BIRDSONG
They say don't judge a book by its cover.
And this lot look pretty respectable these days.
But the truth is...
..this place and these women have one heck of a history.
People like me don't do things like this.
I was a Valleys housewife, for God's sake.
40 years ago, these three Welsh sisters
were making a real ruckus here...
MUSIC: Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
..hitting headlines around the globe, taking on Reagan, Thatcher
and anyone else who got in their way.
Our nerve is being tested.
We must not falter now.
I'm going to fight. That's what we're all doing.
We're fighting for their lives.
This is the story of the housewives from the Rhondda
who risked it all to change the world.
Early 1980s, the Rhondda.
Bonnie Tyler is giving us a Total Eclipse of the Heart.
# Turn around
# Every now and then I get a little bit lonely
# And you're never coming round.... #
Raiders of the Lost Ark is topping the box office.
And along with millions of others, the Valleys
have gone totally bonkers,
toasting the royal wedding of the century.
The Rhondda Valley celebrated as only the Valleys can - in song.
# I'm getting married in the morning... #
But in the little mining town of Porth, a very different family
was set to make headlines across the country.
One, take one. The Brinkworths.
Everywhere you go, people would know your family,
just cos there were so many of us.
To be from a family of what ended up as eight children at that time,
a lot of people assumed that we were Catholic.
We weren't Catholic.
Famously, "No, we're Welsh Baptist."
Dad Ron was a bus conductor and mum Audrey stayed at home with the kids,
one boy and seven girls.
I'm the oldest, so, you know, it was always my fault.
You're not actually the oldest, though.
No, my brother's older than me.
Me and Susan, very close together, 14 months between us.
We'd fight, we'd get on, we'd look after each other.
We'd fight more.
Then there's me.
I've always been the helper.
Christine and Susan, they're either the best of buddies
or they're not talking to each other.
But Susan's quite sensitive underneath her bossiness!
And Christine has got the sensitivity of a rhino.
What was it like in the Brinkworth house?
Mad. Totally mad.
It seemed to be a centre for people that, you know,
to gravitate to.
On a Saturday afternoon, the street would come into our house.
My mother would just be cooking batch after batch of chips.
Start with the little ones and work up.
But times were changing in 1980s Rhondda.
Margaret Thatcher's Britain was just getting going.
Good afternoon, Prime Minister.
Congratulations. Thank you very much.
Unemployment was rocketing,
and from the heyday of 53 pits the Rhondda was down to just three.
Community spirit was strong as ever, but life was getting tougher.
We didn't have a lot.
But not many people did.
The Valleys were...
..dying.
We were one of the poorest areas in the country,
but everyone was in the same boat.
So we didn't really realise that we were living in poverty.
As most young women did then, the sisters soon married
and settled down.
Used to have coffee mornings.
It was a busy little life, you know,
just, just a housewife doing housewifey things.
It wasn't long before Sue had a couple of kids.
We were expected, if you became pregnant,
you give up work and you brought up your kids.
I was happy to do that.
But no-one could have imagined what the sisters were going to do next.
The Rhondda is very insular.
So someone well-educated, it would be a man.
We weren't expected to have opinions, we weren't expected
to have brains, we weren't expected to leave the house and do anything.
The moment you and I and all the rest of us have been waiting for.
Did I do it? Did the Poisoned Dwarf do it?
Who knows?
I've got somebody here who really does know.
JR, who did shoot you?
While most people were talking about who shot JR,
the news has started telling us a different story.
OK?
There's a new fear that we might be closer to a nuclear war
than at any time in our history.
A surprise attack by the Soviet Union would be successful
if it were launched.
Things were heating up in the Cold War between Russia and America,
and the threat of a nuclear attack began to feel real.
Good evening.
The bomb isn't likely to drop, certainly not in the near future.
But as long as we remain a likely target for attack,
we must think about the unthinkable.
Most people didn't even think of nuclear weapons,
but it was all playing on around us all.
With Russia investing in ever more powerful nuclear missiles,
Maggie Thatcher was also banking on the bomb to keep Britain safe.
Two world wars have shown us that conventional weapons
are not enough to deter war.
People began worrying how Britain would survive a nuclear attack.
A one megaton bomb exploded 7,000 feet above the House of Commons
would create a fireball over a mile across.
So the government tried to prepare them.
The Protect and Survive,
I was about seven months pregnant when I first seen that.
I remember getting the pamphlet through the door
and I remember the film on TV.
NARRATION: If we are attacked by nuclear weapons,
these are the warning sounds you must recognise.
BELL TOLLS
There was a growing awareness that we were entering
a completely ridiculous phase.
Making a refuge is not difficult.
The government's advice was that, in the case of a nuclear war,
that you leaned four doors up against a wall inside your house.
Hopefully, we'd have a screwdriver to hand, etc,
and you put a water supply in there and a food supply
and you literally lived there for four weeks. You couldn't come out.
We asked a Yorkshire family to build a fallout shelter
following the government-recommended design.
Keep yourself safe by existing under your cushions, really.
Inside.
What do you think conditions will be like in here
after a couple of weeks?
Pretty grim, I would say,
but what can you do?
Madness.
Will you take any preparations at all?
What preparation you got? You've had it, ain't you?
I can tell you that I've worked in civil defence for some 25 years.
I mean, good heavens, if this building is in the target area
and it shattered, then the fallout dust
will not be stopped by cushions.
This is the last tin of beans, Trevor. Can you pass that, please?
Here you are. We'll have to share it out. One spoonful each.
This is how real it felt,
that the government was actually telling us what we needed to do.
And the thought of having to do that with a newborn baby,
and just the simple thing about what on earth you're going to do
with the nappies.
Fear of nuclear war grew across the country.
But at first, the Brinkworths pushed it to the back of their minds.
Forced myself to forget about it
until we took the girls up to London Zoo.
There were aeroplanes going overhead.
And Jodie's eyes just got bigger and bigger,
and she was down on her knees with her hands over her head
like that, screaming, "Mummy, they're going to bomb us.
"They're going to bomb us."
LOUD EXPLOSION
We didn't even realise at the time where this fear had come from.
It was terrifying.
The horror of nuclear bombs used against Japan 35 years earlier
started to haunt the sisters.
I've seen photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
I've seen the burns and things.
You know, that's what would be happening to us all.
To me, it was very personal. Very, very personal.
I was having nightmares. I couldn't sleep.
I didn't, certainly at the beginning, think I had any power
to do anything.
I was just a housewife from the Rhondda Valleys.
I was just a mother who was terrified
at the thought of what could happen to her children.
I got frightened for the children of the world.
A new year in the Rhondda.
The world was welcoming DeLoreans, Star Wars...
I only get Yoda stew, I've never had Star Wars stew before.
..and a new American president.
# Grandma, we love you... #
At home, the government was also welcoming some new arrivals.
Two sites in England have been named as bases
for American cruise missiles.
The two sites for the missiles are the American Air Force
standby base at Greenham Common
and an American Air Force store
at Molesworth, near Huntingdon.
The first of them would be in position by about the end of 1983.
It would be from here in the Berkshire countryside
that the missiles would be launched in the event of a nuclear war.
At the same time, the area would become a prime enemy target.
The announcement about basing cruise missiles in this country
actually woke us up.
I decided I've just got to do something about this.
On telly, Bucks Fizz were taking on Eurovision.
But it was the bomb that was troubling the sisters.
And they weren't alone.
Anti-nuclear groups were springing up across the Valleys.
There was announced an inaugural meeting of a local CND group.
So me and Christine just decided that we would go to this meeting.
It all started with an idea which came from a group of women
in Mid Wales.
At the meeting, the sisters heard about a group of women
who were leaving their homes in Wales and walking 120 miles
from Cardiff to Greenham Common in Berkshire
to protest against American missiles coming there.
But the media weren't interested.
A group of women had been concerned enough to walk with their children
100 and odd miles to another part of the country...
..and this wasn't newsworthy.
Well, it was newsworthy to me.
I wanted to know about it, I wanted to be...
..to do something about it.
The press hadn't told me.
I thought that was outrage... I was really angry about it.
We discovered that the women had been virtually ignored,
so when they got there, a group of them decided to chain themselves
to the fence, asking for a public debate
between the women who were concerned about this and our government.
One of the MoD guys said,
"Ha! Chain yourself up, see if we care.
"You can stay there forever as far as we're concerned."
So they did just that.
They set up a camp outside the base.
What started with four women chained to the railings
became the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp,
and soon more women were joining them.
To hear that they'd stayed and we weren't even talking about it.
A bottle of wine later and getting really wound up,
and someone saying, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
And I said, "Right, if the press are not going to do their job,
"we will."
MUSIC: Prince Charming by Adam and the Ants
We'll camp out for a week in the middle of Porth Square.
It was a main thoroughfare
that's as public as we can get in the Rhondda.
# Don't you ever Don't you ever... #
I thought it was going to be embarrassing.
# Stop being dandy Showing me you're handsome... #
I thought it was going to be...uncomfortable.
# Prince Charming, Prince Charming
# Ridicule is nothing to be scared of... #
Cold, because it was November.
Never one to do things by halves,
Chris wanted her sisters and even best pal Lynn,
to spend the whole week chained up to railings in town.
I can remember walking down to Porth Square that morning thinking,
"Do I really believe that nuclear weapons are this bad?"
We're going to be ridiculed. Were we going to be arrested?
It was the thing of...
..making a fool of yourself in your local community,
where people know you.
I think that was the fear.
Sue's husband wasn't too keen on the idea either.
And did you ever worry,
"What's Allan going to think about me doing this?"
No.
Yeah, well, I don't know. I thought you were a bit crazy.
Yeah. Well, I was.
We found that, in the area, if you ask anybody, "Who are
"the women at Greenham Common?" - they simply don't know.
So we thought we'd just try and bring the demonstration home
to the people of our area.
And if people, other people who support the women, do the same
in their own areas, then of course everybody will get to know about it.
Sure, there were people who thought we were nutters
or even communist agitators.
We had arguments on the streets, but that's why we were there,
was to have these arguments, to try and inform people
through discussion.
When you first heard about your sisters going down to Porth Square
and chaining themselves to the railings, what did you think?
My immediate reaction was, what are they bl... doing?
What, what bloody idiots they are!
Erm...
I just did not see the sense and the logic
because I was never an advocate of that type of action.
Were you afraid of nuclear war?
No.
My view was that, if they have got nuclear weapons, I want bigger ones.
So you must have had some blazing rows about that, then.
I think we had some discussions about it, yes!
Although plenty didn't see eye to eye on the nuclear cause,
Valleys folk look after their own.
You know, we'd gone down, we'd expected to be evicted.
By the end of the night, we had lines of flasks.
We had lines of bottles of whisky.
We had old blokes coming down saying, my wife won't let me sleep
until I've checked you lot are OK.
It was just unbelievable.
People were fantastic to us.
Builder's lorry goes past, sees us there, stops and says,
"What are you lot doing?"
We told them, they unload a hut and give us a hut,
and suddenly we've got a hut to sleep in.
How did you hear about the Brinkworths?
I came across the sisters doing their thing on Porth Square.
I was just 18.
I felt as if I didn't fit a lot of the time.
Everyone else in Porth thought they were a bunch of hippies,
you know, sleeping on the street.
But when you feel, you know, a bit of a weirdo, really,
and you step into another group of weirdos,
it is a little bit of a relief.
I don't think we really expected to spend the whole week there,
but we did.
And the last day we were there, it was pouring down with rain.
It was really hammering.
And I remember lying there thinking,
"Oh, my God, this is the best night of my life."
People are too good to waste.
There's a new year on BBC television.
MUSIC: Don't You Want Me by The Human League
While things were hotting up for the sisters,
the big snow was rolling in over the Rhondda.
TV PRESENTER: Though few parts of Britain have escaped
the snow and ice, Wales has had it particularly bad.
Thankfully, they were back indoors before the big freeze hit.
But 120 miles away at Greenham,
those at the camp had braved months of the cold.
TV COMMENTARY: 25 women have been living on Greenham Common
in Berkshire since September 10th.
They've coped through the long, hard winter with no hot water
or electricity, encouraged by gifts of food
and equipment from supporters.
We're here for very specific reasons -
to make people aware that this space
is preparing to take cruise missiles which will kill every man,
woman and child, possibly, on the planet.
None of the women come from the surrounding area.
I belong to a Japanese Buddhist order.
Greenham's the first place in this country
which will have cruise missiles.
So, obviously, people of this country,
it's very important for us to all gather here.
From only 25 women in January, the women's peace camp was growing.
For the Rhondda girls, it was time for a road trip.
I was, like, four, maybe three hours, crushed into a small car
on the way up to Greenham.
And it was like being dropped in the middle of...
..another world.
There were people living on the side of the road, right,
under plastic sheets, in caravans.
It was an eclectic mix.
It was a bit of a culture shock.
A Buddhist nun dressed in orange with a shaved head, drumming,
practising witches. I only come across one
and she was from Brighton.
Bridget her name was. She were lovely.
They'd created this big domed structure
made out of rubbish, really.
There was a fire in the centre, and that's where you cooked food.
Some of them are sleeping in cars, some of them are sleeping in tents.
It was somewhat surreal.
Most of the women when we arrived, were very middle-class.
When you come
from an insular Welsh Valley
and meeting people who were very well-educated and very well-spoken,
they all sounded posh to us.
It was intimidating.
You sort of think, "They know what they're talking about,
"they know what they're doing, they know why they're here."
And we seemed parochial, in our own view.
As the weeks went by, there were clear signs
the missiles were on their way.
On the other side of the wire at Greenham Common base,
the build-up for December 1983 continues.
The missiles are due to be delivered at the end of next year,
but the women say they'll never allow that to happen.
We started to go regularly.
It was fantastic!
I remember someone saying to me, "So, what do you do?"
And I said, "Oh, I'm just a housewife."
And this woman said, "You're not JUST a housewife.
"You're not just a housewife.
"You're a homemaker, you're a mother, you're a carer."
And it's, like, jaw-dropping.
Oh, my God, yes, I do do all those things.
It was huge. It...opened up the world.
The first few visits to Greenham were absolutely mind-blowing,
in as much as there were those conversations about your vagina,
you know, or, "Sorry about..." You know, all those kinds of things,
which, you know...
And about you, your sexuality.
The biggest conversation about sexuality was
there didn't NEED to be a conversation about sexuality, right?
Because it was OK.
I was in a relationship with a woman at the time.
I don't actually know how, even within the group
we were travelling with, how...how aware they were.
I didn't know that.
I didn't know.
When you came back to the Valleys,
there was always that element of caution.
At Greenham, there wasn't that heavy burden, you know.
It wasn't my shame.
I was free, I was present, and that was OK.
And that was really quite remarkable.
For the Rhondda sisters, Greenham was becoming a second home.
# Why are there so many songs about rainbows? #
They went every month for days at a time.
Friends, they all thought we were nuts.
They just thought we were crazy.
And what was your husband thinking about all of this?
Oh, he hated it.
I would say we had our ups and downs.
Occasionally, he'd just get fed up of it.
"Isn't it time somebody else was doing this?"
And, you know, "You've got to come back home.
"You've done your bit."
But, um...you know, we hadn't done our bit.
While the Greenham protest was gaining supporters,
a large part of the country was still pro-nuclear.
In a word, we need the bomb to preserve peace.
Which sounds ironic but is nonetheless true.
I think everybody wants to see a reduction in the number of bombs,
but the reduction has to start in the right place.
And the right place is Russia at the moment.
You know, we tried disarming before the Second World War
and it just didn't work.
It was these views the Greenham women wanted to change,
but their PR was proving a problem.
# But I was born a great big woman
# And you just can't take my dreams away
# Well, we ain't got... #
What was the common perception of Greenham women at the time?
We would joke about the Greenham Common women
like everybody else seemed to.
"This is what happened when Woodstock closed,
"this is where they all went. This is what happened to hippies."
They were blamed for everything.
They were blamed for lowering house prices,
to...to shoplifting.
And I actually witnessed that abuse in the local town, in Newbury.
And you heard stories of farmers driving past
with the slurry vehicles and spraying them.
"They're just communists. They're planted there by the Russians..."
With hundreds of women now at Greenham,
the press couldn't ignore them.
But the media seemed more interested in the spectacle than the cause.
Auberon Waugh.
APPLAUSE
Auberon, er...the area in which you live...
..as I said, the controversial journalist, um...
..it's not too far from Greenham Common, is it?
Are you associating yourself with the groundwork
that's being done there at the moment?
I don't think they'd have me.
I thought of putting on a skirt and going along there
and hoping they'd embrace me as a sister and I could join all the fun.
I don't like these sort of hard-voiced, er...slit-eyed,
jargon-shouting freaks
who are growing out of the women's movement.
They're escaping from sex
or escaping from male company or something.
The Welsh women were determined to be taken seriously.
We had written letters, signed petitions,
done the marching, done the demonstrating.
All the time, we were trivialised.
They were a novelty act.
When you moved to the area, you'd get,
"You've got to go and see the Greenham Common women."
It was like you was going to the zoo.
"Oh, look at these funny women," you know.
But nobody really wanted to hear what they were there for.
We weren't there to camp,
we were there to make a point.
Which was, we didn't want the cruise missiles inside that base.
Polite and lawful protest
wasn't getting them the attention they needed,
so the Rhondda women decided it was time to shift things up a gear.
So it was about how could we, you know, raise the bar here?
We decided we were going to have to go into the base.
Me and my sisters and our friends came up with the idea.
And the obvious thing was the main gate, the police sentry box.
We thought it was a mad idea, but...but what could we do?
Invading the base was a serious criminal act,
but a sure-fire way to raise the profile of the peace camp.
The purpose of going into the sentry box was to get arrested
and to be able to, in court, discuss those weapons.
Could have gone to prison for ten years.
People like me don't do things like this.
I was a Valleys housewife, for God's sake.
I didn't get arrested, I didn't go to prison.
I-I-I didn't do stuff like that.
It was scary.
Christine was pregnant at the time
and we tied a note around her neck saying,
"Pregnant. Handle with care."
I was on high alert and I was pretty paranoid,
but they were planning on fighting a nuclear war
and, if we allowed that, then my child wouldn't have a future.
I mean, your body shakes, right? You know?
Um...you know, you have that absolute anxiety
doing something, you know, illegal.
It was just a case of they're opening the gates
for a vehicle to go in and we just all rushed in behind it.
As we were getting closer, they realised we were coming.
A policeman put his arms out to stop us, we went around him.
And then we went into the sentry box.
Initially, they rushed at the box,
and that was scary.
They tried to come in the windows, but we shut the windows.
Then we shut the door and blocked it with a table.
There was nothing thought out
as far as, you know, what we were going to do when we got in there.
And we all started to sing.
Because it was a matter of, "If in doubt, sing."
I remember somebody phoned the box
and a friend of mine answered and said...
Good morning. Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
And an American voice at the other side of the phone answers...
"Oh. Have you all got a telephone now?"
And we said, "Yes, we have, cos we've extended."
We were hysterical with laughter.
It was partly our nerves, you know, at the...
And the release of tension.
But it was...it was like a farce.
We knew it wouldn't be long before they'd be coming for us.
And then we were all carried out one by one.
Their plan had worked.
They'd wanted to put Greenham on the map,
and soon the news crews came calling.
A group of women occupied the guard post inside the camp perimeter.
They were charged with behaviour
likely to cause a breach of the peace.
This week, their case was heard before Newbury Magistrates.
The court became a focal point
for the campaign for nuclear disarmament.
I didn't really appreciate the enormity of it
until we were booked in in, um...in Newbury nick.
My parents knew where I was going, you know, um...
They were just bitterly disappointed.
And my dad was a policeman.
People did look up to him more
and expect us maybe to behave in a certain way.
You know, you don't want your daughter of 18
to be in a police cell. It's not a great outcome, is it?
Tell me how you became involved with the Welsh women
at Greenham Common Peace Camp.
I got a phone call to say some women at the peace camp at Greenham
had been arrested, and asked if I would represent them.
There were cameras everywhere.
And, you know, Greenham women jumping around and singing.
It was just pretty chaotic, really.
FAINT SINGING
You had to be in that courtroom
and to feel the power of what was going on.
And women giving their testimony
about what had brought them to this point.
Much of it was very emotional.
And they were frightened for their families, for their kids.
I felt proud that they were doing it,
because that's what they believed in,
but the other side saying, "What a waste of time."
Doing acts like this doesn't get the message across to Joe Public.
And would you have said you were Joe Public?
I think I was at the time.
I think I was very much middle of the road.
What was so shocking is that I, for the first time ever, I had clients
who were fully prepared to go to prison.
They never budged on that.
They were not going to be silenced.
I remember standing up in court,
and he wanted me to accept a bind over, and I said no.
Bind over is an agreement between the defendant and the court
that the defendant will keep the peace for a fixed period of time,
and if not will pay a fixed penalty.
Could have walked away and that would have been the end of it.
But that would have meant we were saying we wouldn't do it again.
None of us were saying that.
Actually, the magistrates were aghast when the women said,
"No, we're not going to do that."
And they didn't want to do what came next.
23 women, ten from Wales,
were sentenced to 14 days in jail.
One was pregnant.
Their parents were in court to support them.
These housewives from the Rhondda
had won their way into the headlines.
But it came at a heck of a price,
when they were sentenced to 14 days in jail for breach of the peace.
I remember being in the police van outside Newbury nick
and for the first time feeling Bethan moving in my stomach.
And...And being distraught,
of thinking, "What am I going to teach this child?
"Am I going to teach her to stand up for herself
"and get treated like this?"
I remember being taken down into the cells and thinking,
"Oh, my God, what are we doing?!"
I felt vulnerable, but I was also angry.
Because...locking up British housewives for protesting?!
I mean, how outrageous is that?!
The journey from Newbury Magistrates' Court
to the...to the, um...to the prison,
was the first time I was actually able to gather myself, really.
You go through this kind of processing stuff,
where you are, you know, stripped off,
all your belongings are taken.
I was really scared.
I thought, "Oh, my God, I'm going to meet criminals."
We ended up in their lockup cells.
They'd allow us out of our cells one hour a day.
It felt very dark, you know. Um...I hated it.
I absolutely hated it.
Back home in Porth, the Brinkworth family were reeling.
My main concern was not for them, it was my mother.
How she was going to react. How was it going to affect her?
And with the sisters locked up,
the press turned their attention to the rest of the family.
Reporters descended on the Rhondda.
Audrey and Ron Brinkworth are the grandparents of six children,
and parents of the Welsh women from Porth now in prison.
My mother was so angry.
She brought us up to believe in British justice,
and she was so devastated
that her daughters were sent down for political protest.
Very proud.
Proud? Yes. Can you tell me why?
Because they're doing something they really believe in.
They're doing it for their lives,
and they hope other people will join and fight for their own lives.
But they're not doing it for glory,
they are doing it because they want to survive.
She was really angry, but she was so proud of us.
Next, the press homed in on the men left behind with the kids.
MUSIC: Only You by Yazoo
The husbands of the imprisoned women have formed a kind of co-operative
to help with the children and share out the housework.
Alan Lamb, a student, and Peter Fortte, a lagger,
the husbands of two of the women from Porth now in prison,
collect five of the older children
from the local Welsh-speaking school.
The publicity that was being garnered by Susan
was kind of actually coming my way, as well, like, you know.
I mean, there was quite a lot of it.
It did eventually become...difficult.
It did become difficult in the end.
He was having to stay at home and pick up the pieces.
So if something was going on with the kids or something,
then he'd have to deal with it.
What was your view of the nature of the sentences?
Um... Ahem.
I thought the sentence was, er...very harsh indeed.
Er...the original act that they were charged under
was a 1361 Breach of the Peace Act,
er...which is incredibly vague.
They were sent to prison for two weeks,
which is quite incredible, in my opinion.
I was doing one thing, Susan was doing another thing.
I felt that, er...I should have that time...
Phew! How's that? That's all right.
You've got blackcurrant on your chops.
VOICE-OVER: ..and it wasn't being given to me.
You know, there was this separation, wasn't there?
You know, I think I was pretty kind of supportive
about the whole nuclear thing,
but it didn't half go on a long time.
SUSAN LAUGHS
I was just going to say, I'm pleased that he allowed me to do it.
He didn't "allow" me to do it,
but he facilitated it.
# And all I ever knew
# Only you. #
The sisters kept hitting the headlines
as reporters followed their story behind bars.
They set us to work scrubbing floors.
Hands and knees, scrubbing brush, carbolic soap.
Um...97p a week you'd have for that.
And then we decided we weren't going to, um...
..perpetuate the smooth running of the...of the prison,
so we refused to work.
So I said, "Right, I'm not working, then."
It was announced today that
prisoners who were being held in an open prison
have been moved to closed jails
because of their "upsetting influence" on other inmates.
The Home Office say they were having an unsettling effect
on the regime at Drake Hall,
so they lost the freedom to mix with other prisoners.
I think because we'd become disruptive,
um...in the prison, we were all kind of separated.
And so, Lesley and myself were then sent to Styal Prison
for the last few days of, um...of our sentence.
After 14 days at Her Majesty's pleasure,
the girls were free to fight another day.
As the prison bus brought them to the gates
and a reunion with friends and supporters,
there was no hiding the delighted relief of the Greenham Common women.
There were three sisters and three mothers of young children
among the freed women.
We were all paranoid.
Cos we were paranoid that we'd be stopped and taken back.
Then, spontaneously linking arms,
the women began a medley of antinuclear songs.
A musical thank you to the friends
who'd travelled to this outlying prison
to welcome them back to the campaign.
# They said it would be
# They said that the bombs were only keeping us free
# Now they're under ground and they don't have to see
# The eyes of the dying... #
As uncomfortable as I found it, it was worth doing it.
It advertised Greenham and that's what we were about.
It had a huge impact. It really galvanised.
There was there is nobody left who hadn't heard about Greenham now.
The whole country saw what was happening.
And some women had the wit to remember to announce
that there was going to be an action very shortly,
on Sunday 12th December.
13 days before Christmas,
we were settling down to watch Rick and Vyv causing mayhem.
But turning over to the news, we saw just how much chaos
the Rhondda girls had caused.
Now on BBC One, the news with Jan Leeming.
Thousands of women surround the American airbase at Greenham Common
in a peaceful protest against
the siting of American cruise missiles in Britain.
The sisters from Porth had wanted to put the spotlight on Greenham,
but even they couldn't have imagined what came next.
Despite the rain and the bitter cold,
they arrived in their thousands, by coach, by car and even on foot.
You knew there was something different about this
because as you drove up, you know, there were coaches of, you know,
people on their way to Greenham.
It was just like, "Wow! OK."
SHE LAUGHS
Longer queue for the loo!
In a single day, 30,000 women joined the first mass Greenham protest.
They then linked hands to create a massive human ring
around the nine-mile perimeter of Greenham.
Tears.
Very emotional.
Because we'd succeeded.
Cos we'd...we'd made it, we'd made it happen.
We'd got the information out.
Right from Porth Square, that had been our issue -
this information is not getting out.
This is not being answered.
We need to get this...people thinking about this.
So you'd finally been heard.
We'd been heard, yeah.
It was unbelievable. The scale was just unbelievable.
The women came from all over the country,
and from the continent, too.
Their aim was to stress as powerfully as possible
that, in their view, the cruise missile is not a deterrent,
it's a weapon of death.
That's why they all brought symbols of life,
like family photographs and baby clothes,
which they attached to the fence.
There were children's booties,
there were pictures of families.
All around the camp, the whole fence
was...was decorated by life,
in the face of what was going on in that camp, which was death.
If the government hopes that it will be re-elected,
well, the government must take note of the people of the country
and what they feel.
And there are enough people here, I hope, to make them think again
about the siting of cruise missiles.
Two weeks ago, I heard I was going to be a grandmother
for the first time, and I want this child to be born and to grow up.
Embrace the Base happened, and suddenly everybody was like,
you know, wanting to do something.
So the profile of Greenham was really incredibly high.
We weren't just a crazy bunch of women running around, you know,
throwing ourselves on things,
but, you know, there were thousands of people, you know,
from all over the UK, coming then to, um...to have their say.
# What we are saying
# Is give peace a chance... #
But locally, the women were short on support.
Residents of Greenham Common in Berkshire,
where 30,000 women staged their peace rally last weekend,
have spent the day helping to clear up
tonnes of rubbish they left behind.
People just telephoned and feel so disgusted
about what went on last weekend.
I think people tend to forget that, or perhaps even demonstrators do,
that we're living with this 24 hours a day.
It was an awful business to cut off, and we had rainy weather.
Why didn't you just leave it there? Because it looked simply disgusting.
I mean, it was all paper and signs.
You wouldn't have liked it around in front of your house...
They break your hedge down, they hang things in your hedge.
It is so disgusting! They're great at hanging things...
I have never seen anything so awful. Don't they just love hanging...?
We're having to come back from a holiday. We're only
going for half our holiday because we daren't leave the house.
That's right! But I don't think they will break things in the house.
They haven't been rough.
But they certainly will use it as a lavatory. Hundreds of them!
Well, you know... So I'm certainly coming back so they do not.
MUSIC: Save Your Love by Renee and Renato
As 1983 rolled in, across the Rhondda
they were enjoying their morning cornflakes with Frank and Selina.
A good, good job. Keep it up.
We've only been going for about a minute.
And the clock was ticking down for cruises' arrival.
After thousands of women had flooded the base,
it was clear support for Greenham was growing,
and the government got serious about stopping the protest.
Good evening. More equipment for cruise missiles has been flown in
to Greenham Common Air Base.
More demonstrators have been arrested.
And MPs have raised the question - what's going to happen
when live nuclear warheads are on the base
if the demonstrators manage to get near them?
Security really ramped up.
Watchtowers appeared.
There were two lines of razor wire, there were dogs.
It felt different.
The response became...far less compassionate.
Nothing soft about this any more. The game was on.
The defence of Greenham Common against invasion by protesters
has been prepared with the same meticulous attention to detail
that went into the Falklands campaign.
A High Court judge has ruled that all the women
who've been demonstrating against nuclear weapons
at Greenham Common in Berkshire
should be evicted from their peace camp.
When the eviction orders were made,
that's when the bailiffs were sent in.
And the bailiffs were really very violent.
What we want is Greenham Common
to be returned to what it was before September, 1981.
Gypsies cannot camp there, tinkers cannot camp there.
Why should the peace women
expect that the law should be bent in their favour?
Whereas before you'd get occasional evictions,
they would evict every day. Sometimes twice a day.
And that was so hard. So hard to live there.
Because they came en masse and took everything.
There have been reports demonstrators who approach
the missile bunkers will be shot.
And the Defence Secretary, Mr Heseltine,
was asked for an assurance that that would not happen.
I categorically will give no such assurance.
It has been the absolute duty of all governments
to defend nuclear weapons in this country.
It was scary, knowing that they could shoot us.
And I thought that was horrendous.
When they threaten us, we just respond, yeah?
"If they want it, let's fight 'em.
"But we'll do it peacefully."
As the fight turned nasty
and pressure from the government hotted up,
some Greenham women turned to more drastic measures.
I joined the Royal Air Force in 1983.
And really, within a matter of weeks,
we were detached to Greenham Common
to support the, um...military inside the base.
When you first sort of rock up
and you see the number of women at each gate,
that was an eye-opener.
Think about your children. Yes, I am.
You don't think about your life? You're standing on my leg.
The groups at the camps swelled at weekends
and they would get a little bit wanting something to happen.
And so, they'd cut through the fence
and they would try and get arrested.
When that sort of thing wasn't happening
and they just wanted to upset you,
that's when a urine-filled bag would hit you.
I have a right to stand there!
This is my home you're destroying!
The missiles were now only weeks away.
The first of the American airmen who will man cruise missiles in Britain
will arrive here within the next fortnight.
It's another stage in the plan
to have the missiles operational by December.
With less than a month to go until cruises' arrival,
the Greenham women were running out of options.
They had one last unthinkable plan.
We decided to take President Reagan to court.
They were his missiles.
MUSIC: Kids in America by Kim Wilde
The Prime Minister informed me of what her government is doing
to prepare for the scheduled deployment of cruise missiles.
I expressed the thanks of the American people
to the Prime Minister for Britain's strong and unequivocal support
on this vital issue.
Leader of the free world or not,
these girls were ready for a fight.
There is an act under which,
if American policy directly affects your life,
then you can take the President to court.
With just days to stop President Reagan bringing in the missiles,
it was now or never.
The plaintiffs from Wales, most of them from the Rhondda,
are no strangers to the legal system and the courts in this country.
You're taking your eight-month-old baby with you to America. Yeah.
How much is this an emotional case, an emotional hearing, do you think?
I'm going to fight. And that's what we're all doing,
we're fighting for their lives. Cos we...
It is... It's all basically very emotional
because that's what it's about - it's about children and the future.
We don't have the right to destroy this planet.
But before the showdown in the States,
Chris had some trouble at home.
The morning we were going off,
my husband tipped a bowl of porridge over my head.
And I think that was my giveaway that things were not happy.
That he really, really was reaching the end of his tether there.
I-I was shocked.
I mean, I was just shocked.
So I just washed my hair and went.
# We're the kids in America... #
As the Greenham women touched down across the pond...
The amused New Yorkers came to work
to find a Greenham Common encampment on their doorstep.
..back at home, the clock was ticking.
It now seems certain that cruise nuclear missiles
will be flown into Greenham Common
during the first few days of next week.
At Greenham, Galaxy transport planes
have been flying in stores every day.
The launch vehicles are already here,
and there can't be much more to come.
Except, that is, the Tomahawk cruise missiles themselves
and their nuclear warheads.
They headed into the Supreme Court to plead their case.
We got to court, we found we'd been allocated
the most conservative and the most hostile judge
of the entire, er...Second Circuit.
So this is the statement
I presented to the American court.
In the case of Greenham women against cruise missiles,
against Ronald Reagan.
READS: Since I began in November, 1981,
I have hardly spent a full week at home.
My marriage and family life were threatened.
But what choice have I got?
If I stay at home, I know that I am signing my children's death warrant.
We didn't win, obviously, the case.
The ruling of the court was
that they accepted our right to bring the case,
but that the court didn't have the jurisdiction
to change American policy.
That could only be done by the American government.
I was in a terrible state.
Days later, their worst fears came true.
We were sitting there and the news came on...
The first American cruise missiles are now in Britain.
..and I was floored by this.
I can remember thinking, "They can't do this."
It was early this morning
at Greenham Common RAF base in Berkshire
that a United States Starlifter landed with its cargo of missiles.
And how did you come back from that, then?
I don't know if I ever really did, to be honest.
It was dark because, you know, this had been the focus
of what we were doing,
was to try and stop these weapons coming in.
It was horrible. It was horrible.
At home in Porth, Kath and Lesley were also glued to the TV.
The news of the landing of the first cruise missile yesterday
came as a shock to the girls from the Welsh Valleys.
For they are not just Valley girls, but Greenham Common women.
Women who have fought against cruise for two years.
Women who, just one year ago,
were the first to be imprisoned for their cause.
Now they're saddened, but they're still set to fight.
I felt really sick when I first heard it.
I don't think it's sunk in yet, just what it means.
Although we have been expecting it. I've been expecting it for a while.
We really didn't want this to happen.
When cruise did arrive, that was so hard.
I just thought, "Oh, we've lost!"
I came back from America feeling very deflated.
The women had worked so hard to stop this happening.
And although, in a way, it was inevitable,
I mean, the mere fact of their arrival
was...was...was frightening.
When the girls got home,
they found themselves in a different battleground.
The Welsh coal industry was hanging in the balance
and the miners' strike was at its height.
I must tell you that what we've got
is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob
for the rule of law!
They were trying to close the pits.
They were saying that they weren't viable.
I felt very strongly about that
because my father had been a miner.
And, yes, you know, we joined in picket lines.
And so, I went to a miners' picket line
and Lynne got arrested.
So, did you become a bit disenchanted with Greenham, then,
in those later years?
Probably.
Life on the home front was also getting tough.
It was after cruise come, Christine had her child.
Susan had three children by then.
There was lots of stuff going on that we...
..we had to prioritise to live.
There were times that I was so sick of the rows about Greenham
that I...I...did think,
"Oh, this has got to stop."
I never thought it would cost me my marriage.
It did cost me my marriage,
cos I left him in 1984,
after seven years.
When was it that you split up?
Er...not until...1989, I think.
Is just too much water went under the bridge.
Greenham changed my whole perspective
and there wasn't any going back from it, I don't think.
MUSIC: Just Like Honey by The Jesus and Mary Chain
# Listen to the girl
# As she takes on half the world
# Moving up and so alive
# In her honey-dripping... #
I was NOT expecting to see Greenham Common as a nature reserve.
Well, yeah.
BIRDSONG
40 years after their first visit,
the Porth sisters are back at Greenham.
Wow! Wow!
I just don't recognise the place.
In 1989, what the Greenham women had been fighting for finally happened.
Reagan's missiles were sent home to America.
The first cruise missiles to leave RAF Greenham Common
were flown to the United States today.
The runways have gone
and the missile silos have been empty for three decades.
When cruise actually went,
I just thought, "Oh, yes! We won!"
It took a long time, but we got there in the end.
Yes, it was all worth it!
Yes, we succeeded in doing it.
I think it...it showed us that we could win.
And indeed we did!
They've got Dartford warblers here instead of cruise missiles!
All that's left of old Greenham is a single gate.
Razor wire! What happened to the razor wire?!
It is amazing. It's absolutely...
I can't believe it!
Greenham Common's Women's Peace Camp
never get the credit for disarmament.
The governments get the credit. Who did it?
Gorbachev and Reagan.
But who really did it?
The pressure that was put on them to actually address the issue,
that was down to women's action.
It was triumphant! The missiles went!
We should have all come before now
and we should have all come as a group
and actually celebrated what we achieved.
Cos this, to me, is totally amazing.
If Greenham hadn't have happened, this would be Tarmac.
You realise you can change big things, you can change small things.
You can change your life.
You can set yourself goals, you can achieve them.
Because of this, right,
that's made me know that we can change the world.
Absolutely. It doesn't have to be like this.
I learned that I could... I was not what I thought I was.
That I had, um...
..as much right as anyone else
to have an opinion and be forceful in that opinion.
And do you feel proud of what you did?
Oh, massively.
It was difficult,
it was scary, it was...
It was crazy.
But it was the right thing to do
and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
One, two, three, four!
# All we are saying
# Is give peace a chance. #
OK! Beautiful! Yeah!
CHEERING