Title An investigation into the design, production and display contexts of industrial safety posters produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents during WW2 and a catalogue of posters Type Thesis URL http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5661/ Date 2005 Citation Rennie, Paul (2005) An investigation into the design, production and display contexts of industrial safety posters produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents during WW2 and a catalogue of posters. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London. Creators Rennie, Paul Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected]. License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author An investigation into the design, production and display contexts of industrial safety posters produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents during WW2 and a catalogue of posters Paul Rennie thesis submitted to the University of the Arts, London for the award of PhD April 2004 this version June 2005 Figure 1. RoSPA poster by Tom Eckersley “Stow Tools Safely Think of the Man Below” 1942 Eckersley Archive LCC 2 Abstract The industrial safety posters produced by Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) during WW2 are evidence of a politically progressive, socially engaged and mass-produced graphic communication in Britain. These characteristics allow the RoSPA posters to qualify, by Walter Benjamin’s criteria, as exemplars of Modernist cultural production in the age of mechanical reproduction. The emergence of these images, within the unlikely context of war, is evidence of the social change identified by George Orwell as a necessary condition of victory. Furthermore, the presence of this material, within an English context, counters the prevailing orthodoxy of an English resistance to Modernism. The thesis describes the administrative and technical determinants of the posters, as indicated by the structure of RoSPA, the personalities behind the campaign and the technical expertise of the printers; Loxley Brothers of Sheffield. Quaker and Nonconformist antecedents are revealed to define the values of both administration and printers. The thesis explores the RoSPA posters’ use of Surrealist techniques and iconography and also their appeal to a wider and international Left community. The address of the RoSPA posters to the neophyte industrial worker offers the opportunity, exemplified by the special case of women workers, to project an “imagined community” beyond the normal tribal and class distinctions of British society through “Social Vision.” The RoSPA posters make explicit a connection, within English Modernism, between community, technology, progress and dissent. A catalogue of posters is appended to the thesis. The RoSPA posters reaffirm the progressive, emancipatory and radical quality of the popular experience of the Home-Front in Britain during WW2. The social changes, precipitated by the circumstances of war, of which the RoSPA posters are a manifestation, alter the role of graphic designer in relationship to community through an embrace of technology. The concept of graphic authorship is, in consequence, irrevocably changed. 3 Contents Introduction 07 The Posters 11 RoSPA 16 Graphic Design and Mechanical Reproduction 20 The Project 25 The Thesis 39 Literature Review 46 RoSPA Posters 49 RoSPA and Tom Eckersley 56 Propaganda Posters in WW2 59 The Ministry of Information and Official Propaganda 65 Community, Technology and Graphic Communication 87 Graphic Authorship 97 Part One – RoSPA Section One – The Story of RoSPA 102 The Origins of RoSPA 104 RoSPA and Industrial Safety Before 1939 111 RoSPA During WW2 127 Section Two – RoSPA and Design 134 RoSPA and Safety Posters 137 Ernest Bevin and RoSPA 145 The Publicity Committee 158 RoSPA and Poster Design 169 Poster Design During the 1930s 170 Tom Eckersley and the RoSPA Designers 183 4 Section Three – RoSPA, Printing and Technology 202 Printing and Technology 205 Loxley Brothers Printers 206 RoSPA and Loxley Brothers 215 R W Crabtree Machine Makers 217 Crabtree Two Colour Rotary Offset Machine 223 RoSPA and Distribution 231 Part Two – RoSPA and its Cultural Contexts 236 Section One - RoSPA and its Audiences 239 RoSPA and Women Gender and Communications 243 RoSPA and Surrealism Communications and Imagination 267 RoSPA and the Left Communicating Utopia 291 Eisenstein and “Potemkin” 297 Graphic Design and the Left in Britain 303 Section Two - RoSPA and Modernism in Britain 317 Tradition and Propaganda 322 Section Three - Graphic Authorship in Post-War Britain 333 Conclusion 343 Appendix Catalogue of RoSPA Industrial Safety Posters 355 Bibliography 460 5 Figure 2. RoSPA poster by Manfred Reiss “Get Skilled Aid Eyes Are Delicate” 1945 Paul & Karen Rennie Collection 6 Introduction In the Second World War the British people 1 came of age. This was a people’s war... A J P Taylor The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (hereafter RoSPA) is an organisation devoted to the promotion of safety eduation on the road, in the home and in the workplace. During WW2 (1939-45) RoSPA produced a series of accindent prevention posters aimed at the neophyte industrial labour supporting the military efforts of “total war.” 2 A group of these posters is held within the Eckersley Archive at the London College of Comminication and these provide the material starting point for this thesis. The RoSPA posters are, within the contexts of graphic design history, of poster history and of industrial safety propaganda, unique for their time. Their sudden appearance, within the context of war, is surprising and this work is the first attempt at a detailed presentation and contextualisation of this graphic material. 1 Taylor (1970) pp581-583 describes the political background to war between 1940-41. The term “People’s War” is credited to John Marchbank, General Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, who first used it in 1941. Quoted in Briggs (2000) p8. 2 The RoSPA Archive is held at the University Library, Liverpool but does not include any poster material. 7 Figure 3. RoSPA poster by G R Morris “Eyes Cannot Be Replaced” 1944 Paul and Karen Rennie Collection 8 A measure of the significance and achievement of RoSPA’s accident prevention propaganda (of which the posters are the most important element) is evident, within the context of industrial production at war, from the greatly reduced level of accidents reported within the workplace. Lord McGowan, President of RoSPA, claimed that, “within the chemical industry a period of two million accident-free man-hours had been recorded.”3 This achievement is the more impressive for having been made against a background of industrial expansion (some industries doubled in size in terms of infrastructure and workforce) and against a more urgently imperative demand for increased production (often from workers newly drafted into industrial employment). To have achieved this within the context of war and by appeal to the consideration of personal safety and collective responsibility, rather than by threat of discipline or censure, is especially remarkable. The RoSPA campaigns may therefore be considered to have helped the war effort decisively and to have improved the quality of life of the industrial worker. 3 These figures were quoted by Lord McGowan in the “Annual Report to RoSPA Members” of 1944. The report is held in the RoSPA Archive at the University of Liverpool. National Executive Committee papers (D.226/2/1). The statistical record of accidents in industry was maintained, initially, by the Factory Inspectorate. More recently figures have been collected by the Health and Safety Executive who report, in turn, to the Office of National Statistics. The criteria by which “reportable accidents” are reported and judged have been constantly changed as a consequence of policy. The comparison of accident figures, over time, is therefore considered meaningless. Nowadays RoSPA do not themselves collect national statistical data on industrial, or occupational health injuries. In 1965 it was reported that twice as many people were killed and injured (204,000) in British factories compared with on British roads (see Archer (1965) in “Design” 202). 9 Figure 4. RoSPA poster by H A Rothholz “No Room for Horse-Play Here” 1944 Imperial War Museum 10 The Posters The major collection of RoSPA posters is held by the Imperial War Museum, London. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has a small selection of RoSPA posters, as does the Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich, Switzerland.4 The Estate of the designer Abram Games has archive copies of his designs for RoSPA, as does the Estate of his colleague H R (Arnold) Rothholz. In addition there are several private collections that include some of these posters.5 I have also made use of posters and other material held by Paul and Karen Rennie. None of these collections has anything more than a representative selection of RoSPA posters and none of the institutional collections display their RoSPA holdings. The frontispiece and figures 1 to 6 (pages 2, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14) show a sample of RoSPA’s wartime poster output to provide a visual introduction to the thesis and give a sense of what distinguishes these posters from the other propaganda material of WW2. The posters show the characteristic features of split-duct printing (figure 2 p6)6 and show the use of photography as an integral part of poster design for RoSPA (figure 3 p8). 4 The Collection is attached to the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst. Most of the images in Zürich are post-war and it seems they were collected as support material for teaching at the school. Aynsley (2000) p8 identifies the collections held by art schools as a source of valuable information. 5 I am grateful to Lynn Trickett, Michael Nathan, Ian Grush, Paul Bedford, Jonathan Swift and Andrew Ross for access to their collections of RoSPA and other posters.