In this section you can find out more about our Collection.

The Peace Museum’s collection includes badges, banners, baskets, jewellery, letters, newspapers, oral histories, paintings, photographs, plates, postcards, posters, T-shirts and more.

Description: Two photos of Quaker youth peace campers.  One photo shows student peace campers in front of the Friends Meeting House in Long Sutton, August 1938. From 1935-1939 Quaker student peace campers spent weeks in the summer bicycling from town to town in southern England speaking out for peace in public squares and town centres.  Along the way they set up temporary camps where they slept and cooked their meals.

The other photo shows Phillip Bagwell speaking at a meeting in Burford. He holds a one pound note in his hand, explaining that twelve shillings out of every pound goes to pay for war.

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Description: Poster created by Iraqi artist Muatsim Abd-Alkarim, who was killed by Iraqi government forces in 1983.

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Description: Thalia tells why she started making peace banners in the early 1980s during her involvement at protests at Greenham Common, an airbase where cruise missiles were kept.  She speaks about how the women who were protesting were often vilified and how making banners helped her and other women address this vilification.

Click here to listen Thalia Campbell’s audio clip

Transcript

Thalia: Well, I did decide that I was an artist and I could have been one more body around the fire but I thought ‘no’, and we were so vilified, you know, first of all were ignored, we just got little mentions in the local press, but, we were ignored, and I used to irritate some of the women, I said ‘I’d rather be vilified than ignored’ because at least people know you’re, what’s, that something’s happening and the perceptive people can get the right message even if the vilification works on a large selection of the population, which it did. I mean, people did think we were dirty slags, lesbians, bad mothers and all this kind of stuff, like, like they vilified the suffragettes in the early days, but the vilification was so untrue I thought we had to counter it, so that’s why I started making my banners really, to sort of use beauty and humour to put our point across, because that vilification, I mean I had a teacher colleague who used to come to Greenham and she had a job and she used to talk in the staff room about Greenham and she used to be really laughed at so she took ten of my banners into the staff room, put them up around the staff room and everybody was absolutely struck dumb and she never got teased after again that, after she put the beautiful banners up around the staff room. So that’s why I made all the banners really and to tell the story, you know. I made like, ‘Women’s Struggle’, the first one I made was the ‘Map on the March’, and the next one I made was ‘Women’s Struggle Won the Vote Use It for Disarmament’, these are the early ones, and then I made, um, ‘Remembrance Is Not Enough’, and I used to go up and put them on the fence and gradually this became a great big display on the fence.

Interviewer: At Greenham?

Thalia: Yeah.

Description: Ron tells about how he successfully represented himself at his tribunal for being a ‘conscientious objector’, or a person who refuses to fight as a combatant in war.  He describes how many of these tribunals actually operated and how some people were more likely to ‘get off’, or get exemptions from fighting, than others.  Those who were unlucky were sent to prison.

Click here to listen to Ron Mallone’s audio clip

Transcript

Ron: But what they didn’t do…you were allowed to present a statement on your behalf.  All they did was somebody went ‘blub blub blub blub blub blub blub blub’ –reading it out like that.

Interviewer: Reading your statement?

Ron: Yeah, reading your statement.

Interviewer: So were you allowed to read your statement?

Ron: So nobody could ever hear what they said.  So what I did was I wrote, I typed out my statement and when I went along I said to the chairman may I read my own statement and can I give you each a copy of it and then they accepted it, so I was able to make a witness by saying exactly why I was a pacifist.  And I think that’s what really got me, got me total exemption because I was the first person at the Southampton Tribunal to get complete exemption.  And most tribunals were like that. There was one in north London which was good, a friend of mine got off there who wasn’t even Christian.  Usually you didn’t get off unless you were a Christian; if you were Quaker they put you onto the land straight away. It didn’t matter how bad you might put your case because a friend of mine who was a very good open-air speaker dried up completely at his tribunal, he went so nervous he couldn’t speak hardly, but they put him on the land because he was a Quaker.  So it wasn’t really fair.  Anybody who was political automatically went into the army, so then they had to choose either to go on the run or go to prison.  And one of my friends went on the run and another one went into prison.

Description: Collection of jewellery featuring the peace/CND symbol.

Description: A banner displaying the text of the Universal Prayer for Peace. The Universal Prayer for Peace was launched at a London meeting in 1981. Adapted from a passage in the Hindu sacred writings, the Upanishads, it has been translated into over 40 languages. It has received approval from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh religious leaders.

Description: Drawing of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi drawn by Peggy Smith in 1931. On loan from the Commonweal Collection. Known as “Mahatma” (Great Spirit), Gandhi was born at Porbandar in north-western India in 1869. After studying law in London he gave up legal practice and moved to South Africa, where he worked for Indian rights. On his return to India he was active in the campaign for home rule or “Swaraj” and became a leading figure in the movement during the 1920s. In 1930 he launched a peaceful civil disobedience campaign “Satyagraha”, which translates as ‘holding to truth’ or ‘truth force’. He was arrested for leading a 200-mile march to the sea to collect salt in defiance of a government monopoly. On his release he renewed his civil disobedience with a series of protest fasts. He was arrested several more times, including an occasion in 1942 when he was accused of obstructing the war effort. After the war he held talks with the British over a new form of government for India. When independence was eventually granted in May 1947 it led to much violence between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi fasted for Hindu-Muslim friendship, but on 30th January 1948 he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.

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Description: Rwandan peace basket handwoven from coiled papyrus reeds by the members of Avega. Avega, is, in its own words, “a Rwandan survivors’ organisation formed by women affected by the genocide in 1994. Avega members weave peace baskets to symbolise the need for healing in their nation and to help support themselves and Rwanda’s many orphans. Avega provides women and their children with emotional, financial and healthcare support including provision of anti-retroviral drugs for those members with HIV/AIDS”. Peace baskets are brought to the UK by Never Again, which describes itself as a “collaborative international network of people that aims to provoke ideas and action for peace.”

Description: Postcard symbolically showing the benefits of cooperation. This famous design was used on the posters of many peace groups.