13 March Clapham Common (Shutterstock), retrieved from https://www.thearticle.com/reclaiming-clapham-common
In one of my earlier posts, 'The Greenham Way #1', I described the foundation of the Greenham Common Peace Camp as a comically disrupted disruption: Karmen Cutler's recitation at the main gate of the declaration that Ann Pettitt had drafted on behalf of the Women's Peace March was interrupted multiple times by the keening action of Reading Women for Peace. Despite their common commitment to opposing nuclear weapons, the two feminist groups did not share tactics nor their plans for that morning of 5 September 1981. In this chaotic picture lay the clues for Greenham's success, its leaderless inclusivity, and its 'wildly bricolaged tool kit' of visual and material activism.
Today I turn from the unwitting comedy value of that scene, appreciated and celebrated by Ann Pettitt in her memoir and also in the giggles of Greenham women's oral histories (for example, artist Elspeth Owen's) to two of the many references to Greenham in comedy, one in a sitcom and another in feminist stand-up.
Peep Show (Channel 4, 2003-2015) follows two very different men through and beyond young adulthood. Mark, a chubby blue liberal, history buff and conformist, and Jeremy, unsuccessful musician with poor impulse control, share a flat in Croydon. The unlikelihood of their friendship's survival beyond university is a source of comedy as are the constant shifts between unspoken thoughts rendered as voice-overs and dialogue, facilitated by the point-of-view shots that give the show its name. In the episode 'Jeremy in Love' (Season 6, Episode 3, aired 2007) Mark finds out that his on-off girlfriend and nearly wife Sophie is pregnant with his baby. Having just lost his job as a loan manager, Mark wants to lead history walks in East London but fears that Sophie might expect him to seek more stable and profitable employment.
Mark to Jeremy: ‘She’ll want me to take that loss adjuster’s job, so I can pay for her to give birth on a trampoline made of marshmallows in a reconstruction of Greenham Common.’
Jeremy to Mark: ‘Oh, fuck her. This is your dream, man. We’re both living the dream.’
As it happens, Sophie just wants Mark to follow his heart but this is beside the point here. Peep Show makes Mark into a portent of the culture wars to come (again). Associating Greenham with neoliberal feminism of consumer choice with vague nods to new-age maternalism would be exactly what this Mark does, and most Marks would do. Trivialising rather than attacking its feminism has been a successful anti-Greenham tactic, during and after the peace camp. Peep Show's reference to Greenham also betrays the assumed or ideal audience of the show: whereas they might not agree with that portrayal of Greenham Common they know of the peace camp and enough about it to find Mark's misrepresentation amusing.
In his PhD thesis An Approach to Traditions of British Stand-Up Comedy (University of Sheffield, Feb 1991), Oliver Double discusses Pauline Melville's comedy as an example of stand up 'aimed specifically at a middle class liberal Left' (p. 236). In her contribution to the double LP Let the Children Play (Panic, 1984) in support of the Peace Camps Fund, Melville performs as her character Edie, described by Double as 'a rather conservative housewife who had become involved in mysticism and the Left culture' (ibid.):
Hello everybody. Did you go to Greenham before Christmas? I did. Has anyone seen Enid since we got back? No, the thing is, you see, we lost her. Actually, we lost her before we got on the coach. Well, we couldn't wait, you know how it is, we were all bundled into the coach, and we set off, and we were just passing Clapham Common, and somebody looked out of the window and said, 'Isn't that Enid?'...and there was Enid, standing all on her own in the middle of Clapham Common with a mirror and a candle.
Edie's friend Enid confused the two commons in her privileged, under-travelled naivete, seeing 1980s Clapham as equally underdeveloped as the outskirts of a Berkshire airbase. But did she also foresee that Clapham Common would too become a site of feminist protest in 2021? I have not yet seen any mirrors (referring to the action Reflect the Base, on 11 December 1983) but plenty of candles among the flowers and signs on Clapham Common, in mourning and in rage for Sarah Everard and the many others victims of rape and femicide who failed to attract similar media attention.
More than my other blog posts this will have to remain provisional and unfinished. The focus on comedy is intended as ironic rather than disrespectful.
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