Today it has been 40 years since the Women For Life on Earth marched against nuclear arms!!! Here you can find some information about how a group of young people studied what happened then to understand what is needed now
As part of the exhibition THE FUTURE HAS A PAST we have highlighted something very special as Friday the 27th of August it has been 40 years since the Women For Life on Earth marched against nuclear arms. They walked from the Welsh capital Cardiff all the way to Greenham Common (England) and the protest camp they started there lasted for years. With the pictures plus the comments I try to tell something to all the visitors that can’t visit the banner currently on show (until January 2022) in the exhibition in Wales. Please enjoy the work the team and I did in the autumn of 2019!
(this page would not have been possible without Glanmorgan Archives, St Fagans National Museum of History and the team of young artists, please see link here for more)
40 years ago today Women For Life On Earth started the protest against nuclear arms in Cardiff and walked all the way to Greenham Common, where the arms were kept.
The event was planned along with other protests. Lots of the material is now well kept by the Glamorgan Archives in Cardiff.
Pictures were taken along the way as well as notes of the event. For example about the men that were allowed to join and take care of the kids as long as they didn’t walk at the front of the protest.
The weather was hot, it was a hot summer day. Everybody suffered and were taken in by the people of the presbyterian centre in Newport.
We really like the footbath they were offered at the center in Newport
This is what it looks like today (15th of November 2019)
And in memory of that wonderful coming together of people.
Um and Celia with the some memories that remain
And we understand the banner we are having on display is a copy made by the same women.
The copy was on display during lunch with the supporters of the march, they told how they gave shelter for the night.
Jake and I went to several locations to try to trace the march of The Women for Life on Earth (28th of August 1981)
Here it is that the women cross the bridge over the Severn towards England
During a lunch with museum objects around us we discussed more elaborately protests, not only in the past but also the future
And Abike performed her contemporary view on what it is to be at home, as it is from where we protest
The march in 1981 was part of many protests in the 20th century. Our meeting with them was in Newport where early that century a suffragette died during another protest.
And protests continue. We talked if any of it paid off. The answer seemed that it moved forward but in another way it did not move at all. A kind of loss of all hope vs. just enough hope to continu one replied.
Now the banner is on display in THE FUTURE HAS A PAST and hopefully provokes some ideas about the future and how someone wants the future to be.
Related
