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Introduction to Bloo Gate

Greenham Common Wimmin's Peace Camp, or as we wrote in letters:
was a camp by the road, next to the forest and a military base rented by the British Ministry of Defence to the USA military. The camp was a result of a march from Cardiff, in Wales, to the base, in England. It was not established as such, but as if saying "we're here and here we'll remain till we are noticed". This happened on September 5, 1981. (For more info, read Walking to Greenham by the woman who sparked all this off.) When the wimmin counted the accesses to the 9 miles or 2 hour and a half base perimeter, they decided to paint each gate in a different color, like the rainbow rainbow. Up to nine colors were added, and camps were set up in all of the gates in the 1980s, for in the first half of this decade there were hundreds and sometimes thousands of wimmin at Greenham.

Towards 1988 only Blue Gate and Yellow Gate remained open permanently. Wimmin from both gates did not necessarily communicate as there had been a split in the past. Although numbers had plummeted, there was always someone in those two gates, which is even more surprising and admirable if we consider that almost nothing was planned — there was always someone who assumed naturally, spontaneously and freely the responsibility to be there — and there were always people struggling there till the base was finally shut down and the common was returned to its legitimate owners, the people living in that region. Oh, at times, Woad, Emerald, Green or Orange gates would home the women. In 1988 cruise missiles started being taken to the USA. So they were finally out! The bad news was that they wouldn't be destroyed — they were recycled!

Nowadays the largest airfield in Europe has been reconverted into agricultural land for the common has been restored to the community. The deadline for pulling down the fence and for the conversion of a military base into land for the production of food was September 14, 1997. Bloo Gate will probably remain as a meeting place to celebrate the Greenham Common camps every year. In any case, Greenham women can be now found, for instance, at Aldermaston Women's Camp(aign)

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