Disobedient objects

A beautifully crafted Unite banner flies high just behind newly erected  “barricades”  – just inside the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington.

It’s just one of 99 “Disobedient Objects” used by grass roots groups around the world since the 1970s to challenge authority and fight for change. The V&A is crammed with elite and priceless objects. This exhibition is a bracing blast of protest, subversion and dissent.

There are tear gas masks made from plastic water bottles with a facemask shoved down the nozzle – used by protesters in Istanbul just last year. There are ingenious ‘lock-on” devices, used by UK and New Zealand activists trying to stop forests being cut down or roads being built.

At first glance, the Unite Community banner may look very traditional.  But there is something quite radical about a union banner for members who are not in work.

Unite Community, of course, recruits and organises beyond the traditional workforce, helping to build the kind of grass roots activism which dominates this ground-breaking exhibition.

Unite Community members in South Yorkshire knew exactly what they wanted in their banner (pictured), says Joe Rollin, who co-ordinates community members across Yorkshire and the North East.

“We wanted it to represent local struggles of the past and some victories, to make it clear our spirits are unbroken and that we want to fight for the future. That’s why we came up with the slogan “still the Enemy Within”, which Thatcher famously used against the miners.”  Unemployed, retired, disabled and student members chipped in ideas.

The South Yorkshire banner has had many outings – including the great march to save the NHS in Manchester last autumn, timed to coincide with the Tory Party conference.  When it’s not out on the streets, it’s on display in Unite Community’s Barnsley offices – former home to the Yorkshire NUM.

It’s not Unite’s only contribution to the exhibition. There are copies of the Wapping Post, produced during the year-long dispute in 1986-87 when Rupert Murdoch sacked 5,500 workers.

The Wapping Post played a key role in pre-twitter days – keeping strikers informed and buoying up morale.

Ann Field, Wapping dispute stalwart, former print union and Unite official, said, “It’s great to see the Wapping dispute included in an exhibition that depicts people’s struggle for justice, liberation and equality.

“For us though, it’s not preservation for preservation’s sake – presenting the history of battles for workers’ trade union rights inspires us all to fight On.”

There are some very poignant exhibits – the appliques Chilean grandmothers made of the “disappeared”, an anti-US death sentence “love truck”, complete with the death mask of a Texan prisoner killed by lethal injection.

Then there’s the face of Aung San Suu Kya, hidden in a watermark on a Burmese bank note – circulating at a time she was under house arrest and images of her were illegal. It took the authorities three months to catch on.

Another “illegal” bank note shows the shocking wealth divide in the US – a stamped dollar bill divided down the middle shows the richest 400 own as much as the bottom 150,000,000.

There’s a lot of grass roots wit on display. Take the “tactical frivolity” of May Day protestors in Berlin and Barcelona who lobbed giant silver blow-up cobblestones into baffled police lines in 2012.

And London student Coral Stoakes made it clear what she thought of the government’s plans to triple tuition fees on the 2011 protest march in London. Her homemade placard blares, “I wish my boyfriend was as dirty as your policies.”

Technology is changing protest as activists harness Twitter, Facebook and on-line petitions. But as Pragma Patel from longstanding canny campaigners Southall Black Sisters says on a film loop at the exhibition, “We cannot rely on virtual campaigning. We have to be physically present“. Quite so.

Disobedient Objects is on at the V&A until February 5 admission is free.

Visit www.vam.ac.uk for more information.