Text by Gabriela Matuszyk & Katie Evans

Looking at this black and white poster, the illustration makes us consider who’s the ‘we’ it refers to. It depicts five men standing close together, their faces quite distorted making it hard to identify their ages or origins. The figure on the far right appears to be shouting.

At this moment, we do not see the ‘we’ reflected in the image.

Framing the figures are hand-drawn letters spelling out ‘WE ARE ALL Foreign SCUM’. The words are condensed and immediate – the DIY aesthetic signified by wonky lines and irregular letterforms. ‘Foreign’, the only title-cased word on the page, stands alone, curved and child-like. Biggest and boldest of the words, ‘SCUM’, sits right beneath the illustration, so as to make no mistake in who it’s referring to. Seeing this poster for the first time, it was the choice of words that gave me* pause. Words that seem to follow me around as an immigrant.

Foreign scum. EU scum, go home. No more Polish vermin.

The familiar rhetoric references the words of Tory MP Tom Iremonger who, when proposing deportation of foreigners that participate in public protests, said ‘the British People are fed up with being trampled underfoot by foreign scum’ (23 October 1968). Reclaiming this language, the poster was designed by protester Peter Binns in support of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign during the student occupation of London School of Economics (LSE). With the aid of the Poster Workshop collective, students rallied together and screen printed numerous posters for the demonstration.

Looking at the poster as graphic designers, both the style and the circumstance reminds us of Atelier Populaire, a student-led cooperation set up during the Paris uprisings in May 1968. It came as no surprise to later find that the Camden-based Poster Workshop was heavily influenced by this movement and used the same techniques and materials to produce their posters. Serving a broad range of people, from workers on strikes to civil rights activists, the Poster Workshop acted as a pay-what-you-can service in response to socio-political issues. Browsing through their online archive today is equally energising and exhausting, as we note many of the themes feel relevant now more than ever; workers rights, housing crisis, racism, and anti-war.

More recently, this poster was displayed as a ‘design object’, a piece of printed ephemera. In October 2017 one of the original copies hung from silver bulldog clips on the walls of Tate Britain. A year later, it appeared in the Four Corners’ book titled ‘Poster Workshop 1968-1971’. The following year artist Jeremy Deller appropriated its wording for his ‘We are all immigrant scum’ banner, displayed during the 2019 Royal Academy Summer exhibition. It was taken from the impromptu print studio in the halls of LSE, ‘elevated’ by the art world, and now, thanks to capitalism, it is available as stickers, tee-shirts and mugs.

Armed with this context we look back at the men, their direct gaze staring back at us. We think they are students standing together in solidarity and resistance against anti-immigration, racism and the violence of war. The ‘we’ now obvious:

‘We’ stand together in solidarity and resistance.

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Our bio:
Open Practice is an ongoing partnership between Katie Evans, a Brighton-based graphic designer and educator, and *Gabriela Matuszyk, a Polish-British writer and designer. Together they continue to explore different modes of collaboration through designing, writing, editing, organising, and researching.