Greenham Common History

October 17, 2004 5:25 AM

Greenham Common History.'Greenham Common - a name linked world-wide with the awesome potential of nuclear deterrence and the protest movement it gave rise to. But there is a bigger story; here we explore the history of one thousand acres of open land near Newbury in Berkshire. ' (via)
posted by plep (3 comments total)

very interesting--i can't believe the peace camps lasted so long, and it's great that finally the land/base is back to the town.
posted by amberglow at 5:51 AM on October 17, 2004

I visited Greenham for the first time last year, for the opening of the memorial to Helen Thomas, in the Peace Garden. Very strange place, an oasis of calm sandwiched between a thundering road and the part of the Base now turned into an industrial estate.

More background about the peace protests, from the BBC.
posted by ceiriog at 9:17 AM on October 17, 2004

plep, thank you as always. I spent a week at Greenham Common in July of 1983 (and somewhere in a British filing cabinet sits my arrest record, I imagine). It was a troubling, chaotic, and fantastically inspiring place, full of life. There were genuinely marginal women there, and some full of a towering spiritual authority, and girls flirting with the soldiers through the fences, and always a constant sense of invention and purpose.
posted by jokeefe at 11:46 AM on October 17, 2004