High wire act

Scan page 16

WE'RE in trouble girls! Apparently, the MoD think the events at Greenham Common last weekend were all a conspiracy.

Well honestly! Now you all know what happened at Greenham so I suppose it's OK to disclose a few well-kept secrets.

It goes like this. Gender division and sexism prevent women from participation in a variety of male-dominated skills:

one such skill is the use and application of wire-cutters.

To break down this male appropriation of skills, women have recognised the need to organiae ourselves into training the technione sroups, thus acquiring skill in free from malo tntimidation.

Quite coincidentally a lot of women - well all the women at a party at Greenham Common on Saturday - were interested in wire cutting.

So most of the afternoon was spent doing training workshops, learning how to cut very high fences. It's quite easy and takes three women: one below, one on top of her shoulders, and one to pass the cutters to the one on top who cuts.

At four o'clock lots of women dashed out from the woods and at precisely 4.03 the first. cuts started...

Nearly 2,000 women had arrived for the wire-cutting Most women were sure that MI5 would know what was happening. On the way down women felt they'd be stopped and prevented from getting to But on arriving just one small battalion of police turned up.

As they arrested one of the most open teams, women further on had got the first section down.

Soldiers started pouring out of the base. Their action ranged from the pathetic to the violently aggressive.

Continued from front page there are other strands. Bishop and US officials had discussed making a deal, and it seems that such an agreement may have been close before the coup ended that possibility.

The US does not identify itself entirely with the ultra-right even in El Salvador, and keeps open options of a deal with the FDR/ FMLN.

But against Grenada, the US government was waiting its chance to strike.

That it struck when and how it did was determined by domestic political considerations. Reagan's constituency is the hard Right, which sincerely believes in the red demons vs. 'free world' angels outlook which Reagan himself spouts-and probably believes.

After the slaughter of US troops in Beirut, Reagan needed to be seen not to be like Jimmy Carter, whose helplessness when Americans were held hostage in Iran politically destroyed him.

It was probably the coincidence of the bloody coup in Grenada with the carnage in Lebanon that Judith Some tried pinning back the fence with plastic which was burned with candles!

On other sections, soldiers used blocks of wood as batons to beat the women, rapping knuckles as police tried to pull others away:

Some soldiers had to give up: others ran out of the base and dragged inside 30 women who were taken to the MoD.

In all, about 4½ miles of fence were damaged or pulled down completely.

Court cases

The first court cases start this Friday, 4th, and there will be more on the 10th, 17th, 18th, 24th and 25th.

Women-only demonstrations will be held outside Newbury Court on those days.

On Monday one of four women who were detained received a sentence of. 18 months for her activities at This may be setting a new precedent.

After Saturday news coverage was severely censored. No publicity is being given by the media to Greenham.

CND will not be prepared to support Greenham. We must build support now.

On November 9 Greenham women against Cruise are hoping that 102 peace camps will be set up throughout the country, next to the 102 US bases.

Get your trade union, Labour party, women's group banner to your local peace camp.

Raise money, support socials for Greenham. Get your trade union or Labour Party branch, your YS or YCND group to sponsor women to go to the peace camp. made invasion Reagan's inevitable choice. He needed his own 'Falklands war' In his TV address to the American people. he linked Lebanon and Grenada, in effect pleading I've done something to get even' The effect on American allies like Thatcher probably had little weight in Reagan's calculations.

The most important effects of the invasion, however, are not those at government-to-government level. Rifts there can soon be mended.

But among ordinary people the invasion has massively increased the feelings of alarm in Europe that nuclear war is a real and immediate threat.

The invasion of Grenada looks like having the same effect in boosting the anti-war movement in Europe (and, unfortunately, giving it a sharp anti-American bias) as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 had in boosting the Right in the USA and in helping the US government justify its war drive.