‘Who makes history anyway?’: history-making at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp

Abstract

Feminist activists have always been invested in the processes of history-making, drawing inspiration from their predecessors and ensuring their own historical legacies. For participants at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, history played an important role in the written, visual, and artistic culture of the camp, but it also generated sharp debates over who was allowed to define these histories. It was through these debates that women at Greenham Common remade their politics, defining what it meant for women to be rebellious both in the contemporary moment and in the past. Activist-led modes of history-making defied established chronologies of women’s politics by shaping new timelines of influence, solidarity, and shared experiences. This article views Greenham women as producers of history, examining the use of historical symbolism in their direct action and explorations of identity. The final section focuses on the efforts of a small group of women based at the Yellow Gate camp to create a cohesive legacy of the Greenham Peace Camp. Overall, this article demonstrates how feminist activists have challenged concepts of historical expertise and legacy through the production and consumption of diverse forms of history-making.