10:09am Saturday 20th March 2010
THE forthcoming General Election will be dominated by an import from the US: the leaders’ television debate. The days before the three midweek fixtures will be taken up with pre-match tactics; the days after by post-match punditry.
This Americanisation is not new.
One hundred years ago, The Northern Echo imported a strange craze which swept the lapels of the North-East electorate.
This story begins in 1869 in New York when inventor John Wesley Hyatt was challenged to make billiard balls out of something other than ivory. He created celluloid – the first industrial plastic – and manufactured balls, false teeth and piano keys from it. He must be the patron saint of elephants.
Celluloid gradually became thin and flexible enough to be used photographically, and by 1896 it was cling-film thin and a New York novelty company, Whitehead and Hoag, saw its potential in the button badge market.
Previously, badges had been made from expensive enamel. But W&H pressed the badge out of metal sheet, mass-printed a circular design on paper and then sealed the two together with see-through celluloid.
Badge-mania swept the States. Everyone from small boys to big bosses was hoarding badges given out by firms, clubs and, of course, politicians as advertisements.
The Echo first imported political badges into this country for the January 1910 election which was called after the House of Lords blocked David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget” which taxed the rich to pay for welfare and pensions for the poor.
His full proposals could be found in “A Companion Volume to the People’s Budget”
written by Lloyd George and published by the Echo. The paper sold so many thousands of one shilling copies that there were “only a few of the third edition left”. We are thinking of publishing a companion volume to Alistair Darling’s Budget on Wednesday, but fear it may just be a blank sheet of paper.
The Echo created badges for 31 North-East candidates. They sold at 1d each from newsagents, or a card of 16 for a shilling. None survives (unless you have one), but presumably they pictured the candidates’ faces.
But only Liberal and Labour candidates were honoured by a badge. The Echo detested the Tories so much, it couldn’t bring itself to use their name, instead labelling them “Food Taxers” because they wanted to put tariffs on goods coming into the country.
So there were badges for the fantastic Ignatius Trebitsch-Lincoln (Lib) in Darlington and Arthur Henderson (Lab) in Barnard Castle.
For Bishop Auckland, the Echo produced two badges: one for Alderman William House (Lab) and another for Sir Henry Havelock Allan (Lib). The third candidate, Sir William Chaytor (Food Taxer), was ignored.
The Americana worked. Even though Trebitsch-Lincoln became the greatest 20th Century political scandal (a story for another day), the region returned largely Liberals.
Nationally, though, the Liberals only gained two more seats than the Food Taxers creating a Hung Parliament which collapsed after ten months – an omen for this most American of forthcoming elections?
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