"Greenham Common Peace Camp photograph" [NMLH.1994.62.3.12]

Catalogue Number
NMLH.1994.62.3.12

Object Name
photograph

Title
Camping at Orange Gate Easter 1984

Place
RAF Greenham Common

Events
Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp

Date
1984

Description
1984 colour photograph of tents and bikes at a camp in the woods. Photograph taken at Greenham Women's Peace Camp at the RAF Greenham Common base, which 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.

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