As true today as it was in 1909. Here's one from 1929:
Another poster from 1929 has proved horribly prophetic:
This one should be adapted by UKIP, replacing "socialism" with "The EU" and "Vote Conservative" with "Vote UKIP":
These next two are a bit bald, but they still work:
But the next one wouldn't work now, because "modernising" Tories have abandoned grammar schools, presumably on the grounds that they benefit the sort of frightful oiks whose parents can't afford £20,000 a year in school fees (I see the Archbishop of York has once more been preaching the Gospel of St Karl by attacking Free Schools - I wonder why the gap-toothed git doesn't just quit the priesthood and stand as a Labour candidate in May):
Mind you, Tories have often promoted the wrong policies (their record on free trade is well dodgy, not helped by the current leadership's enthusiasm for the heavily restrictive EU), and, while I'm an opponent of the concept of hate crime, I'm rather relieved that screamingly racist depictions of foreigners have fallen out of favour:
Let's face it, that 1909 poster wasn't exactly the Party's finest hour. Experts these days tell us that negative campaigning doesn't work - pure, unadulterated bullshit, of course. The Tories started the year with a rather timid, deliberately uncontroversial poster (the unbelievably dreary one about keeping on the road to economic recovery, or something) - but I predict that by the end of the campaign they'll have reverted to a more traditional "Vote Milliband, get ISIS" approach (actually, that's not a bad one - and not too far from the truth). Or they could simply make a whole series of undeliverable promises. That seems to be David Cameron's stock-in-trade, but the problem is that no one will believe any promise made by old "Cast-Iron" Dave ever again. Still, if they do decide to lie through their teeth, they might as well go for broke:
In the 86 years since that poster was produced, we've learned that sun rays can cause cancer, so the Conservatives might have to employ a new metaphor. Any suggestions?
I rather fear Britannia would have to be redrawn to suit the current mores - perhaps a few dozen piercings, a yard of tattoos and an offspring of indeterminate hue clutching at her skirt (which would end somewhere about her waist).
ReplyDeleteAs for the ape...
...with her friend, Shawneezza, screaming: "Leave him, Brit! 'E's not worf it!"
DeleteVery interesting post.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of 'oiks' reminded me of the term oikophobia, a word coined by the great Roger Scruton :
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs49-8.pdf
"I propose to call this state of mind oikophobia, by which I
Deletemean (stretching the Greek a little) the repudiation of
inheritance and home. Oikophobia is a stage through which
the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in
which some people—intellectuals especially—tend to
become arrested. As George Orwell pointed out, intellectu-
als on the Left are especially prone to it, and this has often
made them willing agents of foreign powers."
A brilliant passage from one of my old tutor's most trenchant essays. It's disgraceful that this great Englishman hasn't been awarded a knighthood or a peerage.
Before the superlative sourness of Socialism made the word 'privileged' a noxious pejorative, I'd have congratulated you, Scott, on being privileged with regard to the opportunity of being under the tutelage of Dr Scruton.
ReplyDeleteI still shudder at the thought that I might have wound up being taught by some mean-spirited Marxist goofball - great stroke of luck getting Roger!
DeletePlenty of "mean - spirited Marxist goofballs" at the American academic slum which produced this Communist claptrap :
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailycal.org/2015/01/20/occupy-syllabus/