William Morris: SDF Membership Card
A chap called Henry Hyndman held the first Social Democratic Federation (SDF) meeting in Britain in June, 1881. In attendance were heavyweight creatives, thinkers and socialists such as William Morris, George Lansbury and Eleanor Marx. Many of them had been involved with previous suffrage movements and were ready to lobby for standardised working conditions (the 8-hour day) and a forceful approach to nationalisation.
Eventually the party would dissolve and reform through defections in what must have been a fairly manic but exciting time in British politics. However, during the formation of the party its members drew heavily on the working-class spirit of unity. They organised themselves utilising a visual aesthetic – a similar method which is employed to encourage collective belonging in schools, military regiments and of course, in workforces.
With artist heavyweights like Morris in the bag, this was never going to be difficult. The picture above is the membership card that William Morris created for early SDF party members and when I saw it, I couldn’t resit posting it here. The motto reads Educate; Organise; Agitate, but somehow it is lost to the trademark botanical patterning of the oak branches – A classic subverted artisan reference to depict strength and dependability. His personal feelings were apparent in this design and it is clear that it was meant as a translation of the power of nature.
As with the banners of the collieries around where I was brought up, I can’t quite help myself from feeling a sense of awe at designing emotively in this way. Commercial gain through design is fairly easy to qualify, but designing for a set of principles you believe in is almost impossible to qualify. After further reading, I found a thoughtful piece of writing by Walter Crane in 1907 on the Working Class Movement Libary’s site, which describes his view on the relationship between art and socialism.
One last thing. Morris was a romantic anti-capitalist. Interestingly, ‘the firm‘ which he set up is still trading today. I wander what he would make of that…