Anarchy symbol (Ⓐ)

The circled A first appeared on the cover of the Paris Jeunes Libertaires bulletin in April 1964, as a symbol the group proposed “to the whole anarchist movement”. Their text gave two reasons: to save the time of signing slogans painted on walls, and to make anarchism more visible by giving all its expressions one shared sign. Ibáñez, who suggested it, says the search for a design and the final choice were the group’s, and one person drew it on the stencil. Amedeo Bertolo and Marianne Enckell, in their history of the symbol (2001–2002), ask whether the idea came from the plain design itself or from the anti-nuclear sign of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, already widespread by then, and leave the question open.

It was slow to catch on. Apart from some graffiti in the corridors of the Paris metro, Bertolo and Enckell write, the 1964 proposal had no success; the circled A headed an article by Ibáñez in Action Libertaire that December, and the Paris bulletin then lapsed from 1965 to 1967. Young anarchists from Milan met it at a European meeting of young anarchists in Paris in April 1966, and it was used experimentally that year and regularly from 1968 by the Gioventù libertaria of Milan, as the signature on its leaflets and posters, sometimes beside the anti-nuclear sign and the apple of the Dutch Provos. From Italy it spread worldwide. Hardly any were seen in Paris in May 1968; the first traces there date from 1972–73. Bertolo and Enckell put its success down to two things: it is as simple to draw as a cross or a star, and a young movement had learned to write on walls and wanted a sign. No organisation ever decreed its use.