2nd generation CND

2nd Generation is a vintage pin badge that branded a new youth movement, one that inherited its cause from the 1960s but forged its own distinct, counter-cultural style.

A silhouette in black and white

The badge's design is stark and minimalist. Against a plain black background, a solid white, gender-neutral figure stands with a hand on its hip, holding a placard aloft. The graphic style echoes the sharp, black-and-white aesthetic of the Two-Tone Ska and Post-Punk record sleeves that were central to British youth culture at the time.

Stepping out from behind the solid figure is a fainter, outlined version of a person in the same pose. The design suggests a younger generation stepping forward from the shadow of its predecessors. The placard, held by both, contains the simple lines of the CND peace symbol that connects them across time.

An inherited shadow

The outlined figure can be read as representing the first generation of the British anti-nuclear movement. They were the parents who walked the first Aldermaston Marches in the late 1950s, protesting the UK's own atomic weapons programme.

They established the cause, creating the symbols and protest methods that would endure for decades.

Their children, who came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s, had grown up under the shadow of the bomb. The threat of thermonuclear war was not a sudden crisis for them, but the constant, low hum of the world they were born into, woven into the fabric of their childhood through public safety films and schoolyard rumours.

The Second Generation finds its voice

This new wave of activists consciously branded themselves as the 'Second Generation'. The name was adopted by Youth CND, the youth wing of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and even became the title of their official magazine. It was a declaration of both continuity and difference.

As the magazine's editors wrote in 1982, they had, “Our own things to say and our own way of saying them.” They inherited a movement already familiar with mass demonstrations and civil disobedience, but brought their own cultural identity to the campaign, combining anti-nuclear politics with music, fashion and youth activism.

Carrying the peace symbol forward

The younger campaigners did not need to invent a new peace symbol. The familiar CND emblem already carried decades of protest history. What changed was the generation wearing it, the music they listened to and the ways they expressed their opposition to nuclear weapons.

The two figures on 2nd Generation remain connected by holding the same placard — with the peace symbol seamlessly passing between the generations.