1945 Philip Zec LABOUR FOR HER

social media post; have played a massive part in that notion of ‘selling’ an idea.

It can also be said that the advancement of mass media, in general, has made the wider public more aware of the visual, as Louis Peters wrote ‘television and cinema have heightened mans pictorial experience so that the printed word in politics has become secondary to the poster"6 Image has become king, and the poster has a unique ability to confront the audience like no other platform. To a degree it’s unavoidable; people can turn off the TV if they dislike the message, you can choose to buy a Newspaper of a different political persuasion if you disagree with the story, but you cannot turn off the poster,7 Erwin Schockel sums this up perfectly "The printed word can be avoided at the outset by all those who oppose the respective newspaper, book, or leaflet. The radio can be turned off; the political meeting does not have to be attended. Even demonstrations and marches do not have to be successful in spite of the general curiosity of human beings. The poster is unique. Only the blind, the bedridden, and prisoners are not reached by it. Every other man that goes out on the street cannot exclude himself from the life around him. Thus all come in contact with posters."8 This undeniable reach makes the poster perfect for its role in politics.

But what is the goal of the political poster? We are conditioned to instantly think of the propaganda posters of the Communists when we first think of political posters, and it’s a medium that the movement utilised incredibly effectively, with design movements like the ‘Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America’ in Cuba producing posters which they saw as a crucial tool in the people’s revolutionary struggles, to inform and educate,[№ 003 - 004]but would ridicule the campaigns of the bourgeois parties as a decadent capitalist ploy to ‘sell’.9 Is a political poster a tool to educate, or is it a tool of selling? These ideas framed an ideological conflict within the Labour party.

Deciding what makes a political poster successful is difficult and is more often than not ruled by someone’s political persuasion, there are countless guides and advisory manuals produced to guide parties with their designs, Michael Middleton produced ‘Soldiers of Lead: An introduction to layout and typography for use in the Labour Party’ in 1948 and Arno Scholz ‘Das Einmaleins Der Politische Werbung’ (‘The Multiplication Table Of Political Advertising’) in 1959,

6 L.F. Peters and P. Chauvel, Kunst Und Revolte: Das Politische Plakat Und Der Aufstand Der Französischen Studenten, DuMont Aktuell (DuMont Schauberg, 1968), p. 7. 7 Gary Yanker, ‘THE POLITICAL POSTER: A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON’, World Affairs, 133.3 (1970), 215–23. 8 Erwin. Schockel, Das Politische Plakat : Eine Psychologische Betrachtung (München: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, F. Eher Nachf., 1939), p. 150. 9 Galina Demosfenova, Sovetski Politicheski Plakat, ed. by F. Kaloshina (Moscow: Iskustva Moskva Izdatestva, 1968), p. 14.