Ethical Design - research - book - Peace 50 years of protest 1958-2008 - Barry Miles

The CND logo is the most commonly used symbol of protest in the world. Recognisable in Europe, America, Africa and Asia. Now the logo which was created by a small group of British protesters to fight agains nuclear weapons is used across the globe as a sign for peace. In the 1950's the mushroom cloud became the image of atomic weapons and their power, just as the peace sign became a symbol of the opposition to their use. The direct action comitee asked one of its members, a designer named Gerald Holtom, to design banners and badges for the Aldermaston march so the public knew what they were protesting. After some thought, Holtom chose to use the semaphore symbols for 'N' and 'D' from nuclear disarmament and enclosed them in a circle, a symbol of life. Badges were soon made, huge banners silk-screened and the logo was given its first public outing.

Holtoms design was striking and original and became internationally adopted symbol of opposition to nuclear arms. It was only in the late 60's when hippies began to use the symbol to represent peace as a wider meaning for the logo.

An organising secretary of the CND, Peggy Duff was responsible for all the complicated logistics that went into the Aldermaston marches and othe campaigns, thius and previous other political activism was recalled in her 1977 memoir Left Left Left.

'There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.' - Howard Zinn

Doomsday : 6th august 1945 - the wartime population of Hiroshima was 380000 people, though by 1945 the town had shrunk down to 240000 people due to evacuation programmes and continuous air raid warnings. Enola Gay began its flight with a 10-man crew and the a-bomb 'Little Boy'. At 8:14am the Enola Gay was flying at 26,000ft above Hiroshima, commander Paul Tibbets released the bomb, which took 57 seconds to reach detonation height at 08:14 and 20 seconds Hiroshima time. Those who survived heard no roar, just a huge blinding white light that was seen for over 20 miles away. The crew of the Enola Gay could see the explosion in the distance, Co-pilot captain Robert Lewis wrote in the planes log book -'My God What Have We Done?'

Almost 100,000 people died within days through burns and radiation poisoning. One of the most startling scenes was at a nearby school in Hiroshima which held 620 school children of whom only two survived, one of which died a week later through radiation complications.



"an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind' - Mahatma Ghandi

BLACK RAIN - 45 minutes following the blast saw a black rain descend across the city, mainly in the northwest. It was rain filled with black, which stuck to everything leaving dark black marks across the city which made the destroyed city look even worse. Many people exposed to the rain, even those away from the centre, contracted radiation sickness and died, fish died in rivers and ponds and the people who drank water from wells and streams also contracted illness.

'Either war is obsolete or men are' R. Buckminster Fuller

'Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding' - Albert Einstein

'Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime' - Ernest Hemmingway

'Some day they'll give a war and nobody will come' - Carl Sandburg

'Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent' - Elie Wiesel

'We still have a choice today: non-violent co-existence or violent co-annihilation.' - Martin Luther King Jr

Pat Arrowsmith, the committee of 100 activist and leading advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience, wrote 'jericho' a novel set in the British peace movements of the late 50's, in 1964 while serving a sentence at Holloway women's prison, London. Herb Greers 'Mud Pie' was a then definitive history of the CND, with detailed accounts of the birth of the peace sign.

"The only thing necessary to do for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke

"We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.' - Bayard Rustin

"It isn't enough to talk about peace, one must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it, one must work at it.' - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind." - John F. Kennedy