38 years ago today in 1983, Greenham Women went to court for the ‘Blackbird’ trial.
On the 25th July, seven Greenham Women had cut a hole in the fence around the air base, and painted women’s peace symbols on a US ‘Blackbird’ ‘reconnaissance aircraft’ – a spy plane.
The MoD withdrew the charges. One woman was imprisoned for contempt. In what can easily be seen as retaliation for the protest, a pilot ‘obtained special clearance’ to fly just 50 feet over the peace camp while many protestors were likely to be asleep.
These conversations are back in the public eye today.
As we reported on Facebook recently, Deborah Hinton OBE, patron of our sister organisation Scary Little Girls was arrested for sitting silently outside Truro Cathedral holding a sign which read, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” as part of a campaign coordinated by Defend Our Juries. Palestine Action (PA) was proscribed by the government in July, in what has been described as a ‘gross abuse of state power.’ Anyone supporting PA faces up to 14 years in prison.
Speaking to the Observer, Deborah said, ‘“My view is that [Palestine Action] is not a terrorist organisation. It’s a direct action organisation. I lived through the Troubles. I was in London during the [IRA] bombings. I know what a terrorist organisation is.“
PA has been around since 2020. It’s website is currently unavailable in the UK, due to the organisation being proscribed this summer, following an incident in June when activists from the group allegedly used paint and crowbars to cause £7m of damage to two Royal Air Force planes at a UK military base.
PA have been given leave to challenge the proscription. A member of the Labour National Executive Committee has raised concerns with the Prime Minister, making a Greenham connection.
This photo by Bob Naylor shows Greenham Woman Sarah Graham standing on a Cruise Missile convoy women stopped and painted CND symbols on.
The UK has a long tradition of protest – often peaceful and non-violent – against laws that people deem to be unjust and the Greenham Women were very much in this tradition. The British traditions of, and rights to, free speech and protest are fundamental to our democracy. The erosion of these rights is a threat to our democracy and must be challenged.
Below we share quotes from Greenham Women about their experiences of non-violence direct action – many involving paint.
Penny Gulliver: “This was before cruise came in and stuff – there was lots of trying to paint out the lights on the runway so that they couldn’t land.”
Oak Chezar: “I went into the base with a bunch of women and had my first arrest. I guess to paint the runways, it was often to paint the runways because there were a lot of runways at Greenham, and they were these big, beautiful canvases for us.”
Oak Chezar: “At Greenham, there were eight ranks of fences you had to cut through to get in to the important stuff. At Welford there was like one. We got in and then we painted the bombs. We found the bombs. We painted them, we painted the runways. And then we got caught. And when we got caught, we got beaten up by American soldiers, young American soldiers. Rebecca’s knee was broken, my ribs were broken.”
Lynette Edwell: “So we then started a paint industry, we’d get eggs – and I don’t believe in wasting food – so we emptied them very carefully, fill them with really hard paint if we could and seal them, and we put them away for the convoy. So that’s directional throwing.”
Lynette Edwell: “Georgina – who had dressed up as a bush – came out and threw paint, got arrested, was in court. So the magistrate said, ‘… Let’s hear the case.’ And the man said, ‘She threw paint.’ So the magistrate said, ‘What colour?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know!’ So he said, ‘Well, if you can’t say what colour paint…’ so because he couldn’t identify the paint Georgina had, he let her off.”
Lyn Barlow: “I believe that criminal damage was a means to an end. It was to challenge the military. To disrupt. But I didn’t feel criminal damage was aggressive in itself. It depended on your motive. And yet some women did have a problem with with criminal damage. It’s funny because they had no problem with cutting a hole in the fence. But painting a slogan. But I think a lot of women worked through that and did actually agree with criminal damage in the end.”
Lorna Richardson: “So we’re sort of standing around Upper Heyford and we go into a hangar and it’s brightly lit, full of American soldiers. It’s got two F1 elevens which have got, you know, fuel cables. They are loading bombs onto the plane. We’re like, alrighty then! And me and Katrina, climb up and … we went up the stairs, Katrina got into the cockpit thought, this is a bad idea, got out of the cockpit. And we sat at the top of the stairs by the cockpit because we … don’t touch anything! And the others were painting on the missiles because if you put paint on a missile, you can’t use it as a missile because it buggers up the aerodynamics of it.”