Different SCI International Leaflets, 1980s

by Heinz Gabathuler (Jan 16, 2017)

When I looked for some printed SCI materials from the 1980s, I randomly encountered these old leaflets issued by the International Secretariat of SCI, explaining SCI's Origins & Aims, how SCI works (completely unsurprising is the list of activities, and their order of appearance: Workcamps, Local Groups, Educational Activities, Long Term Projects), and listing the addresses of all branches / groups and international co-ordinating structures. My pre-predecessor Ralph Hegnauer had noted the respective year of the issuing on each of the leaflets, so there should be no doubt about that.

The ones that date back from the time when the IS was located in Canterbury, England, it was before 1986, had been issued in both English and French. The one from 1988, "printed at Naubharath Enterprises" (apparently in Bangalore, India), is in English only.

The use of languages reflects the general changes occurring in the 1980s from a bilingual to a mainly monolingual (English-only) organisation at the international level – with the move to Asia, the second official SCI language lost ground, as apparently no one at the new headquarters in South India mastered French. Apart from that, one may wonder why the International Secretariat chose to issue propaganda material in French anyway, and not in German too, as the number of German-speaking branches (and potential volunteers in Western Europe) equalled the number of French-speaking ones. Maybe the levels of understanding of the English language in France and Germany, respectively, were not quite equal? It would be interesting to do more research, e.g. in IEC minutes of the time, into the motivation to print such leaflets at all, and also whether the French, Belgian and Swiss branches willingly accepted the disappearance of the language of Molière, Voltaire (and Ceresole!) from SCI official publications and documents.

The shape of the leaflets stayed the same: Six folded pages in DIN A 5 format each. The design, and also the illustrations – photos, cartoons, drawings - changed over the years. The text, however, only varied little. It starts with the diagnosis of a "World in Crisis" (French: "Le Monde en Crise"), which tells us that "most of the great issues of today appear daunting: growing militarism, pollution, resource depletion, population explosion, hunger and the increasing gulf between the rich and the poor", but that there were "hopeful signs" – "a dramatic increase in voluntary organisations of many different shapes, sizes and ideologies, but bound together by a common desire to create a more just, peaceful and sustainable society".

These words reflect the spirit of SCI in that decade: A movement which sees itself as part of a wider social and political movement struggling for peace, ecology, and social justice. A political consciousness rooting in the 1960s social movements combined with the preoccupation for the dangers and threats of the 1980s – the arms race at the end of the Cold War, the newly perceived environmental problems, hunger in the third world. The use of the term sustainable in the early 1980s, however, is pretty surprising, as the formula of sustainable development became mainstream only in 1987 with the Brundtland report, and the 1992 conference in Rio. Apparently, SCI has been part of a societal avant-garde – as had been the idea of a non-violent civil service as an alternative to military service from the very beginning.

In terms of design, it may be interesting to note that only in the 1988 leaflet – made in India! - the well-known traditional SCI logo (shovel with "PAX" letters and broken sword in a circle) appears. And to me as the Archives Coordinator, it has been interesting to note that in the 1988 leaflet, the contact address of the International Archives is mentioned at the very end of the address list: "Ralph Hegnauer, PO Box 117, CH 8910 Affoltern a. A., SWITZERLAND" – Ralph's private postal address, not the one of the place where the Archives had already been stored, in La Chaux-de-Fonds!

 

Heinz Gabathuler, International Archives Coordinator

Reference

In the International Archives, the leaflets are stored in two different boxes, according to the year they were issued – in box 11109 and in box 11112.