Fist and rose

The fist and rose, sometimes called the rose in the fist, is an emblem used or formerly used by a number of socialist and social democratic parties around the world. It depicts a rose, symbolizing the promises of better life under a socialist government, and a clenched fist holding it, symbolizing the activist commitment and solidarity necessary to achieve it. The rose is displayed in the red colour associated with left-wing politics; recent variants display the leafs in green, reflecting the rise of environmental concerns. Its design involves political symbolism drawn from the history of socialism and social democracy, and also alluding to the counterculture of the 1960s. The emblem was drawn in 1969 by French graphic artist Marc Bonnet and became popular within the Socialist Party (PS), which made it its official logo in 1971. It was later used, with slight or large alterations and adaptations, by several parties elsewhere in Europe as well as in Africa, America, and Asia, although some have retired it since the end of the 20th century. In 1979, it was also taken up by the Socialist International (SI). It has often been chosen to provide an attractive visual alternative to the communist hammer and sickle, and to signal a party's affiliation to the SI and kinship with foreign left-wing parties. The emblem was created in France within the Socialist Party (PS), at the time of its transformation from the prior SFIO at the Alfortville Congress (May 1969) and of its enlargement to the rest of the “non-communist left” at the Épinay Congress (June 1971). The emblem of the SFIO was the Three Arrows, a 1930s anti-fascist symbol, which was falling in disuse as the party wished to modernize. The Ceres, a left-leaning faction, had taken control of the PS Paris Federation and actively seek to change the party. The initiative for the emblem is frequently, although disputedly, credited to Didier Motchane, a co-founder of the Ceres, who claimed to have “invented” it in his 2010 memoirs, but a role was also played by Georges Sarre, the first secretary of the Paris Federation, and Paul Calandra, its secretary for propaganda.