The Australian Women's Peace Movement of the Mid-1980s

While the Australian women's peace movement has a long history, during the mid-1980s, there was a heightened level of activity.¹³ At this time, a string of antiwar and antinuclear actions were undertaken worldwide, and the Australian women's peace camps were part of this international move­ment.

The women's peace camps at Pine Gap and Cockburn Sound each lasted a fortnight and took place in November 1983 and December 1984, respec­tively. In between there was another women's peace camp at Salisbury Weapons Research Establishment near Adelaide, and a mixed (gender) camp was held near Roxby Downs uranium mine in South Australia. In 1985, North West Cape, the site of a U.S. military base in northern Western Australia, was the site of another mixed peace camp. Other major events were the annual Palm Sunday rallies held in all major Australian cit­ies by People for Nuclear Disarmament.¹⁵ By the mid-1980s, these rallies were the largest protests in Australian history. In 1985, 350,000 people marched in support of peace across the country.¹⁶ Another regular activity of the Australian peace movement was the marking, by means of rallies and marches, of the anniversaries of the bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

In addition to these major events, there was a stream of smaller actions drawing attention to local peace and military issues.

In several respects, therefore, the women's peace camps at Pine Gap and Cockburn Sound were not extraordinary. They occurred within the context of a much larger and popular nationwide phenomenon that was campaign­ing against the Cold War and the capacity of the United States and the Soviet Union to initiate a global nuclear war. Even though it was geographi­cally removed from these nations, Australia was involved in the proliferation of the Cold War and nuclear threat in a number of ways. First, Australia was (and still is) a partner in the ANZUS (Australia New Zealand United States) defense treaty, which enabled the siting of U.S. military bases in Australia and the visits of U.S. warships and submarines to Australian ports.¹⁸ While never confirmed by the United States, it was firmly believed by those in the peace movement that many of these vessels were nuclear powered and that some were nuclear armed. The peace movement activists were concerned that by allowing the visits, Australia actively supported U.S. militarism and indirectly caused itself to become a target for potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Another fear was the potential for nuclear accidents putting the Australian population and environment at risk. Moreover, Australia mined and exported uranium, a necessary ingredient for nuclear weapons. In terms of how the peace protesters saw it, while this trade was lucrative, it also endangered the safety of the world.

It was all these concerns about Australia’s involvement in nuclear war that led women to join the women’s peace movement and to participate in its two key events of the 1980s—the women’s peace camps at Pine Gap and Cockburn Sound. However, many women who joined the Australian women’s peace movement in the 1980s were not involved in the wider antinuclear peace movement but came because of their links to the Australian women’s movement or other social and environmental protest actions, such as those opposing the logging of native forests. Others joined from their involvement in left-wing politics. Many were inspired by wom­en’s peace camps elsewhere, in particular, at Greenham Common in England, which commenced in 1981 in protest at the installation of cruise nuclear missiles there and continued until 2000.¹⁹ Therefore, while we can situate the Pine Gap and Cockburn Sound peace camps within the wider Australian antiwar campaign of the time, it is important to see these women’s camps as unique as well.

While not mutually exclusive or uncontested, Australian women’s moti­vations for setting up and participating in the peace camps can be located within two frameworks of understandings. First, an interest in peace was maternalist in origin and related to a belief that women were nurturing and protective. Second, an interest in peace and the nuclear disarmament move­ment was framed within particular forms of feminism and, in particular, radical feminism and ecofeminism, in which war was understood as a form of patriarchal oppression.²⁰ As Curthoys states, “feminists often portrayed militarism and ecological waste and destruction as the product of male power, as well as masculine values and priorities.”²¹ A significant difference, then, between the general peace movement and the women’s peace move­ment was the latter’s emphasis on wider issues of violence and, especially, violence against women.

The diversity in motivations for joining and organizing the peace camps at Pine Gap and Cockburn Sound is clearly reflected in the number of groups that participated. The peace camp at Pine Gap, for example, was jointly organized by the Women’s Action Against Global Violence based in Sydney and the local Alice Springs’ women’s peace group, alongside input from the other state-based groups.²² In Western Australia, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), based in Perth, organized the Cockburn Sound camp, with support from women’s groups in other states, particularly in terms of the logistics of transporting women from all over the country to the west coast, which is more than 3,000 kilometers away from Australia’s main cities on the east coast. Over the course of the mid-1980s, these vari­ous women’s peace groups changed their name to Women for Survival, in line with the national trend for a uniform name for Australian women’s peace and antiviolence groups and also reflecting interests wider than nuclear disarmament.

While on the surface it may seem counterproductive to organize protests aimed at gaining maximum media exposure in remote locations, the women at Pine Gap and Cockburn Sound had specific reasons for situating the camps where they did. In both cases, the presence of nearby military instal­lations and naval bases enabled the camps to easily highlight and focus their protest activities on Australia’s engagement in the Cold War. As a result, the “secretive” Pine Gap satellite telecommunications military base (“probably the most important outside the US” and “run by the CIA”)²³ was an ideal choice as was Stirling Naval Base in Cockburn Sound and Perth’s port city of Fremantle, which witnessed the porting of nuclear-powered and nuclear­armed U.S.

However, the goals of the camps were not only concerned with antiwar and antinuclear themes. The women at the peace camps came from a wider antiviolence political background, and their aims also included the support of Aboriginal land rights and the redirection of defense spending into areas of social need and the protection of the environment. They also supported “women and children of all races and cultures in their struggle against vio­lence and oppression,” and, at Cockburn Sound specifically, there were concerns about the impact on the local communities of the 8,000 sailors that arrived during U.S. ship visits. Hence, Women for Survival protested against “the exploitation of women resulting from the use of Cockburn Sound and Fremantle as rest and recreation ports for US military personnel.”²⁵ The pres­ence of military personnel was another way in which war impacted on a peacetime society, but whereas during World War II when there had been largely romantic ideas about Australian women and visiting U.S. sailors, during the 1980s the dangers of fraternization were emphasized by the women's peace camps. In contrast, local residents were keen to get to know the visiting sailors and resisted challenges by the women activists.²⁶