of saying, we are still here. This is still a live issue. The Peace Camp has been here for a number of years, and we know you're not really interested in it anymore, but let us tell you now that we are not stopping. And again, I'm terrible on the details, because it's a long time ago. I think there were 12 of us got nicked, and unusually, because normally you've just been put through the magistrate's court, which is a slap on the wrist, and you can choose a fine, or you get bound over to keep the peace, or whatever, and you can choose not to pay the fine, then you go to prison, blah, blah, blah, blah. And usually for this one, because of the, if I remember right, the sum of money that we were alleged to have caused damage to a limit of, it gave us the choice to go to Crown Court. And so we thought, rock on.

00:20:15.700 - 00:20:50.340

And normally, in the normal course of affairs, you would not wish to go to Crown Court, because the penalties are much longer, and it takes a lot, you know. And it was, I think it was the first Crown Court thing we had at Greenham. And is it, did you want to because it was more high profile? Well actually, well it was a mixture of that, but also, you didn't get three newbie magistrates trying you. You got 12 people, actual real people, who weren't there to uphold a certain view of what, the way the world should be. It's literally a jury of your peers. Oh interesting.

00:20:52.140 - 00:22:24.520

And, and it, oh dear lord, it took a long time. And the first, so we were a mixture of, I mean we were a real mixed bunch. Not all of us knew each other at the beginning, we certainly knew each other by the end. And it was held in Newbury, and the first trial we had was a mistrial. I think, was that Judge Murchie? Anyway, and so some of us were represented by lawyers. There's these three wonderful lawyers, Izzy, Dora, and Elizabeth, or Liv. And yeah, all wonderful. And some of us represented ourselves, because you can get away with more, quite frankly, if you represent yourself. And I think I was the youngest there. And the first was a mistrial because somebody had submitted, and none of, our argument wasn't that we hadn't done it, because we very clearly had, and we were meant to do it, and there was a function of us, that was not the issue. The issue was why we'd done it. And like, so for example, I, I mean, you know, the example that Rebecca always uses, which I don't, I don't know if anybody, I don't think any of us used it, but it's the same sort of thing is, you know, if a house is burning down and you kick through the door, it would be unjust to arrest you for criminal damage to the door.

00:22:26.140 - 00:23:34.120

Because you're saving people's lives by kicking down the door and getting the sleeping family out, which I think is a very neat and fast way of explaining it. And it's not, you know, I mean, I've had the same sort of discussions about Extinction Rebellion. Is it a pain in the arse not being able to get home? Yes, it's going to be more of a pain in the arse when society breaks down, and we're all scrambling in rubbish heaps for, you know, banana skins. So better the disruption now than the disruption later. Yeah. And somebody submitted a copy of Green and Women Are Everywhere, which is one of the publications that somebody made, because it had a photo of something in it, and it appeared from the evidence pile sort of completely wrapped in gaffer tape, so that the jury, when this evidence was submitted, couldn't read any of the things, so they could only see the photo. And one of the lawyers said, when you are in the jury room, rip off the tape and read its publication. And for some reason that was counted as a sort of improper, I don't know, anyway.

00:23:34.120 - 00:24:51.220

And that caused a mistrial? I think that was it. I couldn't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure that was one of the things that he said. Anyway, so we had to start all over again. I mean, we were a week in by that point, I mean, it wasn't a quick thing. And so we had to wait another few months and we had another trial. And I was, I mean, bearing in mind I was, I think I was, had I hit 18 by then? Again, I'm terrible at dates, I'm terrible at periods of time. I was certainly 17 when we started. I was probably, I was almost certainly 18 by the time we finished. And so I was one of the young, I think I was the youngest. And, you know, we were all sort of like bracing ourselves because it's a Crown Court trial, we didn't know what was happening, we were fairly sure we were going to go to jail. And it was this bizarre situation when the jury gave their verdicts. I don't think there's a word for it. If you call a scapegoat the one person who is punished instead of a group, I don't know if there is a word for the one person who is released as an indication. And of the 12 of us, 11 were found guilty and I was found not guilty.

00:24:51.900 - 00:25:55.300

And I think it's because, and I think it was, they wanted to let one of us go. And, you know, I was there on the stand saying, yes, I cut the fence, yes, I did this, this is why I bled. There was no question at all that I had committed damage. The only question was whether it was criminal. However, I was the youngest in the group or nearly the youngest. And I certainly looked the youngest. And I think it was the jury's way and, you know, the ways of juries are mysterious. And I've been a juror bizarrely enough since. So you never know. But it seemed to be a very clear way of them indicating sympathy or something. They couldn't let us all go, or at least then they couldn't let us all go. I mean, subsequent trials have done different things. And did the people that were convicted go to prison?

00:25:56.480 - 00:26:21.080

I think some did. They didn't get the custodials. There's been very few outright custodials. I mean, one of, they might have, do you know, I can't remember, really can't remember. I mean, a lot of us went to prison for refusing to pay fines. Did you serve prison time as well? Yes. How was that? And where was that?

00:26:21.760 - 00:27:09.700

It was, I've had, this is a little bit unusual in that I've actually had three Crown Court trials. Okay, so you've had three Crown Court trials. And the second, that was quite a long time after the first. And there were two of us and we had separate trials. I don't know how they got separated because it's obviously nicer to have them done together. And Anne went first. And she got a year, which, obviously, hideous for her. She was lovely. I mean, she's always described as a vicar's wife, which I think sort of, you know, it's like, actually, she's a hell of a lot more than that. He should be described as a...

00:27:09.700 - 00:27:15.680

Yes, a queen and woman's husband. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a long time. Why did she get such a long time?

00:27:15.840 - 00:27:37.740

Because it was Crown Court. Wow. And I was just thinking, oh, shit. Shit. And I didn't get a custodial then. I can't remember why. I cannot remember what happened there. Honestly, this is awful. I'm a terrible interviewee. I'm so sorry. No, not at all. What was it like when you did go to prison? Did you go to Holloway?

00:27:38.320 - 00:28:57.740

I went a bunch of times, and some of it was on remand. Remand then was a lot easier than regular. You used to be able to get... I don't smoke, and I'm not really a drinker. But as a person on remand then, you could get fags sent in every day, and you could get a can of beer sent in every day. So, of course, it makes you, you know... I remember one of the crews saying to me, I haven't seen you smoke. It's like, oh, I'm an occasional smoker. All my friends are bringing me fags. I'm just passing on to all the other women in the wing. It was horrible. But it was... I mean, I was only ever in for very short times. It was like, you know, a week here, a fortnight there. I think maybe three weeks. A couple of days here, a couple of days there. The longest I ever did was my third Crown Court trial, and I got four months. Gosh. Of which I did two. Right. And after that, I thought, actually, since then, I have not broken the law. Really? That was long enough. I just thought, I'm done now. Yeah.

00:28:58.880 - 00:30:08.740

How did you find other prisoners were with you when you were in there? Did they have much to do with you? Mostly, locally. No, the thing is, there's a really... Actually, there's a documentary about Holloway that they made before it shut, which would be really worth you watching. What I didn't understand at the time, because I thought we were just a drop in the pool, because, I mean, the female prison population is really small now, comparatively for men. Yes. And it was small then. I mean, it's still way too many women in prison. And I just thought we were a sort of tiny handful of randoms, sort of sweeping through. I think we were a bigger chunk of the prison population than I realised at the time. And mostly, I mean, there was one or two exceptions. I met a lot of lovely women. I did think I'm the only person in the world who ever pays for anything, but you know. Did any of them come out to Greenham afterwards or anything? No, not that I know of. Okay.

00:30:11.580 - 00:31:42.360

That was... I mean, a lot... I mean, I was very young at the time. A lot of them were very young. I mean, I remember being, you know, in a... sharing a four-room room with a girl who was 15. Gosh. And I'm, you know, who couldn't read or write, and you just think, oh, God. Going to prison, while I never wish to do it again, and I can't actually tell you how many times I did it, because again, they all blur into one. And I mean, you know, do you count four days in a police cell as going to prison? Definitely. Oh, right then. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's a bit... The difference with this, the last one, was it was my first custodial. I'd been in prison a lot, but this was the first time I had not been in... because, you know, a door is shut, and you can leave the door shut as long as you know you can open it again. And if you're in... well, actually, that's not true with remand. You're stuck in remand until... but you know it's not going to be forever. But if you're in because... actually, in that way, remand is more difficult than being in because you're not paying a fine. But if you're in because you haven't paid a fine, you can ask somebody to pay a fine, you can get out again.

00:32:10.920 - 00:33:16.900

Yeah. being in prison... in police cells over Christmas. Oh, we can't have people in police cells over Christmas. So this was presented as a sort of humanitarian thing of getting people out of police cells. What in practice it meant is that they just shuffled people around prisons rapidly. So who knows where the hell you ended up. So I was transferred out of Holloway into East Sutton Park. And of course, all my mail was going to Holloway, so they'd send it on to Sutton Park. And then because of this shuffling around, I was sent from East Sutton Park back to Holloway after a week in East Sutton Park. And all my mail stayed at East Sutton Park. And so it's been people writing to me at Holloway as being sent to East Sutton Park. So there was weeks when I didn't... I had a ton of mail that was given to me when I left. But there was a whole chunk of time in there that I didn't get any. And mail is huge. And I mean, you know, a tube of toothpaste is huge in prison. Not least because you can stick your mail on the wall with it.

00:33:18.600 - 00:34:11.940

You stick your mail on the wall with toothpaste. It works. But small things mean a lot. But even that, that is a really good lesson for me in not taking public policy that is intended to be a good thing as something that actually ends up being good for the people for whom it is, you know, sort of declaring that they're not going to be in police cells at Christmas. Screw you. Because, you know, I mean, it didn't matter with me so much because I wasn't in for very long and I had a whole bunch of women who would track me down and find me and visit me and who could raise the funds. I mean, there wasn't a lot of money sloshing around, but somebody would find some money and there were people, you know, I would be visited.

00:34:13.220 - 00:35:18.760

There were a lot of, a lot, most women in prison for whom that is not the case, whose families don't have the resources to find out where the hell they are, who don't have the money to go and visit them, who don't have the time to go and visit them if they're halfway across the bloody country. I mean, it's really weird when Holloway shut down and there's nothing humanitarian about the, it was just a big chunk of real estate. North London, of course, are going to sell it. And there's a bit of me which thinks I ought to be delighted by that. There's another bit of me which thinks where do the families of prisoners go when they can't get on a tube. So going to prison was, going to Greenham was one of the formative experiences of my life. Going to prison is another of the formative experiences of my life. And in fact, practically all the formative experiences of my life, being involved, it was because of Greenham that I became involved in the Namibia Support Committee.

00:35:18.760 - 00:36:23.740

And going to Namibia and working with southern African activists was one of the formative experiences of my life. And I came through that because the British nuclear weapons programme was using uranium that was being taken by Rossing from Namibian uranium mines, which had huge problems for Namibian miners. And apartheid was in full swing and Namibia were occupied by the South African apartheid state. So I mean, the word intersectional is used now, but all these things were incredibly interlinked, which is why we ended up at Aldermaston. So even stuff that I did later on, I can trace back to Greenham. The one where I had a custodial, I did that with Lynn. Oh, did you?

00:36:26.060 - 00:37:15.680

The one where I had a custodial, we had somebody from the Namibia Support Committee giving evidence about Namibian uranium. Different chain from the other chain. Was going to Nevada and doing a direct action against British nuclear testing. And that was organised by Rebecca because she was working for Greenpeace at the time. And again, one of the most formative experiences of my life. And they're not that many, I've just listed them all. Well, most of them apart from having a kid. And, you know, I did it with other Greenham women as a sort of direct result of having been at Greenham against the British nuclear testing programme. So you were over in Nevada, were you?

00:37:15.680 - 00:37:48.440

Yes. Wow. There was, we used to have a yearly, we, Britain, used to have a yearly nuclear weapons test. And on in Nevada, on the Nevada testing site. And we knew when it was coming up. And we were approached. And it was set up. And we went across to Nevada.

00:37:48.960 - 00:38:06.580

Who approached you? Rebecca. Oh, okay. Right. So actually, it's in this country. Yes. Well, she was working for Greenpeace at the time. Except I think she was on one of the, she couldn't do it for some reason. I think she was on one of the boats doing something. But she, you know, she was like, I know confident women who can get this done.

00:38:07.620 - 00:39:26.380

And so we all went across to Nevada. And we were hooked up with an activist there. And we spent three days walking across the desert, across the test site. We were sort of driven in the night onto the test site. And that's a very short way of, I mean, it all happened quite quickly. I mean, I was working in, I was working for, it was my first job after Greenham. I was working for a little organisation, which is still going, and it's still lovely, called the Peace Tax Campaign, which is now called Conscience, the Peace Tax Campaign. Which is all about diverting money that goes to war to more, you know, sort of constructive enterprises. And so I'd taken a week off work and come to Nevada. And I loved the, they were so kind to me, the Peace Tax Campaign. They were brilliant. And they kept my job open for me while I was in prison. They were brilliant, because I'd gone to prison after I'd started working for them. Lovely, lovely people. They were, they were fantastic. I knew they were fantastic at the time, but the older I get, the more I realise how fantastic they really were.

00:39:27.980 - 00:40:46.060

Did you run across the authorities in Nevada? I mean, were they different with you? Oh, well, no, because we'd gone, you know, we're in America. And so we'd been driven onto the test site and sort of dumped out in the middle of the night. And then the three, me, Jane Julie, and Michael, who was the sort of American who knew. So we're sort of, you know, hiding from the planes, going across the test site. We had to carry all our water, because of course you can't drink water on a nuclear test site, it's a terrible idea. We had Geiger counters with us. And there's different ways you can measure exposure. And again, I can't remember the details. But like, there's one which will tell you how much it is per, as you're going along. And another which is accumulation. And you sort of go to sleep and it's hit the top and you think, let's reset it. So you're carrying this tonne of stuff. You're absolutely knackered. I mean, I'm certainly a lot more agile than I am now. But I'm not particularly good with heights. And we're sort of going up the sides of bloody canyons and things like that. And it's a bit more complicated than this, but we actually got to the site where they were doing the explosion.

00:40:50.180 - 00:42:03.460

It's more complicated than this, but about six minutes before it went off. And so they delayed it for half an hour, because we knew we were very near. This is a bit of a, it sounds, again, it's a bit of a sideshow. But it's a direct result of this. So we're knackered, we're carrying stuff, we're just... Do you know, I wasn't frightened at the time. And I think the reason I wasn't frightened at the time is because I was so tired. Do you know what I mean? So we knew that we were right by the place where they... I mean, Las Vegas is 100 miles away. And they warned the authorities in Las Vegas not to have people on scaffolding. Because, you know, the seismic shocks and all the rest of it. So we knew we were very close. And then there's a point at which we see all the cars, we hide in the bushes kind of thing, while all the cars stream away from the site. Because they have this thing, it's like, like porter cabins or something like that, or I can't even remember.

00:42:03.460 - 00:43:26.520

And then all these cables and wires plunge down into a hole in the ground. And then there's the device that's underneath the ground, the nuclear device. And I mean, if you look at sort of photographs, you know, the Nevada test sites covered by craters, basically, where they've done underground nuclear testing. And so we think now's our chance. And I'm sent off first while they hide, except the place that we thought where it was, wasn't the right place. And we're all on radios to each other. And so they all go off. And they found the right place. Which is probably a good argument for having sent me off early in the first place. So then I then follow them. And they've all got to the spot and I'm coming up. And there's this helicopter who comes behind me. And it lands on the path behind me, while I'm sort of approaching where the other three are and where all these porter cabins and stuff are. And they're sort of telling me to lie on the ground and all the rest of it. And I'm so tired at this point, I just think, oh bugger that. And I go and meet the others. And a couple have run off to hide so they can't be found. And I go on to the bit where all this stuff is happening.

00:43:26.520 - 00:44:06.020

And the helicopter basically lands on top of me. It basically hovers over me and just descends very slowly until I'm crouched on the ground with my hands over my head. And we're in the desert so I'm in this sort of swirling thing of sand. And they just keep me on the ground with a helicopter over me until the security, the Wackenhut, come. And then the helicopter buggers off and they arrest us all. And they blindfold us and they cuff us and they bung us in cars. And they drive like you wouldn't believe. I mean blindfolding's a bit... Terrifying. Well no, blindfolding's a bit sort of, you know...

00:44:06.020 - 00:44:31.300

Really? We've been there already, you know. Oh okay. That's terrifying to me. It was terrifying in that you... it's very difficult to measure time or distance when you're blindfolded. But they drove for about half an hour. And then they stopped and they parked up. And then we could feel the ground shake. And we knew they'd set it off. And that was upsetting.

00:44:32.440 - 00:45:08.300

Had your aim been to stop them from setting it off? Were you going to try and sabotage it all? No. Jesus. I mean I'm not going to touch their machinery. To be honest, what I hadn't realised is that the American activists didn't think we would get there at all. Because we didn't know that. It's one of those... do you know what I think? We were supposed to be heroic failures. Yes. Which is hilarious because we had no idea that we were supposed to be heroic failures. But that's the thing. You can do actual sabotage. And it's not sabotage, it's kicking the door down of a burning building.

00:45:09.320 - 00:46:04.920

And I have been in situations where things I have touched have had to be reviewed before they are then used for military purposes. But A, there's no way any of us are going to go anywhere, really. But just being there was the point. Right. And they delayed it for half an hour. And one of the useful things was that it made for very dramatic headlines when we got back to the UK. The tabloids were like, six minutes from nuclear bomb, all that kind of stuff. Which is... you know, if you're trying to... you know, if you say, I'm putting this on a nuclear test, it's not very headline worthy, is it?

00:46:06.440 - 00:47:09.640

If you're trying to draw attention to the fact that we do that once a year in Nevada. Yes. But the absolute... the thing that was... I mean, I'd done a lot of actions by that time. The thing that was transformative about that to me is that we'd done it with the blessing and the cooperation and the permission of the Western Shoshone. And most of the Nevada nuclear test site is on Western Shoshone land. Western Shoshone are a group of First Nation people. There's... I don't know how many... I think it's something... I'm probably wrong. There's about 10,000 strong. There's all kinds of things about treaties. There's something called the Treaty of Ruby Valley. I haven't read about it in a long time. But there is a strong opinion based in reasonable fact, which says that the Shoshone never gave up their land.

00:47:12.200 - 00:48:26.840

So the Shoshone say that they have... what happens on Shoshone land is their business, not the government's. And the government shouldn't be blowing up nuclear weapons on it, which is a fair point, really. And so when we went onto the land, we had been given permits by the Western Shoshone to be on that land. And so when we came up in court, we were going, yeah, we got permission. Yes, we did it. Yes, we were there. But we got permission from the people whose land it is. And of course, that's not going to happen. But it was like, again, you know, you are making connections between the violence done to indigenous people. I mean, they've been at the forefront of anti-nuclear activity because it's happening on their land. So, yeah, all these connections, you know, we're using Namibian uranium stolen from Namibian people at enormous cost to the Namibian miners and to, you know, Namibian society as a whole. I mean, Namibia is geographically huge, but the population is tiny.

00:48:29.360 - 00:49:17.620

And then we're blowing up the land of another group of people. It's that thing about the web, isn't it? Green room talk about a lot, the web and interconnections. Can we talk a bit about that? You said you were there for four years. What was the day to day life of being someone living at the Greenham Coin Peace Camp like? Funnily enough, I've heard this phrase before. I've just started reading, I can't get the word out, reading for the first time the sharp novels, you know, the sort of historical potboilers about the Napoleonic War. And this phrase comes up in that and has come up with any description of military life that I've ever read, ever read, hurry up and wait.

00:49:17.620 - 00:49:40.460

OK, yes. And an awful lot of Greenham life was hurry up and wait. OK. It's either endless sitting around by the fire having a cup of tea. I mean, the thing is, and I've had this experience, I lived in a housing co-op about 20 years ago in Brixton.

00:49:40.460 - 00:50:20.040

And there was a little taste of that there in that if you have if you have a really and that was a politically based co-op with activists from, for example, the Never Be A Simple Committee and all that kind of stuff. If if you're in a location where political activity is the norm, you can sit and have a cup of tea and have the world come and have a cup of tea with you. And I, as I said at the start, I started very young and I learnt. It's not to say I haven't changed my mind on some things.

00:50:20.040 - 00:50:47.540

My thinking's developed a lot over the years, but the cups of tea were every bit as important as the, you know, the sort of dramatic actions with a pair of bolt cutters in your hand and all the rest of it. And was that the consciousness raising time in a way? Yes. Chewing the consciousness raising facts.

00:50:47.540 - 00:51:35.840

It also means, I think, I mean, this is one of the things that I hope that a kind of network or structure or something is developing with Extinction Rebellion. Because one of the things that made taking action possible was that I'd had time and space and opportunity to talk through practically everything and to change my mind about things and to read things and to argue about things. And, you know, ten green and wimble round a fire. Twelve different opinions. And, you know, and...

00:51:35.840 - 00:52:27.460

Would you say once some groups and gates were more argumentative than they are today? When you were living at one, were there some that were more... They developed their own personalities. And you sort of, I mean, there's a certain amount of like gravitating to like, which is why, so for example, I'd characterise Bluegate as younger and sometimes very young and working class. And, you know, Greengate, a bit more sort of interested in the sort of spiritual side of life. And Orangegate quite down to earth. But that's too simplistic. I mean, stereotypes are there because there's a kernel of truth in them.

00:52:27.660 - 00:53:02.780

Yeah. What I really liked about Bluegate was their ridiculous sense of humour. I mean, somebody had given them a van and it was one of those old fashioned vans where you've got the sort of bit where you can sleep in the roof and you put the roof up. Yeah. And somebody had written on that sleeping bags. Because it could be sleeping bags or it could be sleeping bags. Because, you know, and it was this sort of, I mean, that was a lot of the Greenham songs as well. You take insults and you turn them around and own them. So it was just a bunch of old bags.

00:53:04.740 - 00:53:45.240

Bluegate, were they particularly, they used, a lot of people mentioned song and lots of the Greenham remember different songs. Did you associate that with Bluegate or was that all of Greenham generally? All of Greenham generally. It's like, if you watch Carrie Greenham Home, the Bee Van Kidron one, the first one. Have you seen her second one? No, I haven't actually. Oh, I'll tell you about that in a minute. But, you know, it's, the actual songs, I mean, they were sort of dirty versions of, you know, or not even dirty versions, but like, you know, like the Carrie Greenham Home, there was the official version, which is all sort of uplifting.

00:53:45.240 - 00:54:59.060

And then there was the standard version, which is Carrie Greenham Home, we're too pissed to walk alone, Carrie Greenham Home. And my favourite verse of that was some ridiculous thing. Woman toilet, woman bat, where the hell do you think you're at? Peanut brain in woolly hat. Go back to Russia, go back to Russia, far away from Newbury Gobe. And it's silly. And it's not sort of heroic. And, you know. We work for the Russians for tuppence a day. They ask us to stay here and that's why we say. We drink lots of vodka and that's why we go, hey! And you know, you do that faster and faster and faster. And, yeah, you take all the things that are thrown at you and you turn them into ludicrous little ditties. Not the sort of sweeping heroics, you know. Not the can't kill the spirit. Well, I like can't kill the spirit, but it's a very different vibe. It's a very different vibe.

00:55:02.460 - 00:55:58.940

Making a cup of tea. Yeah. Okay, so making a cup of tea, you've got to have the water to make a cup of tea, which is you've got to go to the standpipe to fill up the water bottle, the water carrier thing. So if you're not at Yellowgate, you have to get somebody to, with a car, which isn't always easy, to drive you around to Yellowgate to fill up the water bottle. Then you've got to get the standpipe from the van out of Yellowgate and set it up. Fill up the thing, take the standpipe back. So the only place to get water was Yellowgate? Yes. Gosh. In a standpipe. So then you take it back, unless somebody brings it with them, and fill the kettle. Then you've got to get the wood. Either people bring wood or you go and gather wood. Then you've got to build the fire up. There was a whole period of time, it lasted about a year and a half, when the council and the police and the base were trying to get rid of us.

00:56:00.000 - 00:57:08.840

And it was this sort of, I mean this happened all the time anyway, but this was a particularly intense period, and they'd do this thing where either they'd have a van parked near the camp, whichever camp it was, or at Yellowgate they'd have it sort of inside the main gate, the base gate, where you'd get a fire going and you'd have the kettle on top of it, you'd have something cooking, whatever. And they'd rush out of their van or they'd rush out of the gate with a jug of water, basically, and they'd put out the fire. And they'd kick all the bits about. So you'd pile all the damp embers up and then you'd make another fire and then you'd put the kettle back on. And Hazel, who's, like I said, she's passed away now, she remembers that time as, because it was during summer, and you know the fire would just go voodooonk. And again, speaking of silly songs, somebody did a wonderful, wonderful version of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. And I do not have a singing voice, so I will just sort of...

00:57:37.840 - 00:58:18.700

Ah, twelve men in a van with a watering can, is that how you began? The policeman, he replied, as he kicked the logs aside. Ah, at first I had my doubts, but they tell so many lies. Smoke gets in your eyes. That's really good. And that is pretty much the story of that summer, trying to make a cup of tea. I mean, you think, when you look back on it, you think, what were they thinking?

00:58:19.900 - 00:58:28.200

Jesus. It's so petty. So petty. And you think of police cuts and you think of how long it takes to get anything done and you think of... And they're wasting that sort of time doing that.

00:58:28.260 - 00:58:46.220

Yeah. Look, twelve men in a van with a watering can. And you just think, oh for goodness sakes. What were your relationships like with them? Because there was the English army and there was the American army within the band. The English, well the British army were there to be a buffer between us and the Americans. Yeah.

00:58:47.180 - 00:59:34.180

We had, it was a very odd relationship with the British police. Now, we had quite a good relationship, this sounds odd. Thames Valley police had a reputation for being terrible. And they were, quite a lot of the time. Individuals, now, especially at Emerald Gate, because you'd have, I don't know, every 150 yards or something, you'd have squaddies, British squaddies, sort of guarding the fence. Right. And they would be so bored. Very, very, very bored indeed. And they'd talk to you. And you could actually, you know, they were desperate for a chat.

00:59:34.260 - 01:00:06.380

And they'd occasionally be posted singly or sometimes they'd sort of do a joint shift together, like they'd do two shifts but two of them just, whatever. And like in winter at Emerald Gate, there was, you know, and like these were, I mean, they were probably my age, you know. This is the weird thing. I was very young, they were very young, a lot of them. They didn't know how to make a fire. You know, it's snowing and they've got a, what are those called, braziers. Yeah.

01:00:06.680 - 01:00:27.440

And so we'd throw them over kindling. To help them. Yeah. And we had one lot, a sweet couple of lads, who said, do you want some coal? And we were like, sure, why not? And so, bless them, they had this army issue coal. They tried to throw a bag of coal over the fence.

01:00:29.040 - 01:00:50.920

And of course, it's quite a high fence and it's got three rows of barbed wire on the top and it catches in the barbed wire. And so it drops down. It's now full of little tiny holes. And so they go, oh, that's not going to work. Why don't you cut a hole in the fence? And they're going, all right then. And there's literally snow on the ground. So we cut a hole in the fence and they shove it through the hole.

01:00:52.000 - 01:01:26.840

And we just sort of, you know, rattle the fence back to where it was. And we're right by the silos. And because the coal bag now has little holes in it, there's this little trail of coal dust to this badly sort of put together hole in the fence. And I mean, you know, some of them are whackers and some of them are lovely. And most of them, I mean, we did have, we did have ones who showed up to say hello.

01:01:29.940 - 01:02:03.400

One member of the MOD police sent his mum round with a load of, well she sent his mum round, I'm sure she had views of her own about it. I'm sure she's perfectly capable of saying no, she didn't want to. But his mum came round with a load of firewood. I had this odd thing. There was a small number of us who had our own personal DIs. Like if I got, most of the actions I did, I didn't do at Greenham. I went elsewhere. I did them at Alderbaston.

01:02:03.400 - 01:02:46.560

I did one at Wethersfield. What the hell is it called? Burfield. You know, I did them elsewhere. Welford. I did them elsewhere in the country. And I used Greenhamism. I did do stuff at Greenham, but I also did stuff elsewhere. Anywhere I got arrested in the country, I would have a particular DI, Frank Mason, turn up and his sergeant, who was called Jane. So I had somebody assigned to me. Lynn had Frank and that as well. There was a few other women who had the same thing.

01:02:47.740 - 01:03:11.600

Why was that then? Was that because you were a Pete offenders sort of thing? Possibly. But it was actually very convenient because you got arrested in one place and then you got arrested in another place. And then they gave you the same court date. And you can't be in Banbury and Reading at the same time or whatever. But because DI Mason is also going to be there, he's the one who arranges.

01:03:13.360 - 01:03:44.120

So it was not set up for our convenience. It was set up for theirs. I have no doubt of that. But actually it was quite convenient. And there's a certain amount of. I mean, there's this wonderful, wonderful woman who founded and ran an organisation called Women in Prison. Have you heard of them? They do clean break and all the rest of it. And she was called Chris Tchaikovsky. I got to meet her through my aunt, you know, the amazing one.

01:03:45.120 - 01:04:32.100

And you have never met a more charismatic woman in your life, honestly. Seriously, she's a really extraordinary woman. And her argument was that Green and women were not so very different from other women prisoners. And I think she was right. And I think one of the ways in which she was right is that you have this sort of weird sort of practical arrangement with police in some ways. It's almost normalised. You're having, you know, you're in a relationship with them.

01:04:32.100 - 01:05:05.460

But it's like, you know, we did an action at Welford after Britain bombed Libya. And that bombing, one of the casualties in that bombing was one of Gaddafi's daughters. It was an adopted daughter. She was six months old. I mean, it wouldn't matter whose adopted daughter she was because it's a baby. And we knew Frank had had a baby. And it was like, I remember one of our questions on the stand was, do you think a six month old baby girl is capable of any acts of terrorism?

01:05:06.300 - 01:05:38.720

And he was quite rightly incredibly freaked out and distressed by that. Because, you know, I can tell you when you, I mean, I don't know if you have kids, but your whole sort of projection as a new parent is enormous. And it was a very hard thing to ask him, but I think it was a necessary one. Because if our children are worth protecting, as much as I, oh God, that's another thing I'd forgotten about. No, I hadn't.

01:05:40.340 - 01:05:49.900

Because, you know, I mentioned Julie, the one we went to Nevada with. Yes. Me and Julie went to Libya and got thrown out of Libya. Oh my God.

01:05:49.900 - 01:06:21.860

Because we got, it was after, was it? When was it? It was before we did that action. Before the Nevada one? No, no, it was well before the Nevada one. It was before we did the action, the, well, because we'd gone, which one was that? No, that wasn't a wealth action, that was, what's it called? Where they had the F-111s near Banbury.

01:06:22.940 - 01:06:38.780

There's a, Upper Hayford. Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. Because the, this is all incredibly disjointed. Okay, I'm sorry. So we knew the planes were going to go from Upper Hayford to Bomb, Libya.

01:06:44.220 - 01:07:02.420

And we thought this was an incredibly bad idea. Not because, I mean, it's, it's not going to improve our chances of war. Yeah. You know, bombing a country in the middle of the night versus a diplomatic solution. Yeah.

01:07:05.560 - 01:07:18.520

It's, it's not a peacekeeping operation. It's not something that will improve our security. No. And it's not something that will take out Gaddafi. He will kill some of his people. It's not going to take out him. No.

01:07:19.980 - 01:07:44.480

So anyway, we knew this was going to happen. So I think there was one, two, four of us, five of us, five of us. Again, I'm terrible with numbers, who went to Upper Hayford in the middle of the night. We just cut in. I mean, bearing in mind, this is, this is an operational military base run by the Americans, which is gearing up for a military action. So, you know, it's like...

01:07:44.480 - 01:08:08.280

And yet you could just cut in. Yeah. So we cut in and we're sort of staggering around Upper Hayford and we go into a hangar and there are two, it's brightly lit, full of soldiers, full of American soldiers. It's got two F-111s, which have got, you know, fuel cables. They are loading bombs onto the planes.

01:08:08.280 - 01:08:34.340

We're like, all righty then. And me and Katrina climb up and they've got those little stairs that go into the cockpits. Yeah. I do not know why we did this, but we did. We went up the stairs. Katrina got into the cockpit, thought, this is a bad idea, got out of the cockpit. And we sat at the top of the stairs by the cockpit because, don't touch anything, don't touch anything.

01:08:35.000 - 01:09:04.960

And the others were, because they were bomb, you know, there were missiles that were being, and so they were painting on the missiles. Because if, the thing is, if you, if you paint a missile, if you put paint on a missile, you can't use it as a missile because it bugs up the aerodynamics of it. Ah, I see. I presume if it's blobby plane, that works. I mean, I presume, I don't know anything about, I should know more about aerodynamics than I do, but never mind.

01:09:05.400 - 01:09:38.820

So, and of course they freak out, the soldiers freak out, they, half of them rush out. You got ones coming in, we all rested, la la la la la. And they, the flight went off that night, but it didn't go off with the two that we'd been in the hangar with. Not because we'd done anything to them, but because they needed to check that we hadn't done anything to them. Now, like I said to you about the previous thing, if it's something where you don't know what you're doing, you don't touch anything.

01:09:38.820 - 01:09:47.160

Yeah. Because, who's not, you know, there's a war plane there. Yeah. Full of fuel, you're not going to touch anything.

01:09:49.180 - 01:10:08.120

But the fact that we'd been in the hangar with them, the fact that we'd been sitting at the top of the stairs. How were they with you? What was their, what was their manner like with you? Startled. Upset.

01:10:09.900 - 01:10:25.320

Upset. There have been times when I have been, I have felt in danger of my life. I don't remember that as one of them. That's interesting. So other times when you've been arrested or been held by the military or whatever, you've felt in danger. Yes.

01:10:25.320 - 01:10:43.060

But not this time. But I don't remember. It doesn't mean I didn't feel it at the time, but when I look back on it, I don't feel that. I know I didn't feel it in Nevada, and that realistically. I was in danger. I was in danger either of physical injury from the bomb going off when we were on the side.

01:10:44.540 - 01:10:55.540

At least from broken bones, if not from anything else. Or from the helicopter that hovered over you. And all sorts of things, yeah. There was, what are those big spiders?

01:10:56.100 - 01:11:02.820

Tarantulas. Tarantulas. We saw tarantulas, yeah. Really? Ah! I was in danger from the actual physical world as well.

01:11:02.900 - 01:11:27.440

Yeah, yeah. So I was too tired then to feel. Yeah, I was really, really tired. Yeah, so we got, before that happened, because I remember, the reason why I know it was before, because again, I'm terrible on dates, I remember in the van that was taking us to Holloway, one of the screws and one of the police said,

01:11:27.600 - 01:11:37.740

you should go and protest in Libya or something, and I said, well, we've just been thrown out of Libya. And she didn't believe us. And I remember feeling very sort of… Indignant.

01:11:37.740 - 01:11:45.920

Yes, absolutely. It was like, no, no, but we really, really have. And that was me and Julie. Were you frightened for your safety in Libya?

01:11:47.200 - 01:11:59.920

Was that frightening? There were moments, yes, yes. We had got this bizarre invitation to Greenham. Diplomatic relations had been severed by then.

01:12:01.100 - 01:12:19.860

So it was through somebody else, like the Maltese government or something, I can't remember. I've probably slandered the Maltese by that, saying, do you want to go to this conference in Libya? And our sort of base, collective thing was, we will talk to anybody. Yeah.

01:12:20.460 - 01:12:33.200

We will not hold back how we feel about things, but we will talk to anybody. I went mostly because I was one of the few people who had a passport. Right. And a fair chance of getting back into the country.

01:12:33.200 - 01:12:47.900

And Julie was the same, and so we went. And it was… This conference held in Tripoli. I mean, this is right in the sort of…

01:12:47.900 - 01:12:55.200

This is in Mad Dog Gaddafi, kind of, you know, when that was… Yeah. It was right in the heart of the crisis. And he basically…

01:12:56.880 - 01:13:15.320

I mean, he was accused at the time, and it was absolutely right that he was funding all sorts of things around the world. It was a mixture of people, many, many desperate people, tiny little indigenous organisations, big political things. I mean, the SWP was there, which was, you know… They dig it everywhere.

01:13:15.660 - 01:13:24.620

God. Oh, that awful man, that awful man. What was his name? You know, the really creepy one who's since died, who had all the accusations against him.

01:13:24.660 - 01:13:36.000

No. I'm sure he was there. A few hundred people. And it was this sort of thing, you know, creating the Green Army.

01:13:37.220 - 01:13:48.180

Yeah. And we, me and Julie, were assigned a minder, this lovely woman who was… Described herself as a nun, older woman, older Libyan woman. And so we started talking to people.

01:13:51.760 - 01:14:05.600

And trying to, you know, people would sort of ask us. And there weren't very many women at this conference. There was about 30, and we're talking hundreds of people. And there wasn't very many people from Europe or America.

01:14:05.680 - 01:14:16.940

There was a group from America. Not a very big group, because it was legal to go from America then, I believe. Right, okay. And…

01:14:18.860 - 01:14:35.740

It was a weird mixture. I mean, my… I knew very little of a lot of the situation of a lot of people there. In that, I mean, they were, you know, like I said, tiny little indigenous groups from all over the place.

01:14:35.980 - 01:14:49.120

As well as really dodgy people that you wouldn't want to align yourself with. And… We tried to talk to them all. And he was just trying to explain that, you know, you're…

01:14:51.940 - 01:15:06.100

You know, a sort of feminist pacifist. Yeah. You have every bit as much objections to, you know, anyone else's missiles and army as you do the British or the Americans. Yeah.

01:15:06.200 - 01:15:16.440

You can imagine how well that went down. But, you know, we talked to lots of people and it was nice. We met some very nice people. And then the first day of the actual conference proper started.

01:15:18.800 - 01:15:25.660

And… We were in this hall with about 600 people. And… They do this sort of praise chanting.

01:15:25.960 - 01:15:32.960

They lock the doors. That's always a fun moment. And the lined… The walls are always raining.

01:15:33.380 - 01:15:46.520

The walls are lined with Gaddafi's bodyguards, who are all these young women. So the praise singing came up. And then… This is a long story short.

01:15:46.600 - 01:15:57.340

Gaddafi came into the room. The entire hall leapt to their feet. And I hadn't actually discussed this with Julie, but we had this sort of… We kept sitting.

01:15:58.180 - 01:16:05.520

And Julie was sitting there going, Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God. I'm sitting there thinking, We're going to be shot.

01:16:05.600 - 01:16:11.520

We're going to be shot. We're going to be shot. We're going to be shot. But neither of us could bring ourselves to stand up and cheer.

01:16:11.640 - 01:16:18.000

Because what's the point? What's the point of us? What is the point of us if we're going to do that? It was…

01:16:18.000 - 01:16:25.560

The joy of going with Julie is that we didn't have to discuss it. Yeah. It was just automatic. She wasn't going to stand up.

01:16:25.740 - 01:16:31.520

I wasn't going to stand up. We weren't going to be there. And… I'm just like, oh shit.

01:16:32.280 - 01:16:38.600

So there you go. Everybody… You know, tumultuous applause, chanting. Everybody sits down again.

01:16:38.900 - 01:16:51.880

And this is a sort of weird comic interlude. Now, we'd been given these goodie bags for this sorting conference. And in the goodie bag, I mean, it had all sorts of bizarre things. Like, you know, sort of copies of the Green Book.

01:16:52.880 - 01:17:00.100

I've got a Gaddafi boot lace tie. I still have that. I don't have much of the rest of it. But I had the tie.

01:17:00.660 - 01:17:10.540

And there was this cartoon. It was like a graphic novel. But it was a graphic novel of Gaddafi's early life. You know, Gaddafi standing up to his imperialist teachers.

01:17:11.180 - 01:17:16.880

Gaddafi doing this… You know, all as a young man. This sort of rather dodgy cartoon book. And for some reason I had…

01:17:16.880 - 01:17:25.440

Because I'd been rooting through the goodie bag, as you do at the beginning of a conference, thinking, what the hell is this? And I had this cartoon bag in my hands. When I'm sitting down…

01:17:26.140 - 01:17:35.060

Everybody settles down. Everybody sits down. The man in front of me turns around and snatches the comic book out of my hand. Because I am not worthy to have it.

01:17:37.420 - 01:17:48.880

And just, you know, shit. And at this point people start to avoid us quite naturally. Yeah. And not everybody, but they do.

01:17:49.940 - 01:17:53.880

Because… And I don't blame them. You know. Yeah, it's dangerous.

01:17:53.940 - 01:18:01.960

You don't want to… Yeah. And so we carry on going to the conference. Trying to talk to people.

01:18:02.460 - 01:18:07.720

And then we think, bugger this. You know, actually, no. We don't… There is a point to…

01:18:07.720 - 01:18:22.160

And so we thought, well, we're in Libby, we'll have a look around Tripoli. And you can imagine in the middle of this crisis, it wasn't a hot spot for tourism. And we… Every morning to go to this…

01:18:22.160 - 01:18:34.300

And this is literally in the space of a few days. The coach arrives and it takes you to the conference venue from the hotel. And we didn't have any money and we didn't have any… Our passports had been taken away.

01:18:34.860 - 01:18:45.520

And so we hide in our hotel room. Until the coaches have gone. So we don't have to go to this conference. Who's got your passports at this point?

01:18:46.620 - 01:18:57.720

Whoever's running this thing. Oh no. And so as we're hiding in our hotel room, our hotel room bursts in. And these two guys come in, like they're going to search the room.

01:18:58.040 - 01:19:07.920

Except we're sitting there. And then it's just this bizarre thing where… They thought they were going to go through your stuff because you weren't there. Yeah, and we were like…

01:19:07.920 - 01:19:14.720

Hi there. And it's this ridiculous series of comedic interludes. What did they do? We were all just…

01:19:14.720 - 01:19:27.320

It was all terribly awkward and they left. And then we thought… And so we had a walk around Tripoli, which was nice in a slightly bizarre way. And we did other things.

01:19:27.460 - 01:19:43.160

And we did actually talk to the Americans, which was interesting. Those are the sort of really peculiar highlights. Yeah. And then on the Thursday there was due to be a tour of the…

01:19:44.080 - 01:19:51.320

And we're still trying to explain to people but we don't agree now. Because they think, oh you're anti-American. Yes, yeah. And it's like, we're not anti-American.

01:19:51.740 - 01:19:58.980

In fact, there's actually a lot of American women at Greenham. Yeah. We're anti-militarism. We're anti-nuclear.

01:19:59.300 - 01:20:13.460

We are anti-violence. We are trying to create something new. Anyway, so there was due to be a tour of a Libyan military site on the Thursday. And on the Wednesday night…

01:20:13.460 - 01:20:23.740

I think I've got my dates right. On the Wednesday night, we had a phone call at five in the morning saying, be ready because your plane leaves at nine. Oh no, really?

01:20:23.820 - 01:20:27.860

And you're like, all right. OK then. OK then. And that was that.

01:20:28.180 - 01:20:43.440

And that was… So when we got back, this woman, this police officer, or whoever she was, in this van as we pulled up to Holloway, is saying, go and protest in Libya. And it's like, well, actually…

01:20:45.100 - 01:20:53.220

Funny you should say it. Funny you should say it. It was funny because it was just a bizarre coincidence. That it was the two… because it could have been, you know…

01:20:53.220 - 01:21:03.800

Yes, it could have been any of you. Any of you. How did Greenham pay for you to go and do that? Was there like a collective fund so that women could go off and talk about it?

01:21:03.940 - 01:21:10.560

Nope. That was paid for by, I think, Maltese or something, whichever. Oh, right. Which seems very sort of…

01:21:10.560 - 01:21:25.140

I mean, yes, we were bad guests, but they invited us. And if you're going to… yeah. Don't do something. And I try…

01:21:25.980 - 01:21:44.960

I'm dealing with the same things now. If I'm going to be part of something, then I'm going to try and remain true to the purpose of that. I'm going to try…

01:21:44.960 - 01:22:02.120

I mean, you can be diplomatic at various degrees. You can compromise if there are things which do not betray your principles. But there are points at which you actually go, yeah, no, actually, this has to be done.

01:22:07.420 - 01:22:21.460

And… yeah. Yeah. That was that. So when we were… just before we turned the recorder on, actually,

01:22:21.460 - 01:22:36.880

we were talking about my mum taking me to Greenham as a kid because she was a visitor and you asked her name and things. And I was saying, well, she didn't really live there, so she'd have called herself an ally rather than perhaps a full-time Greenham woman

01:22:36.880 - 01:22:45.180

or anything like that. And you said, oh, we'll talk about that. So what were you going to say? Let me bring up my high horse so I can climb upon it.

01:22:45.280 - 01:22:52.480

Yes, please do. Right. Okay, what is a Greenham woman? A Greenham woman is any damn woman who wishes to call herself a Greenham woman.

01:22:53.200 - 01:23:11.520

And I really, really… I think it's antithetical to both the spirit and the practicality of Greenham to divide women into camp women who live there and visitors who do not. Okay.

01:23:12.020 - 01:23:28.520

And it's funny. The squaddies that we used to know at Emerald had a term they used to call some of the women SAS, Saturdays and Sundays. But it's a false division and it's a false division both philosophically and practically.

01:23:29.140 - 01:23:42.200

Like there were women I knew. There's this amazing, amazing woman who was a retired Catholic school teacher who drove like a rally driver on speed, who could follow a cruise convoy in the middle of the night.

01:23:42.480 - 01:23:50.320

Nobody you've ever met in your life. Absolutely extraordinary woman. Loved her to bits. She died in her 80s.

01:23:50.400 - 01:24:03.380

She died quite some time ago. And I'm pretty sure, I think we all sort of talked her out of it in the end, but she's exactly the sort of person who'd go, oh, I never lived there. Yeah.

01:24:03.540 - 01:24:19.800

But she was there. And over a long period of time, you know, she still had a house. She still did other things. She was very heavily involved in refugee.

01:24:19.980 - 01:24:27.240

She was one of the early sort of workers in the refugee welcome movement. I mean, way back when. Yeah. In Oxford.

01:24:29.460 - 01:24:42.140

And where was she living? Anyway, whatever. But if you want to be sort of utilitarian about it, hour by hour, she was there a lot more than many women who say, oh, yes, I lived there.

01:24:46.960 - 01:25:05.320

But, I mean, I lived there exactly as long as I wanted to. And when I didn't want to anymore, I left. And the women who spend a day there, who spend a weekend there, who spend a week there, who spend a month, who come once a year,

01:25:05.700 - 01:25:31.320

or who've come twice in their life, and this whole division into greener women and supporters is also a false division. There are times in my life where I have found it easier to, say, for example,

01:25:31.320 - 01:25:45.180

sit in the middle of the road during a brocade, or cut a fence and go into a nuclear base, than I have to knock on a row of my neighbour's doors. And, you know, say I'm doing a sponsored la-dee-da-dee-da for whatever.

01:25:48.780 - 01:26:03.780

They are all different forms of work. And if Greenham was just, if you divided Greenham into the women who said that they lived there and the women who called themselves supporters, or visitors, or any of those other iterations,

01:26:07.180 - 01:26:19.380

then Greenham would be a fraction of what it was. And it would be lesser. And that is not true. It does not reflect. Dividing Greenham women up into visitors and Greenham women,

01:26:19.480 - 01:26:36.480

or dividing Greenham women up into supporters and Greenham women does not reflect the reality of Greenham. And women who spend a short time, either once in their life or as often as they like, are every bit as much Greenham women, if they choose to be so, as ones who...

01:26:36.480 - 01:26:49.680

I mean, there are women who would call themselves Greenham women who came, who had this intense burst of activity, and then left and were never seen again. And that's fine too. Yeah. And that's kind of part of carrying Greenham home in a way, isn't it?

01:26:49.720 - 01:27:04.620

It might affect you enough that day that it changes what you do when you take yourself away from Greenham, because Greenham is gone with you. But in terms of actual camp life, it's like the women who come up, and again I think a lot of them saw themselves as supporters,

01:27:05.020 - 01:27:25.040

who would do a night shift if you're waiting for the convoy, or if we're experiencing a lot of attacks. Yeah, that's what my mum did to that sort of stuff. Yeah. It's like any sort of functioning thing.

01:27:26.080 - 01:27:38.760

You take one part out of it, the rest of it falls apart. All those are part of it. And that whole supporters and Greenham women thing, I think is philosophically and practically untenable,

01:27:41.260 - 01:27:54.140

and not helpful, and just not true. Yeah, lovely. I will direct women to that answer when they worry about that. Some of the women interviewed have been a bit like,

01:27:54.420 - 01:28:00.620

oh well, I didn't live there, you know, or whatever. And it's like their experiences were just as bad, their interviews were fascinating. Yes.

01:28:00.840 - 01:28:13.100

Like you say, it's all... And in many ways it was easier when you were living there to have that constant network and that constant support, and you know, if you're going to court in Newbury,

01:28:13.380 - 01:28:29.320

you know there's going to be women outside the court. If you've come and visited from wherever the hell, and you end up in magistrates in wherever you are, it's...

01:28:29.320 - 01:28:43.600

The thing about living at Greenham is that there's a certain drama about it. Right. And that drama is quite helpful in a lot of ways, because it attracts attention, it's dramatic,

01:28:43.860 - 01:28:57.400

I mean that's the whole point. It doesn't mean that the things that have less obvious drama are easier. And again I see this, I've been...

01:28:57.400 - 01:29:16.020

I was very heartened with the Extinction Rebellion stuff this time round, because... I mean there was plenty of drama, but they kind of got...

01:29:16.020 - 01:29:24.920

There was more understanding of when to step back, when to regroup. When other people needed to step forward. There was more sort of...

01:29:24.920 - 01:29:35.500

They were planning for the longer term. Yes, there's not so much an ecsmo maybe in a way. Yes, very much so. And yeah, it's just that thing of just because it's dramatic

01:29:35.500 - 01:29:46.400

doesn't mean it's more difficult. Yeah. And I think... And it's been interesting seeing it play out

01:29:46.400 - 01:30:02.180

with a sort of new set of activists, including people who have been activists in other things over a long period of time, is exactly that, the ecsmo.

01:30:02.640 - 01:30:14.680

It's just because something doesn't have dramatic flair doesn't mean it's easy. It can be the most difficult thing to do, to talk at a local meeting

01:30:14.680 - 01:30:24.760

or knock on your neighbour's door or raise money or be the one who sorts it. I mean, I wasn't a Quaker then, although this is how I came into Quakerism.

01:30:26.080 - 01:30:43.920

But there was a Quaker in... I'm meeting up north, like Cumbria, who invented something known as the getaway. Lynette's got one.

01:30:44.920 - 01:30:55.180

She'd lent it to the local museum. It was because during the evictions you had a matter of minutes to pick up all your stuff

01:30:55.180 - 01:31:04.220

and stop it being put into a launcher. And somebody in Cumbria meeting or something sat down and thought,

01:31:04.640 - 01:31:17.740

and they invented this wonderful, wonderful tent. It was a single-skinned, single-person tent made out of three hooped... It was a triangular tent.

01:31:17.920 - 01:31:30.320

I don't think hoop tents have been invented then. So it was like old-fashioned tent tubing, that sort of aluminium tubing. So if you can imagine three L shapes

01:31:31.100 - 01:31:41.480

with the corner of the L at the top sewn into a tent with an integral ground sheet and there was a pointy bit at the end of each of the L.

01:31:42.760 - 01:31:53.200

So you could literally plonk the three things into a row. So it made a tent. It didn't have a top crossbar

01:31:53.200 - 01:31:58.560

or anything like that, but it didn't need one. And then sewn into each end of this sort of pup tent

01:31:58.560 - 01:32:07.420

was a single tent peg. So the entire tent had two tent pegs and a pointy bit at the end of each of the L shapes,

01:32:07.480 - 01:32:16.740

which kept the tent in a tent shape. And you could literally un... un-pitch it, that's the word. You pitch a tent, you un-whatever.

01:32:17.240 - 01:32:28.240

By, at a run, scooping your hand through the three Ls and lift the whole damn thing up off the ground. And they were lovely.

01:32:28.380 - 01:32:37.400

I mean, it was only a single skin, so you had to be a bit careful with it, but it was waterproof and la-la-la-la-la. And somebody thought and designed that

01:32:37.400 - 01:32:45.040

and invented it and then raised up enough money from other Quakers to have a bunch of them made

01:32:45.040 - 01:32:58.340

and then sent them to us. And they were brilliant. I spent maybe a happy night in a getaway. And, you know, that's a huge thing.

01:32:58.760 - 01:33:05.220

It's a huge contribution. Massive. And I will remember that always. It's an absolutely brilliant thing

01:33:05.220 - 01:33:14.220

for somebody to do. And I have no idea if they ever came to Greenham at all. So, yeah.

01:33:15.020 - 01:33:20.760

Nice answer. I like all of that. That's really helpful to hear. Yeah, and also,

01:33:21.020 - 01:33:34.300

this whole thing about hierarchies. You know, it's again with the drama. I mean, my Greenham narrative has a certain amount of drama in it

01:33:34.300 - 01:33:39.260

because of the Nevada thing, because of the Libya thing, because of the prison thing. Because la la la la la la la la.

01:33:39.380 - 01:33:51.980

If I'd spent four years at Greenham getting on with talking to people, with maintaining the life of the camp, with welcoming other people in,

01:33:52.380 - 01:34:03.700

with making sure everything functioned, with doing whatever, you know, doing. I mean, that would have been every bit as valid. And I did those things anyway

01:34:03.700 - 01:34:17.360

because everybody did them. But, yeah. When I think of the difficult things, actually, when I think of my whole life,

01:34:17.500 - 01:34:29.040

I mean, I don't, when I look back on, you know, Nevada, I look back on it with warmth and fondness. I don't experience it as trauma.

01:34:29.320 - 01:34:39.200

You know what I mean? It's like, ooh, yeah, we did that. Whereas other things are much more difficult. Context is everything.

01:34:39.260 - 01:34:46.260

Context is everything, and it's not always clear if you have not been involved in that. Yes, looking on it.

01:34:46.820 - 01:35:02.000

So in that, yeah. So those things were a kind of gift to me rather than, yeah, you know what I mean. I think I've said it enough, but there you go.

01:35:02.440 - 01:35:09.880

Well, I've got a final question for you, and it's one that we're asking everyone that we interview, just to try and keep a sense of unity

01:35:09.880 - 01:35:14.280

if we want to pick anything out that everyone's answered, sort of thing, because they've been quite diverse

01:35:14.280 - 01:35:22.560

and the interviewers have all been quite diverse as well. But the question is, could you explain why you think it's important, if you do,

01:35:23.120 - 01:35:37.960

that Greenham is remembered by subsequent generations? Well, there's a thing,

01:35:38.860 - 01:35:51.300

the point of Greenham history is that it's collective, and I have been involved in a number of political movements,

01:35:51.620 - 01:36:01.040

like the, I mean, my involvement with the Namibia Support Committee was a branch, if you like, of the sort of broader anti-apartheid movement,

01:36:01.460 - 01:36:10.300

although it was sort of quite specific. And in any political movement, you get stuff which is produced at the time for sort of campaigning purposes

01:36:10.300 - 01:36:17.140

and which is subsequently used as sort of part of the historical record, and you get stuff which is written as polemic to change people's minds.

01:36:17.580 - 01:36:24.540

You get stuff which is written immediately post the thing to either justify yourself or to say that you were completely irrelevant

01:36:24.540 - 01:36:32.600

or whatever. And I've seen all that happen with practically every sort of political thing I've been involved in.

01:36:33.940 - 01:36:51.260

I think with a collective, I think there's two things about Greenham which mean a lot of women's work is at the micro level

01:36:51.260 - 01:36:59.260

and at the macro level. And this is a generalisation, but never mind. A lot of women's work

01:36:59.260 - 01:37:05.600

is rendered invisible because people think that elves did it in the night. It happened magically

01:37:05.600 - 01:37:14.080

with no actual input involved. And the thing about a lot of Greenham is that we did it on tuppence. It was women with no money,

01:37:14.600 - 01:37:20.260

no time. Women were carving. I mean, you were talking about your mum. She had you.

01:37:21.400 - 01:37:29.240

And women were carving time out of their lives that they did not have to spare. They were carving money out of their lives

01:37:29.240 - 01:37:34.460

that they did not have to spare. They were carving emotional energy out of their lives that they did not have to spare.

01:37:35.740 - 01:37:45.480

And all those women created something that changed things. It changed public policy at a national level

01:37:46.260 - 01:37:58.680

and not necessarily because... I mean, Britain didn't go unilateralist and is unlikely to do any time soon. But you create the conditions

01:37:58.680 - 01:38:07.580

in which people make decisions in a different way than they would have before. And it changed the international situation

01:38:08.180 - 01:38:17.940

as part of a larger whole. And it changed individual women to a massive extent, some of whom have then...

01:38:18.700 - 01:38:30.580

many of whom have then gone on to create other things. It changed a way of working. The way I learnt to work at Greenham,

01:38:32.240 - 01:38:42.200

a collaborative way, has shaped my entire life. And I believe it's done the same for a lot of other women.

01:38:43.140 - 01:38:49.080

All those things of women who did not have the time, who did not have the money, who did not have the energy,

01:38:49.520 - 01:39:06.320

and who did it anyway. To have that as, oh well, you know, the idea that all that...

01:39:06.320 - 01:39:18.060

that political movement would have happened without that work. It's not true. And so why I am grateful

01:39:18.060 - 01:39:27.600

for any initiative that records it is... partly because we look... well there are a number of reasons.

01:39:27.700 - 01:39:34.820

Partly because else didn't do it and then we did it. I did it, your mum did it, loads of other women did it.

01:39:35.960 - 01:39:44.420

The second is... we learnt from people who'd gone before us. Sometimes well,

01:39:44.580 - 01:39:52.640

sometimes not at all well. And sometimes we sort of learnt it along the way. And...

01:39:55.100 - 01:40:03.460

it's helpful to... I mean one of the things that's hugely affected my relationship with looking at how

01:40:03.460 - 01:40:11.840

Extinction Rebellion work is, you know, we have seen patterns before and...

01:40:13.760 - 01:40:19.420

experience can be useful. Experience can... because, do you know, this is the most exhausting thing

01:40:19.420 - 01:40:24.940

about all of this. It's not like you can have a campaign, you can win and it's all fixed and you can go and have a rest

01:40:24.940 - 01:40:30.520

and raise bees like Sherlock. You know? It's just like, here we are again.

01:40:31.180 - 01:40:38.640

And even if the INF... I mean, that's not a failure in that the INF was in place

01:40:38.640 - 01:40:47.360

for all that length of time. And the INF was not the only success of Greenham. But...

01:40:48.560 - 01:40:55.760

we have to do this again and again and again on so many fronts, on so many issues. And...

01:40:55.760 - 01:41:00.760

You don't want to reinvent the wheel. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. And we... And actually,

01:41:01.140 - 01:41:05.980

the nature... it's... I have been very fortunate in that I have been part of

01:41:05.980 - 01:41:14.260

political movements, which have won. And so... I'm quite cheerful about a lot of things

01:41:14.260 - 01:41:18.660

and I'm absolutely bloody terrified at a whole bunch more. Absolutely. I mean, I've...

01:41:19.360 - 01:41:27.860

Oof. Anyway. That's, do you know, one of the most...

01:41:29.660 - 01:41:35.820

Have you seen The Force Awakens? Yes. Right. I took my teenage son

01:41:35.820 - 01:41:41.960

and his teenage friend to see The Force Awakens in the IMAX, the Science Museum.

01:41:42.080 - 01:41:45.040

Nice parenting. Well done. So, yes. 70mm.

01:41:46.060 - 01:41:53.760

And there was a point at which I thought I would just combust with joy.

01:41:56.820 - 01:42:01.260

Because I... I saw Star Wars the first time round. Yeah, me too.

01:42:01.860 - 01:42:08.840

And... there was... General Organa at Greenham.

01:42:10.500 - 01:42:14.400

And, you know, the Rebel Base was filmed at Greenham. Oh, right, okay.

01:42:14.720 - 01:42:18.380

Oh, did you not? No. Go and have another look. It's really, really,

01:42:18.440 - 01:42:23.080

really distinctive. Really? Once you've seen it, I'll actually look it up

01:42:23.080 - 01:42:26.500

on my phone and show you after we've finished this. You know the Rebel Base?

01:42:26.680 - 01:42:29.780

Yeah. Where General Organa is doing her whole thing and la-la-la-la-la.

01:42:30.840 - 01:42:34.280

Those are the silos at Greenham. They filmed them at Greenham. No.

01:42:34.360 - 01:42:38.960

Oh my goodness. And it was like these... I saw Star Wars

01:42:38.960 - 01:42:44.200

as a teenager. I was at Greenham as a teenager and there was Leia

01:42:45.700 - 01:42:50.740

running the Resistance from Greenham. And, like, every single hair

01:42:50.740 - 01:42:53.820

on the back of my neck is up and I was like, oh my god, I've died and gone to heaven.

01:42:54.020 - 01:42:57.820

That's so cool. And it was... Oh, you know, there's CGI on the back

01:42:57.820 - 01:43:01.860

so it looks like you're on some bloody alien planet. But what... It was...

01:43:03.000 - 01:43:06.380

Yes. Yes. And actually, Greenham is a,

01:43:06.380 - 01:43:10.280

you know, meadow, wildlife centre, yadda yadda yadda.

01:43:10.420 - 01:43:17.420

And the rest of the world is in a total shit state and I'm absolutely terrified. But...

01:43:19.580 - 01:43:24.700

We need not be without hope. And we can use what we have learnt in the past and what we have done

01:43:24.700 - 01:43:28.460

in the past. Not necessarily to repeat the past but to try and do

01:43:28.460 - 01:43:36.100

the present even better. So that's why we need it. And it's why we need biographies of women

01:43:36.100 - 01:43:43.360

who died before Wikipedia became a thing. And it's why we need people's history.

01:43:44.600 - 01:43:49.920

It's, it's, you know, all these things

01:43:49.920 - 01:43:54.120

are not for the purposes of nostalgia. No.

01:43:54.760 - 01:43:58.920

It's for the purposes of getting up and having to do it all fucking again.

01:43:59.780 - 01:44:05.320

And do it well and do it better. And to do it with heart

01:44:06.260 - 01:44:08.820

and... And knowledge. And knowledge. Exactly.

01:44:09.880 - 01:44:13.980

Yeah, lovely. But yeah, do go watch the fourth one. Oh, I should watch it again

01:44:13.980 - 01:44:18.020

with new eyes. It was genuinely thrilling. Genuinely thrilling.