A stalwart of the Greenham Common
protest against the siting of US nuclear weapons on UK soil, Sarah has continued her struggle for
nuclear disarmament across the world.
Most recently Sarah was part of a
group of the women who handed over a Commemorative garden to the struggle
against nuclear weapons to the people of Newbury.
Sarah had lived a relatively straightforward life up until the momentous
day in 1983 when she decided to go down and join the women’s peace camp in
Greenham.
A native of Glasgow, she became a nurse and mid-wife in her late teens,
delivering babies in the Govern area. She then decided to emigrate to Canada,
where she lived for 16 years, nursing, getting married and having five
children. She returned to England in the 1970s, settling in the east London
suburb of Wanstead.
Life at this time involved being a member of the local justice and peace
group at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, as well as sitting on the bench as a
Justice of the Peace.
During the early 1980s Sarah became increasingly frustrated with trying
to raise awareness of nuclear weapons in Wanstead.
She showed Helen Caldacott’s film “Critical Mass” about the dangers of
nuclear weapons. “There would be a numbing effect but it went no further than
that,” said Sarah, who became a member of CND in the 1970s and worked with
Catholic Peace Action.
Moving to Greenham Common in 1983, proved a liberating experience. The
catalogue of events that followed over the next couple of decades, with a
series of peaceful actions, court cases and imprisonments, all formed part of
the work.
“The work is to achieve complete nuclear disarmament,” said Sarah. “We
have all been involved in the crime that presents itself as nuclear deterrent.
The bottom line is that we will use weapons that are 80 per cent more powerful
than the Hiroshima bomb, in the case of Trident, as part of the defence policy
of this country. As a Christian I have never been able to live with that.”
For Sarah, the whole concept of nuclear weapons runs contrary to the word of God. “Nuclear weapons will finish off the planet through which God’s creation finds a way to live out the life given to it,” she said.
Sarah found Greenham Common a highly spiritual place, where she was able to channel her anger by getting involved.
Over the years, Sarah was repeatedly arrested for peaceful direct
actions, like blocking vehicles at Greenham Common and cutting fences. She
served 22 sentences, the longest being 28 days in Holloway for criminal damage.
“I never paid a fine,” said Sarah proudly.
Appearing in court gave the opportunity to openly question the legality
of nuclear weapons. There have been successes, such as when the Law Lords
declared that the bye-laws that the Ministry Defence had been using to remove
women from Greenham Common were invalid. “We had every right to be there, the
military had no right to be on the common,” said Sarah. The women also saw the
fence around the common declared illegal.
When the missiles were removed from Greenham Common in the early 1990s,
Sarah continued her protest against Trident. This involved actions at nearby
Aldermaston.
In a world that seems to get more
violent with each passing decade, the struggle for peace goes on. Sarah
Hipperson and the women of Greenham played their part in moving that struggle a
little further forward.
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