People Power: Fighting for Peace

Fascinating exhibition at the Imperial War Museum looking at the history of the peace movement and its protests.

I went along thinking this would be quite a dry show and just the history of CND but in fact it went back to the First World War and told the story though to the Iraq protests. Throughout the show it told fascinating stories and many of these were illustrated with personal archives. It also made nice use of the museum’s art collection.

I loved the First World War section. It was nice to see the Bloomsbury Group mentioned and I was touched to see a white feather with accompanying anonymous letter. I was entranced by the story of Rachel Wilson and Paul Cadbury who were both Quakers serving in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit who met during the war and married after it. There was a very similar story from the same unit in the Second World War. I have to mention the medical case sheet on Siegfried Sassoon by Rivers, one for Pat Barker fans.

The section on Hiroshima and the reaction to it was chilling as I went at the peak of Trump and North Korea’s grandstanding. The section on the Aldermaston marches and the birth of CND was interesting. There was a nice piece about the design of the logo based on the semaphore for N and D. I was also intrigued to see a banner made by David Hockney’s father.

The last section was interesting too as this was recent history which I’d lived through even if I’d not taken part. I remember an old work colleague going to one of the main protests in Parliament Square and as I work on the square we kept letting her in for toiler trips and reviving cups of tea. There was also a section on Brian Haw’s camp in the square, another colleague used to take him sandwiches on his way home.

Closes on 28 August 2017

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