Badge

This badge features the CND symbol. CND stands for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which was launched in London in February 1958 (the New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament began in 1959). British graphic artist Gerald Holtom designed the symbol that came to represent the movement.

The symbol can be read in different ways. It can symbolise a man with outstretched arms against the background of the globe. Holtom himself recalled: “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” (http://www.cnduk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435&Itemid=131).

It can also be a cross formed by combining the semaphore signals for the letters N and D ('nuclear' and 'disarmament'). The symbol became an emblem of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and the counter culture. It gained currency internationally and has been used ever since to express the desire and determination for universal peace. This particular badge is possibly from the early 1970s when the downward arms of the symbol were slightly flared.

Wearing protest

The visual culture of anti-nuclear protest often took form in practical objects such as t-shirts and badges. Badges are accessible, mass-produced objects, cheap to make and purchase, easily disseminated, and effective in conveying powerful political messages.