From Greenham common to red square: women for life on earth and cross-bloc activism in the 1980s

ABSTRACT

This article examines how the activist group Women for Life on Earth (WFLOE) attempted to persuade the USSR to ditch their nuclear weapons. The article finds that WFLOE began a women-led campaign and engaged with unofficial activists and ordinary people in the USSR to lobby the Soviet government to disarm. WFLOE’s fame as ‘Greenham Women’ helped them to publicise their overseas activism and they attempted to challenge predominant representations of peace campaigners in the UK by campaigning against Soviet nuclear weapons. However, this success was limited with the Cold War maintaining primacy for the British press and WFLOE only gaining positive coverage when they caused embarrassment to the Soviets.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear disarmament
• women for life on earth
• peace movement
• transnational activism
• European Nuclear Disarmament (END)

In May 1983 three members of ‘Women for Life on Earth’ (WFLOE), met with the Soviet Peace Committee in Moscow. The Soviets believed that they were dealing with sympathetic peace campaigners because two of them, Ann Pettitt and Karmen Cutler, had previously organised a march from Cardiff to RAF Greenham Common where they established a peace camp. The meeting with these ‘Greenham Women’ was filmed for broadcast, with the Soviets hoping to show that their defence policy had popular international support. The women, however, arrived with a fourth visitor. She was introduced as Olga Medvedkova, a member of the independent anti-nuclear organisation Moscow Group to Establish Trust between the USSR and USA (GTET). At this point, the Peace Committee’s Vice-chair, Oleg Khakhardin, angrily declared Medvedkova to be a criminal and both left the meeting. Later that year Medvedkova was arrested and tried on charges of assaulting a policeman, prompting a flurry of protests from western campaigners including WFLOE.

WFLOE were part of a renewal of anti-nuclear campaigning that took place in Britain, Europe and the USA in the early 1980s. This activism was a response to NATO’s ‘dual-track’ decision, taken in December 1979. That policy saw America deploy the new generation Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Western Europe whilst seeking mutual discussions on disarmament.¹ The strategy ended détente, which had been under threat since the late 1970s. The groups that emerged in response to worsening international relations were often smaller and more numerous than those of the 1950s and 1960s and some organised along transnational lines, seeking to build cross-bloc coalitions.² One such group was WFLOE, who this article argues, played an important role in building relationships between people from the UK and Soviet Union and applied pressure on the Soviet government to disarm both directly and by supporting the unofficial Eastern disarmament groups. Furthermore, I show how they attempted to increase support for their movement by improving the popular image of anti-nuclear protesters, especially women.

WFLOE worked with other peace organisations with whom they shared common goals, including European Nuclear Disarmament (END) and unofficial Eastern groups. These cross-bloc campaigns have been credited with influencing the leaders of Western nations and the USSR to change their nuclear policy and contributing towards the end of the Cold War.³ Recent interpretations have emphasised the role of transnational activism, especially after the formation of END in April 1980.⁴ This literature has helped to show how some Western European peace organisations also criticised the Soviet Union’s defence policy rather than simply challenging that of the Western governments.⁵ Research into the West German peace movement by Holger Nehring and Benjamin Ziemann has encouraged historians of activism to explore the interactions between movements, policy makers and mass media and to examine the multi-directional aims of the peace movement.⁶ This idea is applied to WFLOE’s role within the British peace movement. I show how WFLOE attempted to build cross-bloc hegemony for nuclear disarmament outside of tightly organised groups by engaging with organisations such as END with whom they shared common ground.

Historians have shown that women’s peace organisations were an important element of Western and British peace movements throughout the twentieth century, but especially during the 1980s, when they instigated a new wave of direct action.⁷ Whilst much research has focussed on the Greenham Common Peace Camp, less has been written about WFLOE’s transnational activity.⁸ Where the Greenham camp has been placed in transnational perspective the focus has been on connections in other Western nations, rather than cross-bloc activism.⁹ The meeting with the Peace Committee has been mentioned previously, mainly by activist-scholars who downplay its importance.¹⁰ But this article argues that the meeting was significant in raising the international profile of the GTET, leading to greater pressure on the Soviet government to stop their persecution of the group. Furthermore, the meeting helped WFLOE to challenge pre-existing representations of peace campaigners.

This article changes the thinking on both the British Peace movement and the transnational movement by examining both as loosely aligned collaborations whose common goals brought together groups with divergent ideological positions. By examining the role of WFLOE it shows that END was much more diverse than previously acknowledged, encouraging independent campaigning outside the leadership group with these women peace campaigners operating independently. Pettitt and Cutler sought to create a movement led by women, but not exclusively female, in contrast to the more radical feminists who later assumed leadership of the camp. Therefore, they worked alongside groups that were often predominantly male, including END. Research into END has tended to focus on the intellectuals centred around E. P. Thompson and Mary Kaldor, who provided leadership.¹¹ Yet the organisation’s informal structure meant that allied groups like WFLOE could carry forward their messages whilst undertaking independent activism.

By examining cross-bloc activism, the article shows how sections of WFLOE, working alongside other movements, spread the spirit of Greenham outside the camp and formed transnational alliances. The article uses critical oral history, memoir, and press reports alongside organisational records. The interviews are read as a continuation of attempts to shape the narratives around disarmament and the women’s stories are examined against the archival record, including their own papers. The first section of the article outlines the organisations involved in WFLOE’s support of the GTET and later in defence of Olga Medvedkova. The second examines the first visit to the USSR in May 1983 and the tactics employed by WFLOE to build initial contacts with GTET and to publicise their trans-national activism. The third section explores WFLOE’s more comprehensive campaign that they built after their first visit. Here they extended the exchanges and promoted the idea of a DIY Détente to the British population to improve popular opinion about their movement. The final section shows how WFLOE used protest and their contacts in the media to attempt to pressure the Soviet Union to end their attack on Medvedkova and other GTET members. For this group of Greenham Women peace did not end on the nuclear silo: they took their fight to the Kremlin as part of a broader movement of peace activists.

The groups and their aims

Karmen Cutler (later Thomas) and Ann Pettitt were in their mid-twenties when they formed Women for Life on Earth (WFLOE) in South Wales. They organised a women-led campaign against nuclear weapons because of the potential impact on their families. In September 1981 WFLOE made headlines when some members chained themselves to the gates of RAF Greenham Common and a permanent peace camp was soon established. Pettitt now questions how successful the Greenham Peace Camp was, suggesting that despite the Greenham women becoming famous ‘nothing had changed’.¹² In interviews and her memoir Pettitt gives special emphasis to WFLOE’s activity to promote worldwide disarmament outside the UK.¹³ Different parts of the group soon began to undertake independent activism using the organisation’s name. Cutler says that the visits to the USSR were motivated by aggressive onlookers at protests, who sometimes shouted ’go and tell it to the Russians’.¹⁴ Pettitt and Cutler responded by building an alliance with independent peace campaigners behind the Iron Curtain.

Pettitt and Cutler used their visits to the USSR to challenge the negative popular perceptions of both the British anti-nuclear movement and women protesters. They did so by presenting themselves as ordinary women, driven to act because of fear of what would happen to their families in a nuclear war. This meant attempting to show that they were non-communist, independent of both the main British protest groups and the Soviet government. Ordinariness has been seen by Claire Langhammer as a descriptor which trusts knowledge gained through ‘common sense’ rather than expertise.¹⁵ Catherine Neveu sees the term as incorporating activists who work independently of professional institutions.¹⁶ WFLOE fit within these interpretations as non-experts who were determinedly independent from both larger organisations in the UK, and the Soviet state. Cutler stresses their independence from mainstream peace organisations when discussing their connections with independent Soviet groups, ‘who in a sense we saw ourselves as … because we weren’t CND, we didn’t conform’.¹⁷ Similarly, the women’s interviews and published material frequently refers to attempts to meet ordinary Soviets rather than state-led organisations. Cutler talks about meeting ordinary Soviet women and having the ‘day to day chats that women do’. These tactics allowed them to claim nuclear proliferation as an ordinary or everyday concern, beyond the realm of politics, in which they hoped to unite similarly concerned citizens of east and west.

WFLOE hoped to use the visit to build connections with the Moscow Group to Establish Trust Between the USSR and USA (GTET). This organisation had formed in spring 1982 and was allied with similar disarmament groups across the USSR. The Western press first wrote about it in June 1982.¹⁸ GTET hoped to pressurise the governments of Moscow and Washington to take solid steps towards nuclear disarmament. Their membership were predominantly intellectuals or Jewish refuseniks who had been denied exit visas. They formed, therefore, an informal part of the network of Westernising intellectuals that emerged from the late 1970s, which Robert English argues operated both inside and outside the Soviet state and paved the way for Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.¹⁹ Two of the prominent members were Olga Medvedkova and her husband Yuri. Both were Geography professors who had been sacked for their activism. The group had hoped to meet with the 1982 Scandinavian Women’s march to Moscow but wrote to Western activists explaining that the Soviet state had imposed ‘house arrests to isolate us’.²⁰ Worse, founding member Sergei Batovrin was detained in a psychiatric hospital. Despite this persecution they appealed for visits from Westerners. A letter to END stressed that they hoped to emulate Western activists, ‘it is literally a vital matter for our cause to borrow from the experience of your peace efforts’.²¹ Geography dictated that Western Europeans were best placed to undertake these visits and WFLOE soon decided to take their anti-nuclear message across the iron curtain.

WFLOE were able to work closely with END whilst remaining independent because of the latter’s loosely organised membership. They featured on END’s contact lists, attended its conferences and contributed towards its collaborative publications. In doing so they worked as part of what some scholars have seen as an alliance rather than a homogenous movement.²² END launched in April 1980 and Pettitt explains that ‘Edward and Dorothy [Thompson, two of END’s founding members] were kind of the inspiration’ for their cross-bloc activism.²³ END's founding appeal framed its aims as creating,

a European-wide campaign, […] in which less formal exchanges, between universities, churches, women’s organisations, trade unions, youth organisations, professional groups, and individuals, take place with the object [...] to free Europe of nuclear weapons.²⁴

END hoped to end the Cold War by generating pressure ‘from below’ and building connections across the iron curtain, thereby lessening mutual enmity.²⁵ It was this common objective that WFLOE worked towards.

Détente from below involved supporting the emerging non-governmental peace organisations in the Communist states. Allied individuals were encouraged to visit and support these groups thereby spreading ideas of peace across the blocs. Pettitt believes that the strategy allowed her organisation to find their ‘true counterparts’: the Group for Trust.²⁶ WFLOE sought out unofficial peace groups but they also attempted to build ‘everyday’ contacts with ‘ordinary’ women in the Soviet Union. This focus away from the official Soviet campaigns supports Nehring and Ziemann’s view that peace activists often campaigned outside of party-political influences. It also suggests that activism could go beyond the formalised peace movement structure. Despite Nehring and Ziemann’s claim that END only had a small membership in Britain, the influence of its ideas went beyond this core: allied groups like WFLOE, and later the UK Trustbuilders, also promoted the idea of ‘détente from below’.²⁷ When Pettitt and Cutler organised a series of visits to the USSR, the first in 1983, followed by several subsequent excursions made by smaller groups, they did so in support of END’s ideas but used their status as ‘Greenham Women’ to gain recognition from the Western media and Soviet state.

When working alongside END, WFLOE were especially keen to participate in women-led initiatives. Women occupied more prominent roles within END than is acknowledged by previous scholars including Wittner, Cortright, Burke, Bess and Baehr who tend to focus on citizen groups as a whole or emphasise the activity of publicly visible figures like E. P. Thompson.²⁸ Mary Kaldor edited END’s journal and Dorothy Thompson co-authored many of the Thompsons’ publications on the matter, sometimes appearing as the lead author.²⁹ She also published a volume of women’s writing on nuclear disarmament. Dorothy published the volume to amplify women’s voices, writing that ‘The opinions and feelings of women, as workers, as thinkers, and as carers and nurturers of the young and old must be heard’.³⁰ A chapter by Pettitt was framed as a response to her neighbour who believed that nuclear war ‘wouldn’t be all that bad’.³¹ Her contribution showed her determination to attempt to use the broader disarmament network to challenge the pro-nuclear hegemony outside of large-scale protests like Greenham. The contributions by Dorothy Thompson and Pettitt both drew on several aspects of what both Jill Liddington and Josephine Elgin identify as an older version of women’s peace activism based on the belief in women’s commitment to peace as mothers, and a desire to end violence.³² Women, including members of WFLOE, were at the forefront of promoting ‘détente from below’.

WFLOE saw their attempts to build a cross-bloc campaign for peace, as a logical expansion of the Greenham camp. They hoped to increase the pressure on the Soviet government to abandon nuclear weapons by encouraging more Soviet and Western people to support the independent Eastern activists. The group were supported by the Greenham Common goodwill fund and they refused to be seen as representatives of the mainstream peace movement, which was often associated with CND and Quaker organisations. This independence was partially because of their desire to ‘find their counterparts’ in the USSR. Pettitt later wrote that, ‘CND and the Quakers seemed to think that their “counterparts” were […] the Communist Party-run “Soviet Peace Committee”’, this association would have given support to those in the media who accused all peace activists of enabling communism.³³ Consequently, WFLOE approached peace activism as a loosely structured campaign in which individuals and groups with different perspectives pursued their own initiatives. Furthermore, by depicting themselves as outside the mainstream peace movement they hoped to reshape their image to appear more respectable and ordinary, which they believed would win them more support.

WFLOE’s first visit and raising awareness

When WFLOE, along with their associate Jean McCollister, visited Moscow in May 1983 they planned to make preliminary contacts with the official and unofficial peace groups, paving the way for future visits by groups of women. Cutler and Pettitt have depicted themselves as anticipating that, as ‘Greenham Women’, they might be used for propaganda by the Soviets. Cutler claims that they expected to be used in this way, ‘because [a]t the time it seemed like we were anti-American’.³⁴ In keeping within END’s framework, however, Pettitt suggests that they entered into dialogue with the Peace Committee because they felt that these official meetings were necessary to ensure that visas were issued.³⁵ Pettitt describes their desire to avoid being seen as a traditional ‘delegation’ going through the ‘set scenario’.³⁶ In doing so they were able to represent their group as independent of the Soviet state, which became an important part of presenting themselves as ordinary. Meeting with the official groups meant that they received entry visas, enabling their primary objective of meeting ordinary people, and the unofficial campaigners.

The connection with the Group for Trust, who McCollister had previously met,³⁷ allowed the women to find their counterparts in the USSR. Cutler believes that this relationship was strengthened by the group’s unofficial status as well as WFLOE’s autonomy from the formal peace movement: ‘We were quite anarchic. We did what we wanted […] We felt there was a connection there somewhere’.³⁸ Cutler’s depiction of their organisation as disruptive echoed their criticisms of the mainstream peace movement. Pettitt had previously warned that, ‘CND and the movement which supports it may be running at cross-purposes. The kind of unity we […] need can only be arrived at from the bottom up’.³⁹ The women’s independence allowed them to enact ‘détente from below’ by working outside the more centralised structure of organisations like CND. Their willingness to co-operate with other groups helped to build a collaborative ethos across peace organisations.

WFLOE hoped that their visit would challenge what they saw as longstanding media antipathy towards peace campaigners, especially women. Early 1980s coverage of the peace movement varied by publication. However, narratives often remained rooted in earlier representations of ‘Moscow stooges’. Contemporary media scholars argued that press coverage of the bomb acted as propaganda against the movement.⁴⁰ By demanding that the Soviets get rid of their weapons WFLOE were able to challenge this representation, aiding their claim to be non-communist and ordinary. Women peace activists were aware of negative coverage of their actions and campaigner Lucinda Broadbent wrote that reporters relied on common stereotypes: ‘sincere grandmothers, concerned housewives, burly lesbians, chaos and arrests’.⁴¹ Such negative presentations were partly facilitated by CND’s ambiguity towards GTET. CND’s magazine Sanity offered some support but primarily argued for unilateralism.⁴² They often insisted that Soviet nuclear missiles were not the problem.⁴³ CND’s former chair, Bruce Kent, who remained influential, was fairly supportive of the communists and Cutler recalls meeting him after the Peace Committee incident when he, ‘really went to town on us’.⁴⁴ These contradictions within the peace movement allowed the press to push their preferred narrative which often meant depicting activists as sympathetic to Moscow. WFLOE hoped to change this image by showing that they had been driven to undertake extraordinary actions by fear of the consequences of nuclear war.

Newspapers expressed mixed opinions on the Western peace movement but were often more diverse than campaigners and academics suggested. Among the broadsheets, the Daily Telegraph had reported on Eastern European peace protesters, but contrasted them with British protest groups and continued to depict CND, the best known disarmament group, as a ‘vehicle for Russian foreign policy’.⁴⁵ Even when covering GTET the newspaper repeated the communist taint and it criticised the main peace groups’ focus on unilateral nuclear disarmament. The Times, however, was more nuanced and they sometimes printed letters and articles by the Thompsons and reported on some of END’s activities.⁴⁶ They also gave some coverage to cross-bloc initiatives, not solely depicting activists as loyal to Moscow.⁴⁷ The Guardian’s Special Projects Editor Jean Stead was sympathetic to the cross-bloc activists. She interviewed Soviet dissidents and contributed towards an END publication on GTET. The pamphlet stated that the newspaper was ‘distinguished in the last two years by its well-informed treatment of the work of the Western peace movement’.⁴⁸ Their good working relationship with END allowed Pettitt and Cutler to gain some positive publicity for their campaign. Indeed, Pettitt discusses meeting Stead and obtaining details of Moscow based journalists.⁴⁹ Whilst the press did not advance a homogenous narrative about the Western peace movement it appeared that some publications were more accepting of its diverse aims. WFLOE had to adopt a careful strategy towards the press when publicising their cross-bloc activism.

Most newspapers downplayed the transnational connections and often presented GTET in opposition to their Western counterparts. WFLOE hoped to challenge this representation; they also hoped to be depicted as ordinary and empathised this aspect of their campaign in their publicity. As luck would have it their journey to Moscow in May 1983 allowed them to build contacts which would permit this change. Pettitt notes that on their flight they met with the Moscow correspondents for the Observer, Times and New York Times.⁵⁰ Pettitt believes that this meeting paved the way for relatively fair press coverage because they ‘were able to talk past stereotypes with them’.⁵¹ Retellings of the story emphasise their ability to build more friendly relations with the journalists. She felt that they built ‘a good understanding’ that led to positive coverage, ‘which we hadn’t sought’. Alongside other anti-nuclear campaigners they worked to change the media framing of the peace movement.⁵² This positive coverage extended beyond the borders of Britain; American newspapers also covered the cross-bloc activism.⁵³ Thus, the creation of a counter-hegemonic narrative around nuclear weapons meant engaging with liberal institutions including the press. The opportunity to network with journalists, which built on their previous press engagements around the Greenham Camp, allowed WFLOE to challenge stereotypes of women peace campaigners and later to generate coverage around Olga Medvedkova’s trial. The visit allowed WFLOE to raise awareness of their aims and counter the representation of themselves as ‘Moscow stooges’.

WFLOE used the trip to generate more Western press coverage for GTET and pressurised the Soviets to end their persecution of members. Wittner suggests that this campaign and publicity led to more lenient treatment of Medvedkova.⁵⁴ The early coverage of the visit represented WFLOE as an oddity. On 20 May, alongside reports on American ‘pessimism’ over potential ‘Soviet first strike’ scenarios, the Times reported their intentions to ‘talk to “ordinary Russians” about nuclear disarmament’.⁵⁵ Its headline ‘Greenham women arrive in Moscow’ emphasised their peace camp connections. They repeated common stereotypes including that the campaigners ‘wore the now conventional Greenham Common uniform of tee shirt, anorak and cropped hair’. Shehnaz Suterwalla shows that these stereotypes represented the Greenham subculture that emerged to resist common ideas around womanhood.⁵⁶ She also shows that the press presented this style as deviant, something which Jonathan Hogg suggests detracted from the protesters’ message.⁵⁷ The initial coverage of the visit repeated these stereotypes. However, the article also allowed the women to shape the media narrative by quoting them stating that whilst they were aware that ‘people were unwilling to listen to the peace movement because they feared and mistrusted the Russians’ they ‘would not be “foisted off” with an organized tour’. Whilst the newspaper recycled stereotypes, it allowed readers to draw their own conclusions about WFLOE’s attempts to go beyond officialdom and helped them to shape their narrative of talking to ordinary people.

The WFLOE members depict themselves as being able to operate relatively freely. They recall their interactions with the GTET as being enabled by a lack of close state supervision and Cutler believes that ‘Intourist [the state travel agency] forgot about us’.⁵⁸ Instead of undertaking formal tours, Cutler discusses meeting people in parks who were, ‘really interested in talking to us’.⁵⁹ Pettitt remembers these everyday contacts in a more subversive way, including a picnic with the Group for Trust. Here WFLOE displayed posters that had been given to them by the Soviet Women’s Committee, which ‘obviously hadn’t been produced for domestic consumption’, but aimed to convince visiting activists of the popularity of official Soviet peace campaigns.⁶⁰ Pettitt recalls the arrival of several policemen and men ‘in KGB signature apparel […] trying to hide behind the trees […], some speaking into radios’.⁶¹ Pettitt has portrayed their entire visit as defying the Soviet state with open association with unofficial groups as a key part of this. They now link this privileged position to being Greenham activists about whom the Soviets felt they had little to worry. The women have depicted themselves as lucky because of the lack of official oversight, but also as cunning because they turned this freedom to their advantage.

After meeting the GTET, the three women went to meet the Soviet Peace Committee, taking Olga Medvedkova with them. As mentioned above, the presence of this unofficial peace campaigner was unacceptable to Khakhardin who stormed out of the meeting. Despite this fiery start, Pettitt reported to readers of END Journal that following Khakhardin’s departure, ‘we talked about the need for free time and free contacts during the September visit if the message we were to bring back was to have any credibility with the British public’.⁶² This amounted to something of a ‘dual-track’ strategy of their own: they appeared to be of benefit to the Soviets in order to gain access to the USSR so that they could meet with the unofficial groups. It was the controversy, however, that attracted press attention. In that respect the women reused the shock tactics previously employed on the Greenham march, where members had chained themselves to the fence to gain press attention.⁶³

Pettitt and Cutler discuss how they experienced harassment from the Soviet state throughout the rest of the trip, including an intrusive search by border guards at the airport.⁶⁴ WFLOE’s interactions with reporters enabled them to use the Soviet heavy-handedness to publicise the issues of peace and Soviet attacks on peace campaigners. Amongst the popular press the Daily Mail, not known for its support for nuclear disarmament campaigners, presented a prima facie even-handed view of the women’s actions. They reported on the searches and delays that the ‘Greenham women’ experienced as they prepared to depart. The article stated that the women were told that a confiscated diary ‘contained material damaging to the Soviet State’ and thereby assisted Pettitt and Cutler in disrupting media presentations of them as Moscow stooges.⁶⁵ Many press outlets emphasised the Women’s Greenham Common connections and implicitly presented them as being ‘official’ representatives, but WFLOE were able to gain some positive coverage because the press hoped to use them to criticise the Soviets.

Interviews with both Pettitt and Cutler suggest that they felt that they received some fair newspaper coverage following the visit. The Times printed a photograph of them collecting signatures from Soviet women on a pledge for peace, whereas an earlier article had used an image of Sergei Batovrin, a founding member of GTET. This photograph allowed readers to humanise the campaigners and helped them to be seen as ordinary women. The article stated that WFLOE were planning a return visit with a larger group ‘despite the rumpus caused by their insistence on helping unofficial Soviet peace activists’.⁶⁶ An adjacent article discussed the USSR cracking down on dissidents. The Guardian focussed on the controversy noting that the women had left after ‘upsetting the official Soviet Peace Committee and having notes of their meetings with the unofficial peace group confiscated’.⁶⁷ Such reports similarly emphasised the coercive nature of the Soviet state. The coverage often focussed on attacking the Soviets rather than celebrating the cross-bloc attempts to promote peace.

Pettitt and Cutler recall the initially sceptical attitudes of The Times and the Guardian journalists. Following the Medvedkova controversy, however, they recall a change in their attitude as one journalist told the women that they had created a shock where ‘nothing new really happens […] that was a major provocation’.⁶⁸ Often newspapers were less supportive of WFLOE themselves, focussing instead on GTET. The women have linked this coverage to attention given in the British and American press to GTET. Cutler suggests that their familiarity with the previously unsympathetic journalists meant that Medvedkova’s later arrest prompted ‘an immediate response from our press’. WFLOE’s ability to increase awareness brought pressure on the Soviets for leniency. The Daily Telegraph reported the ‘unusual row’ because Medvedkova was ‘a woman member of the Soviet Union’s first anti-war group which has been harassed by the KGB’. The newspaper outlined the persecution of GTET stressing that it was ‘independent of the huge Communist-led official peace movement’.⁶⁹ GTET, however, were critical of mainstream Western coverage of their organisation. In an interview in END Journal Batovrin stated that Western journalists ‘were more interested in its harassment than its ideas’.⁷⁰ This disapproval indicates that the sympathy for GTET from the Daily Telegraph was mainly another stick with which to hit the USSR, rather than support for its appeal for worldwide disarmament. For WFLOE favourable press coverage only emerged after they had confronted the Soviet government; Cold War politics retained primacy in how the Western peace movement was covered.

Following their visit, WFLOE continued to raise awareness of the GTET. Despite their reports about a ‘dressing down’ from Bruce Kent and some negative press about that argument,⁷¹ several areas of the peace press, including Sanity, reported the visit positively. Pettitt reiterated the message that the visit was a response to shouts of ‘tell it to Moscow’, to which they could now respond, ‘we’ve been’.⁷² WFLOE also wrote to END that the ‘Moscow Trust Group also needs our help if it is to survive’.⁷³ They emphasised their discussions about the lengthy prison sentences that unofficial activists may receive in the USSR. Moreover, their memo raised the case of Oleg Radzinsky, a GTET member who was facing trial for ‘”anti-constitutional activity”’. WFLOE highlighted the need for international pressure, stating that protests on Radzinsky’s behalf had precipitated an improvement in his treatment. They also claimed that lobbying the Soviet authorities before the trial would ‘make the difference between freedom and prison for him’. The aftermath of the visit provided a testing ground for the techniques that would later be used in support of Medvedkova and other unofficial peace campaigners.

Building a D.I.Y. detente

During the summer of 1983 WFLOE began to organise a larger visit splitting into several groups of women taking in different Soviet cities, due to take place in September. During their preparation they continued to present the campaigners as ordinary to build popular support. Pettitt writes that the idea was that: ‘If people could start coming over to Moscow and just meeting ordinary people, […] then some of the support for hawkish policies’ would disappear.⁷⁴ The language of ‘détente’ echoed similar earlier types of public diplomacy carried out by governments of the USA and UK since the 1950s.⁷⁵ They were now applied, however, to détente from below: the language and form of ‘people to people’ exchanges was appropriated by the peace movement to build a cross-bloc network which encouraged citizens of East and West to pressure all governments to disarm.⁷⁶

The organisation of a second visit required WFLOE to find suitable participants and funding. They appealed via activist networks throughout the summer of 1983. An allied organisation, Merseyside Women for Peace, wrote in their newsletter, ‘Ann Pettitt and Karmen Cutler […] have started a new venture. […] We are getting together to go to Russia this autumn, to talk with Russian women’.⁷⁷ This appeal emphasised their desire to meet ordinary Russian women. Cutler discusses the importance of using the background of the visitors to challenge the stereotypes applied to female anti-nuclear campaigners, ‘we wanted to have a cross range of people from different parts of the country, different ages. So not necessarily activists[…] different types of women’. Whilst activists participated, WFLOE intended the second visit to consist of a broader cross-section of women to shape narratives about their movement.

When WFLOE appealed for participants and funds via the peace press they focussed on broader ideas of peace rather than being radically feminist. On 8 July Peace News published an article in which Pettitt stressed that their aims were to build ‘person-to-person contact, to attack the mistrust and ignorance of each other at their roots’.⁷⁸ This phrase, which was borrowed directly from international relations terminology, shows that the group attempted to use the methods of formal diplomacy to create a from below movement that echoed other Western European organisations.⁷⁹ At the end Pettitt pleaded: ‘The women desperately need more money for their September visit’, with similar appeals for donations towards a total of £15,000 made elsewhere.⁸⁰ Whilst the article showed women taking the initiative, Pettitt expressed support for all members of GTET, regardless of gender. This narrative follows Elaine Titcombe’s argument that Pettitt depicted women’s peace activism as being ‘led by women’ but not wholly ‘radical feminist’.⁸¹ In keeping with Peace News’s frequent coverage of women peace campaigners during the early 1980s, the newspaper focussed on the link to feminism. They printed a drawing of two onion domes, with the CND logo and a Venus symbol to show that this movement aimed to build contact between women of either bloc. Whilst WFLOE focussed on women’s leadership of peace initiatives some representations of them shifted to being primarily about feminism.

WFLOE used the mainstream press to disseminate their messages about the forthcoming visit. On 23 August the Times reported that, ‘thirty women including founders of Greenham Common peace camp are to visit Moscow next month for the 17-day visit’.⁸² The article quoted Cutler saying that their aim of overcoming mutual Cold War paranoia ‘starts with personal contact’’. Before their second visit the women disseminated their message of forming a detente from below based on individual contacts with Soviet people. Other activists used their local press to generate publicity and to show their independence from the Soviet state. The Liverpool Echo reported on local participants and repeated the message that their objective was not ‘to act as a peace delegation, but to meet ordinary Russian people in their homes and places of work’.⁸³ Their ability to engage with national and local newspapers allowed them to present themselves as ordinary or local people who had been driven by fear to take extraordinary actions, a tactic which they employed to attempt to build popular support.

Following the previous public embarrassment, the Soviet administration refused to grant permission for this second visit. Visitors to the GTET were often barred from re-entering the USSR.⁸⁴ The exact situation surrounding this cancellation has become confused: Pettitt and Cutler claim that their trip was cancelled when they reached the airport. However, they wrote, in Sanity that their travel was stopped before visas were issued. According to this version the women made their way to Birmingham Airport on 1 September 1983 ‘hoping for a change of mind’, and doubtless to draw newspaper publicity.⁸⁵ Following the cancellation of their trip WFLOE appealed to several Soviet institutions. Cutler describes how she and Pettitt travelled to London to lobby the Soviet embassy. Here they, ‘demanded to see the first secretary, refused to leave and behaved really badly’.⁸⁶ The actions of the Soviet state only made the group more determined to push on with their visits to the non-official peace group.

Cutler acted as the group’s main organiser and lobbied several other Soviet institutions adopting what can be seen as their own dual-track strategy. She wrote to the Soviet Women’s Committee and stressed the importance of their visit claiming that the British press had used the recent Soviet shooting down of Korean Airlines flight 007, ‘to inflame still further Cold-war and anti-Soviet feeling in the British population’.⁸⁷ Cutler used worldwide public opinion as a lever by suggesting that the visit might help the Soviet Union to show that it was peaceful. She tied this to the ordinariness narrative claiming that the volunteers, ‘many of whom are in the senior age-group are known and respected in their local communities’.⁸⁸ The suggestion that the visit could be used for Soviet propaganda advantage needed to be carefully approached. Cutler hoped to turn the previous embarrassment to her group’s advantage by stating, ‘(F)or our credibility with our British public it is important that we be seen to be independent of the Soviet State’.⁸⁹ This letter further reiterates that their goals included positioning themselves as ordinary and respectable women by disassociating from Soviet officialdom. Having repeated similar claims of managing British public opinion Cutler wrote to the Peace Committee and stressed the ‘common goals’, although she did not explain that theirs involved the removal of Soviet weapons as well as American ones.⁹⁰ The group’s dual-track strategy, therefore, meant convincing the official organisations to soften their approach to Westerners who engaged with the non-official groups in order to help the Soviets navigate Western public relations.

WFLOE used activist networks and journalists to persuade the Soviets to permit their visit. The Guardian stated that: ‘the Russians cancelled the visit because they feared that the peace women might not conform to polite formal contact with official bodies and would branch out on their own’.⁹¹ This area of the press showed that when they built transnational connections with non-state actors there was no barrier to positive coverage. On 30 September an article in Peace News urged readers to lobby the Soviet Peace Committee, Women’s Committee and Council for Tourism in support of the visit.⁹² This targeted approach showed how British peace activists utilised their network to directly pressurise the Soviet government. The mainstream press, however, tended to take the opportunity to criticise the Soviet Union. Whilst WFLOE used their press contacts to forward their own messages of ordinary people shaping the Cold War, the press used that relationship to continue the Cold War of rhetoric.

Where possible WFLOE used the press coverage of the cancellation to direct their preferred narratives towards the British public in the hope of changing perceptions. The Daily Mail repeated the women’s narrative of ‘planning to split into four groups to tour the country to talk to ”ordinary people” about peace’.⁹³ An adjacent double page spread covered the Soviet’s downing of Korean Air flight 007, with the headline ‘These murderous liars—Reagan’. The article, therefore, appeared couched in scepticism about any contacts with the people of the Soviet Union. The implicit nature of this doubtfulness allowed readers to draw their own conclusions. The Guardian’s report paraphrased Pettitt’s objective: ‘the only way that the ordinary people of both countries could learn to live in peace was to start talking to each other’.⁹⁴ By publicising their message about meeting ordinary people WLFOE continued to promote their détente from below in the hope that others would undertake similar trips.

The lobbying of the official Soviet committees had some effect. The Soviets eventually granted visas to most of the women, who travelled in smaller groups visiting different parts of the Soviet Union throughout 1983 and 1984. However, Pettitt was denied a visa and Cutler’s activities were restricted to Moscow and Leningrad. This second series of visits achieved many of the women’s aims of avoiding organised tours, and instead meeting with the GTET and other ordinary people. One objective of these visits was for the women to publicise their experiences through talks and news media once they returned to the UK. The women were, therefore, encouraged to disseminate the message of cross-bloc interactions to more mainstream audiences. They hoped that this publicity would expand the idea of détente from below and opposition to nuclear weapons as an everyday concern.

The publication of D.I.Y. Détente in 1987, a collection of participant accounts of visits to the USSR, edited by Pettitt, helped to spread their message and aimed to inspire future activism.⁹⁵ This book was seen as important across the international activist network with Cathy Fitzpatrick, Research Director of Helsinki Watch, offering encouragement because it would fulfil the need for ‘a handbook on how to travel to the USSR’.⁹⁶ The authors felt that recent improvements in Cold War relations showed the success of their strategy. The contributors were mainly, but not exclusively, women who had participated in visits between 1983 and 1985. Pettitt stressed that the authors became involved because they believed that contact between ordinary people could end the Cold War.⁹⁷ Pettitt’s introduction noted that ‘Gorbachev has consolidated his power and begun his programme of “perestroika”’, and she urged that this made casual contacts with Soviet people more important by warning, ‘The Iron Curtain won’t go away because we wish it away. It will only weaken by being cris-crossed innumerable times, until there are so many holes it has become see-through’.⁹⁸ Even as the Cold War continued Pettitt appeared aware that the Iron Curtain was, as Michael David-Fox refers to it, ‘a semi-permeable membrane’ and seemed determined to use the actions of ordinary citizens to push this permeability past the point of disintegration.⁹⁹

DIY Détente encouraged members of the public to play a leading role in ending the Cold War by meeting Soviet people independently. Pettit explained that she wanted ‘to collect together a group of ordinary, nice, trustworthy women, distinguished only by their concern for the future of our planet’.¹⁰⁰ The book helped them to present themselves as ordinary women driven to act rather than as political activists. Moreover, it was intended as a guide to independent activism.¹⁰¹ Pettitt presented those who made these journeys as doing so because they felt that both sides were in the wrong and that personal contact could change the policy of their respective governments. She was critical of the views created by the Soviet state with ‘slogans everywhere on the theme of peace’, which often echoed the view of many Western activists that ‘Our Soviet bombs are for peace only’’.¹⁰² This criticism of both sides’ claim to be securing peace through nuclear arms situated the book as aiming to disrupt the idea of a divided Cold War world.

A section on the WFLOE visits allowed participants to discuss their experiences. Caroline Westgate, a Greenham veteran, also discussed her encounter in the local media including public speeches, a series broadcast on BBC Radio Newcastle and articles in the local press.¹⁰³ Westgate’s chapter compared her perfunctory conference with the Peace Committee to the ease of talking to the GTET. She even took hope from her contacts with the former, reporting that a Committee member, Sergei Stepanov, had privately responded to mention of GTET by saying, ‘”Perhaps there is something in what they say.”’¹⁰⁴ In later reminiscences Westgate explained that, ‘the line we took was we were going to go to Russia and meet ordinary people’.¹⁰⁵ This trip enabled WFLOE to engage a wider range of British audiences and to present their narrative that effective action for disarmament could be achieved through meetings between ordinary people from either side.

DIY Détente attempted to help visitors go beyond the ‘tourlandzia’ presented to them by the Soviet authorities. Pettitt discusses how visitors usually undertook official tours and only encountered Russians for whom ‘meeting Westerners is part of their job’.¹⁰⁶ She encouraged readers to meet Soviet people outside of this group and suggested strategies such as, ‘skipping some organised group excursions in favour of random wanderings on foot […], eating in public cafeterias instead of always at the hotel’, or using Soviet stores instead of the tourist shops.¹⁰⁷ This passage epitomised Pettitt’s intentions: she encouraged visitors to break away from the officially created ‘tourist gaze’ that was a continuation of the traditional ‘delegation’ visit.¹⁰⁸ Instead the women hoped to make their own encounter with non-communist party members. Chapters on avoiding official tours, dealing with hotel staff, photography, unofficial sightseeing, camping, and trade between people encouraged future visitors to escape the grasp of the Soviet state and advised readers on how to avoid possible consequences such as confiscation or exposure of unprocessed film. The second set of visits organised by Women for Life on Earth allowed the group to bring their ideas about détente from below to local and national audiences throughout Britain.

The trial of Olga Medvedkova

On 8 December 1983 Olga Medvedkova was arrested and charged with assaulting a policeman. Western activists, journalists, and members of GTET believed that the arrest was punishment for Medvedkova’s attendance at WFLOE’s meeting with the Peace Committee. They subsequently attempted to pressurise the Soviets by raising awareness of the state’s treatment of activists. Anne Pettitt’s partner Barry Wade had been in Moscow at the time of the arrest and brought the news to the UK.¹⁰⁹ GTET immediately issued a memorandum appealing for Westerners to help ‘save’ Medvedkova. They asked foreign activists for support including sending ‘letters of protest and also the formal examination of the whole case by independent groups of concerned lawyers’.¹¹⁰ Alongside the activity undertaken as WFLOE, some members, notably Pettitt, played leading roles in a new organisation called UK Trustbuilders which aimed to support GTET. They asserted ‘that only the widest possible contacts at all levels, across the East/West political divide, can right the flawed perspectives that justify our mutual hostility’.¹¹¹ UK Trustbuilders wrote that Medvedkova was arrested because of her appearance at the WFLOE meeting and that she and Oleg Radzinsky were targeted because they represented the ‘artistically-inclined wing and academic/scientific wing; presumably this is to intimidate the two social groups inclined to support the Trust Group’.¹¹² Groups allied to END answered this appeal by extending their regular visits, ensuring the circulation of information among activists and helping to publicise the Soviet group in the British press. GTET believed that this strategy was successful and appealed via END for ‘more personal visits and support from the Western peace movement’.¹¹³

One of the main tactics used to raise awareness of Medvedkova’s plight was to lobby Soviet institutions. WFLOE organised a twenty-four hour vigil at the USSR’s London embassy. They distributed a flyer within material about a Greenham planning meeting.¹¹⁴ The flyer urged campaigners to ‘Demonstrate for Olga Medvedkova’ and discussed her persecution after she ‘accompanied three members of the British peace movement to a meeting with the Soviet Peace Committee Officials’. WFLOE used their network to encourage greater pressure on the Soviet government to stop the suppression of non-official peace campaigners. The vigil, at which Sarah Hipperson, another Greenham activist, enforced an hour-long ‘silence’ drew press coverage. Reports at the time stated that an official made ‘shaky appeals to talk about something … anything … the weather … ’¹¹⁵ The vigil is now remembered by the women as an event which impacted on the Soviet official because he ‘got so bored that he picked up [the appeal of the GTET] and read it without thinking’.¹¹⁶ At the time the Daily Telegraph reported that Hipperson and four other women were initially given a ‘red carpet reception’ when they arrived at the embassy, but claimed that when they refused to leave, the ‘Metropolitan Police Diplomatic Squad […] carried out the women feet first’.¹¹⁷ In undertaking these actions the women focussed more on activism and less on presenting their ordinary women narrative. Their actions allowed them to keep the issue of Medvedkova’s forthcoming trial in the news and ensured that international public opinion became a factor in the Soviets’ treatment of dissidents.

Other supporters reused this tactic and held a second vigil.¹¹⁸ UK Trustbuilders reported that around ‘70–80 people protested outside the Soviet embassy on Sunday 5 February 1984’, and handed in a petition, although contact with officials was negligible because ‘the memory of last week’s successful sit-in [was] still fresh’.¹¹⁹ These protests kept Medvedkova’s forthcoming trial in the mainstream press with a smaller report detailing that the campaigners were protesting about her arrest after ‘she met Greenham Common women in Moscow’.¹²⁰ Other newspapers reported similar protests in Paris.¹²¹ The campaign for Medvedkova ensured that international public pressure was applied directly to Soviet institutions. The protests helped to shape news coverage of the peace movement and ensured that reports of Soviet suppression of ‘dissidents’ now mentioned the support from Western peace campaigners.

Whilst Medvedkova’s arrest would likely have become news, her appearance at WFLOE’s meeting with the Peace Committee meant that many readers had encountered her name previously and were aware of the Group for Trust, increasing her trial’s newsworthiness. As her hearing approached, WFLOE and their associates maintained pressure via the British press, but they had to act dramatically to gain attention as they had done at Greenham Common and in Moscow. A Times article stated that Medvedkova’s arrest was ‘revenge for her appearance alongside a Greenham Common delegation at an encounter with the official Soviet Peace Committee last May’.¹²² Its author Richard Owen had met WFLOE on the flight to Moscow and he outlined the group’s troubled relationship with the Soviets. Owen explained that the Soviets were clamping down on the GTET and that Medvedkova ‘will almost certainly get three years hard labour’. He also suggested that the protests by WFLOE and other Western peace groups had influenced politicians and reported that Margaret Thatcher had responded to a letter written by GTET about the British treatment of protesters. Thatcher had suggested that GTET were wrong to question the arrests of British demonstrators but stated, ‘“I think it is very important that ordinary people in every country should have the opportunity to voice their opinion on the vital issues of peace and war”’. Owen felt these interventions may cause leniency because ‘The Kremlin may also come round to the view that individuals who have the support both of Mrs Thatcher and the women of Greenham Common are better left in peace’. The influence of worldwide public opinion and pressure for leniency was central to the discourse of international Cold War politics.

The pro-GTET campaigners publicised Medvedkova’s plight as the trial approached. The Guardian published a letter from Pettitt in which she humanised the activist. She wrote about her time spent with the Medvedkovs and the Trust Group. She drew comparisons between both movements stating that ‘they don’t want to be martyrs; they want to see their kids grow up, just like we do’.¹²³ Pettitt’s letter did more than familiarise Medvedkova to readers: it pushed the narrative of ordinary people taking action to attempt to resolve the impasse of world leaders.

Not all British peace groups expressed support for GTET. Various parts of the mosaic of peace organisations that proliferated in the UK during the early 1980s supported Moscow’s official viewpoint that the Peace Committee was the only legitimate Soviet peace organisation. Writing for a group called ‘Pensioners for Peace’ Jack Sheppard wrote to the Guardian claiming that his son had captained the aircraft taking the women to Moscow and that they had been invited onto the flight deck where, ‘In my son’s own words: “I don’t know what they did to the Russians, but by God they scared us”’.¹²⁴ Sheppard claimed that groups like the British Soviet Friendship Society and the Quakers were best placed to build relations between Britain and the USSR. He said that Pettitt and WFLOE ‘must realise that their brash behaviour while visiting such a land can do just as much harm as anti-Soviet pronouncements by Western political leaders’. Sheppard’s language was similar to mainstream stereotypes and to that which Moores identifies among groups like Ratepayers Against Greenham Encampments (RAGE), a reactionary protest group, by portraying them as confrontational and ‘brash’.¹²⁵ This gendered language attempted to discredit WFLOE. His letter showed that the peace movement was divided between those who supported the official Soviet organisations and those who wanted to break free from the communist embrace.

Other criticism came from groups claiming to speak for the women’s section of the peace movement. Eileen Bernal & Antoinette Ansaldo from ‘Women for World Disarmament’ stated that the Peace Committee negated the need for GTET. They questioned Pettitt asking,

I wonder whether Ann Pettitt knows of the anti-war event which took place in Moscow on October 1. This was supported by 800,000 people[…] I can’t really believe that Ann and Olga Medvedkova […] would refuse to support such action […] I hope she and Olga will be willing to work with the entire peace movement on this issue.¹²⁶

Whilst the letter lacked Shepperd’s gendered language it presented Pettitt and the Group for Trust in opposition to the rest of the movement. Bernal was a communist who, alongside her husband J. D. Bernal, had been influential in the communist-led World Peace Council during the 1950s.¹²⁷ Her statement echoed similar anonymous letters and photographs sent to Cutler that were designed to demonstrate the size of the official organisation. One such memo stated ‘We trust that you have already heard about the mass anti-war event that took place in Moscow on October 1, and was attended by 800,000 people’.¹²⁸ These letters were part of the Communist-supporting groups’ attempts to assert their leadership over the peace movement. Their public profile provided a justification to those in the mainstream press who depicted all peace campaigners as communist stooges, with nuance limited to a few journalists, often those who had met these campaigners.

WFLOE rallied supporters of the Moscow GTET, aiming to raise its public profile prior to Medvedkova’s trial. But mainstream perceptions of Western peace movements being allied to the Soviets did not necessarily change. The Daily Telegraph presented a homogenised view of the peace movement as supporting the Soviets against GTET, writing that, ‘[m]embers of the group have appealed largely unsuccessfully to Western peace movements including the CND, for positive support’.¹²⁹ The view ignored the transnational campaigning, undertaken by members of WFLOE among others, and continued to present the Western peace organisations as Moscow stooges. This opinion was given legitimacy by the competing positions adopted towards the unofficial Soviet groups by different Western peace organisations; communist-sympathising groups and CND generally depicted Western nuclear weapons as the only serious threat and questioned the motives of Pettitt and Cutler.

At other times the mainstream press did link Medvedkova’s trial to the WFLOE visit, particularly in articles by the journalists who had met Pettitt and Cutler. Nigel Wade reported that ‘Mrs Medvedkov was being punished for embarrassing the authorities last spring when she accompanied a group of Greenham Common “peace women” to a meeting with representatives of the state-run Peace Committee’.¹³⁰ This connection between both groups was further reinforced in the Times.¹³¹ However, the latter minimised the role of the women peace campaigners by mentioning them near the end of the article and placing inverted commas around ‘peace women’, which suggested that their motives were suspect. This framing meant that the acknowledgement of Western peace campaigners support for the Eastern activists and their cross-curtain network was only grudgingly accepted.

Conclusion

On 23 March 1984 Olga Medvedkova was found guilty of assault. Instead of the expected three years jail sentence, however, her punishment was suspended. When Annie Tunnicliffe, another ‘Greenham woman’, visited the group that spring she noted that they were ‘convinced Western intervention had great effect’.¹³² This claim about the effectiveness of public pressure, which has been repeated by a generation of activist-scholars, merits future investigation. The Medvedkovs remained important members of GTET with Western activists regularly visiting them and exchanging information, which helped the broader network of anti-nuclear campaigners in the USSR, until they were given exit visas (as a form of deportation) in September 1986.¹³³ They eventually moved to the USA where Olga worked as a professor of Geography.

Women for Life on Earth expanded their activities outside Britain and formed a transnational network. They worked alongside END and campaigned for similar objectives. They aimed to create a women-led movement that achieved a sense of empowerment and hoped to persuade world leaders to change their defence policies. By working in mixed groups as well as undertaking women-only visits to the USSR, they were able to expand their network. They connected with and supported the emerging unofficial peace groups in Eastern Europe. These groups had shared objectives: that either side must give up its nuclear weapons, thereby enabling mutual support. The network was aided by its loose connections rather than the centralised process under which many traditional groups, such as CND, were perceived to operate. This informal nature of the activist network meant that the WFLOE was able to encourage citizens to become activists, and that the role of ordinary people in ending the cold war became a central focus for them. They hoped to encourage ordinary citizens to undertake a form of Cold War diplomacy to compensate for what they saw as the failings of world leaders.

WFLOE used the notoriety that they had earned as ‘Greenham Women’ to publicise their activities. However, it was only when they drew journalists into their network that they received more positive coverage outside of the specialist peace publications. Reports of their activities were mutually beneficial for both WFLOE and the mainstream British press. The women were able to promote their message that ‘ordinary’ people mixing with each other across the blocs could end the Cold War and the press were able to criticise the Soviet state because of their treatment of the campaigners. GTET itself was able to benefit most from this press coverage. The group believed that the actions of campaigners including WFLOE and the subsequent press coverage made the USSR reconsider the severity of the punishments and other intimidatory activities against their membership.

By confronting the Soviet state and ‘telling it to the Russians’ WFLOE were able to challenge press narratives around peace activism. However, this message upset several areas of the peace movement. Press coverage tended to accept the women as allied to Britain only when they could be used to wage the rhetorical Cold War against the Soviets. Criticising the Soviet Union remained the media’s primary objective. The cross-bloc activism of Women for Life on Earth shows how diverse the transnational peace movement was during the 1980s and how it often worked as a loosely aligned network that agitated for common outcomes and applied pressure to governments in the East as well as the West. The tactic of DIY Détente had some success. WFLOE and other associated groups were able to meet with unofficial activists across the iron curtain and to publicise their activities in several Western countries. They did manage to change some of the representations of the British peace movement in some Western publications, developing friendly relations with some journalists. But this change was limited and ingrained cold war rhetoric and stereotypes were hard to change. Their main success may be in using cross-bloc activism to raise the morale of the Group for Trust and to help them keep their campaign going in the face of state repression.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Karmen Thomas and Ann Pettitt for agreeing to be interviewed; Professor Martin Johnes, Dr Christoph Laucht and Dr Evan Smith for their useful feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Readman, ‘NATO”s Dual-Track Decision”.

2. Becker-Schaum et al. “Introduction”.

3. Evangelista, Unarmed Forces; Cortright, Peace; Wittner, Towards Abolition, 253.

4. Burke, “Transcontinental Movement?

5. Cortright, Peace, 147–9.

6. Nehring & Ziemann, “NATO dual-track decision”, 15.

7. Liddington, Long Road to Greenham; Eschle, “Gender and (Anti)Nuclear Politics”; McDonagh, “Women”s Peace Movement; Eglin “Women and Peace”.

8. Accounts include biographical works such as Hipperson, Greenham; Pettitt, Walking to Greenham; journalistic works including Fairhall, Common Ground; and academic accounts including Feigenbaum, “Written in the Mud” xiii; Jolly, Sisterhood and After; Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy; Recent accounts have questioned the idea of a dominant radical feminist identity among women protesters, see Titcombe, “Women Activists”; Eshle, “Gender and (Anti)Nuclear politics”.

9. Roseneil, “Global Common”, 65–6.

10. Spencer, Russian Quest 25–6; Fairhall, Common Ground, 102–3; Wittner, Against the Bomb, 246, 269.

11. Bess, “Thompson”; Baehr, “Thompson and Disarmament; Wittner, “Détente from Below”.

12. Richard Burton Archive, Swansea University (Herein RBA) C0004/02, Ann Pettitt interview, Apr. 2018.

13. Ann Pettitt, Walking to Greenham.

14. RBA C0004/01, Karmen Thomas, Interview, Feb. 2018; Laucht and Johnes, “Resist and Survive”.

15. Langhammer., “”Ordinary People?”“, 175–195.

16. Neveu “Of Ordinariness”.

17. RBA C0004/01, Karmen Thomas, Interview, Feb. 2018.

18. John Burns, “11 Russians open Antinuclear Drive”, New York Times, 5 June 1982.

19. English., Russia and West.

20. “Group for Trust”, Moscow 8 July 1982, Reprinted in J. Stead & D. Grünberg, END Special Report: Moscow Independent Peace Group (London, 1982), 5–6.

21. J. Stead, “The Peace march and the Independent Peace Group” in Stead & Grünberg, Moscow Independent Peace Group, 12.

22. McDonagh, “Women”s Peace Movement”, 53.

23. RBA C0004/02, Ann Pettitt interview, Apr. 2018.

24. END, “Appeal for Nuclear Disarmament”, in E. P. Thompson and D. Smith (eds.) Protest and Survive (London, 1981 [1980]) 163–5.

25. LSE/END/23/1, E. P. Thompson, “Beyond the Blocs”, END: Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament, xii, 1984, 13.

26. Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 165.

27. Nehring & Ziemann, “NATO dual-track decision” 6–7.

28. Cortright, Peace, 147–9; Bess, “Thompson”“; Baehr, “Thompson and Disarmament; Wittner “Détente from Below”.

29. See “Russian Peace Groups”, The Times, 28 October 1982, 11; “Dr Popov”s Missile Misfires, The Times, 17 November 1982, 10.

30. Thompson, Over our Dead Bodies, 2–3.

31. Pettitt, “Letter to My Neighbour”.

32. Liddington, Long Road to Greenham, 6; Eglin, “Women and Peace”, 228.

33. Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 165.

34. RBA C0004/01, Karmen Thomas, Interview, Feb. 2018.

35. See note above 23.

36. Ibid. 2018.

37. Cf, LSE/END/23/1 J. McCollister, “Affecting the Policy Makers”, END: The Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament, iii, (1983), 27.

38. RBA C0004/01, Karmen Thomas, Interview, Feb. 2018.

39. Pettitt, “The CND horse and cart”, Peace News, 29 October 1982, 7.

40. Sabey, “Disarming the Disarmers”; Chilton, “Nuclear Language, and propaganda, in Aubrey ed. Nukespeak.

41. L. Broadbent “Greenham Common: The Media”s Version”, Peace News, 21 January 1983, 12–13.

42. “Building Trust”, Sanity, 8 September 1983–9.

43. Cf, M. Pentz, “”No Cruise—No SS20”: But are they the Same”, Sanity, 25 April 1983–7; B. Heuser, Nuclear Mentalities, 15.

44. RBA C0004/01, Karmen Thomas, Interview, Feb. 2018.

45. Christopher Dobson, “Has the Kremlin been caught in its own propaganda trap?”, Daily Telegraph, 23 April 1982, 22; Nigel Wade, “11 Russian Citizens launch unofficial anti-nuclear group”, Daily Telegraph, 5 June 1982, 17.

46. See “Russian Peace Groups”, The Times, 28 October 1982, 11; “Dr Popov”s Missile Misfires, The Times, 17 November 1982, 10.; Michael Binyon, “Peace activists get together at East Berlin secret meeting, The Times, 13 May 1983, 7.

47. “Tyranny Begins at Home”, The Times, 17 May 1983, 13.

48. Stead & Grünberg, Moscow Independent Peace Group, 2.

49. See note above 23.

50. Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 185.

51. See note above 23.

52. See, Cornell “Peace in our Times”; Sabey “Disarming the Disarmers”.

53. S Serge Schemann, “Moscow”s Façade on War and Peace Cracks a bit”, New York Times, 29 May 1983, 16; “Kremlin”s Monolithic Party Line is showing a few Cracks”, Arizona Daily Star, 29 May 1983.

54. Wittner, Towards Nuclear Abolition, 268–70.

55. Richard Owen, “Greenham Women arrive in Moscow”, The Times, 20 May 1983, 6.

56. Suterwalla, “From Punk to Hijab, 112–172; see also Wittner, Towards Nuclear Abolition, 137.

57. Hogg, British Nuclear Cultures, 142.

58. RBA C0004/01, Karmen Thomas, Interview, Feb. 2018.

59. RBA C0004/01, Karmen Thomas, Interview, Feb. 2018.

60. Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 231.

61. Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 232.

62. LSE/END/23/1 A. Pettitt, “Peace Women Visit Soviet Union”, END: Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament, v, (1983), 12.

63. Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 56–61.

64. RBA/C0001/04 Karmen Thomas interview, Feb. 2018.

65. “Russians seize Greenham woman”s “Peace” diary”, Daily Mail, 28 May 1983, 8.

66. Richard Owen, “Peace Camp Women Plan Second Visit to Moscow”, The Times, 27 May 1983, 7.

67. Jonathan Steele, “Setback for Peace Women”, Guardian, 28 May 1983, 4.

68. See note above 23.

69. John Miller, “”Moscow”s Lesson in Peace”, Daily Telegraph, 27 May 1983, 21.

70. LSE/END/23/1 “Conversations with Batovrin”, END: The Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament, v, (1983), 10.

71. RBA/C0001/04, Karmen Thomas, interview, Feb. 2018; RBA C0004/02, Ann Pettitt, interview, Apr. 2018; Con Coughlin, “Ranks split over trip to Moscow”, Daily Telegraph, 31 May 1983, 17.

72. “We”ve Been”, Sanity, 15 July 1983.

73. LSE/END/14/2 Memo 30 May 1983.

74. Pettitt, Walking to Greenham, 188–9.

75. Cull., United States Information Agency, 118–9.

76. See “People to People”, Sanity, 27 July 1984.

77. Glamorgan County Archive (Herein GCA) D/D WLE 5/6/E6 “Merseyside Women for Peace: Newsletter no 1”. Emph in original.

78. A. Pettit, “Moscow Bold”, Peace News, 8 July 1983, 9.

79. Nehring & Ziemann, “NATO Dual-track decision”.

80. LSE/END/23/1 Ann Pettitt, “Peace Women Visit Soviet Union”, END: Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament, v, (1983), 11–13.

81. Titcombe, “Rewriting Greenham”s History”, 311.

82. Nicholas Timmins, “Greenham Women plan 17-day visit to Russia”, The Times, 23 August 1983, 2.

83. “Women in “peace” trip to Moscow”, Liverpool Echo, 26 August 1983, 26.

84. Chilton, “Mechanics of Change”, 204.

85. “Back in the USSR”, Sanity, 12 November 1983.

86. See note above 64.

87. RBA 2017/9 uncatalogued, uncatalogued, “Karmen Cutler to Ksenia Proskurnikova, Soviet Women”s Committee”, 5 September 1983.

88. RBA 2017/9 uncatalogued, “Karmen Cutler to Ksenia Proskurnikova “Soviet Women”s Committee”, 5 September 1983.

89. Ibid. 1983.

90. RBA 2017/9 uncatalogued, “Women for Life on Earth USSR Visit Co-ordinating Committee to Grigory Loshkin (Soviet Peace Committee)”, 5 September 1983.

91. Paul Brown, “Women to try for Russian Trip Again”, The Guardian, 6 September 1983, 6.

92. “Back in the USSR”, Peace News, 30 September 1983, 5.

93. “Visa Set-back for “Peace Tour”, Daily Mail, 3 September 1983, 2–3.

94. Brown “Russia Trip”, 6 September 1983.

95. Pettitt, D.I.Y. Détente.

96. LSE/END/14/2, Cathy Fitzpatrick, “Urgent Action Network”, 4 November 1985.

97. Pettitt “Introduction” in her D.I.Y. Détente, 2.

98. Pettitt “Introduction” in her D.I.Y. Détente, 1, 3.

99. David-Fox, “Semipermeable Membrane”, 14–39.

100. Pettitt, “The Russia Trip” in her D.I.Y. Détente, 11.

101. Pettitt, “Introduction” in her D.I.Y. Détente, 1.

102. Ibid., 5.

103. “Peace Mission”, Newcastle Journal, 4 July 1984, 7; “Russian Visit for Peace Duo”, Newcastle Journal, 5 July 1984, 8; “From Russia with Love”, BBC Radio Newcastle, (broadcast date unknown).

104. C. Westgate, “Official and Unofficial Peacemakers”, in Pettitt ed., DIY Détente, 29.

105. British Library C9001/11,084, Caroline Westgate, “Observing the 1980s: Millennium Memory Bank”, https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/Observing-the-1980s/021M-C0900X11084X-0001V0.

106. Pettitt “Introduction” in her D.I.Y. Détente, 4.

107. Pettitt “Introduction” in her D.I.Y. Détente, 4–5.

108. Urry & Larsen, Tourist Gaze.

109. “Moscow Trust-builders Arrested”, Peace News, 6 January 1984, 6.

110. LSE/END/14/2 “Save Olga Medvedkova!”.

111. LSE/END/14/2 U. K. Trustbuilders.

112. LSE/END/14/2 “News from USSR”, UK Trustbuilders, Feb. 1984.

113. LSE/END/23/1 “To Moscow With Love, END: Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament, Issue 9, April/7 May 1984.

114. GCA/DWAW10/48 “Greenham Women Against Cruise Meeting”, London 21 January 1984”.

115. “Soviet Embassy Occupied”, Peace News, 3 February 1984, 4.

116. See note above 23.

117. Charles Laurence, “Peace Camp “sit-in”“, Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1984, 1.

118. “Cold War Victims”, Peace News, 3 February 1984, 7.

119. LSE/END/14/23 UK Trustbuilders “Newsletter 1”, 7 February 1984.

120. “Peace Protest at Soviet Embassy”, Daily Telegraph, 6 February 1984, 2.

121. “Peacenik Appeals for Help”, Guardian, 21 February 1984, 7.

122. Richard Owen, “Why the Kremlin is waging war on the peaceniks”, Times, 27 December 1983, 8.

123. Ann Pettitt, “Letters to the editor”, The Times, 19 December 1983, 12.

124. Jack Sheppard, “Argy-barging into Moscow”, Guardian, 23 December 1983, 10.

125. Moores, “RAGE Against the “obscene”“, 204–227.

126. Eileen Bernal & Antoinette Ansando, “Letters”, Guardian, 23 December 1983, 10.

127. Brown, Bernal, 42–5, 330–341.

128. RBA 2017/9 uncatalogued, “Memo from Soviet Peace Committee” Oct. 1983.

129. John Miller, “KGB harasses Russian peace campaigners”, Daily Telegraph, 15 November 1983, 10.

130. Nigel Wade, “Soviet Peace Group Appeals for Support”, Daily Telegraph, 17 December 1983, 5.

131. Richard Owen, “Plea to UN over activist”s trial”, The Times, 17 December 1983, 6.

132. LSE/END/14/2, Annie Tunnicliffe, “Conversations with Olga and Yuri Medvedkov”.

133. See LSE/END/14/2 “Visit to Yuri and Olga Medvedkov 7.11.85”.