How Welsh women campaigned for peace amid fears of nuclear war ‘MANHANDLED AND THROWN INTO DITCHES’
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F ONE had exploded above St Thomas in Swansea, it would have blasted a crater 140ft deep and 1,300ft across, killing or seriously injuring 90% of the population as far as Gower.
A one-megaton bomb, according to the former Swansea CND – Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – Labour group, would have instantly vaporised people living in Eastside, Bonymaen, Hafod, Mount Pleasant and Brynmill.
Severe structural damage, it said, would have ravaged houses as far as Neath, Port Talbot, Gowerton and Clydach, with one in three people killed or seriously wounded.
This was the early 1980s, when tensions between the West and the former Soviet Union were running high and American Cruise missiles were stationed at RAF Greenham Common, Berkshire.
The world had come close to nuclear war in 1962, and there were fears nearly 20 years later that the Cold War could turn hot.
Local authorities were enticed with UK Government cash to build or upgrade bunkers in the event of nuclear war.
There were campaigns, pickets and protests – and years of sit-ins and peace camps at Greenham Common.
The story of Swansea’s part in this unsettling period has been told by campaigner Jen Wilson in the annual report of the West Glamorgan County Archivist.
It describes how she acquired a folder earlier this year from another former campaigner, containing a treasure trove of information.
“My first reaction was to laugh at the Monty Python-esque contents, except this was serious business,” she said.
Mrs Wilson’s report said a bunker in West Cross, owned by the then West Glamorgan County Council, needed a £73,000 upgrade or a complete rebuild at a cost of £250,000 – no small sum back then.
Three-quarters of the cost would be covered by Westminster.
The report alleged that if war broke out, Government officials would hand over power to local commissioners – normally council chief executives – who could order executions without trial and authorise
CS gas to be used by police to control “unsettled” sections of the community.
Swansea CND Labour agitated, and proposals to renovate the West
Cross bunker and train council staff for wartime roles did not get taken forward.
In February 1982,
West Glamorgan County Council declared itself part of a nuclear-free Wales.
Now 76, Mrs Wilson – an honorary professor and founder of Jazz Heritage Wales – recalls the tense times from four decades ago.
She regularly travelled to Greenham Common with other women from Swansea to protest against the presence of the Cruise missiles. “In some respects I was quite scared, but there was solidarity, friendship and cooperation,” she said.
“S omeone would always put their arm around you.”
But one incident in particular has stayed with her.
“The nine entrances to Greenham Common were named after different co colours,” she said. “We were at ‘green’ g gate when police vans came up the la lane backwards. The doors at the b back shot open, and 12 to 15 policem men came out and ran towards us.
“There were about 20 or 30 of us. W We were manhandled and thrown in into the ditches at the side of the la lane. Some had built a fire, as it was fr freezing. One of the women’s trouse sers legs was set alight. We jumped on her. Another woman hit her head on a tree and was stunned for a few m moments.
“We were thinking that this was Britain, you’re not supposed to be doing this.”
Mrs Wilson had young children at th the time and was an auxiliary nurse at Swansea’s former Mount Pleasant H Hospital.
Society was divided, she said, with so some people saying that we should h have been supporting the Governm ment.
“Some nurses supported [then Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher because she was a woman,” said Mrs
Wilson. “I used to say, ‘Do you know what the Government is spending its money on?’
“Every time we went to Greenham Common, there seemed to be another row of razor wire nine miles around (the base).
“There were American soldiers with machine guns. These huge Cruise missiles used to be driven out and back during the night.”
Mrs Wilson said some marriages fell apart because of the stance taken by campaigning wives.
She and her like-minded comrades have campaigned on other issues since the early 1980s.
Jazz and writing are also long-held interests for the mother-of-three, who lives in Swansea with her husband Mike.
She has recently written a book, Freedom Music: Wales, Emancipation and Jazz 1850-1950.
Mrs Wilson said she could understand the feelings of Black Lives Matter campaigners following the killing in America of George Floyd by a white policeman.
“They are doing something they feel passionate about,” she said.
The old West Cross bunker building still exists but Swansea Council declined to provide Wales on Sunday access. One image of the interior, taken in 2003, shows the highceilinged control room, with around a dozen chairs arranged around desks.
County archivist Kim Collis said back then it still looked like an oldfashioned command and control centre from the 1950s, with bunk beds, grey blankets, and pale green crockery in the canteen.
He said: “The control room was later used as a Doctor Who set in a story about invasion of the Cybermen.”
He said the interior comprised several rooms, and had no natural light.
“It wasn’t creepy, it was strange,” he said. “Not the type of place you would want to spend a long time in.”
Long-serving West Cross councillor Des Thomas has been inside.
He said: “There were thick cement walls, and it was rather bare and draughty.”
Domestic accoutrements, he said, were in short supply.
Cllr Thomas recalled the former West Glamorgan County Council chief executive living very close by.
“It was a command centre,” he said. “In the event of hostilities and nuclear war, it would have offered some kind of protection.”