Catalogue Number
NMLH.1994.62.6.23
Object Name
Photograph
Title
6th June 1982. Westminster Bridge, London. One of a group of women who went to keen when President Reagan visited Westminster. When the group reached Parliament Square they were arrested by the SPG because of their alternative welcome. (Keening is a
collective wail that expresses anguish)
Place
RAF Greenham Common
Events
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp
Date
1982
Description
Black and white photograph of a woman on Westminster Bridge with the Houses of Parliament in the background, looking at the camera. Caption reads "6th June 1982. Westminster Bridge, London. One of a group of women who went to keen when President Reagan visited Westminster. When the group reached Parliament Square they were arrested by the SPG because of their alternative welcome. (Keening is a collective wail that expresses anguish)". One of a set of mounted photographs from an exhibition about Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. The 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.
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