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expiration and Max-max expiration

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expiration. It's April

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4th, 1958, and another remarkable

0:33

event is about to be

0:36

uncovered by Aria, Rebecca, and

0:38

Ali, the retrospectors. There are

0:40

a handful of instantly recognizable

0:43

symbols in the world including

0:45

Nike's swoosh and the Christian

0:47

Cross and for better or

0:50

more probably worse the Nazi

0:52

swastika. But one logo to

0:55

join that club comparatively recently

0:57

was the Peace Sign which

0:59

made its first appearance today in

1:01

history in 1958. But its designer originally

1:03

meant it to convey something slightly different

1:06

to peace. So if you're listening in

1:08

the UK you will know this sign

1:10

as specifically the logo of the Campaign

1:12

for Nuclear Disarmament, CND. And that's the

1:14

origins that it had on this day

1:16

in history in 1958. But if you're

1:19

listening particularly in the States, you may

1:21

just think of it as a generic

1:23

peace sign that you might associate with

1:25

hippies or with Volkswagen camper vans, that

1:27

sort of forest gump style and T

1:29

Nixon protest scene that you imagine in

1:31

your head, the little circle with an upside

1:34

down tree in it. And probably you have

1:36

no idea where it originated, but it did

1:38

originate here in Britain with a very specific

1:41

purpose in mine. Yeah, it was designed by

1:43

the artist Gerald Holtham as a symbol for

1:45

use in the first Oldermaston March, which would

1:47

become a yearly march, this was the first

1:50

one, every Easter, from London to the Atomic

1:52

Weapons Research establishment in Oldermaston in Berkshire, that's

1:54

52 miles, and it was emblazoned on 500

1:56

cardboard what they call lollipop signs, you know,

1:59

just very simple... with something at the top,

2:01

half of them were black on white and

2:03

half of them were white on green, which

2:06

was supposedly meant to reflect the way the

2:08

church's liturgical colours change over Easter. Just a

2:10

lot of thought had gone into these protest

2:12

sides. Now they just say, you know, Donald

2:15

Trump's a little bit back in those days.

2:17

It was... So just the liturgical significance. Yeah,

2:19

so what it's meant to symbolize is that

2:22

the vertical line in the center represents the

2:24

flag semaphore signal for the letter D, and

2:26

the downward lines on either side represent the

2:28

semaphore signal for the letter N, and then

2:31

N and D are for nuclear disarmament, and

2:33

they're enclosed in this circle. There's another reason

2:35

that he had in mind. He thought about

2:38

the image of Goya's the third of May,

2:40

which is that quite famous paint. of a

2:42

peasant for a firing squad, and he sort

2:44

of has his arms out in this sort

2:47

of position of despair. As it happens, Haltam

2:49

imagined him with his hands kind of down

2:51

by his sights, like on the piece symbol,

2:54

but actually in the painting he's got his

2:56

hands very firmly up, so he must have

2:58

misremembered it. I feel like if it inspired

3:00

you that deeply, wouldn't you check again before

3:03

she did the design? I mean it wasn't

3:05

even designed actually for the campaign for nuclear

3:07

disarmament, it was designed for the direct action

3:10

committee against nuclear war and then it became

3:12

the symbol of the C&D and then it

3:14

became a broader peace symbol and I wonder

3:16

if he was kind of trying to remodel

3:19

slightly his inspiration so that it wasn't so

3:21

tied to this very specific thing. I mean

3:23

the way that it became a broader symbol

3:26

for peace that too has a bit of

3:28

dispute about it. It may have been first

3:30

brought across to the US as part of

3:32

the civil rights movement possibly imported by a

3:35

guy. called Bayard Rustin who was a close

3:37

collaborator of Martin Luther King Jr. and he

3:39

had participated in this London March in 1958

3:41

and then the story goes he brought it

3:44

back with him. There's another story which is

3:46

that the buttons with the symbol on it

3:48

that you know that were handed out on

3:51

the day they were in into the US

3:53

in 1960 by a guy called Philip Altback

3:55

who is a freshman at the University of

3:57

Chicago but even that looks like a guy

4:00

trying to shoehorn himself into history a little

4:02

bit because basically the idea seems to be

4:04

that the truth of it is that it

4:07

sort of started being picked up by other

4:09

people for use particularly in the protests against

4:11

the Vietnam War as a kind of general

4:13

symbol for you know what we want no

4:16

war. It's anti-establishment, isn't it? It's not used

4:18

by the authorities. I think that's the thing

4:20

that delineates it and that's why it kind

4:23

of went viral. Because it's not as if

4:25

there wasn't already a very popular peace symbol,

4:27

which is the olive branch, right? And the

4:29

olive branch is in the great seal of

4:32

the United States in 1782. It's in the

4:34

United Nations flag in 1946. It's not like

4:36

there was nothing out there to represent peace.

4:39

bit harder to draw. What's that there man?

4:41

It's just like a branch. Give it a

4:43

minute. Well exactly. And here you had something

4:45

that had its origins in something that just

4:48

seemed cooler because it wasn't on a flag.

4:50

It was being held by people who were

4:52

against something that the country were doing and

4:55

was easy to draw. I mean I know

4:57

you said that flippantly but that is absolutely

4:59

right. You know if you're a particular repressive

5:01

society you can quickly scribble something on the

5:04

floor and a chalk. Yeah, I mean that

5:06

was the issue with some of the previous

5:08

symbols of peace, because this wasn't the first

5:10

attempt that was made. So the closest to

5:13

a universal sign for peace was probably the

5:15

V sign, although that obviously was V for

5:17

victory, so it wasn't necessarily P. That was

5:20

popularised in 1941, that was V for victory,

5:22

so it wasn't necessarily P. That was popularised

5:24

in 1941 by Victor, who was popularised in

5:26

1941, by V. As a rallying V. And

5:29

then obviously, it was a rally as a

5:31

rallying just looking like you've... drawn the letter

5:33

V? It's also such a particular version of

5:36

piece, like the V symbol is piece on

5:38

our terms. Well maybe more fitting thematically than

5:40

to piece is the symbol of the broken

5:42

rifle. that had been in use since the

5:45

early 1900s and it became the symbol of

5:47

war resistance in 1921 but again Very tricky

5:49

to draw, if you're not good at drawing,

5:52

I'm not much good. I'm not sure I

5:54

could do that, especially not quickly on a

5:56

wall with spray paint, you know. And also

5:58

dates so quickly, like all of those flags

6:01

that have an AK-47 in them, they too

6:03

must be impossible when you're a school kid

6:05

trying to draw your national flag. It'll be

6:08

easier when they update them to drones. Yeah,

6:10

right. But also they have made a point

6:12

of not copywriting, never copyrighting it, so that

6:14

no one has to pay or seek permission

6:17

before they use permission before they use it's

6:19

a symbol of freedom. But actually cheekily, two

6:21

companies tried to trade market in the same

6:24

year in 1970, both the Intercontinental Shoe Corporation

6:26

in New York, and Love Inc. of Miami

6:28

tried to make it their very own. If

6:30

you're going to march from London to Oldomasten,

6:33

you need good shoes. Yeah, well, that's true.

6:35

But the commissioner of Patents at the time

6:37

said, no, you couldn't, or because it's basically,

6:40

it doesn't belong to you, it never did.

6:42

It's got nothing to do with your product

6:44

in your product. So that was shot down.

6:46

And Gerald Houghton himself didn't ever make any

6:49

money out of the design. The sad thing

6:51

is how unsuccessful the campaign for nuclear disarmament

6:53

has been really. Like I was looking up

6:55

the current figures on nukes in the world

6:58

and although obviously there aren't exact figures because

7:00

you know this whole business is shrouded in

7:02

enormous secrecy, the Federation of American scientists estimates

7:05

that there are around 19,000 nuclear warheads in

7:07

the world, 95 percent of which are Russian

7:09

and American unsurprised. the UK has around 200

7:11

warheads, but also like the destructive power of

7:14

them has grown so enormously. Like the Hiroshima

7:16

bomb was about 15 kilotons, that is 15,000

7:18

tons of TNT equivalent, and the Nagasaki bomb

7:21

was 25 kilotons, but the current biggest yield

7:23

thermonuclear device in the US is the B83,

7:25

which has a yield... of 1.2 megatons so

7:27

that's like 50 to 80 Hiroshimas put together.

7:30

It's as tarnishing. And yet a lot of

7:32

the top politicians in Western democracies in particular,

7:34

kind of in their hearts, would like disarmament,

7:37

wouldn't they? You've got this strange situation where

7:39

it's escalated and yet at the same time,

7:41

there would be, for example, a lot of

7:43

politicians that wouldn't feel embarrassed being at a

7:46

march where someone was holding this behind them,

7:48

whereas they would, with other symbols behind them.

7:50

And that's because the symbol can mean anything

7:53

to anyone. When you actually look into what

7:55

CNDD stand for, you go on their website,

7:57

Yes, it's scrap Britain's nuclear weapons. Yes, it's

7:59

global abolition of nuclear weapons, but it's also

8:02

no to nuclear power. Yes. It's no to

8:04

NATO. Yeah. And so actually once you get

8:06

into the detail of how would you go

8:09

about achieving peace, a lot of the solutions

8:11

that they'd suggest under this banner aren't the

8:13

ones that people who think the banner is

8:15

just an innocent peace sign would. Yeah. Well,

8:18

that links to the reason why Holtam actually

8:20

regretted putting the symbol the way up that

8:22

it... ended up. He wanted it in the

8:24

end to be upside down because he thought

8:27

actually a better semaphore symbol to be involved

8:29

in would have been you to signify unilateral

8:31

disarmaments. Yeah, I mean that was what was

8:34

actually at the heart of the CND when

8:36

it was formed. He was formed in the

8:38

wake of an article that appeared in the

8:40

New Statesman magazine by JB Priestly and in

8:43

it he urged the British government to give

8:45

up what was then its recent nuclear program.

8:47

Britain had only just become a nuclear power

8:50

and it's so weird now that it seems

8:52

such an ingrained part of life that at

8:54

the time it really seemed like it was

8:56

a plausible thing that the government could just

8:59

roll this back and say no okay we

9:01

won't be a nuclear power I mean they

9:03

they received so many letters to the new

9:06

statesman after the article appeared by people who

9:08

were really keen on this idea and were

9:10

really uneasy about Britain joining the US and

9:12

the USSR as a nuclear power the editor

9:15

of the magazine Kingsley Martin was one of

9:17

the founders then of the CND because he

9:19

could see just how much support there was

9:22

for this and at the time the group

9:24

seriously believed that disarmament could be imminent part

9:26

that it so strange to

9:28

me now me now having

9:31

we've all grown up

9:33

in a world where

9:35

all know up have had

9:38

nuclear weapons and there's

9:40

no sign of them

9:42

giving them up but

9:44

weapons and predicted to win

9:47

the of them election in

9:49

the end they lost

9:51

but the to win genuinely

9:54

thought if Labour got

9:56

into office that this

9:58

would be what they

10:00

would do and there

10:03

were lots of Labour

10:05

politicians and members in

10:07

the CND ranks. they would

10:09

do and there thing they

10:12

did do after this

10:14

day is and the march

10:16

CNDy ranks. the CND did

10:19

an anti -nuclear march

10:21

from this point point from Aldemasten

10:23

to London Aldemasten is where

10:25

the nuclear weapons were

10:28

and still are manufactured

10:30

are they but they realised they're going

10:32

in the opposite going in to where

10:34

the policymakers and media the are they're

10:36

more likely to get documented. are, thought

10:39

you were going to say that that

10:41

was a route that took them

10:43

next to the say that that was a route that took

10:45

them next to the intercontinental shoe corporation. And so another

10:47

week of retrospecting ends but next week

10:49

begins a day early day early at club Join

10:52

us now to get

10:55

an exclusive episode every Sunday,

10:57

every patreon.com slash retrospectors.