Left: Greenham Common banner designed and made by Thalia Campbell. Right: Rachel Wilson, back, second from right, and VAD friends, 1917. Photo: Left: The Peace Museum. Right: © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain.
People Power: Fighting for Peace
Ian Kirk-Smith welcomes a powerful and moving exhibition
In the past hundred years the world has experienced conflict, warfare, worldwide destruction and violent death. It has also seen the growth of a mass mobilisation of people opposed to settling conflict by violent means – a rejection of war.
The Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London was set up in 1917 in the year of Passchendaele and the Russian Revolution. It has chosen to commemorate its centenary with an exhibition on the anti-war movement. It is an unexpected subject to find in a building full of tanks, guns and fighter planes.
The IYM, however, has a reputation for looking at conflict from different perspectives and People Power: Fighting for Peace is a thoughtful, creative and well-presented contribution to this tradition. The exhibition brings together some 300 items – letters, photographs, paintings, extracts from literature, banners, posters, badges, music, archive film and news footage – in telling story of a century of protest against war.
There are four sections: the first world war and the 1920s; the 1930s and the second world war; the ‘Cold War’; and the modern era. A ‘soundscape’, made up of chants and protests from different eras and installations, offers a continuous audio backdrop and is a reminder that demonstrations, marches, camps and sit ins have been a preferred form of action. There are also headphone posts where visitors can listen to a selection of voices from different eras (1930s, 1950s, 1980s). Several Quakers are included in these recordings.
The anti-war movement has always been a ‘bottom-up’ rather than a ‘top-down’ one. It is not a story of ‘lions led by donkeys’ but one of dissenting volunteers driven to action by promptings of conscience and faith. Nobody conscripts a Quaker to witness at the gates of an arms fair.
The visitor is presented with insights into the testimony of ‘ordinary’ individuals – through personal letters, photographs and objects – and this method of ‘humanising’ a huge story is extremely effective.
The principled stand against war taken by Quakers features strongly in the first part of the exhibition. A poster issued by the Peace Committee of the Society of Friends, for example, emphasises calm and self-control in contrast to the widespread patriotic fervor of the time.
Personal items and letters reveal the harrowing experiences of conscientious objectors who faced noncombatant service, forced labour, imprisonment and hostility from wider society. Archive documents from the witness of Friends such as Howard Maren and Bert Brocklesby are included.
The story of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) is acknowledged. There are photographs, objects of clothing, and letters of Paul Cadbury and Rachel Wilson, who met in the FAU and went on to have six children. The work of the Friends War Relief Committee is also represented by a selection of documents and images.
One of the most famous artists of the first world war, CRW Nevinson, served with the FAU from October 1914 to January 1915. Two of his oil paintings are shown. One, The Doctor, is a Cubist style representation of men being patched up after a battle and the other, Paths of Glory, shows two dead soldiers face down in the mud. Both evoke the suffering and futility of war and are executed in a Futurist style. His war paintings are both powerful propaganda and achieved works of art.
A significant thread in the exhibition is the role that art and design have played in the anti-war movement. Striking posters, banners, signs and badges, that convey a message clearly and crisply, are everywhere in evidence.
There are also many moving written expressions of conscience. One, a letter of resignation by a serving officer in the first world war, suggests the deep personal anguish many soldiers must have faced:
‘I am resigning my commission because, while I cannot comprehend a transient God, I believe that God is incarnate in every human being and that so long as life persists in the human body, soul and body are one and inseparable, God being the life of both. From which it follows that killing man is killing God.’
Pacifism and anti-war views became more widespread and socially acceptable in the 1930s. Diaries, letters and photographs illuminate the experience of anti-war campaigners in this section and there is fascinating material on the Peace Pledge Union. The Christian, faith-based, witness for peace was increasingly complemented and overtaken in the 1930s by a strong secular movement.
The thread of conscientious objectors (COs) is picked up with the second world war, when there were some 62,000 COs compared to 16,000 in the first, and documentary material is again used to bring individual witness to life. One of the most unusual of many personal stories covered in the exhibition is that of John Bridge, a pacifist and teacher of physics who volunteered to train as a bomb disposal expert. There are fuses on display from bombs that he made safe.
References to Quakers begin to disappear in the 1930s, though the exhibition does feature a letter written in 1945 by Quaker and Yes, Minister actor Paul Eddington, who registered as a CO when he was called up.
The largest section of the exhibition explores the forty-five-year standoff between the USA and the USSR – the ‘Cold War’. It commemorates the mass marches made from the centre of London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at RAF Aldermaston in Berkshire. The early designs by Gerald Holtom for a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was founded in 1958, are given well deserved space. His iconic design was based on a combination of the semaphore signals for the letters ‘N’ and ‘D’ (representing nuclear disarmament).
When the government of Margaret Thatcher agreed to deploy cruise missiles at RAF Greenham in Berkshire it prompted a new generation of direct nonviolent action that grew into a cultural phenomenon – a permanent camp of women protesters who undertook a range of anti-nuclear protests.
The Greenham camp began in September 1981 and continued for nineteen years until it was disbanded in 2000. The exhibition includes memorabilia from the camp that conveys a sense of the passion, commitment and creativity of the women involved. The prominent role that women played in the anti-war movement is a central theme throughout the exhibition.
The final section includes artefacts – particularly visual items – from the post-Communist era. Many protests were organised against Western interference in and invasions of Arab countries.
A wall is filled with original ‘blood splat’ artwork and posters created by designer David Gentleman for the Stop the War Coalition. His ‘No More Lies’ and ‘Bliar’ images are powerful examples of a long tradition of poster design in the anti-war cause. Quakers have made a distinguished contribution to this story, as a small exhibition currently running in the Library at Friends House demonstrates.
Archive film is used throughout the exhibition to telling effect. One particularly effective sequence in the end section is of hand held footage of three ex-servicemen, from Veterans for Peace, standing outside Downing Street delivering heartfelt speeches rejecting militarism. The ex-soldiers then contemptuously throw their caps and medals to the ground – a symbolic, dramatic and thought-provoking act that is perhaps more compelling for being addressed not to an audience but to the anonymity of a building in which politicians have, on many occasions, committed a country to war and thousands to their deaths.
The exhibition concludes with a film made up of quotes from figures at the forefront of protest today. They talk of the experience of taking part as liberating, empowering and inspiring. They also reflect on the enduring legacy of a tradition of anti-war protest in which Quakers have played a significant part.
The decision to organise the exhibition apparently caused some concern at the IWM. Would seasoned peace campaigners want to see their lives and personal artefacts appear in a museum devoted to war? Would servicemen and women wish to see the actions of pacifists highlighted in a space normally dedicated to soldiers? There has been no problem.
People Power: Fighting For Peace narrows the gulf between soldier and pacifist by honouring the workings of the human spirit, respecting the authenticity of all promptings of conscience, and illuminating what it means to make a personal sacrifice. It is inspiring to see the personal witness of ‘ordinary people’, including so many Friends, in the cause of peace. The IWM is to be commended for its creativity and its commitment to tell this story.
