Cultural Resistance at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp Anna Feigenbaum Department of Art Histor
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Tactics and technology: cultural resistance at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Anna Feigenbaum Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal April 2008 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Studies. © Anna Feigenbaum 2008 abstract My dissertation examines women’s unique techniques and cultures of communication at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in Newbury, England between 1982-1985. Often referred to by participants as one of the “last movements before the internet,” I look at Greenham as a site through which to think about how activists’ communication and cultural practices in the 1980s shaped activist uses of the worldwide web and other new media technologies central to contemporary struggles. I argue that social movement media such as videos, newsletters, postcards, songs and songbooks both create movement culture at the time of their production, and carry movement ideas and their infrastructures into the future. A story told orally, a songbook, a manifesto, a recorded interview, a picture of a mass demonstration, all circulate across time and space. Through this movement, ideas and artifacts are transformed and incorporated as different people encounter and make meaning out of these cultural texts in different ways. Ma dissertation considère les méthodes uniques de communication de femmes activistes lors du Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp de Newbury, Angleterre, de 1982 à 1985. Greenham, que les participantes ont souvent appelé la première phase des derniers mouvements avant Internet, est un site permettant de penser la communication et les pratiques culturelles aux fins militantes des années 1980, dans un contexte d’usages activistes du Web et autres technologies nouveaux médias cruciales aux débats contemporains. J’affirme que les médias de mouvement social comme la vidéo, le bulletin d’information, les cartes postales, les chansons et les recueils de chansons créent une culture de mouvement au moment de leur production, et amènent ensuite les idées de ces mouvements et de leur infrastructure dans le futur. Une histoire racontée, un recueil de chansons, un manifeste, une entrevue enregistrée, une photo d’une manifestation circulent tous dans le temps et l’espace. À l’aide de cette mobilité, les idées et les artéfacts se transforment et s’incorporent au fur et à mesure que les gens découvrent et donnent différents sens à ces textes culturels. acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the early financial support of the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London and the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women, whose funding first brought me into the green boxes of Greenham women’s lives. Further archival research was made possible through a grant from the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada. In the writing stages, Media@McGill and the McGill Faculty of Arts provided generous support toward the completion of my dissertation. The insights and inspiration of the many Greenham women I spoke with throughout my research lay at the heart of this study. From the start, Sasha Roseneil helped give life to the project; her generosity brought the spirit of Greenham into all our meetings and discussions. Thanks go to Liz and Hilary for delving into the past to dig up stories of Greenham and ramble with me about rebel clown armies and activisms trapped in the internet. I am grateful also to Jane at Feminist Archive South, Holger Terp of the Danish Peace Archive and the staff of the Women’s Library in London for all of their help locating the scattered pictures, pamphlets, songs and newsletters that form the basis of my study. I am immodestly proud to be my supervisor Carrie Rentschler’s first PhD at McGill University. She brought passion and wit to my project, offering rich critical feedback and constant reassurance! I thank Jonathan Sterne, Will Straw, Darin Barney, Jenny Burman and the graduate students of the department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University for providing stimulation, sustenance and softball. I am indebted to my undergraduate students in Cultural Resistance for coming with me during the final stages of my travels through art and protest. I am grateful also for being a part of the Feminist Media Studies Working Group, the Graduate Group of Feminist Scholarship and the MCRTW community. Particularly, I am thankful for the friendship of Anna Carastathis whose support took on so many forms and whose work always gives gifts to mine. Special thanks also to Raphael B for phone therapy and abstract translation; Rami Nijjar for love and the much needed shifts in perspective; Martin Jackson for turning things upside down and copy editing. And finally, many thanks to my family of Feigenbaums and my mother, Susan Recchia, the first woman to teach me that we can always be more than we think we can. table of contents Introduction: Studying Greenham_____________________________________ 1 1. Can the Women’s Peace Camp Be Televised?: Challenging Mainstream Media Coverage of Greenham ____________________________________________ 31 2. Written in the Mud: Grassroots Media Coverage of Greenham ___________ 70 3.‘Metal Goddesses for Earthly Survival’: Myths and Symbols of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp____________________________________ 114 4.If These Fences Could Talk: The Greenham Fence as Communication Technology ____________________________________________________ 172 5.Singing for Our Lives: Constructing Community & Collective Identities in Greenham Women’s Songs________________________________________ 222 One Man’s Junk is another Woman’s Artifact: Studying & Archiving Social Movement Culture_______________________________________________ 271 table of figures Figure 1: Map of Greenham _________________________________________ 1 Figure 2: Sunday Express Cartoon of Greenham Women _________________ 31 Figure 3: Widening the Web Demonstration Booklet_____________________ 70 Figure 4: Comic on Greenham Newsletter Readership___________________ 101 Figure 5: The Greenham Office is Moving_____________________________110 Figure 6: The Goddess of Metal ____________________________________ 114 Figure 7: Gillian Booth's "A Snaky Story" ____________________________ 138 Figure 8: Cover of the Rainbow Dragon Festival Booklet ________________ 150 Figure 9: Do It Yourself Guide to Remodeling the Perimeter Fence ________ 159 Figure 10: Women at the Fence ____________________________________ 172 Figure 11: Cover of Fundraising Record______________________________ 222 Figure 12: Queer Sexuality and Singing at Greenham ___________________ 260 Figure 13: “Why Are We Here?” Greenham Cartoon ___________________ 271 introduction Studying Greenham “[Greenham] became a 24 hours a day women’s centre, or perhaps a 365 days a year women’s conference, bringing in older and very young women from all over the country and, increasingly, some working class and Black women—and curious semi-lesbian culture, as the ‘ordinary’ mums, and grandmums and daughters, fell in love with each other.” -Ruth Wallsgrove, Feminst Writer & Occasional Greenham Camper “The word ‘Greenham’ came to be understood not as the common near Newbury, nor even as the USAF base for Cruise, but as the women’s peace camp.” -Sasha Roseneil, Greenham Camper & Researcher Figure 1_Map of Greenham 2 The story of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp always begins the same: On September 5, 1981 a group of women ended their march from Cardiff, Wales outside the Greenham Common United States Air Force base in Newbury, England in protest of the 1979 NATO decision allowing US nuclear cruise missiles to be housed at military bases in Europe. Greenham Common was to be the first base to receive missiles, with over 100 warheads scheduled to arrive. The group of around 35 marchers, mostly women, demanded a televised debate with the Ministry of Defense over the decision to site cruise missiles in England. The women’s request was not granted, so they refused to leave. As supporters and supplies came in, an encampment soon emerged. In 1982 the camp became women-only and adopted the name ‘Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp.’ By the end of the year protest events at the camp drew thousands of women and international media coverage. Whereas in 1980 surveys found that 41% of people in Britain did not know that nuclear weapons were even stored in their country, by 1983 only 6% of people had not heard of Greenham and did not know of the missiles stationed there (cited in Roseneil 1995, 169). Participation in the peace camp swelled in 1983 and 1984. At times there were hundreds of women camping at Greenham, with thousands more supporters and visitors. Headlines screamed: ‘Camp that will not go away’; ‘Greenham numbers swell to 1,000’; ‘475 held in Cruise fury.’1 During these peak years of the protest camp Greenham was flooded with reporters producing sensationalized stories of camp life and camp inhabitants. The camp was often described as dirty, unsanitary, messy or even unfit for living. Woman protesters were generally either 1 Times, May 2, 1983; Guardian July 9, 1983. 3 heralded as selfless mothers fighting for peace, or more often (especially by the tabloid press), as man-hating lesbians flaunting their sexuality, acting aggressively and sucking dole money from the State. 2 The unconventionality of life at a protest camp—and particularly a women’s-only protest camp with a