Remembering Greenham Common

Greenham Common, 1983: the site of mass protests by women, against the placing of nuclear missiles at this RAF base, and of a women's peace camp that lasted for 19 years in all (1981-2000).  There's a peace memorial there now; the base has gone, the land returned to the local council.
I didn't pick the image out of the old boxes of negatives for its clarity, or technical quality :-) 
Present-day me comments to 1983 me: why didn't you get the focus nice and sharp on that hand, what were you thinking?? I was probably a bit unhinged at the time; not just swept up in the excitement of the protests, but also in the hormonal swirl of new motherhood (Jack was 9 months old), and the genuine fears about nuclear war that were so vivid in the 1980s.
Whatever its flaws, the photo brings all those thoughts and emotions right back. A woman's hand, fingers loosely curled over the fence wire; behind that fence, soldiers pacing in full kit, and behind them - well beyond view - the missile silos.
In this particular week, when we've seen the International Court of Justice in The Hague deliver an interim statement on the Gaza-Israel war, and when there is talk, even in the Guardian, of thinking of ourselves as in a 'prewar' situation, not the familiar 'postwar' situation... perhaps that's why I was drawn to this particular grainy image.
For some more in-depth reflections, Gaby Hinsliff has a good piece in today's Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/26/britain-peace-belligerent-putin-russia