Posters for peace

Ian Kirk-Smith considers the role and themes of Quaker peace posters from the archives

by Ian Kirk-Smith 30th September 2011

The poster has been used as an instrument of radical protest for hundreds of years: pasted on walls, carried in processions and held up in demonstrations, it has been a cheap, portable, and visually striking way of speaking ‘truth to power’.

Peace posters are part of the Quaker tradition and have been produced and nationally distributed from 1905 through every decade of the twentieth century. The library of the Religious Society of Friends, at Friends House in London, has one of the finest collections of ‘peace posters’ in the world.