When the Bolshevik Revolution began in 1917, the western economies viewed the uprising as a threat to their capitalistic systems. The Bolsheviks challenged the notion of private property, private business, and personal self-determination.
When the nuclear arms race began after World War II, exemplified in particular between the United State and the Soviet Union, propaganda on both sides successfully demonized their enemy.
We Americans associated the suffix “-ik” with Communism and thus with evil intentions. When Senator Joseph McCarthy announced that he had incontrovertible evidence of Communist infiltration into the government and the arts, he launched hearings through the House Un-American Activities Committee. The Committees hearings and accusations damaged the careers of dozens of American citizens.
A corollary of the US-Soviet arms race was the space race. While on paper it looked like a race to get humans into space, the unspoken government goal was to design a nuclear weapon delivery system.
Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks
Sputnik
On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 and Americans had another Communist -ick to hate (NYT article).
replica of Spunik 1 at US Air and Space Museum
Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks
The Beats
In reaction to the horrors of World War II and the increasing emphasis of the American Dream equaling American Consumerism (the antithesis of Soviet Communism), some young Americans like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady (future hippie and driver of Furthur), and many others developed a literary view and philosophy that de-emphasized conspicuous consumerism.
They deliberately did not fit in. According to the Wikipedia entry, “Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase “Beat Generation” in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York.” Oxford Dictionaries site.
Bosheviks Sputniks Beatniks
Beatnik
Herb Caen
Traditionalists already viewed the Beats with suspicion when Herb Caen, a well-known and popular San Francisco Examiner journalist, published a column on April 2, 1958in which he wrote, “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s beat generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!) hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only beat, y’know, when it comes to work.”
The term took hold immediately and the San Francisco Beats, already discriminated against, now carried the additionally negative Communist association.
Ever ready to take advantage of a popular coinage, the media was able to convert the negative image of the beatnik into one to ridicule and have fun with. The Halloween costume. The TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in which Bob Denver played Maynard G Krebs, the lazy air-head beatnik. Denver’s acting career, as successful as it was, never recovered as his even more successful character on Gilligan’s Island is simply the same beatnik without the costume.Beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik
As the nuclear arms race escalated in the mid-20th century, so did the number of groups who protested that expansion. And as the US participation in Vietnam’s civil war increased, the same became true.
Abzug & Wilson
Bella Abzug (left) and Dagmar Wilson (right) founded Women Strike for Peace on November 1, 1961 when they organized an anti-nuclear weapon protest.
First Conference
At its first national conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1962, Women Strike for Peace adopted the following declaration: “We are women of all races, creeds and political persuasions. We are dedicated to the purpose of general and complete disarmament. We demand that nuclear tests be banned forever, that the arms race end and the world abolish all weapons of destruction under United Nations safeguards. We cherish the Historical Introduction right and accept the responsibility to act to influence the course of government for peace. We join with women throughout the world to challenge the right of any nation or group of nations to hold the power of life and death over the world.” (from >>> Swarthmore edu)
Dorothy Marder
Dorothy Marder
From the same site: Dorothy Marder (1926-2007), was a social realist photographer active during the politically energetic 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In her photography Dorothy Marder captured the peace, anti-nuclear, social justice, women’s liberation, lesbian/gay pride, and disability rights movements, especially in New York City and Washington, DC. For many years, she was the photographer for the women’s peace group, Women Strike for Peace. Marder’s work has appeared in numerous alternative-press publications, as well as in books, and even a documentary film. Dorothy Marder was not only a photographer, but also a self educated artist and dedicated activist, whose strong passionate for life was reflected in her art.
Long after the 60s
From Wikipedia: WSP remained a significant voice in the peace movement throughout the 1980s and ’90s, speaking out against U.S. intervention in Latin America and the Persian Gulf states. On June 12, 1982, Women Strike for Peace helped organize one million people who demanded an end to the arms race. In 1988 they supported Carolyna Marks in the creation of the Unique Berkeley Peace Wall, as well as similar walls in Oakland, Moscow, Hiroshima and Israel (a joint Jewish and Palestinian children’s Peace Wall). In 1991, they protested the Iraq-Persian Gulf War; afterwards, they urged the American government to lift sanctions on Iraq. In the late 1990s Women Strike for Peace mainly focused on nuclear disarmament.
It was on this date, March 26, in 1969 that Women Strike for Peace demonstrated in Washington, D.C., in the first large antiwar demonstration since President Richard Nixon’s inauguration in January.
More important was the fact that Paul Findley, a Republican from Illinois, had inserted into the daily Congressional Record the 31,379 names of the United States dead in Vietnam. [NYT article]
Gerald Holtom is likely a name you don’t know. Ironically, you probably do have something he created and if you don’t you would immediately recognize what he designed. The whole world recognizes what he designed.
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
Peace News
As with any historic event, there are many events that precede and lead to it.
Fellowship of Reconciliation
In 1915, sixty-eight pacifists formed The Fellowship of Reconciliation in the United States. Its origins involved opposition to World War I. Its programs and projects involved domestic as well as international issues, and generally emphasized nonviolent alternatives to conflict and the rights of conscience.
Peace News
Peace News is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom.
From it’s site: Peace News seeks to oppose all forms of violence, and to create positive change based on co-operation and responsibility. To create a nonviolent world, we believe we must avoid violence in our struggle for change.
Peace News draws on the traditions of pacifism, feminism, anarchism, socialism, human rights, animal rights and green politics – without dogma, but in the spirit of openness.
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
Operation Gandhi
In December 1951 a group initially calling itself ‘Operation Gandhi’ (subsequently renaming itself the Non-Violent Resistance Group) was committed to using Mahātmā Gandhi’s method of nonviolent action in the campaign against war and to building a nonviolent society.
Hugh Brock, then deputy editor of Peace News, was the Operation Gandi secretary and driving force behind the group, whose first action in January 1952 was a sit-down outside the war office in Whitehall.
The group went on to organise a series of demonstrations, including two at Britain’s nuclear bomb factory at Aldermaston in 1952 and 1953; at the US Air Force base at Mildenhall in Suffolk; at the microbiological research establishment at Porton Down; and at the atomic weapons research establishment at Harwell.
Other Warnings
Russell-Einstein Manifesto
On July 9, 1955, philosopher Bertrand Russell and physicist Albert Einstein (who had just died on April 18) released their Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It called for a conference and warned leaders of the world about the dire consequences of a nuclear war. They urged peaceful resolution to international conflict to avoid “universal death.”
Pugwash Conference of 1957
Held in July, 1957, the Pugwash Conference was that conference. Joseph Rotblat and Bertrand Russell organized it. The meeting brought together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the danger of armed conflict and to seek solutions to global security threats. It was held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference would jointly win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for their efforts on nuclear disarmament.
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
1st UK H-Bomb
While the United Kingdom’s Labor Party’s H-Bomb Campaign Committee and the National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests favored public meetings, petitions and education work, those in favor of direct action against the test set up an emergency committee to organise and finance a voyage to the test zone of the UK’s first hydrogen bomb testat Christmas Island on 8 November 1957 by pacifist Harold Steele.
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
World Annihilation
From that test and the publicity surrounding it, the time for a mass march in opposition to nuclear weapons seem to have arrived.
The Aldermaston March at Easter was born. The UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is less than 1 mile south of Aldermaston. AWE is where the UK designs and manufactures the warheads for its stock of Trident missiles, and where decommissioned and redundant nuclear warheads are dismantled.
There had been earlier demonstrations at Aldermaston in the 1950s which had simply comprised of hiring a bus to the site, marching round the base, and holding an open-air meeting in the nearby village itself.
This march would take four days.
Keep in mind that by 1958, the growing nuclear arsenals had become capable of destroying all humans and the world as we know it. Each of the three countries with atomic bombs, the UK, US, and USSR, continued to develop more powerful bombs, test them, as well as developing ways to deliver them.
Today, nine countries have nuclear weapons: the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
DAC
The Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War [DAC] had its roots from Operation Gandhi led the March’s organization. Michael Randle, Hugh Brock, Patricia Arrowsmith, and others had formed DAC in the late summer of 1957
The three headed Aldermaston March Committee .
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Sketch of nuclear disarmament symbol by Gerald Holtom (courtesy Commonweal Collection, University of Bradford)
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [CND] was another nuclear disarmament group that evolved out of the National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests. On January 27, 1958 the Council had changed its name to the CND and on February 17, 1958 had had its founding meeting in Westminster, England.
Bertrand Russell was elected the CND president and John Collins of London’s St Paul Cathedral its chairman.
CND wanted an image to represent their organization during the Aldermaston Easter March.
Gerald Holtom
Gerald Holtom was a professional artist, textile designer, and graduate of the Royal College of Arts in London. He had presented a symbol he had designed at the February 17 meeting, but decided to tweak the symbol and came back the following day.
On that day the symbol simply communicated two of the organization’s initials: N and D.
In the 19th century flag communication system known as semaphore, the letter N is represented by holding the two signal flags angled at one’s side:
N in semaphore
The letter D is represented by holding the flags vertically:
D in semaphore
Overlapped and surrounded by a circle they appear thusly:
It is not…
A) a chicken foot.
B) a B-52 bomber.
C) a broken Christian cross
D) nor whatever else someone has told you unless it’s the above
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
Peace News
Though unsure at first, on February 21, the DAC committee decided to accept the symbol and give the job of banner arrangement to Holtom.
The CDC site expands on the story: [Holtom] later wrote to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News, explaining the genesis of his idea in greater, more personal depth:
“I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.”
… Holtom had originally considered using the Christian cross symbol within a circle as the motif for the march but various priests he had approached with the suggestion were not happy at the idea of using the cross on a protest march.”
The Third of May, but Francisco Goya
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
Aldermaston March at Easter
On April 4, 1958 the walk began and several thousand people marched for four days from Trafalgar Square, London, to the Atomic Weapons Establishment to demonstrate their opposition to nuclear weapons.
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
More about Gerald Holtom
Gerald Holtom was born on January 20, 1914. He died on September 18, 1985…
Gerald Holtom grave (photo by JohnRobert Mauney)
…but of course the symbol he designed continues to be a part of the expression of peace and hope in an atmosphere of irrational aggression.
The semaphore letter “N” becomes the semaphore letter “U.” Holtom was aware of this possibility and said that the symbol was also one of “Universal Disarmament.”
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
On October 6, 2018, a plaque was put up at 3 Blackstock Road, North London, to honour Gerald Holtom. It was there, in the PN office, in February 1958, that Gerald first presented sketches for the symbol to PN editor Hugh Brock and other organisers of the Direct Action Committee.
Peace Symbol Gerald Holtom
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
