MAY 2018

Co-op Paths to Peace
and the Peace Sign
The peace symbol, first seen at an anti-nuclear
rally in 1958, is now a protest icon. Less well
known is how the co-op movement – including
the Women’s Co-operative Guild, the London
Co-operative Society and the Co-operative Party
– played a critical role in the birth and growth of
the peace movement.
This year is the 60th anniversary of the founding
of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND) and the public unveiling of Gerald Holtom’s
Peace Sign at Trafalgar Square on Good Friday,
4 April. Holtom’s emblem incorporates the
semaphore sign for N and D.
This anniversary makes it a good time to
consider the role of the co-op movement, and
the ordinary people who comprised it, to make
sure its efforts are not forgotten. What follows are
references from several books that underscore
the co-operative contribution.
HISTORY
BY DAVID THOMPSON
David Thompson is a
UK-born co-operator who
attended anti-nuclear
protests in London in
the 1950s. He now lives
in the USA, where he is
president of the Twin
Pines Foundation
“The Co-op Van would arrive with Bob Tapson. ‘The
real leader of the March,’ said the Guardian, one
year, ‘is the Co-op van.’ Someone else said that if
you drove it across London soon after Easter, by
the time you got to the other side, you would find a
march behind you.”
Duff, Peggy. Left, Left, Left. Allison and Busby, 1971
“In March, 1955, a Socialists doctor’s wife in
Golders Green, Mrs Vera Leff, mentioned to her
local Co-operative Women’s Guild the problem
of the radiation risk from H bomb tests. Women’s
Co-operative Guild’s being what they are; it is
probably that nothing would have happened but
for another of the Guild’s members, a retired civil
servant called Gertrude Fishwick … and if any single
person can be said to have triggered off the chain
reaction which ended in CND, it is Miss Fishwick,
who died exhausted by her efforts two days
before the Central Hall meeting which launched
CND in February 1958.”
Driver, Christopher. The Disarmers: A Study in
Protest. Hodder and Stoughton, 1964
“The National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear
Weapons Tests had its origins in the Golders Green
and Suburb Women’s Co-operative Guild. At the
beginning of 1955, the Guild convened a meeting
of various local bodies ‘to discuss what we could
do together in our own area to help towards the
banning of the H-Bomb. The immediate actions
of this group were, first to send a message to
the Prime Minister: ‘We ask our Government to
do all in its power at the forthcoming Four Power
Talks, to reach agreement on the vital matter
of banning nuclear weapons and ending the present
experimental explosions.’ And, secondly, ‘Appeal to
all local organizations and groups to help us in our
continued efforts for the above policy.’”
Taylor, Richard. Against the Bomb-The British Peace
Movement. Clarendon Press, 1988
“In the mid-1950s there were more than 1,600
branches of the Women’s Co-operative Guild which
helped lay the local groundwork for the anti-nuclear
movement, with nearly 3,000 guildswomen from all
over England attending the Central Hall Westminster
demonstration in 1955, and 2,500 in 1956.
“The banning of the H-bomb tests, hostility
to German re-armament and to foreign bases and
to arms expenditures appear regularly on Congress
agenda. Three major Guild efforts were the 1955
and 1956 peace rallies and the 1958 Women’s
Caravan for Peace, in which the Guild took place.”
Gaffin, Jean and Thom, David. Caring and Sharing:
The Centenary History of the Co-operative
Women’s Guild. Co-operative Union, 1983.
“We must not let this enthusiasm be lost. The
international situation is still such that extreme
46 | MAY 2018