It was an era with echoes of our own: a burgeoning radical left that particularly inspired the young; a time of political tumult, with anger over domestic injustices such as housing as well as a bloody foreign policy. The late 1960s saw the fag-end of the second majority Labour government, one that had disillusioned the left with its lack of economic radicalism and its support for the US-led Vietnam war.
Today’s left has two distinct advantages to promote its mission. First, the leadership of the Labour Party and a 40,000-strong leftist movement in the shape of Momentum. Second, the rise of social media to challenge the otherwise profoundly politically hostile mainstream press with viral content such as videos, dissenting articles and memes. An earlier left had neither, which is why posters proved such a critical means to spread their message. The Poster Workshop – a printing workshop in Camden Town that existed 1968-71 – used this age-old populist form of political agitation to spread radical messages on everything from opposing Iran’s despotic shah to fighting racism.
Emerging in 1968 – the year France was convulsed by a near-revolutionary surge of workers’ and students’ revolts – Poster Workshop rejected hierarchical structures and had an open-door policy for leftist agitators. It proved a synthesis of counterculture and political radicalism; some were involved in the anti-authoritarian Marxist Situationist International, for example, which harked back to the art movements of the early 20th century. Striking workers, anti-apartheid activists, tenants protesting rent hikes, Trotskyists, young Communists and Irish solidarity groups were among those who used Poster Workshop to mobilise support. Mostly skint activists without funds, they used screen-printing, which required inexpensive equipment and could easily be transported. The pioneers gave a flavour of the times and included Sam Lord, an ex-art school student politicised by Vietnam who lived in a west London slum, and Jean Loup Msika, a French-Tunisian driven from his country by his involvement in the May events.
These were simple posters, often coloured in the red and black colours of socialism and anarchism. Anti-Vietnam posters declared the UK the “51st state of US” and advertised protests in cities around the country while others stuck two fingers up at the political elite: “Vote for Guy Fawkes the Only Man Ever to Enter Parliament With Honest Intentions.”
As today, migrants were in the firing line: when hard-right Tory MP Tom Iremonger declared that “the British people are fed up with being trampled underfoot by foreign scum”, they responded with a poster emblazoned with “We Are All Foreign Scum”. Others advertised strike meetings and called for workers’ solidarity. While the causes are often unnervingly similar, and the posters often imaginative and striking, today’s radical can be comforted at the far greater ease with which they can popularise their message.
Poster Workshop 1968-71 is published 30th April, Four Corners Books
