During the punk and post-punk period of 1976 to 1984, it was fundamental to wear your allegiances, political or musical, on your lapel in the form of the button badge. Better Badges, run by Joly McFie, was the small business leader in manufacture of punk buttons, of which this is an example. He started a stall in 1976 at a Ramones gig at the Roundhouse, London, and became a fixture of the scene with a mail order service too. Jamie Reid used McFie's process cameras to produce artwork for single sleeves for the Sex Pistols, which were subsequently turned into badges by McFie.
This badge relates to the first single released by the Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the U.K.. The image is from the publicity posters used to promote the single, as the original single came in a plain black sleeve. The image is of a Union flag, ripped and held together with bulldog clips and safety pins, and the Sex Pistols logo and song title in the ransom note style that would become associated with them and the punk aura.
Jamie Reid's cut-and-paste aesthetic developed from his interest in radical politics. His artistic style developed while at art college in Croydon, where he was influenced by the ideas of the avant-garde political group, the Situationist International. The political slant to his art was aroused by the May 1968 Paris student riots, which inspired fraternal protests organised by Reid at the Croydon College of Art. These were directed with fellow student Malcolm McLaren, later to become the manager of the Sex Pistols.