Ann Pettitt
Founder of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp & Author
In the early 1980s, Ann Pettitt was a young mother and vegetable farmer in rural Wales, when she became aware of the increasing possibility of a nuclear war. At the height of the Cold War this could happen by design, misunderstanding between the paranoid and jittery leaderships of the US and the then USSR, or by accident.
Reluctantly, in 1981 Ann decided that some action was needed to alert the public to this imminent danger and she and three other women organized a 120-mile women’s march to an airbase called Greenham Common where American Cruise missiles were scheduled to be based - turning England into a significant target for Russian missiles.
The women's march was ignored by the government, so Ann and her co-organizers escalated the action by chaining themselves to the razor wire fence surrounding the base. This marked the beginning of the largest peace action ever held, The Greenham Women’s Peace Camp, a women-led occupation that continued for twenty years.
The Greenham women enacted disruptions and sabotage against the base and December, 1983 saw 30,000 women holding hands and encircling the entire nine-mile perimeter of the base. The action, Embrace the Base, was the largest demonstration by women ever, and it sent shock waves around the world. The presence of women living outside an operational nuclear base 24 hours a day, brought a new perspective to the peace movement - giving it leadership and a continuous focus.
The protest, committed to disrupting the exercises of the USAF, was highly effective. Nuclear convoys leaving the base to practice nuclear war were blockaded, tracked to their practice area and disrupted. Taking non-violent direct action meant that women were arrested, taken to court and sent to prison.
Cruise missiles were still installed at the base, but change was afoot. A new leader in the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, decided to make the ending of the nuclear arms race his priority, and a gradual end to the Cold War began.
The conduct and integrity of the protest mounted by the Women’s Peace Camp was instrumental in the decision to remove the Cruise Missiles from Greenham Common. Under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the missiles were flown back to the USA along with the USAF personnel in 91/92. The Treaty signed by the USA and the USSR in 1987, is in accord with the stated position held by women, in defense of their actions on arrest, when it states : “Conscious that nuclear weapons would have devastating consequences for all mankind”.
Ann wrote a book about her experiences called Walking to Greenham.
