Did you know that in England thousands of feminist and pacifist women occupied a military base for 19 years between 1981 and 2000? The Women for Life on Earth organization began accusing Greenham Common, a U.S. base in Berkshire, of storing nuclear missiles, commissioned by NATO, in the lake area.

In September 1981, 36 women chained in the wall. So they started the camp, which would be maintained for a year. In September 1982, the local government ordered the dissolution of the camp, but the women did not surrender. In December, about 30,000 women surrounded the perimeter of the base at the Embracing the base event. But it was not the most massive act, since in 1983 the human chain, made up of 70,000 people, extended to two arms factories of a 23 kilometer radius.

They faced the dozens of collapsed houses and arrests. In the surroundings a new camp was set up, several people entered the base and danced until they were expelled. Facing the male universe of war, they stressed that the culture of women was pacifist and linked to care. In another act, all participants disguised themselves as bear teddy bears to symbolize the message that the threat of war violated the safety of children.

Although in 1991 the United States took missiles from Greenham Common and in 1993 it was decided to close the base, the presence of a group of women was maintained until the year 2000, with the aim of requiring this camper to be made public and subsequently consolidated as a memory space for antimilitarism.

The media of the time questioned the importance of this movement and extended the cartoon of a group of witches that broke traditional family values. They said: “If they were concerned about the safety of the children, why didn’t they stay home with their children, instead of going to make a scandal with them to the military base?” The sin of these women was to break with the housewife model and turn it into a political subject.

In an article by The Guardian, journalist Beeban Kidron states that the women’s camp has had little recognition, despite being an exceptional example of civil disobedience. “In Greenham, a generation of women discovered their voice in the public sphere. They promoted inclusiveness and diversity, rather than a central discourse, opening up many perspectives. Before the majority, it was identified that politicians abandoned the interests of ordinary people and opted for the interests of warriors and international business.”

This fact echoed in our own. Members of the women's assemblies from Euskal Herria went to England to participate in this initiative. With this inspiration, in 1986 they organized a feminist protest against the Eibar arms factory, which placed a wool spider around the building. Begoña Zabala Women's Movement. In his book Women on the Move (Editorial Txalaparta) he tells that he fueled a very enriching debate on anti-militarism and armed struggle within the feminist movement. In addition to the context of our people, the Basque feminists in the 1980s bet on the Central American revolutions. I read the book for a long time, yet both Greenham Common and that Eibar protest disappeared from my memory. Today I have decided not to forget this story again and to participate in new echoes.