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Briefings & Information
The CND logo
One of
the most widely known symbols in the world, in Britain it is recognised
as standing for nuclear disarmament – and in particular as the logo of
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In the United States and much
of the rest of the world it is known more broadly as the peace symbol.
It was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and
artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts. He showed his preliminary
sketches to a small group of people in the Peace News office in
North London and to the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, one
of several smaller organisations that came together to set up CND.
First
public appearance
The Direct Action Committee had already planned what was to be
the first major anti-nuclear march, from London to Aldermaston, where British
nuclear weapons were and still are manufactured. It was on that march, over
the 1958 Easter weekend that the symbol first appeared in public. Five hundred
cardboard lollipops on sticks were produced. Half were black on white and
half white on green. Just as the church’s liturgical colours change over
Easter, so the colours were to change, “from Winter to Spring, from
Death to Life.” Black and white would be displayed on Good Friday and
Saturday, green and white on Easter Sunday and Monday.
The first badges were made by Eric Austin of Kensington CND using white
clay with the symbol painted black. Again there was a conscious symbolism.
They were distributed with a note explaining that in the event of a nuclear
war, these fired pottery badges would be among the few human artifacts to
survive the nuclear inferno.
(These early ceramic badges can still be found and one, lent by CND, was
included in the Imperial War Museum’s 1999/2000 exhibition From the Bomb
to the Beatles)
What does
it mean?
Gerald Holtom, a conscientious objector who had worked on a farm in Norfolk
during the Second World War, explained that the symbol incorporated the
semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament).
He 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.
Eric Austin added his own interpretation of the design: the gesture
of despair had long been associated with the death of Man and the circle
with the unborn child.
Gerald 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. Later, ironically, Christian CND were to use
the symbol with the central stroke extended upwards to form the upright
of a cross.
This adaptation of the design was only one of many subsequently invented
by various groups within CND and for specific occasions – with a cross
below as a women’s symbol, with a daffodil or a thistle incorporated by
CND Cymru and Scottish CND, with little legs for a sponsored walk etc.
Whether Gerald Holtom would have approved of some of the more light-hearted
versions is open to doubt.
Misrepresentation and misuse...
There have been claims that the
symbol has older, occult or anti-Christian associations. In South Africa,
under the apartheid regime, there was an official attempt to ban it. Various
far-right and fundamentalist American groups have also spread the idea
of Satanic associations or condemned it as a Communist sign. However the
origins and the ideas behind the symbol have been clearly described, both
in letters and in interviews, by Gerald Holtom. His original, first sketches
are now on display as part of the Commonweal Collection in Bradford.
Although specifically designed for the anti-nuclear movement it has quite
deliberately never been copyrighted. No one has to pay or to seek permission
before they use it. A symbol of freedom, it is free for all. This of course
sometimes leads to its use, or misuse, in circumstances that CND and the
peace movement find distasteful. It is also often exploited for commercial,
advertising or generally fashion purposes. We can’t stop this happening
and have no intention of copyrighting it. All we can do is to ask commercial
users if they would like to make a donation. Any money received is used
for CND’s peace education and information work. |
 
 
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