Stop the War! Withdraw all troops now

This poster was created for the second of three protests relating to the Vietnam Moratorium movement between 1970 and 1971.

The Vietnam Moratorium Campaigns were a result of a conference held in Canberra in November 1969 to plan a series of protests based on the American Moratorium model. There were three Moratorium campaigns in Australia in 1970 and 1971. The Moratorium was the first truly mass movement of the protest against the Vietnam War. Until 1969 the protest had been uncoordinated in a national sense and rallies had been reasonably small in size, whereas the Moratorium mobilised the support of hundreds of thousands. It also succeeded in gaining more publicity in its first six months than had been achieved by the protest movement between 1965 and 1969. The aims of the first campaign were the immediate withdrawal of Australian troops from Vietnam and repeal of the National Service Act. The Moratorium stated that all actions taken by its members and supporters should be of a non-violent nature and this philosophy was extended throughout Australia through various state committees and others.

This poster takes headlines and emotive words from various contemporary newspapers and issues, combining them in one poster. In the lower section, the confusion and disorder of the words above have been simplified into the three key objectives of the movement: “Stop the war”; “withdraw all troops now”; and “abolish conscription.”