While calls are made for an inquiry into the policing of striking miners on the picket lines at Orgreave, there should also be an investigation into the role and questionable legality of police officers employed to protect the US air force's (USAF) nuclear-armed cruise missile convoys leaving Greenham Common.
The USAF believed that it was possible for its missiles, mounted on mobile launchers, to slip out from the base under cover of darkness, disappear into the English countryside to a secret location, where they would be undetectable to the "Soviet enemy."
Peace women would decorate the convoy vehicles with slogans, splat them with pink flour paste, smear petroleum jelly on the windscreens, shove chewing gum into the door locks and a potato up the exhaust.
It took a mass police operation to drag women off vehicles and remove others blockading the exits and many complaints were lodged about police rough-handling of non-violent peace women.
The cost of policing US bases in Britain is reimbursed by the US defence department, except policing demonstrations, which is borne by British taxpayers.
At Greenham hundreds of police were drafted in from the civilian forces.
They were not informed, so couldn't know, if they were policing the actual start of a nuclear holocaust.
The black farce is that the USAF couldn't start World War III if the roads were icy or it was too foggy, or if the police couldn't be spared because they were needed at Ascot or Orgeave.
Anne Lee
Otley
If you appreciated this article then please consider donating to the Morning Star's Fighting Fund to ensure we can keep developing your paper.
Printable
Email