1983 Cruise Threatens Peace and Breaks the Law
DESCRIPTION
This bold and captivating poster was created as a call to action by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, one of the most influential feminist and anti-nuclear protest movements in late-twentieth-century Britain. Designed in stark red, white, blue, and black, the poster combines cartography and political design to convey the scope of American military presence across the United Kingdom during the Cold War.
At its center is a stylized map of Britain covered with large U.S. flags, each marking one of the 102 American military bases then operating in the country. A list of those bases runs down the left side, while bold text at the bottom proclaims that on November 9, 1983, women activists would establish “102 Peace Camps-one at each base.” The date was deliberately chosen to coincide with the day Greenham Women filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court against President Ronald Reagan, challenging the legality of stationing nuclear-armed Cruise missiles on British soil. Thus, the poster served both as a nationwide protest announcement and as a transatlantic legal statement of resistance.
The design’s power lies in its simplicity and scale: the American flags overwhelm the British map, visualizing what protesters saw as the erosion of sovereignty and the moral peril of nuclear escalation. The crisp typography, geometric layout, and limited color palette echo the urgency of 1980s activist design, where information graphics and protest art converged.
Produced anonymously within the Greenham network, possibly in London or Berkshire, near the main Greenham Common camp, the poster embodies the creativity and coordination of the women’s peace movement. It remains one of the most memorable visual statements of Cold War dissent, combining activism, geography, and feminist solidarity in a single, unflinching image.
CONDITION
1200 W. 35th Street #425 Chicago, IL 60609 | P: (312) 496 - 3622