Rebel Britannia

26th October 1927:

This doesn't sound like the CV of a rebel: a devoutly Catholic magistrate, a middle-aged midwife, a mother of five. But in 1983, in her mid-50s, Sarah Hipperson gave up her respectable life to become one of the principle activists at Greenham Common women's camp in Berkshire, taking part in dfirect action to prevent the siting of Cruise missiles there.

As a result, she was sent to prison 22 times.

She could have avoided many of those jailings if she'd agreed to pay a fine instead, but she refused to do so on the grounds that the nuclear war base was illegal, and therefore under English law she was not guilty of any crime.

In the early 1980s, the cold war between NATO (founded 1949) and the Warsaw Pact (founded 1955) was close to turning into a nuclear war. The UK's main role in all this was to provide a site for the USA's missiles aimed at targets in Europe. In 1980 it was announced that 96 nuclear missiles would be installed at Grenham Common.

As part of a growing, worldwide anti-war movement, a group from Wales, called Women For Life on Earth, travelled to Greenham on 5th September 1981 to deliver a letter to the base commander expressing their fear for "the future of all our children and for the future of the living world." The commander, rather pathetically, refused to come to the gate to debate the matter with the women, and so they refused to leave.

They were still there 19 years later.

Over the months, news of what became known as the "women's peace camp" outside the gates of the missile base spread around the world and the controversy over Cruise became one of the main political issues of the 1980s. Women from many countries travelled to Greenham to join the protest, and to physically impede the work of the USAF and the RAF by such actions as damaging wire fences and obstructing vehicles with their bodies.

Sarah Hipperson, born in Glasgow on 26th October 1927, had a tough childhood, including a period in care, with limited education. In her teens she became a midwife and district nurse in Govan; at one point, keen to see the world, she applied to join the army as a nurse, but was turned down on health grounds. Instead, she emigrated to Canada for 16 years where she married and had her children. By 1970, she had settled in England.

Her growing involvement in Catholic peace campaigns led to her decision to join the Greenham camp. She was frustrated by her church's ambiguity on the moral question of nuclear weapons, which, as far as she was concerned, were a crime against man and God. So she took the train to Newbury, walked five miles in the dark to the camp, and stayed there for the next 17 years.

"Camp" was a polite way of putting it; the sleeping quarters at first consisted of plastic bags on the ground. There was no running water, electricity or phones, and Hipperson later admitted "I thought I maybe had been a bit rash," though in the end, she told later interviewers, "It was the most wonderful experience of my life."

During special days of protest at the camp, tens of thousands would turn up, the operation of the military base would be completely messed up, and there would be hundreds of arrests.

The camp's fame was becoming a serious embarrassment to the UK authorities and their US overlords, and non-violent disruption of the missile convoys was an actual operational nuisance, so every attempt was made to get rid of the women. They were attacked by vigilante groups, as well as police, they were constantly evicted, arrested and jailed, and their possessions were often seized or destroyed. The coal strike of 1984-5 helped: the police were called away to batter the miners, meaning that the Greenham campers were able to put tents up unopposed.

A lot of local residents - dependent on the base for their economy, but also, in many cases, patriotically proud of it - were hostile to the protestors. Some shops wouldn't serve them, and some bus and minicab drivers wouldn't carry them. Hipperson told the story of a supermarket checkout assistant who refused to take their money, claiming that the women from the camp carried disease. One of the campers instructed her comrades to run round the shop touching all the meat - at which point the checkout woman took the cash and the rebels took their groceries.

Reputable newspapers explained to their readers that the Greenham women were all either mad, or communist saboteurs, or else that the whole camp was just an excuse for lesbian drug orgies.

Hipperson and her fellow campers won some extraordinary victories in court over the years. The rules the government brought in to help them evict the women were found to be invalid by the Law Lords; the fence around the common was declared illegal. Eventually, the military's occupation of the common itself was ruled illegal.

In 1987, a new treaty between the USA and the USSR saw the missiles sent home to the US. Today, the base is closed, the land has been returned to the people, and on the site of the missiles there is a commemorative garden. The Catholic Church now rules nuclear weapons "absolutely prohibited."

Hipperson was one of the last three women to leave the camp, after all their local objectives had finally been achieved, in 2000. She continued to be active in the peace movement, and in her church, for the rest of her long life, dying on 8th October 2018.

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Sources:

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-1974-landmark-in-the-struggle-for-peace-1

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/greenham-common-protester-sarah-hipperson-dies-90

https://paxchristi.org.uk/resources/peace-people-2/sarah-hipperson/

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/i-was-a-mother-and-im-a-grandmother-now-but-we-all-have-a-life-1081361

www.greenhamwpc.org.uk/