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Sept. 27, 2023
Back From The Brink
Even in this period of perpetual war between men across the world - at no time in history did the contest for world domination reach as dangerous a moment as it did during the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.
Male leaders in what was then The USSR ...
Even in this period of perpetual war between men across the world - at no time in history did the contest for world domination reach as dangerous a moment as it did during the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.
Male leaders in what was then The USSR - and America, were trying to outdo one another in who could amass the greatest, most threatening pile of nuclear weapons capable of mass death and planetary destruction.
In 1980, at the height of the arms race, Ann Pettitt was a young mother and vegetable farmer in rural Wales and found herself in much closer proximity to the nuclear threat than most - and in this episode Ann is going to tell the story of how she became a leader of the largest all-women peace action of all time - that helped to end the Cold War.
Credits
Host: Elle Kamihira
Produced by Elle Kamihira
Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio
Cover Art by Bee Johnson
Music by Beware of Darkness
Ann Pettitt
Founder of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp & Author
In the early 1980s, Ann Pettitt was a young mother and vegetable farmer in rural Wales, when she became aware of the increasing possibility of a nuclear war. At the height of the Cold War this could happen by design, misunderstanding between the paranoid and jittery leaderships of the US and the then USSR, or by accident.
Reluctantly, in 1981 Ann decided that some action was needed to alert the public to this imminent danger and she and three other women organized a 120-mile women’s march to an airbase called Greenham Common where American Cruise missiles were scheduled to be based - turning England into a significant target for Russian missiles.
The women's march was ignored by the government, so Ann and her co-organizers escalated the action by chaining themselves to the razor wire fence surrounding the base. This marked the beginning of the largest peace action ever held, The Greenham Women’s Peace Camp, a women-led occupation that continued for twenty years.
The Greenham women enacted disruptions and sabotage against the base and December, 1983 saw 30,000 women holding hands and encircling the entire nine-mile perimeter of the base. The action, Embrace the Base, was the largest demonstration by women ever, and it sent shock waves around the world. The presence of women living outside an operational nuclear base 24 hours a day, brought a new perspective to the peace movement - giving it leadership and a continuous focus.
The protest, committed to disrupting the exercises of the USAF, was highly effective. Nuclear convoys leaving… Read More