I’d been making prints based on photographs of the Welsh women’s peace movement. I learned about its history and enjoyed the technical challenge of honouring its images through print.
But one Saturday last autumn, as I stood at a protest against the genocide in Gaza, something became clear to me. My work on women working for peace a century ago meant very little if I didn’t honour the women campaigning for peace today.
Discovering the Welsh Women’s Peace Petition
By chance, I’d made linocuts based on photographs of the 1938 opening of the Temple of Peace in Cardiff. I admit I was drawn to the challenge of making prints full of medals, shoes, buttons, hats, and moustaches as much as the subject matter.
The Temple was opened by Minnie James of Dowlais, ‘the most tragic mother’ in Wales, having suffered the terrible loss of three sons in the first world war. With that in mind, I submitted the prints for an exhibition about the 1923–24 Welsh Women’s Peace Petition.
I’ve been campaigning for peace for over 30 years and have lived in Wales even longer, but knew little about the petition. The prints were accepted, so I started on research. (Craig Owen’s work for the Welsh Centre for International Affairs was really helpful).
I learnt about the incredibly strong Welsh women’s peace movement and the petition, signed by 390,296 women across Wales. I thought about that document, carried over the Atlantic in a chest. In the context of today’s online petitions, this physical object showing the commitment of Welsh women to peace is such a powerful act. I made a series of prints: Annie Hughes Griffiths’ passport photograph, the women with the ‘Peace Appeal’ on the White House steps, and the 1926 Peacemakers’ Pilgrimage.
Annie’s story is inspiring. She took the petition to the USA with her fellow campaigners, met President Calvin Coolidge, and tried to persuade the USA to join the League of Nations. But we still went to war in 1939. If you think about what came next, you could see the whole episode as a monumental story of failure. I prefer to see it as a triumph of human spirit and optimism. We need those as much today as they did then.
Printing and protest
After I finished those prints, I started to think about working on other subjects showing Welsh women fighting for peace. I chose the Greenham Common protests, started by women from Wales in an Ammanford cottage in 1980.
This was on my mind last autumn as I joined yet another march in support of Gaza in Cardiff. I stood there with my Palestinian flag, thinking about Greenham Common – who I needed to email, leads to follow up, and so on.
Then I looked around and thought, “What are you doing, thinking about Greenham Common when we’re facing one of the biggest human calamities of our time, and you’re standing here right in the middle of a protest? A little bit of joined-up thinking wouldn’t go amiss!”
I went to the next march for Gaza with the intention of capturing some protesters as best I could. One of the first things that caught my eye was a beautiful family of women from West Wales. We got chatting, then I swallowed and took the plunge. “You’d make a really great linocut. Can I take your photo?” They were delighted.
Making this work raised questions for me as a printmaker and protestor. For example, I focused on the women protesting, though of course there were as many men there. Was this right?
I photographed two wonderful women with their banners. When I started to make the linocut, I realised they had the biggest smiles on their faces – as if they were at the beach with ice creams and ‘kiss me quick’ hats. Initially, I felt uncomfortable. Then I explored the question of whether we shouldn’t smile, even when protesting something so devastating. It’s the nature of such protests that people are kind and open. That’s a key strength of the peace movement.
Artist and activist
If I’m being brutally honest, while I was pleased with the prints of the 1920s – especially the detail of Annie Hughes Griffiths and her passport photo – I’m less pleased with the prints of the Gaza protests from an artistic perspective. They’re the size of traditional family snaps, which makes capturing banners, flags, and groups of people tricky.
Nevertheless, I shared the prints on Instagram and people liked them, much more than some of my other work. I suspect this was as much about the subject matter as the prints themselves. In spite of the likes, I knew I could do better. It’s important that I do this subject justice and raise my game.
Two of the prints are currently in the Impressions exhibition in Llandough Hospital, jostling for attention among very different images. Maybe the dissonance of spotting an image of people demanding a ceasefire will make the odd person stop and think for a second, before getting on with their day.
I don’t quite know what compels me to make art from protest. Photos are everywhere, but sometimes their ubiquity makes them invisible. Maybe there’s something about presenting an image differently that gets people’s attention.
I was told recently that printmakers have a history of combating government sponsored pro-war propaganda. It makes me proud to be continuing this tradition, and to be telling the stories of women of Wales who fought and are still fighting for peace.
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