While wasting time on Twitter last week, a tweet containing a picture of a badge from the 80s that read “If the Tories had a soul, they’d sell it” caught my eye. It brought me back to a topic I’ve been mulling over for a year or so, sparked by the 30th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike. Sparked because miners’ strike badges are something that make up a small but significant part of my political badge collection. I have a corkboard in my spare bedroom into which I pin new badges that I’ve bought from anarchist bookfairs, had thrust into my hand on marches, and have dug, treasure-like, from baskets of miscellaneous tat in charity shops. They are something that I’ve never had the need to engage others in conversation about, but which I sometimes go and just look at. I look at them and think about all of the social justice struggles they represent. I think about the people who made and wore them, and who were committed to those struggles. I think about their short, pithy summation of thousands of pages of academic texts and activist pamphlets in a single image or quote. I think about them and smile because they connect me not only to these struggles, but also to my own political identity.
Badges featured heavily in my teenage ‘alternative’ phase. Mosher, goth, emo, whatever term best applies, badges were a symbol of my subcultural affiliation and adorned by rucksack (worn low on two shoulders, naturally) and occasionally pinned to a sartorially ill-judged tie. Whether graced by the name of a band I was currently enamoured with, or a self-deprecating statement of my teenage angst, they signalled my allegiance to an amorphous tribe of similarly musically inclined individuals.
The badges were one of the first things to go as I shed my teenage style when I found comfort in the warm intellectual arms of university. As a child I was weird because I was clever and politically outspoken and during secondary school these were increasingly used to label me as weird and undesirable. My subcultural style provided a more visible weirdness upon which people could focus and toward which they could direct their ire, but it also gave me a community of others with which I could identify. When I went to university I found a place where being clever and politically outspoken was positively encouraged and no longer needed a protective subcultural identity. Ultimately, my political mobilisation brought me back to badges, and watching my collection grow has illuminated my own development.
The first badge I remember buying was one I’d had my eye on for a while. At 18 I was working in a vintage clothes shop in Manchester and when I went to university I continued to work at weekends and during the holidays. Behind the counter hung a tatty denim waistcoat on which were displayed badges of various types. Most were depressingly representative my boss’s understanding of ‘vintage’, which was essentially fancy dress. So the neon peace signs sat side by side the type of badges given away as promotional material by building societies in the ‘80s. They were on sale because they were old, not because they were interesting or desirable. Yet in amongst the jumble-sale rejects sat a yellow circular badge with black writing that spoke to me. “Greenham Women are Everywhere” is shouted, its voice muffled by the glitter and neon that jostled for space on the waistcoat. After looking at it for a few weeks, I sacrificed all of £2 from my (well below) minimum wage and took it home. The women’s peace camp at Greenham was born years before I was, but its place in my consciousness at 18 is testament to its legacy for feminist activism. Raised by a feminist mother whose campaigning against the first gulf war saw me spending an enjoyable amount of time in local authority crèches, Greenham always figured in my understanding of the feminist and peace movements, despite never having visited it. The Greenham Women badge linked me to those women and their struggle, as well as to my mother and her activism. It signified a community even more amorphous than the musical subculture I’d taken solace in, but even more important and, I hoped, longer lasting.
I lost the badge years ago, along with two others (an Aids awareness badge and an anti-racist one) when I lost the jacket they were pinned to. Losing the other two badges didn’t bother me, but losing the Greenham badge still saddens me whenever I look at my corkboard. It had no monetary or use value, but a large part of its importance to me lay in its original ephemerality. It was of its time and I shouldn’t imagine it was ever intended to outlast the camp. But its message remains true 30 odd years after Greenham began, and those women are still everywhere.
I began writing this piece as a way to unblock myself in the midst of my thesis-writing nightmare. The chapter I’m working on it bitty and largely incoherent, so I decided to write about something completely unrelated. But in doing so I’ve realised that even this is related, which is helpful. Hopefully when I get back to writing tomorrow everything will flow a little easier. The badges I still own all have their own stories to tell so I might follow up with a couple of other pieces if I get the time. They might be slightly more sociological, but maybe not. We’ll see.
Badges featured heavily in my teenage ‘alternative’ phase. Mosher, goth, emo, whatever term best applies, badges were a symbol of my subcultural affiliation and adorned by rucksack (worn low on two shoulders, naturally) and occasionally pinned to a sartorially ill-judged tie. Whether graced by the name of a band I was currently enamoured with, or a self-deprecating statement of my teenage angst, they signalled my allegiance to an amorphous tribe of similarly musically inclined individuals.
The badges were one of the first things to go as I shed my teenage style when I found comfort in the warm intellectual arms of university. As a child I was weird because I was clever and politically outspoken and during secondary school these were increasingly used to label me as weird and undesirable. My subcultural style provided a more visible weirdness upon which people could focus and toward which they could direct their ire, but it also gave me a community of others with which I could identify. When I went to university I found a place where being clever and politically outspoken was positively encouraged and no longer needed a protective subcultural identity. Ultimately, my political mobilisation brought me back to badges, and watching my collection grow has illuminated my own development.
The first badge I remember buying was one I’d had my eye on for a while. At 18 I was working in a vintage clothes shop in Manchester and when I went to university I continued to work at weekends and during the holidays. Behind the counter hung a tatty denim waistcoat on which were displayed badges of various types. Most were depressingly representative my boss’s understanding of ‘vintage’, which was essentially fancy dress. So the neon peace signs sat side by side the type of badges given away as promotional material by building societies in the ‘80s. They were on sale because they were old, not because they were interesting or desirable. Yet in amongst the jumble-sale rejects sat a yellow circular badge with black writing that spoke to me. “Greenham Women are Everywhere” is shouted, its voice muffled by the glitter and neon that jostled for space on the waistcoat. After looking at it for a few weeks, I sacrificed all of £2 from my (well below) minimum wage and took it home. The women’s peace camp at Greenham was born years before I was, but its place in my consciousness at 18 is testament to its legacy for feminist activism. Raised by a feminist mother whose campaigning against the first gulf war saw me spending an enjoyable amount of time in local authority crèches, Greenham always figured in my understanding of the feminist and peace movements, despite never having visited it. The Greenham Women badge linked me to those women and their struggle, as well as to my mother and her activism. It signified a community even more amorphous than the musical subculture I’d taken solace in, but even more important and, I hoped, longer lasting.
I lost the badge years ago, along with two others (an Aids awareness badge and an anti-racist one) when I lost the jacket they were pinned to. Losing the other two badges didn’t bother me, but losing the Greenham badge still saddens me whenever I look at my corkboard. It had no monetary or use value, but a large part of its importance to me lay in its original ephemerality. It was of its time and I shouldn’t imagine it was ever intended to outlast the camp. But its message remains true 30 odd years after Greenham began, and those women are still everywhere.
I began writing this piece as a way to unblock myself in the midst of my thesis-writing nightmare. The chapter I’m working on it bitty and largely incoherent, so I decided to write about something completely unrelated. But in doing so I’ve realised that even this is related, which is helpful. Hopefully when I get back to writing tomorrow everything will flow a little easier. The badges I still own all have their own stories to tell so I might follow up with a couple of other pieces if I get the time. They might be slightly more sociological, but maybe not. We’ll see.
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