We too own one of a handful of the original posters that remains in existence. It was purchased at an auction of wartime memorabilia and which our products are a replication of. You can read more about the auction by clicking here. Sadly no record remains of the unknown Civil Servant who originally came up with the simple and quintessential Britishness of the Keep Calm and Carry On message.
However, it is wonderful to think that all these years later people still find it so appealing and reassuring in our modern times. I first noticed its ubiquity in the winter of , when the poster appeared in dozens of windows in affluent London districts such as Blackheath during the prolonged snowy period and the attendant breakdown of National Rail; the implied message about hardiness in the face of adversity and the blitz spirit looked rather absurd in the context of a dusting of snow crippling the railway system.
The poster seemed to exemplify a design phenomenon that had slowly crept up on us to the point where it became unavoidable. This aesthetic took the form of a yearning for the kind of public modernism that, rightly or wrongly, was seen to have characterised the period from the s to the early s; it could just as easily exemplify a more straightforwardly conservative longing for security and stability in hard times.
Unlike many forms of nostalgia, the memory invoked by the Keep Calm and Carry On poster is not based on lived experience. Most of those who have bought this poster, or worn the various bags, T-shirts and other memorabilia based on it, were probably born in the s or s. They have no memory whatsoever of the kind of benevolent statism the slogan purports to exemplify. However, there is more to it than that.
No one who was around at the time, unless they had worked at the department of the Ministry of Information, for which the poster was designed, would have seen it. The specific purpose of the poster was to stiffen resolve in the event of a Nazi invasion, and it was one in a set of three.
The two others, which followed the same design principles, were:. Possibly, this was because it was considered less appropriate to the conditions of the blitz than to the mass panic expected in the event of a German ground invasion. The other posters were heavily criticised.
Anthony Burgess later claimed it was rage at posters like this that helped Labour win such an enormous landslide in the election. Wrenched out of this context and exhumed in the 21st century, however, the poster appears to flatter, rather than hector, the public it is aimed at.
One of the few test printings of the poster was found in a consignment of secondhand books bought at auction by Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, which then created the first reproductions. The power of Keep Calm and Carry On comes from a yearning for an actual or imaginary English patrician attitude of stiff upper lips and muddling through. This is, however, something that largely survives only in the popular imagination, in a country devoted to services and consumption, where elections are decided on the basis of house-price value, and given to sudden, mawkish outpourings of sentiment.
It is a nostalgia for the state of being repressed — solid, stoic, public spirited, as opposed to the depoliticised, hysterical and privatised reality of Britain over the last 30 years. At the same time as it evokes a sense of loss over the decline of an idea of Britain and the British, it is both reassuring and flattering, implying a virtuous if highly self-aware consumer stoicism. The Keep Calm and Carry On poster is only the tip of an iceberg of austerity nostalgia.
Although early examples of the mood can be seen as a reaction to the threat of terrorism and the allegedly attendant blitz spirit, it has become an increasingly prevalent response to the uncertainties of economic collapse.
Interestingly, one of the first areas in which this happened was the consumption of food, an activity closely connected with the immediate satisfaction of desires.
Along with the blitz came rationing, which was not fully abolished until the mids. Accounts of this vary; its egalitarianism meant that while the middle classes experienced a drastic decline in the quality and quantity of their diet, for many of the poor it was a minor improvement.
The rest, as they say, is history. Tags: ministry of information , posters , propaganda , publicity. Comment by Susan Cham posted on on 27 June Great article. I love the use of history to remind people of how the past relates to today.
Comment by Dr Bex Lewis posted on on 30 June Comment by Lynda Mugglestone posted on on 02 August Really interesting article - 'carry on' in the specific sense being used here, is, incidentally, a form of expression that derives from WW1 where it has its own propagandist role.
Comment by Henry Irving posted on on 03 August Thanks for the recommendation Lynda - it's very interesting to hear that the wording has a First World War precedent. This blog gives insights into the history of government — its development, its departments and some of the roles and people involved. Find out more. Re-Discovery The fact that a design which is now seen to symbolise an era caused so much unease amongst contemporaries remains something of an irony.
Sign up for our email alerts. Comment by Susan Cham posted on on 27 June Great article.
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