We tend to think of environmental activism as something very new – the urgency of the climate crisis, the speed of the degradation of the natural world, and the anxieties about the cascading impacts of biodiversity loss feel very much like the theme of our time.
They are, in fact, the theme of many times in the past too. Writers far back in antiquity fretted about the impact of human behaviour on the environment, noting that unsustainable and short-term decisions made the world a more challenging and difficult place. It was clear to observers living thousands of years ago that deforestation changed rainfall patterns, the overworking of land had an impact on soil chemistry, and that polluting waterways was not just stupid but dangerous.
It is easy to forget – or never even realise – that many of the stories about the origins of life on Earth are stories about ecological balance and about respecting nature. That is as true in the case with Aboriginal creation stories as it is with the story of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve live in perfect environmental conditions before being expelled from the garden and thenceforth forced, along with their descendants, to fear droughts, floods and famine, and to have to cope with weeds and thistles.
Worries and fears about the world being degraded by over-exploitation have a long history – and are regular if not constant themes in literature, art and religion: in many faith systems, priests and priestesses have the role of acting as intermediaries with the divine to ensure benign conditions. Difficult times – of food shortages, deluges or scorching heat – have often been taken as indications of divine displeasure at immoral behaviour. Just think, for example, of the Flood of Noah (known not only from the Book of Genesis, but from Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts too), where humanity was all but wiped out by an apocalyptic weather event because of God’s anger at how humans treated each other and His creations.
Not surprisingly, then, many activists in the past have recommended different ways of living – and, in particular, of treating animals, plants, ecosystems and each other. In the modern era, one might think of the legendary Woodstock festival of 1969, often seen as the height of the hippie movement that recommended different lifeways – vegetarianism, communal living, free love and holistic medicine. The tagline ‘Make love, not war’ was closely associated with trying to influence United States policy in South-East Asia and the Vietnam War in particular.
On 22 April 1970, the first Earth Day was held around the world. Vast crowds took to the streets to protest about damage to the natural world, with 20 million people demonstrating in the United States alone in what broadcaster Alistair Cooke called ‘the first mass reminder of our decaying and polluted planet’.
On top of that were increasing anxieties about the threat of nuclear devastation as a result of the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 served as a warning that confrontation did not just rest on a knife edge, but that the fate of humanity – and of our planet – rested in the hands of two people: the President of the United States and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
By the early 1980s in Australia, several strands had come together. The Pacific had served as one of the major testing grounds for British, French and United States nuclear bomb detonations since the end of World War II, which was devastating for local communities and ecologies. Although Australia had no nuclear weapons program of its own, the development of a uranium mine at Radium Hill in South Australia, and then at other sites in the Northern Territory and Queensland, meant Australia had an important and direct role in the nuclear stand-off between superpowers.
This helped fuel protest movements in the country, ranging from those opposing uranium mining specifically to campaigns organised by Friends of the Earth and People for Nuclear Disarmament – which became increasingly vocal and visible in mainstream debate in Australia from the 1980s.
This T-shirt was made for the Stop the Drop concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne on 13 February 1983. The concert was held in response to leading figures in the Australian music business wanting to support efforts to raise money and public awareness for campaigns for nuclear disarmament. The shirt shows a stave of music with notes of radioactive molecules, along with the modern peace sign designed by Gerald Holtom for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958, itself based on flag semaphore signals for N and D.
The concert was attended by more than 12,000 people. Performers included some of the biggest names in Australian music, including Goanna, INXS, Colin Hay from Men at Work, and Midnight Oil, whose lead singer (and future politician) Peter Garrett had been one of the leading figures in putting the event together. The concert had little immediate political impact, despite follow-up concerts in 1984 which were modestly successful. A planned concert in 1985 was cancelled as interest was low.
The era of Stop the Drop seems rather different to today. In 1983, few politicians paid attention to what those in the music or entertainment business did or said. That started to change two years later when another group of musicians set out to try to generate action against injustice and suffering in Ethiopia: the Live Aid concerts and the related single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ proved transformative for famine relief, for international development, and for ways in which high-profile figures can make a difference when they reach out to their fans and supporters.
I like this T-shirt precisely because of the fact the Stop the Drop concert appeared to achieve very little. I like it because it reminds me of grassroots activism, of people trying to use their platform not just to entertain but to inform. I like the T-shirt because, as a historian, it does not just tell me something about nuclear arms protests of the 1980s, but fits within a tradition going back thousands of years of people being concerned about what happens if we do not make better choices and what happens if we destroy the planet we all live on. I like it because it reminds me that trying to do something is better than doing nothing.
And in a world where arms development and spending is skyrocketing, where the threat of nuclear disaster has come back out of the shadows, being able to remember we have been through this before can be a comfort in an age of concern.
