On August 31st 1984, ten women arrived at Blue Gate, the entrance to the American Cruise missile base at Greenham Common to do the night watch for the peace camp there—and simultaneously to keep the vigil of the Passion based on the gospel of St. Mark. It so happened that that weekend was the anniversary of the women’s peace camp—three years since it had been set up in 1981. The camp had been evicted and destroyed many times. But the women return and remain, gathering around the fire, huddled under sheets of polythene at night and in the rain. Old prams stand at the ready for the women to wheel away their few possessions when the bailiffs come in the morning—as they do most days.

The women of the camp welcomed the night watchers and extended the hospitality of their fire, before going off to sleep under the polythene sheets. The vigil women remained around the fire to keep the watch, gathering each hour on the hour to face the guarded gates of Greenham, to sing a psalm, read from the bible and pray. Towards morning at 6.00 a.m., as dawn came up over the base, and Mark’s gospel told of Jesus being led away and delivered to Pilate, the night watch prepared to depart. Meanwhile, another woman was getting up in London and going to continue the vigil in the church beside her house.

Without the presence of the women’s peace camp at Greenham, this theological initiative for peace on the part of Christian women would not have taken place.