“PIGS!” I shout.
The policeman in front stares at me. He says, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t mind doing to one of you lot.”
The convoy’s gone inside the base, and I’m sitting in the open beside a smoking wood fire, getting my hands warm, drinking hot tea that tastes weird because it’s got soya milk in it. There don’t seem to be a lot of women there. I thought there’d be hundreds camping out.
The woman who gave me the tea asks me what my name is.
“I’m Blue,” I say.
She’s old enough to be my mum, and she looks at me like a teacher. Okay, like a kind teacher – but I wish she wouldn’t.
“I’m Jane. You look very young, Blue.”
Oh, no.
“Does it matter how old I am?”
“It’s really tough here. Believe me. When the council comes and evicts us, that’s bad, and vigilantes come…”
How old should I say I am? “I’m sixteen,” I say.
They’re not going to send me away, are they? I can’t go home!
She doesn’t look convinced, but she asks me if I’ve got a survival bag, and when I say no, she gets one for me. It belongs to a woman who’s gone away for a week. They’ll get me my own one later, she says, from a place in Newbury where they keep spares. They can’t keep them here because of the evictions. I’ve got warm clothes though, and food. It’s not all bad that Dad’s made me into a slave and I have to do the shopping.
I’m in a tent with another woman. She’s asleep, I’m not. I’m too wound up. A woman’s sitting outside by the fire, keeping watch. There’s a collie dog, too, a girl dog (of course), but she’s not friendly. I hope she’d bark, though, if anyone came.
Jane said sometimes drunks come and pee into the tents. That’s disgusting. I went to pee in the bushes; that was embarrassing, and the women made jokes about peeing on a Mod Plod, that’s Ministry of Defence police. Now I think about the police kicking that woman and saying there’s nothing they’d mind doing to one of us. Why? Why is it so awful not to want nuclear war?
Mum was against the cruise missiles. One of the last things she wrote was a letter to our MP about them. No, I tell myself. Don’t think about her.
I creep out of the tent to sit with the woman who’s on watch. I take my Gore-Tex jacket to sit in, because it’s really cold.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“A year.’ She’s not that much older than me, sixteen or seventeen, maybe? She’s short and solid and she’s got a lovely friendly grin. She’s called Kate.
I stare into the fire, seeing the white-hot wood falling apart. If a nuclear bomb falls, it’ll vaporise the place it lands – Ground Zero – but further out there’ll be a zone where everything just bursts into flames, and nobody will be able to put them out. Partly because they’ll be on fire too. The mattress-shelters won’t help anyone. The lucky people still further out get to die of radiation sickness.
She makes us more tea in a kettle that’s covered in thick tarry stuff from the fire.
“What do you do here, at the peace camp?”
“Well, partly we’re just here so people can’t ignore what’s behind that fence. But some of us break into the base. Spray-paint. Get arrested. Go to court and argue that preparing for nuclear war is a crime.”
That sounds scary. “How do you do that?”
“The law says it’s okay to commit a crime, if it’s to stop a greater crime happening. Anyway, you don’t have to get arrested unless you want to. Then, when they take the convoy down to Salisbury Plain, we track it.”
“What exactly do they do there?”
“They practise for nuclear war, when they’d disperse into the countryside. And they do survival exercises – but they’re not as good at that as we are.” She grins. “They have lovely portaloos down there to survive with.”
I say, “It’s all insane, isn’t it?”
“Strategically,” she goes on, “our cruise missiles fly so low, they could hit Moscow and the Russian early warning system wouldn’t spot them. So NATO could launch a strike on Russia and hope to win. But it’d be a gamble. Chances are, the Russians would launch a counter-attack and we’d be cooked. You’re right, it is insane. It’s all those men in charge, they think violence is the only thing that works. And Mrs Thatcher – but she’s just like a man anyway.”
I say, “And people just carry on with their lives, as if nothing was wrong! Like my friend’s mum, getting excited about her new en-suite shower room – what does that matter when maybe the whole world’s going to be wiped out?”
Kate grins. “Yeah, but showers are a great thing when you live out here. We’re allowed to go to the Quaker meeting house in Newbury and use their shower room, it’s bliss.”
“I’ve been so scared,” I say to Kate. Suddenly, I’m crying again. “I mean, all the time, day and night. It won’t leave me alone.”
She puts her arm round me. “I know. But listen, it feels better when you’re doing something about it.”
Kate tells me what to do if there’s an eviction. I have to grab my stuff and hold it, or put it into the van. Someone designed the tents so you can pick them up and hold them over your arm. Then the bailiffs, who do the evictions, can’t touch them. It sounds scary, but cool.
I sit up with her till morning, when she makes porridge for us both on the fire.
“You need a lot of hot things out here.”
She’s right. It’s lovely to feel the porridge going down.
Then I go to sleep and don’t wake up till four in the afternoon. There’s a Mum-age woman from Reading who’s brought a pot of vegan soup and some vegan chocolate cake. When she sees me, she gives me that ‘why aren’t you at school’ look.
Like my year tutor, last autumn.
“You’re having a lot of days off ill. Is everything all right at home? How’s your mother?”
“She’s okay,” I mumbled.
She wasn’t. She had really bad MS and she couldn’t speak any longer and nobody except me could guess what she wanted. I’d been looking after her all summer and how could I just go back to school and leave her? So I truanted and forged sick notes. I’m so glad I did. Dad didn’t care enough to stop working and help Mum. And one day she just died, suddenly, lying on the bed. Her heart gave out, the doctor said.
I hope the woman with the soup – she’s called Lindsey – won’t ask me how old I am. What’s the point of school anyway, if there’s going to be a nuclear war?
Kate’s saying: ‘I’ll put on too much weight if people keep bringing us goodies, then I won’t be able to run away from the Mod Plods.’
Everyone laughs.
“How can you make jokes?” I ask them.
“Laughing stops you going mad,” says a fair-haired, older woman called Sue.
They tell me stories about going in the base and spray-painting and it sounds really exciting. Sue says one night she got fed up with painting all the right things, like WOMEN FOR PEACE, and she just did NERDY NERDY NOO NOO.
I have to laugh, and then I see that it does make things feel better.
I ask why it’s all women.
“There were men, at the start,” Sue says, “but they wanted to take over. This began as a women’s action, and we thought it ought to stay that way. And it shows how much we can do – we don’t need men to help us.”
I think of Dad – he’d be expecting the women to wait on him. I’m glad there aren’t any men. “I’ve got this banner,” I say.
I’ve made it out of an old bed sheet, with string ties.
“Can I put it up somewhere?”
“Why not?” Kate says. I tie it to a tree near the fire. It says PLEASE CAN I HAVE A LIFE?
The women think it’s cool.
Lindsey keeps looking at me, but I’ve got a bigger problem than her suspicious face. The vegan soup has made me need the toilet.
They’ve shown me where it is, and I don’t want to go there. It’ll stink, and what if I
fell in?
Yeah, but what else can I do?
I could go to the base and ask to use one of their nice clean American toilets.
As if.
I use the toilet-pit. I never realised fighting nuclear weapons would mean I had to crouch over a hole in the ground full of other women’s poo and recycled toilet paper. I know they dig a new one every day or so; that doesn’t make it any better.
It’s night-time, a day later. I’m eating baked beans that I brought with me. The fire smokes so much no one will notice if I fart. I’m pickled in smoke by now; it’s all through me, in my nose, my hair, my eyes.
I quite like it, actually.
Kate pulls something out of her pocket – a neat little pair of bolt-cutters. She’s going into the base.
Lorna and a Dutch woman called Anneka are getting up. I get up too and whisper to Kate, “Can I watch you go in?”
She’s not sure, then she says, “Okay, but stay outside. You don’t know what to do if you’re arrested.”
We walk along a path through the woods, and then we get to a bit of the fence that’s like patchwork, it’s been cut and mended so many times. Kate gets to work with the bolt-cutters; she’s an expert, and soon there’s a nice opening in the fence. They slide through it. Anneka’s got a rolled-up thing under her elbow. I wonder what it is?
Only, I’m supposed to stay outside.
I never said I would, though. And they haven’t exactly shut the fence behind them!
I push through the slit. Where have the others gone? I’m scared for a moment, but then I manage to spot one of them, a dark figure against the glare of lights from inside the base.
I go as fast and as quietly as I can, keeping behind them so they won’t see me and send me back. There’s a kind of bald strip along by the fence, but after that there are a lot of bushes so I can duck down and keep out of sight. My heart’s pounding.
I see mounds against the sky, and another fence round them. Rolls of barbed wire on top of the fence. Then Kate looks round and stands still. I run towards them.
“It’s me. Blue.”
“I knew it was you. You weren’t meant to come in! Oh well.”
So I can go along with them. We reach the fence.
“We’ve got to be quick,” Kate says. “Those are the silos, where they keep the missiles.”
Anneka’s unrolling her bundle. It’s a banner, like the one I made. It says BREAK THE NUCLEAR CHAIN.
Now I’m helping to tie it to the fence – that’s hard because it’s freezing again and my fingers are clumsy. But I feel more alive than I’ve ever done, even though my heart’s pounding. I’m doing something to fight back at last.
“Now what?” I ask.
“We stay and wait to be arrested,” Lorna says. “If nobody arrives, we sing. You’ve got to go back.”
I want to stay with them. “I don’t know the way.”
“I’ll take you,” says Kate.
Someone’s coming.
“Mod Plods,” Kate says. “Run!”
I remember how the police kicked the woman when the convoy came in and I’m so scared I just take off. We’re running from them, dodging the bushes – then I hear a heavy body hitting something twiggy and a lot of swearing.
“He’s fallen into a gorse bush.” Kate’s laughing, though she’s out of breath.
“There’s another one coming – listen.”
More running footsteps.
“This way,’ she says. “I’ve got a hiding place…”
There are three gorse bushes that have grown round, almost in a circle. We push past the prickles and crouch down, getting our breath back.
The Mod Plods are running round, shouting, then I hear them going away again.
“Is that it?” I say to Kate. “I thought they’d come with dogs and guns.”
“No – though you’d be shot if you went into the silo area. That’s because we once danced on top of them and they don’t want us back.”
She doesn’t talk for a while, then she says, “How old are you, really, Blue?”
I don’t know why, I can’t pretend any more. “Fourteen. Just.”
“I thought you were. Why did you leave home? Apart from the nuclear stuff.”
I don’t answer, but she’s waiting. Well, she’s not a teacher.
“My mum died of MS in October and my dad – he just kept working and let me do all the looking after her. I was glad to, but now he thinks it’s still okay for me to do all the shopping and cooking, and clean the house – I’m just his servant. He doesn’t care about me any more, he hardly talks to me.”
“Does he know where you are now?”
“No, he’s no idea.”
“He’ll have the police looking for you.”
I don’t want to think that.
“Listen,” Kate says. “I was brought up in a children’s home. When I was sixteen they chucked me out, gave me a flat and left me to look after myself.”
“What?”
“That’s what happens to care kids. But you’ve got someone at home.”
“No! I told you—”
“Have you told him how you feel?”
No, I realise, I haven’t. I’ve just thought he ought to know how I felt.
“You’re both grieving,” she said, “and maybe he hasn’t realised. And you need to go back and get your education.”
“There’s no point! Not if we’re all going to get nuked.”
“What did you put on your banner? Please can I have a life? You can’t give up on life, or they’ll have won. You’ve got to talk to your dad, tell him how you feel.”
“Maybe he won’t listen.”
“Is there anyone who might help you talk to him?”
“There’s my aunt Ruth. I like her.”
“Ask her, then.”
It’s uncomfortable, and not just because of the gorse prickles, but I am beginning to see things differently.
“He’s got to take charge of the house, and show you he loves you. I bet he does.”
“He used to be nice. Before… before Mum—”
Then I’m crying, and she’s holding me, and patting my back.
“Okay,” I say at last.
“I know you’ve had a tough time,” she says, “but you’re lucky to have a dad. I had to be taken away from mine – don’t ask why.”
So I don’t, but I give her a hug.
We’re squeezing out through the slit in the fence. I say, “I so wanted to be a Greenham woman.”
“You are a Greenham woman. You’ve been here, you’ve watched the convoy come in. You’ve done an action at the silos – that’s no picnic. Changing things with your dad is part of being a Greenham woman. It’s not just about nuclear weapons, it’s about women standing up for all the things that really matter. And you can come back here, for demonstrations.”
I have a thought. “I could start a CND group at school. I can think of a few kids who’d join.”
The next morning, I go to a Greenham woman’s house in Newbury – Lynette, she’s called. She’s kind, but I’m so scared.
I tell myself I’ve looked nuclear weapons in the face, so I can do this.
I ring my home number. Dad answers and his voice is all shaky, as if he’s been crying.
I take a deep breath.
“Hello, Dad,” I say.
Why I Chose the Greenham
Common Women
I was deeply involved in campaigning against nuclear weapons in the 1980s. I belonged to a local peace group, but I also used to go to Greenham to demonstrate against the convoy when it came in. I regularly went in the daytime, took food to the women and fetched them wood with my car. Nuclear war did seem to be very likely in those days; it was terrifying. But going to Greenham was about more than nuclear weapons – it changed my ideas about who I was, what I could do as a woman, and what I dared think. This story is set around 1986–7, which was when I had most to do with the peace camp.
LESLIE WILSON
The Greenham Common Women Facts
Between 1949 and 1991, the Warsaw Pact countries (the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries under its domination) and the Western North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) confronted each other with nuclear weapons. At first, it was hoped that a nuclear war would be so devastating that nobody would dare start one. This was called Mutual Assured Destruction. But in the early 1980s, the introduction of American cruise missiles and Soviet SS20s seemed to make it possible to fight what was called a ‘limited’ nuclear war. Exactly what that meant was always unclear, but it seemed to many that it would involve millions of dead, and might well escalate into a worldwide nuclear holocaust.
The population of the UK were issued with leaflets suggesting that they could survive a nuclear attack by going under the stairs, protected by a couple of doors and mattresses. This sparked a wave of protest from all over the country. The women’s peace camp at Greenham Common (one of the cruise missile bases) was part of this protest. The camp lasted from 1981 until 1993, and the women there survived brutal evictions and vigilante action, inspiring campaigners everywhere.
About The History Girls
The History Girls are a group of bestselling, award-winning authors of historical fiction. Some of the authors write for young adults, some for fully fledged adults and some for younger readers.
Among them, The History Girls’ books cover every historical period from the Stone Age to World War II. Geographically, their novels will take readers from Trondheim to Troy, or the Caribbean to the Wild West, via Venice, Victorian England and Ancient Rome.
The History Girls blog was started by Mary Hoffman in 2011 and is a place where the authors share their thoughts on writing, research, reviews, and all aspects of their work.
the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk
About the
Authors
PENNY DOLAN
Penny Dolan works as a children’s writer and storyteller, visiting children in schools, libraries and museums. She writes picture books and longer stories for children and has always been very interested in legends and history. She has studied drama and is currently working on another Victorian story. Like her most recent book, A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E, the new novel is partly set in the whirling backstage life of the fictional Albion Theatre. MOUSE was shortlisted for the Stockton Children’s Book of the Year, the West Sussex Book Award and the Young Quills Award for Historical Fiction.