Starting Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp – a personal perspective

We have been working with Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp on events for our Carry Embrace the Base Home project. Here, Rebecca Johnson remembers how the camp started

The Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp(aign) was started by Lorna, Lyn and me in late winter 1984. We decided to escape from Greenham (where we were living) and camp at the British nuclear bomb factory for a change. We set up under the oak trees at Falcon Gate where we would be visible and also (we hoped) safe, as there was a pub and garage. Lorna painted a green cloth banner with radiation symbols and ‘Aldermaston Women’s Campaign’, and we took a spare kettle from Yellow Gate, some wood and water. We lit the fire, made some tea, ate chips and talked about stopping Trident as well as Cruise.

Police came, took our names and my car registration. We talked with them (and each other) about UK bomb testing, the Pacific, and uranium illegally mined by Rossing (RTZ) under Apartheid regimes in Namibia and South Africa. Passing cars honked horns that seemed encouraging rather than hostile. A few even stopped for a chat. We stayed two nights and then returned the following month with Hazel, Jean, more banners, a saucepan to join the kettle and food to cook for ourselves. We wrote newsletters, held a rally on 9 August with Namibian speakers and ‘Out of the Darkness’ singer Frankie Armstrong.

In 1987 Lyn and Lorna served two months for protesting Trident warheads by painting the new A90 plutonium processing facility. Cruisewatchers like Di and Juliet began ‘nukewatching’ the warhead convoys from Burghfield, as more and more women joined us for Aldermaston actions, especially after the USAF and their cruise missiles left Greenham in 1991 – brilliant!

Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp still runs on the 2nd weekend of every month and the Camp is running special events for the Embrace The Base Anniversary in December

Paices Hill, Aldermaston, RG7 4PW
Tel: 07852 293 386
FB: Aldermaston Women’s Peace Campaign