The press
Girl talk
Paul Johnson
Tt is a matter of opinion whether Newbury
District Council did the right thing in getting a High Court judge, Mr Justice Croom-Johnson, to shift the Greenham protest women. It seemed, wrote the Guar- dian, 'a heavy-handed and inept response to a legitimate political protest'. The Sun- day Mirror condemned the judge's decision to hear the case in chambers: 'He should have allowed the women to defend themselves publicly. With respect, M'lud, you boobed'. 'In fact', the Guardian admit- ted, 'the judge was not acting unusually. Most applications for such injunctions are heard in chambers'. In any case, the women simply shifted their site a few yards onto Ministry land, so presumably further legal action will be needed. It is argued that other councils, such as Brighton, have dealt much more sympathetically with camping pro- testers, and as a result deprived them of the publicity they crave.
On the other hand, the Greenham women have been there 18 months, and I can well understand that many locals loathe the sight of them and are putting pressure on the council to act. A lot depends, of course, on how many campers there are. The Guardian reported that, in last Wednesday's case, proceedings were against 21 women. Six, it said, were absent, 'at demonstrations in Brussels and Sicily' no shortage of travelling cash, I see — and the others left the court in protest, though `counsel representing two of them, Mandy Bush and Shu Shu Al-Sabbagh, remained to put the case'. Saturday's Daily Telegraph referred to 'the 140-or-so campers'. Repor- ting the second case, the Guardian noted: 'Originally there were 56 defendants to the possession order and another 400 applied to be joined in the action. In the event, only 11 of the original 56 turned up and 102 of the rest'.
It seems there is coming and going among the women all the time. The Evening Stan- dard reported the return of 'veteran peace campaigner Gillian Booth'. As she 'tucked into a breakfast of muesli', Ms Booth, `barefoot and wearing a Mexican-style pon- cho', said: 'I was worried as I returned to the peace camp last night in a taxi. But as we drove along the road and I saw the lights of the camp-fire it felt wonderful to be back'. Kate Wharton, who spent four days camping there for the Mail on Sunday, noted 'the first surprise was how small the camp is with its steady nucleus of no more than 25 people'. She missed 'the hundreds I had expected from sympathetic TV coverage. The crowds, I was told, come for special demonstrations only'.
Kate Wharton gave a not unsympathetic but depressing account of the camp. The fire was 'wretchedly small ... There is no place to wash except in the bushes. Two open Elsans serve other needs'. However, `Greenham has plenty of money. I noticed one woman with a stack of cheques and cash'. Lisa, 'prettier and softer than some of the very butch girls' had a job in Lon- don. But most were evasive about jobs: `When asked they usually say "nothing" or "I work for peace", which means drawing the dole or social security'. One 'crophead- ed 18-year-old' said that her parents 'would kill her if they knew where she was'. Another was 'just sixteen and she's left both school and home'. A third had had a row with her husband: 'I drank a whole bottle of vodka and decided to come here. I'll stay a couple of days — that'll teach him'. Kate Wharton recorded an incident or two: 'A dark-haired, highly attractive girl suddenly leans forward and kisses a companion passionately on the lips. A "joint" is passed'. Another girl 'has a hysterical outburst against Margaret That- cher and America'.
In another revealing piece in the Observer, Michael Davie, talking to Greenham women at the Law Courts, found one with a drawing of a snake, salt, herbs and nettles, who declared: 'We're go-
'Oh, look, a streaker.'
ing to heal this building'. Another told him that 'the snake, or serpent, was a symbol of female wisdom'. When he protested that `the serpent had done an equally bad turn to Adam and Eve', she replied that he had misunderstood: 'That particular Garden of Eden serpent marked the beginning of male' dominated religion; serpents in general, and indeed dragons, though represented as bad, in fact represented matriarchal society'. A third woman was writing a song, 'We coil and spring, we grow and sing, we dance with the tree of life'. It included the line: `wimmin have reclaimed the earth'. WhY the spelling of `wimmin', Davie asked, and was told, 'You ought to be able to work that out for yourself ... We want to spell women in a way that does not spell men'• Davie, in his piece, argued that `Greenham women have already had quite a success, thanks largely to the Newbury Council'. The polls showed that there had been a big swing against cruise between 1981 and ,1983: 'The likely cause of this relatively large shift in public opinion Masi, have something to do with the high level of the press coverage given to the peace move- ment which concentrates attention on the cruise missiles rather than Trident'. This may well be so. What amazes me is the ap- parent failure of the Government to get it across to the public that the cruise missiles are to be set up merely in response to devastating Soviet theatre weapons, many of which are already in place and which are being added to as fast as Mr Andropov knows how. Last Thursday's Daily Telegraph, reporting the press conference held by Caspar Weinberger, US Defence Secretary, in Washington, quoted him as saying that Russia now has as many as 351 SS-20s deployed: they could reach Western Europe, China, the Middle East and South Asia. Each has three warheads and 250 are already targeted on Europe — presumably, Greenham and its women. It is true that the British government, somewhat belatedly, is now trying to put the facts before the public. In an article in the Sun- day Times, Michael Heseltine pointed out that the Americans were putting in the cruise missiles at the request of the Euro- peans, precisely to deter a threat from the SS-20s already there. 'Even if the Nato Cruise and Pershing II systems have to be deployed in full, Nato would have only 572 warheads compared with over 1,000 already deployed by the Soviets'. Those sections of the press which want to tell British people the truth should make this point again and again. It explains why the pro-Soviet element within the `Peace movement', which is now very powerful, has done everything it can, usually sae_ cessfully, to censor any mention of the, SS-20s in 'peace' propaganda. But oi course a lot of those who belong to the movement want to be duped. Kate Wharton quoted one of the Greenham women as in, sisting that 'Russia has no intention of bar, ming Europe', adding: 'Look Afghanistan'. As Kate Wharton eon mented: 'How does one answer that?'
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