In Walking to Greenham: How the Peace-camp began and the Cold War ended (Honno, 2006), a memoir of the women's anti-nuclear march that established the women's peace camp at USAF Greenham Common, Ann Pettitt describes the arrival on the morning of 5 September 1981 of some of the women at the main gate of the airbase, ready to chain themselves to the fence (in homage to the suffragettes) and with a declaration composed by Pettitt the previous evening in a Newbury pub. The declaration is reproduced in the book in three instalments (p. 73, p. 75, and p. 76), reflecting the multiple interruptions of Karmen Cutler's recitation of it on the day:
"This is an open letter from the Women's Peace March to the Base Commandant, US Air Force, Greenham Common, Berkshire. We are a group of women from all over Britain who have walked one hundred and twenty miles from Cardiff to deliver this letter to you. Some of us have brought our babies with us this entire distance. We fear for -- (p. 73)
We fear for the future of all our children, and for the future of the living world which is the basis of all life. We have undertaken this action because we believe that the nuclear arms race constitutes the greatest threat ever faced by the human race and our living planet. We have chosen Greenham Common as our destination because it is the base which our government has chosen for 96 'Cruise' missiles to arrive at it in 1983. This decision has been made without our consent. The British people have never been consulted about our government's nuclear defence policy. We know that the arrival of these hideous weapons will place our entire country in the position of a frontline -- (p. 75, unfinished)
We in Europe will not accept the sacrificial role offered us by our Nato allies. We will not be the victims in a war which is not of our making. We wish neither to be the initiators nor the targets of a nuclear holocaust. We have had enough of our military and political leaders, who squander vast sums of money and human resources on weapons of mass destruction while we can hear in our hearts the millions of human beings throughout the world whose needs cry out to be met. We are implacably opposed to the siting of 'Cruise' missiles in this country. We represent thousands of ordinary people who are opposed to these weapons and we will use all our resources to prevent the siting of these missiles here. We want the arms race to be brought to a halt now -- before it is too late to create a peaceful, stable world for our future generations."
As the statement was being read out, a dozen or so women dressed in black appeared by the gate and stood on the other side from the chained women. They were Reading Women for Peace who knew of the march and came to support it by means that weren't immediately welcome: they 'were making a sort of moaning, wailing sound which was increasing in intensity towards a concerted scream' (p. 75). They were keening, a Gaelic artform of vocal lamentation traditionally performed by women, which has since been identified with the peace camp and frequently deployed in its actions both on the common and beyond. All the same, the keening action of 5 September 1981 was at the time deemed disruptive by the women from the Peace March (or in any case by Pettitt), with Cutler purportedly loosing her patience ('Would you lot just mind shutting up for five minutes?', p. 76), eager to finish reading out their statement. (Disruption is of course one of the key aims of keening; in the face of communal pain there can be no business as usual.)
The first time I came across Pettitt's account of that morning I was puzzled. Why would she paint such a chaotic picture of the inaugural moment of the longest-standing peace camp in British history? Even her well-documented belief in amateur activism (passim but esp. 'Postscript', pp. 309-310) did not fully justify this warts-and-all account.
Retrospectively, it is difficult to accommodate the radical diversity of views and tactics at Greenham Common even as it becomes obvious that such diversity was behind the peace camp's success. The comical scene at the main gate gave me insight into a wildly bricolaged tool kit, tapping into well-established maternalist pacifist tropes while refusing to leave intelligible political discourse to the other side of the fence. What better way of illustrating one's opposition to an expertly orchestrated (well...) and grotesquely over-funded (definitely) military operation than by embracing internal discordance?
ESSENTIAL POSTSCRIPT
To be precise, in the very beginning there was little comedy but frustration, humiliation, and underestimation.
Pettitt writes of her daily phone calls to the press during the march, 'an exercise in frustration that seemed designed to humiliate' (p. 56), when she would find herself repeating her group's activity to uninterested reporters with no plans for press coverage, as if she were 'trying to sell them double grazed plastic windows' (ibid.).
She notes that 'absence of toilets out on the open road ensured an abundance of farce' (p. 55), but farce is not the same as comedy and not free from the sting of shame, even in provoking laughter.
Finally, Karmen Cutler's recitation was originally interrupted not by keening but by a policeman who mistook the women protesters for the airbase cleaners: 'Aren't you a bit early?' (p. 74) They weren't expected until 8 o'clock. Some women protesters took umbrage at this suggestion or pretended to, seeing in it as an opportunity to challenge the policeman's assumptions. At some point during the interrupted recitation and the keening performance of the Reading Women for Peace the cleaners arrived. Apparently, the cleaners were 'notorious for their weird pranks' (p. 76) and even by their presence alone contributed to the polyvocality of that morning of protest and what followed.
WERE YOU EMPLOYED AS A CLEANER AT USAF GREENHAM or do you know someone who was? If so, please get in touch. (Pranks as protest/pranks as performance.)