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Abstract
This article provides evidence of the significance of political colours and associated emblems in the repertoires of social movements and related political parties. It argues that political colours play an important role not only as visual symbols of the cause but also in the emotional life of social movements. Political colours help to create and sustain collective identities and illustrate the role of affect in political life. The article includes a case study of the role of colours in the women's movement, showing how one set of first-wave organizational colours took on much broader symbolic meanings during the second wave of the women's movement. It provides evidence from both the first and second waves of the women's movement of the emotional meaning of the colours for activists. The case study also illustrates the contestation over public memory that occurs in relation to powerful symbols.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Janette Bomford, Jenni Craik, Nick Harrigan, Leonora Howlett, James Jupp, Claus Offe, Paul Pickering, Elizabeth Reid, Sean Scalmer, Pat Thane and David West for their advice, Dorothy Broom for the title and Merrindahl Andrew for proof-reading, the survey respondents and two anonymous reviewers.
Notes
1. Historically, however, party colours in the UK varied with the local party organization, rather than being uniform across the country. When William Gladstone contested Newark in 1832 the local Tory colour was red and this remained a Conservative colour in other areas until the 1960s. In the 1870s blue was a Conservative colour in Lancashire but a Liberal colour in Cheshire and Westmorland. Purple and orange were Conservative colours in Surrey and Kent, but Liberal colours in Wiltshire.
2. In 1995 the Australian Labor Party changed the waving national flag logo it had used since 1979. The logo now has a new version of the Southern Cross and excludes other elements of the national flag such as the canton featuring the British Union Jack.
3. It should be noted that the term ‘green’ had also been incorporated in the name of the organization ‘Greenpeace’, founded in 1971.
4. Programme for celebration of National Women's Day, Pretoria, 9 August 1996, marking the fortieth anniversary of the women's march against the pass laws.
5. The two weeks set aside for wearing white ribbons in Canada appear to cut across World AIDS Day on 1 December when red ribbons are worn (see above).
6. As Pat Thane has pointed out, the word ‘abeyance’ may not be strictly accurate for the interwar period, as the women's movement was still very active (personal communication, 22 January 2006).
7. A Brisbane activist in the late 1970s believed that purple stood for strength, white for purity and green for truth (Lesley Singh, ‘Taking to the Streets’, Museum of Brisbane, July Citation2006).
8. This confident assertion had its origin in the NSW Department for Women website.
9. Suzanne Bellamy, personal communication, 16 March 2005.
10. Dale Spender, personal communication, 18 October 2004.
11. The Dawn survived a boycott by the Typographical Association, angered by its use of women printers, and was published from 1889 until 1905. The name was also used for newsletters of the Women's Service Guilds of Western Australia and the Australian Federation of Women Voters.
12. When the Hawke Labor government was elected in 1983 its advisory body, the National Women's Consultative Council, maintained the use of the WSPU colours for its publications and newsletter.
13. Ten women were surveyed in November 2005, five being older and five younger feminists. They were asked questions about why and when they started wearing the colours, the meaning the colours had for them and their emotional response to them.