More political postcard joy.

I think it is a great pity that we don't have political postcards any more. Back in the early days of the twentieth century, if you wanted to make a political point to your Uncle Sid or Aunty Flo, you could seek out an appropriate postcard, pen a suitable curt message on the back and consign it to the post. One hundred years ago, there were a whole range of postcards representing a wide range of political viewpoints: you just plucked your argument off the display stand, stamped it and sent it. Over the decades, sadly, the practice has fallen out of fashion and I suppose the modern equivalents are to post a YouTube video or post a blog entry rather than post a postcard. They just don't have the same colour or romance, do they?

 

I came across the postcard featured above during some research on the EU Referendum and it had some interesting modern resonances. It was used postally in 1904 and relates to the argument which, at the time, was destroying the Conservative Government led by Arthur Balfour. The Conservative Party was being torn apart by the clash between free trade and tariff reform (does this remind you of the current in or out of Europe debate?). Balfour tried to be clever by allowing the chief proponent of tariff reform in his Cabinet, Joseph Chamberlain, to tour the country speaking in favour of protectionism whilst he and the rest of the Cabinet sat on the fence and waited to see what the electoral response would be. The postcard shows Chamberlain in the water whilst Balfour and the rest look on undecided.

Balfour's attempt to stand back whilst others tested the political water ended in one of the biggest ever landslide victories for the Liberals in the 1906 election. Perhaps the moral of the story is that it is better to be decisive and loose than to vacillate and be routed. We are seeing shades of both at the moment, proving, yet again that there  is nothing new in politics.