Catalogue Number
NMLH.2019.21.4
Object Name
Postcard
Title
Blockade of Gate 6 at USAF Greenham Common, 13 December 1982, as workers arrive by bus...
Place
RAF Greenham Common
People
Page, Raissa
Events
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp
Description
Photograph postcard, "Blockade of Gate 6 at USAF Greenham Common, 13 December 1982, as workers arrive by bus...", photograph taken by Raissa Page at Greenham Common demonstrations. Image shows women singing or chanting whilst staging a sit-down protest. In the background a bus can be seen trying to get through the blockage.
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp protested against nuclear weapons between 1981 and 2000. Thousands of women, many from the lesbian or wider LGBTQIA community, travelled from all over the UK to live at the site for weeks, months or years.
The RAF base at Greenham Common was one of three sites within the UK chosen to deploy US Cruise missiles during the Cold War. The protest started in 1981 when a group of mainly Welsh women chained themselves to the fences that surrounded the base. Shortly after, in 1982, a women's-only protest camp was established in order to resist further deployment of nuclear weapons. Cruise missiles were removed from Greenham Common in 1987, following the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, shortly before the end of the Cold War in 1991. Despite multiple eviction attempts, the camp remained standing until 2000 to oppose the UK government's nuclear deterrent Trident Programme.
Image copyright of Raissa Page.
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