043 SMITH JOURNALSOME TIME IN THE YEAR 2000,
NORTHUMBERLAND BOOKSELLER
STUART MANLEY BOUGHT A BOXLOAD
OF ANTIQUE BOOKS AT AUCTION.
WHILE UNPACKING THEM, HE
DISCOVERED A POSTER FOLDED UP
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOX. IT WAS
PLAIN RED, AND BORE BOLD WHITE
LETTERING BENEATH A CROWN. IT
READ “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.”
..........................................
The British government had printed more
than two million such posters as war with
Germany loomed in 1939, but never ended
up distributing them. Thinking it looked nice,
Manley framed it and put it up in his shop.
When customers began enquiring about it,
he made a few prints to sell on the side. It
has since become one of the most recognised,
reproduced and parodied images of all time.
That simple, nearly forgotten poster is a
reminder of the unsung genius that often
labours in the graphic design divisions
of oicial communication. It is not the
only one: the anonymously run website
GovernmentAttic.org, which pesters
the U.S. government with Freedom of
Information requests, recently disinterred
a trove of variously quaint and menacing
“motivational posters” produced by the
National Security Agency during the
1950s and ’60s.
When most people think of the propaganda
of the Cold War period, they tend to think
of the Soviet Union and its pious, kitsch
tableaux of ruddy-cheeked peasants
beaming ecstatically at combine harvesters.
Government Attic’s find confirmed that
those interested in shoring up morale in
the free world were at least as convinced
of the powers of propaganda, and perhaps
even more inventive in producing it.
Among the 136 posters released this June,
there are some straightforward commands
to knowing your enemy – the rearing bear,
emblazoned with a hammer and sickle,
accompanied by lines from Rudyard Kipling’s
cautionary ‘The Truce of the Bear’. (Kipling
had written that poem nearly two decades
before the Russian Revolution, but the NSA
clearly thought the lesson held.) There are also
some diversions into the strange and surreal:
“Mona only smiles about her secrets. Keep
smiling” reads one bearing da Vinci’s muse,
drenched in an inexplicable deep crimson.Mostly, though, the posters take the form
of upbeat airmations, as if attempting to
elevate ‘security’ to the all-American pantheon
alongside mom and apple pie. “Don’t fumble,”
says an image of an American football
player, “security is in your hands”. “Security,
companion of liberty,” reminds an image
of Revolutionary War drummers.These, however, are not the posters that
the NSA could make most profitably available
at its gift shop (and there is one – at the
National Cryptologic Museum near the NSA’s
headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland). Any
number of whimsical inner-city cafés would
be tempted by the designs that might be
best categorised as hailing from the “How
do you do, fellow kids?” school. There’s a
cartoon of a John Travolta-ish figure with
the caption “Security fever – catch it!”, and
one of a modishly dressed (for 1975) young
woman urging the beholder to “Make
security your thing,” in a cheerily bulbous
font of the sort which often adorned
‘discotheque’ albums of the period.Regrettably, we cannot know whether any
of these posters successfully discouraged
NSA sta from making indiscreet remarks
within earshot of trench-coat-clad spooks.
They endure, however, as postcards from
a more suspicious, if less complex, age,
when America’s foremost intelligence
agency tasked a group of designers with
churning out nice-looking variations
on a paranoid theme. And for that,
the Bear would have been proud. •