Capitol Ideas / The Lovelies of Greenham Common
Bethell, Tom
: C A P I T O L I D E A S ~., THE LOVELIES OF GREENHAM COMMON Atone point in Richard Attenborough's interesting and thoughtprovoking film, Gandhi is shown using the British-imposed system of...
...We...
...But we did pray, and our spirituality will not be defeated by such gross tactics...
...When they arrived they felt it was abit of an anti-climax so they just decided, on the spur of the moment, to stay...
...military in Britain...
...Communism and capitalism are both concerned with living ones' everyday lives...
...during the intermission, before I bring on my sister for Act Il...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S ~., THE LOVELIES OF GREENHAM COMMON Atone point in Richard Attenborough's interesting and thoughtprovoking film, Gandhi is shown using the British-imposed system of justice in order to get rid of the British: a matter of due process, his being emboldened by the certainty that the rule book would be applied in his as in any other case...
...I recently wrote and asked her to tell me about her participation in the weird "women's demonstration" at Greenham Common, England...
...I wish I was brave enough to leave my family...
...The Peace movement in Europe is strong...
...Other people used baby clothes and children's toys...
...My first visit was in Feb 1982 and the women had been there since the previous December...
...Since then more women have joined them and they have a rota system which allows them to return to their homes every two weeks or so to recuperate...
...Newbury Council has forcibly removed their tents and caravans and they are now existing under plastic sheeting...
...She wrote as follows: I felt unsure at first that excluding men from the Peace Demonstration was right but then I realised that we weren't so much excluding men as getting together as women...
...I attended a religious service at the "Christian Gate," which was one of the most desolate experiences I have ever had...
...I have never been in circumstances so unconducive to prayer...
...This initiative by a group of women had obviously caught the imagination of the world, and had already been a unifying force between apparently irreconcilable economic ideologies...
...We need unilateral initiatives by people who have the courage of their convictions...
...Andrews University, she is definitely old enough, and sufficiently conversant with current events, to have heard of totali tarianism...
...I forgot to bring anything but looking through my purse I found a slip of paper with the by Tom Bethell measurements and names of my three sons...
...It occurred to me that this, rather than his alleged saintliness, was the point worth emphasizing about Gandhi: his willingness to exploit gentlemanly rules in order to get rid of the gentlemen...
...Women are not yet used to these feelings...
...Whilst we prayed for Peace a military personnel carrier with its engine running presented a really sinister aspect to the scene...
...Along with her reply came a letter from a fellow-demonstrator named Eileen, viho wrote as follows: The demonstration on Dec 12th was the third time I had been to the camp...
...At Greenham we felt great strength, unity, and purpose...
...But I don't think she believes that such a thing really exists...
...You can't impose any economic laws on a pile of radioactive rubble...
...That hideous fence was Humanised by us...
...It is rather his naivete that one finds disturbing...
...Were Gandhi to break the law, why, he would be granted a certain status, procedure would be followed, rights would be observed, lawyers would be on hand-and of course the press would be there to tell the world if due process was violated...
...We covered the whole nine miles of the perimeter with personal items which meant a great deal to us...
...It was rather crowded but I did overhear two conversations, one between a Peace Person and a journalist from Bulgaria and one between a Peace Person and a journalist from Japan...
...We had begun the process of breaking down the barriers which isolate and separate us...
...We were a strange mixture-mothers, lesbians, grannies, feminists, Catholics, Quakers, and, yes, probably a few Communists but I stress the word few...
...The third visit was the wonderful demonstration of love and Solidarity by 30,000 people, mainly women, on Dec 12th...
...As we know he succeeded beautifully, and we can only regret that the Hindus and Muslims, who fell to murdering one another by the millions after the gentlemen had left, proved to be somewhat less well behaved than their predecessors...
...It was wonderful to be with women like myself, horrified by nuclear weapons, who until recently had felt too powerless and isolated to take any action against them...
...I raise the point because I have once again heard from my incorrigible Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...I don't see America as a greater threat to World Peace than the Soviet Union...
...It is after all Russian bombs which are targeted on Britain...
...We are not so naive as to think that so-called multilateral talks will induce either sides to reduce their arsenals by so much as one bullet...
...They had marched from Cardiff with their children as a protest against the siting of Cruise missiles...
...Orwell wrote in 1949, adding that "these and kindred questions need discussion, and need it urgently, in the few years left to us before somebody presses the button and the rockets begin to fly...
...The stark perimeter fence, with its cold metal and barbed wire, represented everything evil and unremitting about Humanity...
...The day I went to the camp there were two other coach-loads of Peace activists who had also come to visit the women...
...It is not that Gandhi's nonviolent tactics are unworkable, it is that they work only against people decent enough to permit a system that can be turned against them...
...My second visit in March was organized as a festival with different attractions staged at each of the eight gates to the base...
...Such benign regimes are no doubt uncommon in history, with the likelihood of becoming even less common as every new Gandhi arises in our midst...
...We have people of great-courage on our side, people like Helen Johns, who with other women at Greenham Common have given up the happiness and security of family life...
...What I do fear with my whole being is the military threat on both sides...
...4 sister who, undeterred by an earlier column in this space drawing atten tion to her views, has begun to behave in Gandhi-like fashion with respect to the U.S...
...The conditions they are living in are atrocious...
...We know we are morally right and that it is inevitable that public opinion will grow more and more supportive...
...Born shortly after World War II, and educated at St...
...Perhaps the reader would like to go and get a drink (may I suggest a double...
...Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment...
...The military mind which divides the World into East and West and talks about "territory" and "power blocs" is infinitely more threatening than any ideology...
...That was why there was something different about Greenham-a feeling of excitement and exhilaration, the start of something important...
...I imagine what I felt was comparable to what the Jews must have felt when they were incarcerated in the concentration camps...
...I had used it when I was buying their school clothes a few weeks earlier, so my contribution was really apt...
...As George Orwell asked, did Gandhi even begin to understand the totalitarian mind...
...Oh yes, he had the right, I know...
Vol. 16 • April 1983 • No. 4
