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As well as concentrating on the past failings of the Conservatives, Labour was keen to highlight the advancements in society that their policies had facilitated, central to this was the founding of the NHS; one of the key pledges of the Beveridge Report, and something they were incredibly proud of achieving, as one poster documents ‘Labours Health Service covers everyone’ [№ 016] as the poster points out the ‘Tories voted against it’, this idea plays into the notion that Burgess alludes to of trashing your opponent becoming prevalent in this election, in Labours position they seem to be using the negative connotations of the past to highlight the advancements that they had made and the benefits of socialism; these polarising political methodologies creates the narrative of 'Don’t let us go back to an unsuccessful past that the one ideology has created, let’s continue on the prosperous path that we have created.' We can also look at the communities that are depicted in the posters, in 1945 they depicted the ‘Tommy’ returning from War, a universally recognised parable, that resonated with the idea of renewal, and the need to find service personnel jobs. In 1950 this set of depictions shifted to a more domestic appearance, with housewives, neighbours and children becoming the focus. Interestingly there is no distinction between the working class and the rich, a catch-all attitude to voters, that appealed to Morrisons attempt to attract the people that had seen that socialist 24 Christopher Burgess, ‘From the policies had positively influenced their Political Pipe to Devil Eyes: A History lives. Alongside this as Burgess writes, this of the British Election Poster from depiction of the public added an element of 1910-1997’, PQDT - UK & Ireland (unpublished realism and relatability to the posters, Labour Ph.D., The University of Nottingham (United was projecting an image of the public back Kingdom), 2014), p. 106, at themselves.24 This idea that you could
26
The Soldiers of Lead
