"Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp photograph" [NMLH.1994.62.8.16]

Catalogue Number
NMLH.1994.62.8.16

Object Name
Photograph

Title
I want to grow up not blow up

Place
RAF Greenham Common

Events
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp

Date
1980s?

Description
Colour photograph of five women with their arms around each other. They smile at the camera, sat in long grass in front of a fence with barbed wire at the top. There is a fabric banner on the fence with a drawing of a toddler between text "I want to grow up, not blow up". Along the top are several Venus or female symbols. The woman in the centre is wearing a sweatshirt with the slogan "Greenham Women Are Everywhere" on top of a spiderweb, one of the associated symbols.


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.

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