How the banners of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp fought horror with beauty

The county of Berkshire in the southeast of England is a close-knit collection of small villages and towns. Besides the M4 that runs through it, these areas are connected by your typical winding English country roads. In the populated areas, houses are often close together in a mix of Cotswold stone architecture and quaint cottages with thatched roofs. In the early 1980s however, residents of one of its towns, Newbury, were startled at the sight of cruise missiles – usually around 20 feet long – meandering their way past their windows. Its local airforce base, Greenham Common, had been chosen as their new home in line with NATO’s response to Soviet SS20 missiles, potentially signifying not only an advancing of the cold war but future nuclear conflict.

Also startled at the announcement were a group of women in Wales. In the years leading to the announcement of Greenham Common housing missiles, they had already been voicing similar concerns as part of Nuclear Free Wales, a group that protested the dumping of nuclear waste from 1977 to 1979. In turn, they formed a protest group of solidarity with their English neighbours, showcasing their concern with a march between the two locations as the Women for Life on Earth. Predominantly women-led, and later women-only, the protestors were anti-violent mothers and grandmothers along with their children. Yet in the eyes of Thatcher’s government, the press and US military commanders, their valid concern for the future was insignificant, and even viewed as a greater present threat. “It’s amazing how the establishment don’t like women getting up and doing things, isn’t it?” laughs Thalia Campbell, the movement’s primary protest banner-maker, over the phone to It’s Nice That 40 years later. “It’s quite dangerous, being an uppity woman.”

The Women for Life on Earth had already created a few banners before this realisation from Thalia, although they lacked the impact the artist felt was necessary. The very first was made in organiser Lynne Whittemore’s garden with just an old sheet. At its centre sat an appliquéd world bordered by an upside-down CND logo with a tree sprouting out. Across its centre, it read: “Women For Life on Earth” but also, “Women’s Action for Disarmament”, to avoid any confusion with an anti-abortion, pro-life message. The second, made in a church hall in Newport, saw Thalia step into a directional capacity in banner design, working with a group of teenage girls, again using a donated sheet with some added bamboo sticks offered by a local gardener. Holding tight to its frame while marching “I kept thinking, we’ve got to make something better than this,” she reflects today.

As the group reached Greenham, a decision was made to take up residence, fuelled by the feeling that their efforts had not spurred enough public debate. Growing then into the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, the initial 36 women who left Cardiff in 1981 expanded into a permanent peace camp for the following 19 years. Their efforts were collective, but in this expansion grew splinter groups and each camp took on its own identity symbolised with a colour from the rainbow. The main gate became the yellow gate, for instance, a green gate allowed women only at all times (as men were allowed to visit during the day), a violet gate took a religious focus and a red gate signified an artist presence, allowing each woman “to go with their kindred spirits,” describes Thalia.

For Charlotte Dew, the author of Four Corners’ recent release Women for Peace: Banners From Greenham Common, it was the “vivacity of their banners tied to the airbase fence” that initially drew her to Greenham. A “curator, writer, and researcher, with a fascination for craft,” Charlotte’s work is centred on an interest “in how things are made and why, and what they tell us about the people who created and used them.”

Introduced to Greenham while an assistant curator at The Women’s Library in London, it was the scenes Thalia describes that leaned Charlotte’s research into Greenham banners’ social history. “Commonly the banners were a backdrop to their camps, make-shift kitchens, and campfires,” Charlotte tells It’s Nice That. “I became captivated by the tenacity of the Greenham women, whose commitment to the cause and belief in the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons saw them live in primitive conditions, suffer all weathers and continuous evictions,” she explains. “It was striking that such potent and, in many instances, beautiful banners were a central means of communication in the campaign, and I wanted to find out more about the women who made and used them.”

Central to this “means of communication” as Charlotte describes was of course Thalia’s creative spirit, yet the artist remains insistent it was a collective effort across the camp. “I get a bit cross – well, maybe not cross – but when people say they’re ‘my’ banners – they were really the work of a lot of people,” she reflects 40 years on. “All I really did was stand by and make sure there were no mistakes.”

Working with the Peace Museum and Four Corners in Women For Peace’s creation, author Charlotte Dew relays having three key aims for the title’s narrative. Utilising Greenham Common’s banners’ visual impact as a vehicle to pose wider questions, Charlotte first asks the reader to “consider the range of arguments that the Greenham women were putting forward through their banners,” she explains. “The slogans and motifs are often sophisticated, multi-layered, and build into the history of women’s and peace campaigning. They can be playful too. I wanted to consider what they were saying and why.”

Secondly, Women for Peace dives deep into the individuals, such as Thalia, who actually made these banners, “from artist banner makers to those with great enthusiasm but no creative background,” she points out. As a result the imagery across the title, in typical extensive fashion from publisher Four Corners, digs deep into the archives, not only highlighting the impact of specific banners but their context as a backdrop to the conflict across the 1980s through to 2000. “And lastly, I wanted to consider the range of different ways and places with which the banners were used,” Charlotte concludes, “from the fence at Greenham, to meetings, demonstrations, international delegations, and court appearances” – creating a book that circulates the perimeter of the military base and beyond.

Despite being an event that first began almost 40 years ago to the day, there are of course parallels between the concerns of Greenham women and sociopolitical, and crucially environmental, issues that we face today. It is a frightening time to consider our future but Women for Peace should spur the ambition to stand up before it is too late, with Charlotte’s hope being to prove to readers: “That campaigning can give rise to the most extraordinary creativity.”