Beyond Greenham Woman?

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the discursive construction of gendered identities in anti-nuclear activism and particularly in peace camps. My starting point is the now substantial academic literature on Cold War women-only peace camps, such as that at Greenham Common. I extend the analysis that emerges from this literature in my research on the mixed-gender, long-standing camp at Faslane naval base in Scotland. I argue that the 1980s saw the articulation in the camp of the figure of the Gender-Equal Peace Activist, displaced in the mid-1990s by Peace Warrior/Earth Goddess identities shaped by radical environmentalism and reinstating hierarchical gender norms. I conclude that gendered identities constructed in and through anti-nuclear activism are even more variable than previously considered; that they shift over time as well as place and are influenced by diverse movements, not solely feminism; and that they gain their political effect not only through the transgression of social norms, but also through discursive linkage with, or disconnection from, political subjectivities in wider society. With such claims, the article aims to re-contextualise Greenham Woman in her particular place and time, and to contribute to a more expansive understanding of the gendering of anti-nuclear activism.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-nuclear
• peace camps
• gender identities
• discourse analysis
• Faslane Peace Camp

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this article were presented at a workshop on “Sex, Gender and Nuclear Weapons” at the University of Leicester, 16 January 2015; a panel on “Gendered Agency in War and Peace: Politics of Security” held at the ISA annual convention in Atlanta, 16–19 March 2016; and a conference on “Social Movements and Protest” held at the University of Brighton, 10–11 October 2016. I am indebted to the organizers of and participants in those events for their encouragement and feedback, particularly Meryl Kenny, Andrew Futter, Maria O’Reilly and Laura McLeod. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers at IFjP for their insightful criticism. My greatest thanks go to those anti-nuclear activists of Faslane Peace Camp, past and present, who generously gave of their time and attention in interviews often stretching for several hours and who have waited a long time to see the results. I hope to have done justice to their views and activities here, even as the particular interpretation of gender identities on site and their implications remains my own. Finally, I am very grateful to Jane Tallents for access to her archive of camp ephemera. Images from the camp newsletter are reproduced here on the ‘copyleft’ principle, with the understanding that the newsletter contents were not owned by their creators and intended to be freely distributed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Catherine Eschle is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Her teaching and research focus on social movements, with a particular interest in feminist theory and practice and their implications for the disciplines of Politics and International Relations. She is the author of Making Feminist Sense of the Global Justice Movement (with Bice Maiguashca, Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), and her more recent publications focus on anti-nuclear activism and protest camps.

ORCID

Catherine Eschle http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4566-9176

Notes

1. See the camps listed at http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/ford/f254.htm.

2. For methodological discussions, see Krasniewicz (1992, 11–20), Titcombe (2013) and Young (1990, 105–125, 134–172).

3. It can be argued that the camps were insufficiently transgressive, or that transgression itself was inadequate as a political strategy (e.g., Cresswell 1996, 145; Young 1990, 32–37). My point remains that there is a remarkable consensus in the literature that the women’s camps achieved their effect, whether that is judged positive or negative, through transgression.

4. The base was built in the early 1960s and expanded in the 1980s. It is home to about 3000 military personnel and their families and hosts 4000 civilian workers, as well as the British Trident submarine nuclear system (Nicholson 2015).

5. There was a much smaller camp at the north gate of the base, 1985–88.

6. “A poll by TNS BMRB for Scottish CND in March 2013 found that 25% of those questioned were uncommitted, but of those who expressed a preference, 81% were opposed to Trident replacement, with only 19% supporting the plan” (Scottish CND 2013). The extent of opposition has been contested in a more recent poll but even that found a minority of 37 percent of the Scottish public supporting the UK’s nuclear weapons “in principle” with 48 percent opposed (Eaton 2013).

7. I have interviewed seven women and eight men: eight were resident during the 1980s, three in the 1990s (one camper’s sojourn spanning the decade) and three since 2011, while two did not camp but are frequent visitors, one since the camp’s inception and the other since 1997. All interviewee names are pseudonyms.

8. Anna, interview 12 December 2014.

9. These subcultural identities may sometimes have been organized spatially, with the camp at the north gate being originally Christian in character and later revived by young anarchist punks, in an echo of the distinct cultural character of the camps at Greenham’s different gates.

10. Shirley, interview 5 December 2014.

11. This should not be taken to mean that gender inequalities were always overcome. As one interviewee conceded, “it was difficult that first year [of my arrival] because … there were only three women in the camp … the blokes were just blokes … they needed to be coaxed along to do things like the washing up” (Toni, interview 11 December 2014). Another camper was more vitriolic: “I’ve wasted enough of my energy on layabouts here … (strange enough, it happens to be men)” (Pauline in Members of the Faslane Peace Camp 1984, 57).

12. “Heterosexuality … should not be thought of as simply a form of sexual expression … Heterosexuality is by definition, a gender relationship, ordering not only sexual life but also domestic and extra-domestic divisions of labour and resources” (Jackson 2006, 107).

13. Nick, interview 27 November 2014.

14. Anna, interview 22 October 2014. This parent-child dynamic continued into 1992–93 with Willa referring to two sets of “mums” and “dads” during her time on camp (interview 8 July 2016).

15. Vince, interview 30 June 2016.

16. Toni, interview 11 December 2014; Vince, interview 30 June 2016.

17. Vince, interview 30 June 2016.

18. Andrew, interview 4 August 2016.

19. Andrew, interview 4 August 2016.

20. According to Andrew, on camp at the time, “we’d always read The Guardian [a left-wing broadsheet]. The Sun newspaper was only used to light the fire” (interview 4 August 2016). Clearly, though, it remained a reference point for the newsletters.

21. Andrew, interview 4 August 2016.

22. Una, interview 25 June 2016.

23. Anna, interview 22 October 2014; Shirley echoed Anna’s sentiments in her interview of 5 December 2014.

24. Andrew, interview 4 August 2016.

25. Anna, interview 12 December 2014.

26. Willa, interview 8 June 2016. Andrew’s activist trajectory took him in the other direction, from Pollok to Faslane.

27. Andrew, interview 4 August 2016; this view was echoed by Willa, interview 8 June 2016.

28. In this vein, Paul Routledge’s analysis of Pollok Free State draws attention to “the ‘macho’ character of some of the ‘Free Staters’, the privileging of men's voices at camp meetings and the fact that gender roles often followed a traditional pattern: the men would chop wood and climb trees, and the women would cook” (Routledge 1997, 368). Such dynamics were eclipsed for Willa by class inequality, however. She declared: “I don’t remember it [gender] being that visible … [or] any tension around that” (interview 8 July 2016).

29. Willa, interview 8 July 2016.

30. Denise, interview 23 October 2014.

31. Fiona, interview 25 October 2014.

32. Quentin, interview 2 December 2014.

33. Nick, interview 27 November 2014.

34. Vince, interview 30 June 2016.

35. Anna, interview 22 October 2014.

36. Andrew, interview 4 August 2016.

37. In relation to the specific case under discussion, it could be argued that Faslane Peace Camp has had an indirect effect on voting or policymaking through the wider peace movement, and a direct effect on the attitudes and behaviors of base workers through the disruption of everyday base routines, but further research (going beyond the focus of this article on the internal dynamics of camper discourse) is required to demonstrate these effects and disentangle their gendered dimensions.