meals. Politics is for men - and it takes women acting together, putting the fact that they are women right to fore, for women to conceive of a different role tor themselves. Any women's movement that succeeds in doing that is profoundly positive.
Perhaps the most difficult discussion to confront is that about tactics. Should women to go jail? Is direct action a useful tactic? The argument for direct actions that result in arrests are that the 'proper channels are useless' since the decisions have already been made over most peoples' heads.
This is certainly true, but the argument is not really about legality. Even standing on a pavement can be deemed an offence. The question is what types of action, legal or illegal, are useful for the movement.
There is no doubt that there are two schools of thought on legality within the Greenham movement: Both start from the point of view that the actions have to be continually escalated otherwise the movement will stagnate and die. But one view holds that this means more and more women have to be involved, while another sees this as meaning that the degree of illegality of the actions and daringness has to increase.
At certain levels these are not mutually contradictory points of view. At many points in history a movement has been maintained or pushed forward by the exemplary actions or sacrifice of small groups of individuals - witness the effect of the hunger strikers in the North of Ireland in rebuilding the mass activity of the nationalist movement. Or the actions of the Sandinista guerrilla squads 1n structure that created the possibility of nuclear weapons in the first place, If we don't use imagination nothing will change.
It's as simple as that.?
Lesley Boulton, June 1982 Nicaragua seizing the government building under Somoza and winning. the release of hundreds of political prisoners.
But the vital element is that the exemplary actions have to be aimed at building a genuinely mass movement that all women can get involved in, to any degree.
Sylvia Pankhurst had touchstone for how to judge militant tactics. When asked to burn down Nottingham Castle by Photo: CLAIRE HERSHMAN Without change we will destroy the planet.
Christabel Pankhurst, she decided against - only being prepared to fling a torch as a symbolic act, accompanied by a large demonstration.
Sylvia explained: '1 regarded this new policy with grief regret, believing it wholly mistaken and unnecessary The old, defiant, symbolic militancy performed in the sight of all, punished with a severity out of all proportion to its damage, if damage there were, had roused an enormous volume of support; had brought the Cause to the fore and would keep it there. What the movement required, that it might reap what it had sown, people confident appeal to was, in my opinion, a broader and HOIC the We should apply the same measure to tactics at Greenham. Otherwise women will go to jail or pay heavy fines and the sacrifices will have been in vain. The story of the violence that was inflicted on the imprisoned suffragettes is not just history. When the state is determined to halt a movement it will use any force, any Violence, any expense. The only counter measure we have is our massive numbers. A few can be picked off but a majority of the population raised in protest is a force ignored at a government's peril.
But if we make this judgement about tactics, we should not be led Gwyn Kirk, April 1983 to dismiss all illegal actions. The cutting of the Greenham fence on 29 October was an inspiration and In the name of sterile, meaningless abstractions like patriotism and duty, mothers' sons are sent off to murder other mothers' sons. The police, the armies and the courts are all "only obeying orders". People in Africa, India and South America starye while these same continents export shipload after shipload of tea, coffee, meat, exotic fruit and vegetables to the rich countries of the world. This is "civilisation as we know if", the "peace" they are so proud about. We are left in isolation to deal with this system, this outrage, with its privilege exploitation and rape. If we can't cope with it we're made to feel that we're weak, inadequate, over-sensitive The world is run by a handful of mad old men, indulging their ghoulish, expansionist fantasies. Disenfranchised women, despite the vote, we are campaigning against cruise missiles, but in doing so we are also taking on the WOMEN
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'What we want to change is immense. It's not just getting rid of nuclear weapons, it's getting rid of the whole