Taking Action: 'Closing the Gap" and 'Breaking the Sound Barrier"

Participants writing shortly after the two camps were over remembered the media coverage as having been “hostile.”⁶¹ I was a participant at both of the women’s peace camps, and, had I been asked at the time, I would also have thought similarly, although I knew of at least one journalist who was a close friend (and ally) of other peace campers, who worked hard to get our points of view across in the daily tabloid for which she worked.

The first major action organized at the Pine Gap campsite occurred on 13 November 1983, the third day of the camp, and resulted in the arrest of 111 women. Most of the women gave their name as “Karen Silkwood” to the police, in memory of the American antinuclear campaigner who had worked at a U.S. nuclear power station and who died in suspicious circum­stances in 1974. In addition to the explanatory comments regarding the name Karen Silkwood, some newspapers also reported on the issues raised by the women over the course of their action. For example, it was reported that one of the Karen Silkwoods, from within the perimeter fence of Pine Gap, stated that the base was “a daily example of Australia’s recoloniza­tion by a foreign power.”⁶² By speaking from the restricted space of the military base—a space to which most Australians were denied access—she highlighted the impact of war on peacetime Australia.

The novelty of the names of the arrested protestors attracted much media attention and overrode some concerns that the women had trespassed and vandalized U.S.

We gathered at the gates singing “Take the toys from the boys”. Professor Wipemout arrived with the nuclear missile on the Mini-moke with a camouflage-clad guard. Speeches, singing, clapping, jeering and the missile was brought up. Lauri spoke about cruise missiles being deployed at Greenham today. The missile was disarmed: balloons released, nose dented, then carried forward, all the time we were singing “Take it back, it’s a load of crap, turn it into scrap, take it back”. Women attempting to climb over the fences with the missile to take it back to those in command at Pine Gap but they were pushed back, thrown back, over the fence, arms and legs flail­ing, by the line of police lining the gate. Some women climbed through the fence and ran forward up the road with the crumpled missile to be arrested by the waiting group of police.

At the same time, women pushing on the gate, five deep. Police lining the gate pushing back arms outstretched... The right gate came off its hinges, a moment’s hesitation and then turning to the left hand gate, and twisting and pushing it off its hinges. Several women had run forward to be blocked by the line of police who then formed a human fence. Women took the gate away, quickly painted a banner, “Preventative medicine: doctors for peace”, and a woman was ceremoniously brought back on the gate being used as a stretcher... Women slowly began to form a line facing the line of police, our arms linked singing “We are gentle, angry women and we are singing for our lives”...

The press reporting on “Closing the Gap” focused on the confrontation between police and protesters, the removal of the gate, and the speed with which the protestors were arrested. Importantly, the women’s statement concerning the deployment of cruise missiles was successfully (although less prominently) noted in the press. For example, Sydney’s daily tabloid the Daily Telegraph reported on its front page that

two hundred women broke into the top secret Pine Gap military base yes­terday after ripping a metal gate off its hinges and smashing through a wall of police. The violence erupted after the women staged an early morning anti-nuclear demonstration to coincide with the installation of cruise missiles at Greenham Common in England.⁶⁸

Sydney’s daily broadsheet the Sydney Morning Herald also covered the protest with a front-page photograph, captioned “We are strong—we say No to the Bomb... About 100 women pulled the gates down in protest against the deployment of missiles in Europe.”⁶⁹ The determination of the women is reflected in other photographs in newspapers across the country that day, and while they could be read simply as acts of violence by a group of aggressive women, they also suggest something about the activists’ physical strength and moral commitment to their cause. In doing so, the press, per­haps inadvertently, helped to challenge traditional female stereotypes of weakness and mindlessness.⁷⁰

In addition to reports on the Australian protests, Australian newspapers also covered protests in the UK about the deployment of the cruise missiles.⁷¹ Here again, the coverage focused as much on the “violent” actions taken by British female activists as it acknowledged the point that was being made about the deployment of cruise missiles. In both cases, it reflects a willingness on behalf of the newspapers to take the women and their messages seriously.

we should all be saying “no” to the lies that we can save ourselves by prepar­ing to kill others and ourselves, whether these lies are told in Paris, Moscow, Washington, Pretoria or Alice Springs, and we should not be leaving a protest for peace to these women at Pine Gap.⁷²

A concern with media reporting of the issues about which the peace activists were protesting was highlighted in a cartoon in Melbourne’s daily broadsheet the Age, later that week.⁷³ In this cartoon, a stereotypical lesbian feminist (with spiky hair and overalls) at Pine Gap is yelling at a barrage of microphones and camera lenses, “Why don’t the media report the real issue?” She then goes on to outline the mass of concerns including “the way that the male-dominated nuclear multinational chauvinist complex use militarist police brutality and media oligarchies to competitively rape sexual liberties and Aboriginal identity.” At one and the same time, the cartoon satirizes the peace activists and summarizes their frustrations with the press. Even though the cartoon used a stereotyped image to categorize the women activists (“butch hairstyles and boilersuits”), it also successfully conveys something of their antiwar and antiviolence messages as well as of their strength and determination.

In much the same way as Australian newspapers presented the “Closing the Gap” campaign at Pine Gap camp in ambivalent terms, they would also send mixed messages about Cockburn Sound’s major protest actions. On the third day of the Cockburn Sound camp on 6 December 1984, several hundred singing, chanting, and dancing women marched to the gates of the Stirling Naval Base. Once there, the women presented speeches and then successfully sought a meeting with the naval commander. At this meet­ing, they requested to meet with the minister for defense, and the naval commander agreed to pass on their request and concerns about Australia’s peacetime participation in the support of war.

It would seem, then, that the women were being taken seriously, and their antiwar and antiviolence messages were being heard (if not under­stood). However, the next major action, “Breaking the Sound barrier,” occurred three days later but did not receive the relatively positive media attention that this first action had received. An entry from my journal at the time of the Cockburn Sound peace camp describes this event:

The procession left through the camp with singing, music, banners, face paint, streamers, inflatable rubber ducks, liloes and surf boards to the gates of the naval base... We sang, Biff spoke about male violence, boys’ toys and militarism. There was street theatre to similar effect, a black ball as a bomb, a painted blue and green ball as the world and a maze game with questions as cues. At the same time, some women set off to swim to the sentry box past the surprised line of police. The “Bounty” [a boat owned and crewed by peace campers] cruised up and down and around the causeway giving the water police a merry chase and generally keeping an eye on the women in the water. At the [two-meter-high] gate, women were clambering over with the assistance of milk crates and other women’s outstretched sup­porting arms, at the same time as being pushed back by police. Women were being held bodily in the air at the height of the gate as they tried to make their way over...

That night we slept on the lawn outside Fremantle police station maintain­ing a vigil while women were held inside. In the morning we found the women around the back and we spoke with them through the walls and windows, waiting for them to go to court. We had changed the West Australian’s headline sheets of “75 arrests in women’s assault on island” to “75 arrests in women’s celebrations” and “75 arrests in women-won island.”⁷⁶

The “Breaking the Sound barrier” action was widely reported in the Western Australian press and focused on the “frenzied battle” and the “dem­onstrators’ assault” that “resembled a game of human volleyball.”⁷⁷ While later reporting focused on the “violence” of these events and community disquiet about the protestors’ actions, in the earliest reporting there was some acknowledgement of the reasons for the actions.⁷⁸ However, little attention was paid to the specific issue of U.S. ship visits and their associ­ated nuclear risks or of the impact of sailors on local communities. Instead, the action was criticized as violent in contradiction to the nonviolent inten­tions of the camp and against the wishes of many of the camp's members.⁷⁹ The staging effects were also disparaged: “[the action] smacked of a Hollywood production. Every move was well orchestrated.”⁸⁰ The local press noted that the actions themselves were not the only opportunity that the women had to make statements about their antiwar feelings, but such expression of these views was treated disdainfully. For example, in a “rowdy” session in Fremantle Magistrates' Court, “many of the women tried to read anti-nuclear statements to the court but were silenced by the magistrate... In the afternoon there was a brief scuffle between two policemen and a woman who was reading a statement.”⁸¹

While the women were depicted in these reports as wild and unruly, their behavior can also be read as actions of those who were highly com­mitted and willing to speak out about what they considered to be unjust and wrong. Some publicly acknowledged the peace activists' commitment and sincerity, as indicated in a letter to the editor of the West Australian, written by W. Hartley of Perth:

That these women have made the long trek from their homes and accepted the discomforts of their present situation leaves little doubt in the minds of reasonable people that their motives are sincere and commendable and call for the admiration of those unblended by prejudice.⁸²

Others also challenged the negative perceptions presented in some of the press and seemed to understand something of what the women were trying to achieve. For example, Ailsa Ruse of Perth commented in a letter to the editor:

As a conventional old lady, I cannot fail to admit that the appearance and behaviour of the demonstrators near the Stirling naval base “get up my nose”... However, as a woman, mother and grandmother, I quietly applaud them. They are worthy successors to suffragettes, without whose antics women would never have had a vote.⁸³

In line with these more sympathetic views about the peace camp, at least one interstate newspaper successfully presented the peace activists' antiwar and antiviolence messages and, in doing so, portrayed the women them­selves as thoughtful and determined. The Age described the peace camp as “non-violent throughout the confrontation” and quoted a camp spokes­woman as saying that the “the fence symbolises the division created between people by nuclear militarism which claims to protect us while in fact expos­ing us to violence.” Furthermore, a reason for the action was “to link with women all over the world who want to reclaim the earth's resources to affirm life rather than destroy it.”⁸⁴ These varying perceptions, both in terms of whether the action was viewed as violent or not in terms of the inclusion or exclusion of commentary about the intended meaning of the actions, are characteristic of the “mixed messages” about gender, war, and peace that were offered in the press coverage of both the women's peace camps.