‘Widening the web’ Greenham Common, the CND and the Women’s Movement: the rise and fall of women’s antinuclear activism, 1958-1988.

Abstract

Between 1981 and 1988, the Greenham women would protest against the installation of US cruise missiles at the British airbase RAF Greenham Common. Through using the gender theories of Nancy Fraser and Kimberle Crenshaw in conjunction with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice this thesis reintegrates the women’s antinuclear movement into the broader study of gender and protest movement history. Taking a chronological approach, this thesis focuses on two key aspects of the movement. Firstly, in extending the analysis of the women’s antinuclear movement to the late 1950s, it identifies the movement’s close ties to both the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the wider-women’s movement. Rather than presenting a unified field of protest, this thesis suggests that inter- and intra-movement conflict proved crucial in shaping the practices of the women’s antinuclear movement. Secondly, it explores the impact of the women’s antinuclear movement upon the wider field of protest. The Greenham Common protest should not only be viewed as a product of earlier protests but also as a producer of new forms of protest. Over the course of the protest the Greenham women would develop a spatially and conceptually robust understanding of antinuclear activism that encompassed a wide range of campaign platforms placed within a transnational context. In turn, these practices would be adopted by the CND and incorporated into the organisation’s increasingly professionalised mode of campaigning. By taking a holistic approach towards female activists’ agency this thesis serves as an elaboration on the current understanding of post-war feminism and a reinterpretation of the role of women in the development of the modern protest movement.