Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Mai Davies reunites those who could say I Was There at a moment in Welsh history. This programme relives the 10-day peace march from Wales that sparked a campaign that captured the global spotlight and lasted almost two decades.

On 27th August 1981, 36 women, four men and several children set off from Cardiff to walk 120 miles to Greenham Common. The march was organised by Women for Life on Earth – a Welsh women’s peace movement created in response to the growing threat of the nuclear arms race. They walked to the Berkshire airbase to protest against America’s plans to store cruise missiles on British soil. And to demand a televised debate on nuclear weapons.

It was only ever meant to be a march. But when their journey failed to make the impact they had hoped for, the women set up camp at the airbase. Days of protest stretched into weeks, months and years as the Greenham Common Peace Camp became the world’s most famous anti-nuclear campaign.

Joining Mai to relive those remarkable events are Ann Pettitt – then a young mother – who founded the Women for Life on Earth movement and organised the march from which the Greenham Common Peace Camp evolved; former MEP Jill Evans and CND Cymru chair Jill Evans who galvanised support in her native Rhondda for the march and became a regular protestor at Greenham and Cardiff councillor Sue Lent who made a spur of the moment decision to join the march - with her one-year-old son - just for the first day as far as Newport. She turned up in flip flops and ended up making the entire 120-mile journey with baby Chris in tow. She too became a committed Greenham campaigner.

Forty years on the women share their evocative recollections of the world-famous peace campaign that was rooted in Wales.