PEACE WOMEN AT WAR
Stephen Robinson reports from
Molesworth, where extreme feminists are attacking peace campers
THE Eirene All Faiths Peace Chapel once occupied a central position in the mytho- logy of British opposition to American weapon installations. Over the past five years the several hundred peace campers who have come to Molesworth in Cam- bridgeshire to protest at the deployment of cruise missiles at the US airforce base helped build the chapel. In April this year, on the same night that American planes bombed Tripoli, the Ministry of Defence demolished the chapel. To commemorate what the campers thought of as an act of gratuitous vandalism, a wooden sign- board was erected which remembered the spirit of that chapel in all due solemnity. Last week, when I visited the peace camp, someone had scrawled in bright blue paint 'RAPE' across the board. A few yards along 'Peace Lane', which runs incongruously along the wire perimeter fence surrounding the camp, there stands an unoccupied caravan belonging to Christian peace workers. The caravan bears the legend, emblazoned in bright blue aerosol paint, Wimmin are angry'. Just a few yards away the 'Peace Garden' has been similarly desecrated with spray- painted graffiti. These are indeed difficult times for the handful of peace campers still living out- side the two US cruise missile bases at Greenham Common in Berkshire and Molesworth. At the beginning of last year, over 200 people were camped outside Molesworth base alone. Today, only two permanent campers remain there, and they are physically frightened. Apart from the dispiriting vandalism, they live in daily fear of the destruction of the primitive shelters under which they live. Three times in the past six weeks their makeshift tent has been attacked and dismantled. The attacks have been carried out not by right-wing vigilante groups, or drunken American servicemen, but by groups of well-drilled and highly organised feminist fanatics.
Huddled under the plastic sheeting in the pungent atmosphere of the only re- maining communal shelter (or 'bender' as it is known to peace camp veterans), the two remaining campers related the back- ground to the extraordinary violence at the peace camp. The groups of women now attacking the peace camp claim there have been three rapes at the peace camp over the past 18 months. Of these, only one was reported to the police, and then only three weeks after the attack allegedly took place. A man was interviewed by the police, but charges are not to be pressed. The police know nothing of the other two alleged rapes; the two remaining peace campers suspect they did not actually happen, and that the allegations were made simply to support an argument which is splitting the British and European peace movements.
The presence of men at the Molesworth peace camp has long irritated arch-feminist peace campaigners who wish to emulate the Greenham Common ‘wimmin only' regime. For several months now, debate has raged within the feminist and peace press. Peace News For Nonviolent Revolu- tion, which is published by an outfit called the Peace Collective, has devoted many columns to the issue in recent weeks.
One article argues the case as follows: 'Male violence against women and male violence in war are intimately linked ex- pressions of the patriarchal system. Rape and other violence against women more- over inflict casualties on a scale fully comparable with that of war. It is therefore no longer possible for those — particularly those men — who seriously claim to be pacifists or peace activists to do so without condemning and acting to end the war against women.' In view of the recent alleged incidents, the writer concludes that 'to keep Molesworth open in the present circumstances is openly to condone rape; we now call for Molesworth Peace Camp to be closed down.'
But the two remaining campers, Pippa Visick and Gary Nowell, a jovial CND worker from Manchester, refuse absolutely to budge. They have both endured 18 months and two winters under plastic sheeting, and they do not intend to go without a fight, whatever the wimmin's group may throw at them. In the most recent attack against their shelter, their clothes were scattered around the area, and an attempt was made to burn down the tent. The two now keep containers of water inside in case the women repeat the tactics while they are asleep. A large but absurdly good-natured dog is tethered to the front of the tent as the peace campers' ultimate deterrent force.
What really concerns Visick and Nowell is that it is so dangerous to leave the camp unattended that they fear they will soon be unable to travel to town to pick up their social security payments. 'When the police tear down your shelter in the middle of the night,' Nowell confided, 'and the Ministry of Defence try to evict you, well that strengthens your resolve. But when it's done by people you thought were on your own side, it can all get terribly depressing.'
But most quaintly of all, Visick and Nowell have been forced to appeal to the military police for assistance. They have agreed to alert the Cambridgeshire Consta- bulary if they spot anything suspicious through the razor-wire perimeter fence. 'Ideologically speaking, of course, asking the police for protection does indeed raise certain problems, but you've got to protect your own property, haven't you?' Nowell added.
The leaders of the feminist faction make no apologies for their actions. A woman I tracked down to an office in a Cambridge back street who identified herself only as Marjorie explained: 'We've run anti-sexist workshops, we've held non-violent discus- sion sessions, but still we cannot convince men they are the central problem.' She said she would rather have no camp at all than one at which a woman feels unsafe.
On the other side of the perimeter wire a major construction programme is under way. In recent months the rate of work has increased noticeably, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament believes the Americans could be trying to complete deployment of cruise before the next general election. Work on the vast con- crete silos which will contain the warheads is far advanced; the damage to the Cam- bridgeshire countryside is appalling. And there would not appear to be much that the two remaining residents of Peace Lane can do to stop it.
Previous page
