'I was there': Greenham Common peace camp
5 live Daily looks back at an historic moment through the eyes of those who were there.
Thousands of people join a peace camp in protest at nuclear weapons
In April 1983 around 70-thousand people formed a 14-mile long human chain in Berkshire.
It stretched from the nuclear warhead factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield to the then US airbase of Greenham Common. The chain was part of a series of coordinated awareness-raising events, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The Greenham Common camp had been set up two years earlier.
Mary Millington was among the protestors
Mary Millington went to protest at Greenham Common Peace Camp in 1982 and stayed there for five years.
On April Fools Day she was arrested whilst dressed as a Panda after she and others broke into the base. She told Peter that officers weren't amused: "The police couldn't get rid of us and didn't get rid of us".
In February 1982 it had been decided that the protest should involve women only, in contrast to the male-dominated arenas of politics and the military.
There were protests about the protests too
Lady Olga Maitland watched the human chain being formed on television and disagreed with what was taking place.
Lady Olga Maitland: "I can understand nice British women getting emotional about nuclear weapons but in fact the more often I debated with them the more I realised how little they knew about the balance of power and what was going on."
She set up an opposition group, Women and Families for Defence, as a result. She saw the demonstration and said "the silent majority gave us massive support all over the country because nobody could understand the CND's argument".
It was 18 years before the camp was closed down completely
Many members of the peace camp were evicted by police in 1984, before it finally closed down in 2000.
The peace activist Margaretta D'Arcy made a film about Greenham Common called 'Yellow Gate Women'. She claims the protest was successful because they kept on campaigning: "If you stay there and constantly resist and you know what your aims are, in the end, your aims will come into fruition."
The defence minister at the time Michael Heseltine called the demonstrators "misguided" and "naïve".
You can listen to a short clip here
Mary Millington and Lady Olga Maitland discuss the camp along with Shirley Huxtable, who lived next to Greenham Common for nearly 40 years.
