¡Bye, bye, bylaws!
From the Greenham Newsletter, 1991. Text and graphic by Dido
On July 12th [1991] Georgina and Jean won the Bye-laws Case in the House of Lords. The Greenham bylaws were declared illegal. Trespassing is no longer a criminal offence and women aren' t arrested anymore for going in.
Breaking the Bylaws
Well, since we were fairly sure that Georgina and Jean would win the bylaws case, we decided we'd better break all the bylaws before there weren't any. So all through June and July (until July) we worked really hard at breaking all the bylaws.
The first one, bylaw (a) was easy—leaving or entering the base by way of an 'unauthorised' entrance or exit. We got spotted walking out of the base through a huge hole in one of the sections and, voilá!, there was 2(a) broken.
2(b) is the bylaw for trespassing and we'd already broken it about 400 times in 1990.
2(c) is a nice general bylaw: no person shall cause or permit any vehicle, animal, aircraft or thing to enter into or upon or to pass through or over or to be or remain in or upon or over the Protected Area without authority or permission. We broke 2(c) in four different ways. First we took Raggy, a dog, in, then we took our push bikes in, then some women drove in and got spotted in the silo area and arrested, lastly a woman was arrested under 2(c) for throwing a sandwich over the fence. 
(I then threw a loaf of bread over the fence but didn't get arrested for it!)
Bylaw 2(d), refusing to leave after having been directed to leave, we didn't manage to break despite trying very hard. The trouble was to get in on legitimate business in order to be asked to leave.
It took four tries to break 2(e), making any false statement either orally or in writing, or employing other form of misrepresentation in order to obtain entry. 
Well, we made up all sorts of "authentic" looking identification and letters but we couldn't seem to get done for 2(e) because the MOD said our i.d. was too obviously phoney. Eventually some very good, almost genuine base passes came our wav and we finallv got arrested for 2(e).
We didn't manage to break 2(f), obstructing any constable in the course of their duty. Sigh.
We managed to get arrested for 2(g) (it is prohibited to enter any part of the Protected Area (i.e. the base) which is shown by a notice as being prohibited or restricted), but when we were processed, they changed it to boring old 2(b)! We entered several fuel-storage-type areas to break this bylaw.
Bylaw 2(h) (no person shall board, attempt to board, or interfere with the movement or passage of any vehicle, aircraft or other installation, etc.) we broke repeatedly, but we never managed to get arrested for it.
2(i) was easy to break—no person shall distribute or display any handbill, leaflet, sign, advertisement, circular, poster, bill, notice or object within the Protected Area or affix the same to either side of the perimeter fences. We broke it first by putting stickers on the gate, and later we unexpectedly got arrested for 2(i) for throwing three branches into the top of the gate and tying them to the grill of the gate. This made us very cheerful.
2(j) is about interfering with or removing property from the base, but we never figured out how to break this bylaw without getting done for theft.
2(k) was broken once and nearly broken several times (which turned into a bit of a contest). 2(k) prohibited women from willfully damaging, destroying, defacing or removing any notice board or sign within the base.
2(l) was similar to criminal damage and we never managed to break it (no person shall willfully damage, soil, deface, or mark any wall, fence, structure, loor, pavement, or other surface within the Protected Area).
All in all, breaking all the byelaws was so much fun that we were almost sorry to win the bylaws case (not really). Besides, we'd become so competitive about it that we began to worry about our co-operative, non-hierarchical reputations.
So the end result was that out of 12 bylaws, we got arrested for 7 of them!
About The Bylaws Legal Case at the British National Archives 
Website designed by