3

1930–1960
Fascism, The Cold War and The Bomb

The end of the 1920s saw much of Europe in turmoil. Although many of the countries involved in the First World War were still attempting economic recovery throughout the decade, they were plagued by unemployment, workers’ strikes (Britain’s General Strike of 1926) and inflation (Germany), while the USA’s economy boomed. Then, just as recovery began to be in sight for all, the US stock market crash of 1929 brought it all tumbling down, with global repercussions. This opened the door to totalitarian regimes (Fascism and Nazism) in Europe, while the USA struggled with the Great Depression. In short: the USA headed for economic collapse. Banks went bust, factories closed, unemployment skyrocketed: a million were homeless and hungry. US President Herbert Hoover could not, or would not, comprehend the tragedy, and refused to spend government money on relief programmes.¹

In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) campaigned for the US presidency – against Hoover – and won easily. (Not surprisingly, there were campaign buttons that said ‘ANYONE BUT HOOVER’.) Once in office, Roosevelt produced a series of programmes and laws under the name of the New Deal, regulating the stock market and creating work programmes or training for the unemployed. Recovery wasn’t easy. By a trick of nature, from 1934–37 abnormally severe droughts and windstorms turned the Great Plains area, across seven states of the USA, into a dry desert: the Dust Bowl. But the New Deal brought hope.²

Throughout the 1930s, social deprivation and economic depression became the subject of the art movement known as Social Realism. Encouraged by federal arts projects under the New Deal, artists such as Ben Shahn (one of the movement’s central figures and agitators) produced work that was rooted in social criticism, committing themselves to depicting the plight of the urban, or rural, poor. They drew attention to industrial workers, labour unions and labour organizing, viewed as pathways to a better future, as well as highlighting ruined land, ruined farmers and the devastation of rural communities. Such imagery produced a new expression of American identity, as well as consolidating a group of artists dedicated to social justice, while keeping an anxious (and watchful) eye on events developing in Europe.³

At the same time, Germany’s Depression, driven by inflation and large-scale unemployment, also needed a strong leader. Adolf Hitler, leader of the (fascist) Nazi movement or National Socialist German Workers Party, was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933 on the promise of stability and better times. But his strong nationalist movement (Nazism) had, at its centre, racism and militarism. He targeted particular groups to blame for Germany’s ills – Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled – and set out to exterminate them. He built up Germany’s industrial might, and by 1938 used it to invade and occupy surrounding countries including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and eventually France, leading to the Second World War in Europe.⁴

Hurrah, the Butter is All Gone! 1935
John Heartfield for AIZ, 19 December, 1935

In the early years of the 1930s, former Berlin Dadaist and photomontagist John Heartfield became a regular contributor of photomontages to the German magazine Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung or A-I-Z (Workers’ Illustrated Paper) aimed at Communists and German workers. But as time went on, he embarked on a dangerous path, producing searing and at times bloody anti-Nazi photomontages as covers or illustrations for A-I-Z, a number of them aiming a direct hit at Hitler or his cohorts. In 1933 both Heartfield and the magazine (now called AIZ) were forced to escape to Prague. There Heartfield continued to deliver his visual attack on Nazi terror. In 1938 the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia and Heartfield made a narrow escape to London where he remained throughout the Second World War continuing his anti-Nazi activities.⁵

Not far away, Spain was fighting a civil war (1936–39) involving its beleaguered republican government pitted against the forces of the fascist rebel leader, Francisco Franco. Despite international help supplied to the republican government and its army, Franco won (aided by Hitler and Mussolini) and ruled until his death in 1975. However a product of that devastating civil war was the production of a mass of extraordinary posters, produced by or on behalf of the republican government, which drew stylistically from the Modernist advertising of the time, and are still admired, and seemingly ‘modern’, in the 21st century.⁶

The Second World War (1939–45) brought a spectre of weaponry that has defined global power politics to this day. In a move intended allegedly to end the war, the USA dropped an atom bomb (nuclear weapon) on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki in 1945. Within four years, another country – the USSR/Russia – had tested one. The Cold War had started, a period characterized by two superpowers (the USA and the USSR) engaged in an arms race and a space race. The testing of atom bombs by a growing number of countries wishing to be part of ‘the club’ continued, often taking place in the Pacific (with protests by Islanders bearing the consequences, or their sympathizers).⁷

In the early 1950s, the USA succumbed to panic about the Communist threat, fears of invasion by the Soviets (as hyped in popular culture) and an on-going craze for underground fallout shelters. Britain, however, slowly began sowing the seeds for a nuclear disarmament movement. Then on 1 March 1954 the USA set off the first hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, which had 1,300 times the power of the bomb at Hiroshima. The explosion was witnessed by the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru or Lucky Dragon. Despite being 20 miles outside of the US exclusion zone, the 23-man crew was covered with lethal fallout.⁸

In addition to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Lucky Dragon incident added further impetus to the fast-developing Japanese peace movement. It also inspired the anti-nuclear film Gojira (Godzilla) directed by Ishiro Honda and released in 1954. Honda had visited Hiroshima after the war. Haunted by images of horror and devastation, he imbibed the film with a documentary-like directness. It opened with an incident based on that of the Lucky Dragon, where a fishing boat was confronted with a nuclear blast, which then awakened a long-dormant dinosaur-like monster. Honda made Godzilla (the monster) a representation of the destructive power of the atom bomb.⁹

With news of a hydrogen bomb, peace activists and grassroots organizations were beginning to form internationally and the ‘Ban the Bomb’ movement was underway. In Britain, in July 1955, world-renowned philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell drafted an appeal, co-signed by Albert Einstein, calling for scientists worldwide to work for peace. By 1957 there were hundreds of ‘Ban the Bomb’ groups spread across Britain, organizing meetings and marches. It became clear that they could be more effective if they banded together as a mass movement, and in January 1958 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was born, with Lord Bertrand Russell as president. CND’s first mass protest was a march from London to Aldermaston, the location of the government’s nuclear weapons factory. Textile designer Gerald Holtom was asked to design banners and placards to be carried on the march. He also produced a logo/symbol which was adopted by CND, carried on the march and has been used by CND ever since.¹⁰

In 1960 Lord Russell (then in his eighties) and others split from CND to form the ‘Committee of 100’, favouring civil disobedience as a more urgent way of bringing attention to their cause. In their first action, in February 1961, 5,000 activists staged a sit-in outside the War Office in Whitehall, London. This was followed by other sit-ins. In September, a massive demonstration was held in Trafalgar Square in London, at which police arrested and then jailed 89-year-old Russell for a week. It made headlines around the world. But not long after, another series of events drew worldwide attention and protest, particularly among the young: the USA’s intervention in the Vietnam War. Anti-war protests would overshadow many other good causes for at least a decade.¹¹

The 1950s also saw a light cast on the dark practices of racial segregation in two countries. On 1 December 1955, in the USA’s Deep South (Montgomery, Alabama) on her way home from work, a black woman named Rosa Parks – a ‘quiet’ activist since the 1940s – refused to get up from her seat on a bus and move back one row (into the black section) so that a white man could occupy her seat. In accordance with the racial segregation laws of the time, if the white section became full, the dividing line was moved back a row. But not this time. This one act of defiance set off a chain of events that ended with a Federal Court voting that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. Rosa Parks’ small (but politically huge) action brought national and international attention to the USA’s Civil Rights movement. Her mugshot marks the beginning of a slow transformation that would carry on for years, and still shadows the present.¹²

The 1950s brought enforced racial segregation to South Africa; it also sowed the seeds of defiance. In 1948 the National Party was voted into power, and soon introduced apartheid: a policy of white minority power over the black majority, involving an enforced system of racial segregation, economic exploitation and the denial of basic rights to blacks, as well as Indians and people of mixed race. An important tool in this system was the use of the Pass Laws, designed to control the movement of Africans, who were required to carry a Pass Book (essentially a method of tracking or restricting their movements).¹³

Africans often violated Pass Laws in order to find work, and lived under constant threat of harassment or arrest. Hatred of the Pass Laws fuelled the first Defiance Campaign (1952–54) begun by the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League, under Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, and involving thousands of mass refusals to obey the new apartheid laws. Protests continued throughout the decade. Finally, on 21 March 1960, as people were burning their Pass Books in protest, police opened fire on the crowd, killing 69; it became known as the Sharpeville Massacre. The ANC called for a national ‘stayaway’ (stop work) in protest. The government banned the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Both were forced underground, and in 1963 the ANC leader Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.¹⁴

Women, Work More for the Men who Fight c. 1937
Juan Antonio

Hiroshima survivors taking part in an Aldermaston march for nuclear disarmament 1962
Photographer unknown

Ben Shahn and Social Realism

Sacco and Vanzetti 1958
Ben Shahn
Poster, print

Throughout his life Ben Shahn used his art to expose or argue against social injustice. In the early 1930s he became known for his controversial paintings (and eventually murals) relating to the trial and subsequent execution of two Italian immigrants: Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler. Arrested in 1920 in connection with the robbery and murder of two men in Braintree, Massachusetts, they were convicted the following year on largely circumstantial evidence. Despite seven appeals, in 1927 they were executed. Their conviction and execution have been argued about ever since; a more likely reason for their treatment may have been to do with the suspicion felt at that time by the authorities, and some of the public, towards Italian anarchists and immigrants (and Sacco and Vanzetti were both). Ben Shahn maintained his fight against social injustice, as well as exercising his great love of lettering, throughout his working life. In 1958, in the twilight years of the McCarthy ‘witch hunt’ often aimed unjustly against ‘Communists’ in the USA, he created this tribute to Sacco and Vanzetti by lettering a stirring quote by Vanzetti, published in the New York World in May 1927, immediately after their last appeal had been rejected.

Organize? Of Course We Will Organize 1930s
Ben Shahn
Poster

Ben Shahn’s concern for the common man and the hardships of workers and labourers found natural expression in the labour movement and labour organizing throughout the 1930s. As the country was trying to pull itself out of the Depression, the posters Shahn created for various trade unions were not defiant or angry; they were easy-going and positive, yet full of energy and action. Most of all, they conveyed a warm sense of hope.

We Want Peace. Register, Vote 1946
Ben Shahn
Poster

Shahn joined the Political Action Committee (PAC) of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in order to work for the 1944 re-election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Once FDR was elected, Shahn became director of the CIO-PAC Graphic Arts Division. This led to the design of many posters aimed at encouraging people to exercise their democratic right to vote and see that as the road to a better future. This poster shows the emotional ‘pull’ of Shahn’s imagery in the haunting eyes of a begging child: but a better life can be achieved through the power of the vote.

Years of Dust 1936
Ben Shahn
Poster

The US stock market crash of 1929 plunged the country into the Great Depression and economic collapse: banks went bust, factories closed, unemployment soared. In 1932 newly-elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt produced new ideas, new work programmes and new laws to help recovery, under the name of the New Deal. At the same time, from 1934 to 1937 severe droughts and windstorms turned seven states in the Great Plains area into a dry desert, referred to as the Dust Bowl. This economic depression, and the social deprivation it caused, became the subject of the art movement known as Social Realism. Aided by federal arts projects under the New Deal, artists such as Ben Shahn – one of the movement’s central figures – committed themselves to social criticism and depicting the plight of the urban, or rural, poor. The poster image shown here was created by Ben Shahn for the Resettlement Administration offering resettlement for urban families, or as shown here, ruined farmers and devastated rural communities, as well as addressing problems such as soil erosion, drought, floods and financial debt.

In the Shadow of Fascism

Adolf, the Superman – Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk 1932
John Heartfield
Photomontage – AIZ, vol XI, no.29, 1932

Former Berlin Dadaist and photomontagist John Heartfield created some of the most vicious visual attacks on Hitler and his cohorts in existence; they were nothing short of meticulously-constructed political weapons. They were usually produced as covers or illustrations for the magazine Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung or A-I-Z (Workers’ Illustrated Paper), which was aimed at s and German workers. (In the end, AIZ published over 200 of his photomontages.) ‘Adolf, the superman’ was a fairly early photomontage, as Hitler hadn’t been named chancellor yet. But enlarged versions were apparently pasted up throughout Berlin, leading to fights between Communists who defended the posters and Nazis intent on destroying them. It was one of a number of Heartfield’s photomontages implying that Hitler was backed by ‘big money’ proffered by industrialists.

Simplicissimus, March 1933 1933
Illustration: Karl Arnold
Front page

Germany’s celebrated weekly satirical tabloid, Simplicissimus – also known as Der Simpl – was bound to change when Hitler was named chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. Up to that point, Hitler had been caricatured and ridiculed by Thomas Theodore Heine, Karl Arnold and others on the team; now such behaviour stopped (although Arnold continued, but with care). Not long after, co-founder Heine was forced to flee to Norway, as he was of Jewish heritage. Other members of the team carried on, but Der Simpl didn’t survive the war; it stopped publication in 1944.

Tool in God’s Hand? Toy in Thyssen’s Hand! 1933
John Heartfield
Photomontage, front cover – AIZ, August 1933

At some point of note in 1933, Wilhelm Kube – a loyal Nazi and a committed German Christian (eventually to become a high-ranking SS officer) – referred to Hitler as a ‘tool in God’s hand’. Photomontagist John Heartfield then added the slur ‘Toy in Thyssen’s Hand!’, in both text and image, on a front cover of AIZ magazine. The man pulling the puppet’s string is industrial magnate Fritz Thyssen, a friend and financial backer of both Hitler and the Nazis from very early days. Now, in 1933, Thyssen was all-powerful: manager of one of the largest trusts in Germany and recently appointed ‘economic dictator’ of Rhineland-Westphalia, Germany’s most important industrial region. Thus Thyssen is shown playing with his puppet (‘Hampelmann’) with a look of control and boredom on his face, while the toy’s arms and legs click up and down with exaggerated (and ineffectual) bravado.

Goering, the Executioner of the Third Reich 1933
John Heartfield
Photomontage, Front cover – AIZ, vol XII, no.36, 1933

The Reichstag in Berlin, Germany’s parliamentary building and symbol of the Weimar Republic, was set alight on 27 February 1933. It was believed to have been engineered by Goering and Goebbels as a plot to incarcerate the Communists. At any rate, the Nazis arrested mostly Communists and Socialists, citing their alleged conspiracy to overthrow the state. In the trial that followed, five Communists were accused of arson. This is one of Heartfield’s most bloody photomontages, showing Goering as the executioner (or butcher) of the people. In the end, thousands of Communist Party leaders were arrested and imprisoned, and the Communist Party was outlawed.

A Voice from the Swamp 1936
John Heartfield
Photomontage – AIZ, 19 March 1936

The caption to this simple but incisive photomontage states: ‘Three thousand years of consistent inbreeding prove the superiority of my race!’

The Spanish Civil War

MADRID. ‘Military’ Action of the Rebels. If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next. c. 1937
Artist unknown
Poster – issued by the Ministry of Propaganda (originally in English)

Not long after Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, Spain found itself in the throes of a bloody, devastating civil war (1936–39). The young Spanish Republic, barely five years old, was defended by a loose combination of Communists, Socialists and other Republican factions, as well as volunteers from around the world who joined the ‘International Brigades’. (Sadly, the Republicans received ‘sympathy’ but no substantial help from Britain, France or the USA.) The so-called ‘Rebels’ attacking the government were led by Francisco Franco, who received heavy backing and military help from the Italian fascists (Mussolini) and the German Nazi Party (Hitler). As the Republicans were the weaker side, they created an outpouring of posters calling for aid from other countries, targeting the enemy, supporting the morale of their people, applauding the courage of their combatants, encouraging farmwork and industry, and calling for volunteers (to fight). Artistically, the posters make extraordinary use of the visual developments of the Modern Movement, incorporating photomontage, dynamic layout and composition, symbolism and, in many cases, ‘active’ typography. In the end, Franco won; Spain paid a heavy price. The poster shown here was for the Republican cause, but has become a recognizable protest against any modern war. It shows a photomontage of a dead child, with a formation of aircraft flying behind her, and shames the enemy ‘military’ for killing children while also warning other countries ‘you could be next’. It also marks the Spanish Civil War as the beginning of conflicts utilizing the power of bombing from the skies.

What Are You Doing to Prevent This? c. 1937
Artist unknown
Poster – Issued by the Ministry of Propaganda

Photomontage is used here to make another plea for help, focusing on the aerial bombing of Madrid and particularly the targeting of women and children. Similar to the poster opposite, this poster was probably produced in different languages, including English and French, with the intention of attracting aid or funds from other countries, as well as international volunteers. However, a wide range of Republican propaganda posters were produced by myriad organizations, from trade unions and government ministries to the army and youth organizations, for internal communication and confidence-building. They united the masses, demanded commitment from all, and covered walls throughout Republican Spain. They were placed in every available space in cities, villages and along roads in farming regions, and due to swift production methods, responded rapidly to changing events.

Help Tortured and Heroic Madrid c. 1937
Artists: Cabaña and Contreras
Issued by: Council for the Defense of Madrid

A number of symbols are combined here: the head of a soldier, the revered emblem of Madrid (the Bear and the Strawberry Tree) and, gently but powerfully in the background, the historical figure of Isabella I, Queen of Castile and Spain, representing Spanish unity.

The Claw of the Italian Invader Grasps to Enslave Us c. 1937
Artist: Oliver
Issued by: Council for the Defense of Madrid

In this poster the huge, grasping hand that threatens to take hold of Spain, is also used to symbolize the power of the marching Italian Army (bearing the colours of the Italian flag – red, white and green).

First Win the War. Fewer Idle Words! 1937
Artist: Parrilla
Issued by: Council for the Defense of Madrid

Republican Spain’s fighting force depended greatly on the organization and unity of loose bands of militia and battalions as well as volunteers, both internal and international. Bringing together such disparate elements was crucial. In this dynamic poster, an officer of the Spanish Republic strikes a heroic pose, rousing his diverse co-fighters to work together and follow him into action. Floating behind them are banners belonging to different supporters: the Soviet Union (supplying aid), the CNT or Anarchist Syndicates, the FAI – another anarchist group – and others. The dynamic use of colour and composition produces a vibrant call to action. But over and above all, this is a poster proclaiming the importance of unity: it shouts ‘Work together, follow me’.

‘Ban the Bomb’ and CND

No Atomic War 1954
Hans Erni
Poster

A new era of global power (and its weaponry) began when, in a move intended to end the Second World War, the USA dropped an atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki in 1945. Within four years, the USSR/Russia tested one, starting the Cold War between two superpowers engaged in an arms race. Slowly countries in Europe, particularly Britain, began sowing the seeds for a nuclear disarmament movement. Then on 1 March 1954 the USA tested the first hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, which had 1,300 times the power of the bomb used on Hiroshima. When news of the hydrogen bomb spread, peace activists and grassroots organizations began to form internationally. The ‘Ban the Bomb’ movment was underway. This poster was created by Hans Erni for the Swiss peace movement. It is one of a number of posters using the characteristic mushroom cloud or human skull (or both) to represent total annihilation and death. Both symbols would continue to be in evidence in the peace movement well into the 1980s.

Gojira (Godzilla) 1954
Artist unknown
Film poster

The US testing and explosion of the first hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in 1954 was witnessed by the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru or Lucky Dragon. Although outside of the US exclusion zone, the 23-man crew was covered with lethal fallout. All were treated for radiation burns, and at least 239 Marshall Islanders (100–300 miles from Bikini) were exposed to radiation, along with 855 other boats. The Lucky Dragon incident accelerated the fast-developing Japanese peace movement, and also inspired the anti-nuclear film Gojira (Godzilla) directed by Ishiro Honda. Having visited Hiroshima after the war, Honda was haunted by images of horror and devastation, and so gave Gojira a documentary-like directness. It opened with an incident similar to that of the Lucky Dragon, where a fishing boat was confronted with a nuclear blast, which then awakened a long-dormant dinosaur-like monster. Honda made Godzilla (the monster) a representation of the destructive power of the atom bomb.

NIE! (NO!) 1952
Tadeusz Trepkowski
Poster

Polish designer Tadeusz Trepkowski produced this poster at a point when two interpretations were still a part of living memory. One recalls the destruction of European cities in the Second World War. The ruins of a building are depicted within the bomb’s silhouette, symbolizing the serial bombing that took place, leaving houses and buildings destroyed, cities in ruin and years of necessary reconstruction. The other interpretation is even more lethal: the recognition of one (and only one) bomb, silhouetted, fixed in blue sky. Bombs no longer need to come in groups, or in series or repetition: it only takes one for total annihilation. The isolated typographic ‘NIE!’ suddenly feels very urgent and powerful.

‘Ban the Bomb’ (H-bomb) demonstration in London 1957
Photographer unknown
Photograph

With news of a far more destructive hydrogen bomb, anti-nuclear protests increased internationally. In 1955 world-renowned (British) philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell drafted an appeal, co-signed by Albert Einstein, calling upon all scientists worldwide to work for peace. By 1957 hundreds of ‘Ban the Bomb’ groups all over Britain coalesced into a mass movement, and in January 1958 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was born, with Russell as president. It shifted its attention from focusing solely on testing, to opposing the actual weapons – in other words, the military use of nuclear energy.

Stop Nuclear Suicide 1963
FHK Henrion
Poster

This poster by internationally-known designer FHK Henrion was commissioned by the relatively new Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (founded 1958) for placement in London Underground stations. After a decade of Cold War hysteria, nuclear bomb testing and mass protests by the peace movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis followed in 1962. Henrion pulled together two monumental images as a warning to the new decade. The image has a respectful presence: the nuclear blast merges with the skull. It says ‘stop and think’.

‘Action for Life’ Sit-in Staged in Whitehall, London, with Lord Bertrand Russell (front row; middle right) 1961
Photographer unknown
Photograph

Lord Bertrand Russell and others left CND in 1960 to form the ‘Committee of 100’, as they felt civil disobedience would be a more urgent way of attracting attention to their cause. This photograph captures their first action in February 1961, a ‘sit-in’ involving 5,000 activists outside the War Office in London. Their efforts peaked in September with a massive demonstration in Trafalgar Square, when police arrested and jailed 89-year-old Russell for a week, making headlines around the world.

First CND March from London to Aldermaston 1958
Photographer unknown
Photograph

This photograph shows the first CND march from London to Aldermaston, and the display of the CND symbol on the banner as well as being carried on sticks (as placards).

March on London June 1958
Photographer unknown
Photograph

A few months after the initial CND march to Aldermaston, up to 4,000 H-bomb demonstrators from throughout Britain marched to Whitehall, carrying Gerald Holtom’s nuclear disarmament symbol, in order to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister calling for a ban on nuclear weapons.

The Dawn of Defiance: Civil Rights, Anti-Apartheid

Rosa Parks’ Mugshot 1955
Photographer unknown
Photograph

In Montgomery, Alabama, on 1 December 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks, riding home from work on a segregated bus, refused to give up her seat so that a white man could occupy it. This act of defiance set off a chain of events. The white bus driver called the police, and Parks was arrested but out on bail that night. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) called for a bus boycott which took place on the day of her trial. Martin Luther King got involved and extended the boycott. Churches were burned; Parks lost her job and received hate mail. The boycott continued for over a year, and finally a Federal Court voted that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. Rosa Parks’ one action brought national and international attention to the Civil Rights movement. Her mugshot has come to mark the symbolic start of that movement.

We the People Are Granite c. 1955
Artist unknown Poster/pamphlet image reproduced in The New Age newspaper

The 1950s also marks the beginning of mass defiance against the enforced system of apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was, in essence, a policy of white minority power over the black majority, and included racial segregation, economic exploitation and the denial of basic rights to black people, as well as Indians and people of mixed race. An important tool of enforcement was the Pass Laws, which controlled the movements and therefore the work and lives of all Africans. Hatred of the Pass Laws fuelled the first Defiance Campaign (1952–54) begun by the African National Congress Youth League, under Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, involving thousands of mass refusals to obey the new apartheid laws. Protests continued throughout the decade. This image projects the inspirational, combined strength and resistance of the people. The people are shown as huge, strong, made of granite or stone. The puny character below, wielding a straggly whip, is Hendrick Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. The image intimates that the strength and will of the people will eventually overpower him. But it is the beginning of a long struggle, that will take at least another 30 years.