Make your mark for peace

Make your mark for peace is a vintage pin badge marking the moment the Campaign Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Greenpeace united for nuclear-free seas.

Bricks, graffiti, and a peace symbol

The badge is circular, its white background covered entirely by a pattern of red brick. Across the centre, in loose black hand-lettered script, are the words 'Make your mark for peace.' A bold black CND peace symbol sits to the right of the text. Around the top edge, in solid block capitals, the words 'NUCLEAR FREE SEAS.' Around the bottom, equally firm: 'PORTSMOUTH OCT 15TH.'

The brick pattern is not decoration. It is a wall, and the text is graffiti. The hand-lettered slogan and the heavy peace symbol are not printed onto the badge — they are written onto it, the way paint goes onto a wall. Someone made their mark.

The words around the rim fix the moment precisely — Portsmouth, October 15th 1988 — the day CND and Greenpeace chose Britain's premier naval city as the ground for a joint campaign against nuclear weapons at sea.

The sea nobody signed for

A year before this badge was made, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Washington. It was the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons — ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres. Photographs of the two leaders shaking hands went around the world.

But the treaty had a boundary, and that boundary was the shoreline. Every nuclear weapon aboard a warship, every sea-launched cruise missile, every nuclear depth charge carried by a naval helicopter — none of it was touched. The negotiators had drawn a line at the water's edge and called it disarmament.

For CND and Greenpeace, that line was the problem. The weapons had not gone. They had simply moved somewhere the treaty could not reach.

Greenpeace takes to the water

Greenpeace launched the Nuclear Free Seas campaign in 1987, in direct response to that gap. Where the treaty stopped, the campaign began. Its target was the network of ports, dockyards, and naval bases where nuclear-armed vessels berthed, refuelled, and were maintained — often in cities, often beside civilian populations who had no say in the matter.

The campaign put boats in the water alongside nuclear-capable warships, tracking their movements and recording their presence in ports. A warship carrying nuclear weapons and a Greenpeace vessel fifty metres off its bow was not something naval authorities could quietly ignore.

Portsmouth was a natural focus. As one of the Royal Navy's principal bases, it was home port for nuclear-capable surface ships and carriers. The weapons were there, behind the dockyard walls, in a city of ordinary streets.

Make your mark

CND took the Nuclear Free Seas cause and brought it ashore. Where Greenpeace worked the water, CND worked the streets. The 'Make Your Mark' campaign gave local branches across Britain a consistent identity and a clear objective — to visually identify and mark specific ports and naval bases as high-risk nuclear zones.

The campaign deployed banners and water-based demonstrations around naval vessels. Alongside the street action, Greenpeace published a report exposing the severe inadequacies of Portsmouth's official public safety scheme — the emergency plan that was supposed to protect the city in the event of a nuclear accident in its own harbour. The report was the sharpest mark of all.

The same badge design travelled to Plymouth, to Faslane, to every port where the campaign took root. Only the name of the city and the date changed around the rim. The wall stayed the same.

The naval city draws the line

Portsmouth had lived alongside the Royal Navy for centuries. The dockyard was part of the city's fabric — its economy, its identity, its skyline. By 1988 it was also, without public consultation, a base for ships carrying nuclear weapons.

On October 15th, CND and Greenpeace brought that fact to the streets of Portsmouth. The 'Make Your Mark' campaign is over, but like a permanent marker the badge it produced remains — and so does its demand for nuclear-free seas.