WHICH colour did you vote for? David Cameron’s blues? The Greens? Red Ed’s reds? Or the yellows of the Lib Dems? Perhaps the purple of the kippers, if they made it onto your ballot paper?

The question of political colour has intrigued me since I stumbled across a 1983 election poster in which the unknown Labour candidate for the new constituency of Sedgefield, one Tony Blair, introduced himself in green ink. There’s not a trace of red anywhere, even though red has been the colour associated with Labour since it was created in 1900. Indeed, red has been the colour of most of Europe’s socialist parties since the French Revolution of 1789 because it symbolises the blood of workers which was spilt in the struggle against capitalism.

But the newly-formed Labour Party could not use red in areas where another party had already bagged it, as was the case in the North-East. Up here, red was traditionally the colour of the Conservatives – in the 1910 elections, the girls in Peases’ Mill in Darlington wore red knickers to show their support for Herbert Pike Pease in his fight against the Liberals.

Why our Conservatives wore red is unknown – one theory is that it was the racing colour of a Durham aristocrat and so his constituents followed suit at election time.

Back then, in the black and white age, colour wasn’t so important. The Conservatives only officially adopted blue after the First World War, but local hues persisted so that in March 1949, they passed a further resolution standardising blue as their colour.

But in the 1950 election, their Darlington candidate, Geraldyne Walford – the first woman to stand for the town – produced bright red leaflets. She came second, but in 1951, the seat was won by the Tory candidate, an old Etonian called Sir Fergus Graham, and he always wore a red rosette.

So North-East Labour plumped for green. As recently as 1974, all of its candidates in the region seem to have produced green posters, while many Liberals fought in blue and orange, and many Conservatives seem still to have been in red.

Colour TV demanded uniformity, so local colours died out. Green Mr Blair in 1983 may have been the last to eschew red. This may explain why in 1997, as party leader, he felt able to change Labour’s whole colour scheme to purple to symbolise its newness.

Very soon we will know which colour is going to win power – although as a coalition looks likely, it could be a multi-coloured government.

SATURDAY’S Memories included a large headline: “Book fairs and bookkeepers”. I am indebted to my colleague Andy White for pointing out that totally useless fact that bookkeeper is the only word in the English language to have three consecutive double letters. Sweet-tooth runs it close, but has a hyphen in the middle.