An iconic symbol turns 50

It was Good Friday 1958 that the iconic peace symbol had its first outing as thousands of British protestors set off from Trafalgar Square on a 50-mile march to the nuclear. Since then it has become an international sign for peace, and arguably the most widely used protest symbol in the world. It has also been adapted, attacked and commercialised.

The demonstration had been organised by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) joined in. Gerald Holtom, a designer and former World War II conscientious objector from West London, persuaded DAC that their aims would have greater impact if they were conveyed in a visual image. He considered using a Christian cross motif but, instead, settled on using letters from the semaphore - or flag-signalling - alphabet, super-imposing N (uclear) on D (isarmament) and placing them within a circle symbolising Earth. Holtom later explained that the design was "to mean a human being in despair" with arms outstretched downwards.



In a book to commemorate the symbol's 50th birthday, American pacifist Ken Kolsbun charts how it was transported across the Atlantic and took on additional meanings for the Civil Rights movement, the counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s including the anti-Vietnam protests, and the environmental, women's and gay rights movements. He also argues that groups opposed to those tendencies tried to use the symbol against them by distorting its message. How the sign migrated to the US is explained in various ways. Some say it was brought back from the Aldermaston protest by civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, a black pacifist who had studied Gandhi's techniques of non-violence.

In Peace: The biography of a symbol, Mr Kolsbun describes how in just over a decade, the sign had been carried by civil rights "freedom" marchers, painted on psychedelic Volkswagens in San Francisco, and on the helmets of US soldiers on the ground in Vietnam. "The sign really got going over here during the 1960s and 70s, when it became associated with anti-Vietnam protests. "This, of course, led some people to condemn it as a communist sign," says Mr Kolsbun. " As the sign became a badge of the burgeoning hippie movement of the late 1960s, the hippies' critics scornfully compared it to a chicken footprint, and drew parallels with the runic letter indicating death. In 1970, the conservative John Birch Society published pamphlets likening the sign to a Satanic symbol of an upside-down, "broken" cross.

The real power of the sign, its supporters say, is the reaction that it provokes - both from fans and from detractors. The South African government, for one, tried to ban its use by opponents of apartheid in 1973. And, in 2006, a couple in suburban Denver found themselves embroiled in a dispute over their use of a giant peace sign as a Christmas wreath. The homeowners' association threatened them with a daily fine if they didn't remove it.


CND has never registered the sign as a trademark, arguing that "a symbol of freedom, it is free for all". It has now appeared on millions of mugs, T-shirts, rings and nose-studs. A decade ago, the sign was chosen during a public vote to appear on a US commemorative postage stamp saluting the 1960s. "It is still the dominant peace sign," argues Lawrence Wittner, an expert on peace movements at the University at Albany in New York. "Part of that is down to its simplicity. It can be used as a shorthand for many causes because it can be reproduced really quickly - on walls on floors, which is important, in say, repressive societies."