From 1981, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp mounted a sustained campaign of non-violent direct action against the first cruise missile site in Britain. Sarah Meyer, a peace activist who spent time at the camp from late 1982 onwards, gathered an archive full of colour, striking images, songs and radical ideas.
Leaflets, newsletters, personal letters and photographs were threaded through with symbols of personal and political identity, including witches, dragons, snakes and spiders’ webs, and written in a language which tried to challenge and undermine preconceived ideas about women: witness spelling of “womyn” on the envelope in the picture.
The archive gives a real flavour of the experience of campaigners, not only at Greenham: Sarah Meyer was involved with groups across the South West of England and in Europe. Find out more about her on the web page for her archive.
Sarah Meyer’s archive was catalogued as part of the PaxCat Project (funded by the National Cataloguing Grants Scheme). Most of the above text was written by the Project Archivist, Helen Roberts, who did a wonderful job unpicking and reflecting on the complex histories of our many peace-related archives.
