CND’s “Ban the Bomb” sym­bol is 50 years old tomor­row. It made its first appear­ance on a chilly Good Fri­day as thou­sands of British anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers set off from Lon­don’s Trafal­gar Square on a 50-mile march to the gov­ern­men­t’s weapons fac­to­ry at Alder­mas­ton.

The demon­stra­tion had been organ­ised by the Direct Action Com­mit­tee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and the Cam­paign for Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment (CND) joined in. Ger­ald Holtom, a design­er and for­mer World War II con­sci­en­tious objec­tor, per­suad­ed DAC that they need­ed an image to express their aims. To cre­ate this he used let­ters from the sem­a­phore — or flag-sig­nalling — alpha­bet, super-impos­ing N (uclear) on D (isar­ma­ment) and plac­ing them with­in a cir­cle sym­bol­is­ing the Earth.

The full sto­ry is told in Ken Kols­bun’s new book, Peace: The Biog­ra­phy of a Sym­bol. There’s also a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle about it on the BBC.

They inter­view peace his­to­ri­an Lawrence S. Wit­tner who says that “it is still the dom­i­nant peace sign,” a fact part­ly due to its beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty. It’s per­fect for spray­ing on walls and is a uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised sym­bol of peace and resis­tance to repres­sion.

As Wit­tner says, although peo­ple are still fight­ing wars — this week­end is also the fifth anniver­sary of the inva­sion of Iraq — there has not yet been a nuclear war:

“There are many ways in which nuclear war has been pre­vent­ed. The hawks say that the rea­son nuclear weapons have not been used is because of the deter­rent. But I believe pop­u­lar pres­sure has restrained pow­ers from using them and helped curbed the arms race.”

I agree that pop­u­lar move­ments have played a big role in pre­vent­ing nuclear war. But I would also argue that fic­tion and film brought the unique hor­rors of nuclear war alive in peo­ple’s imag­i­na­tions. The role of writ­ers like HG Wells and Peter George (aka Peter Bryant), whose nov­el Red Alert was the basis for Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Dr Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb, is often for­got­ten. They too helped pre­vent war.

A peace­ful East­er to you all!