{"id":309,"date":"2024-07-01T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T08:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=309"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:04:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T08:04:00","slug":"how-britains-political-parties-got-their-colors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=309","title":{"rendered":"How Britain\u2019s political parties got their colors"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\n CNN<\/span>
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0
\n <\/cite>\n <\/p>\n

\n With the UK\u2019s general election just days away, British voters have seen their TV screens, mailboxes and newsfeeds fill with color.\n <\/p>\n

\n Just like commercial brands, political parties know that using a single, bold shade can make them easier to recognize \u2014 whether that\u2019s out on the campaign trail or checking the latest polls.\n <\/p>\n

\n On July 4, the blue of the ruling Conservatives will go head-to-head with the red of Labour. While these are the only two parties with a realistic chance of winning the election<\/a>, other smaller parties across the British political system offer a veritable kaleidoscope of differing \u2014 and sometimes duplicate \u2014 colours. The Liberal Democrats (orange), and Reform UK (turquoise) and the Green Party (you guessed it), are all vying for votes.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Scottish National Party uses yellow, while Northern Ireland\u2019s Sinn F\u00e9in and Wales\u2019 Plaid Cymru are represented by nearly identical shades of green.\n <\/p>\n

\n Although the older, established parties trace these associations back to their foundation, the importance of color in campaigning blossomed with the advent of new technology and advertising between the 1950s and 1970s, explained Dominic Wring, a professor of political communication at the UK\u2019s Loughborough University.\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n Jeff J Mitchell\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

\n British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during Scotland’s election campaign manifesto launch on June 24, 2024 in Edinburgh, Scotland.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n \u201cThe advertising industry itself underwent a change around the introduction of color television, so, increasingly, colors and more ambitious or innovative designs became quite significant,\u201d he said in a phone interview, adding that, during this time, \u201cparties began to simplify their messaging.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Beyond simple brand recognition, certain colors have long been associated with various values and ideologies. Yellow, for instance, is often linked to liberalism, while black has traditionally represented anarchism or fascism \u2014 especially in Britain, where followers of the British Union of Fascists in the 1920s and 1930s were known as \u201cBlackshirts.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n For the Labour Party, the use of red was a natural choice for a group allied with trade unions, social democrats and democratic socialists. Since the French Revolution, the color has been widely associated with left-wing politics, symbolizing the blood of workers who died in the struggle against their oppressors.\n <\/p>\n

\n Upon Labour\u2019s inception at the beginning of the 20th century, the party used a red flag as its official logo. \u201cThe color is central and symbolic to the labor movement, and has been since that period,\u201d said Wring, noting that the party logo has since changed to a red rose.\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n Oli Scarff\/AFP\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

\n Labour Party leader Keir Starmer during the launching of Labour Party election manifesto, in Manchester, on June 13, 2024.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n The Conservative Party, meanwhile, has historically adopted all the colors of the United Kingdom\u2019s flag \u2014 red white and blue \u2014 in order, perhaps, to promote itself as a defender of British values. Of those three colors, an ultramarine blue emerged as its predominant shade (though the party\u2019s current tree logo is a paler shade than some of its predecessors). Traditionally the most expensive color<\/a> to produce, blue has long held connotations of wealth and conservatism.\n <\/p>\n

\n Among the smaller parties, color choices have sometimes been relatively straightforward \u2013 the Green Party uses green, unsurprisingly, due to its obvious connections with environmentalism. Others have been more pragmatic. Take the Liberal Democrats\u2019 orange, for instance, which emerged from the combination of the two parties it was created from: the Liberal Party (yellow) and the Social Democratic Party (then associated with the red of Labour, which it broke away from in the early 1980s).\n <\/p>\n

\n Yet for the Liberal Democrats \u2014 the UK\u2019s third largest party until the 2019 election \u2014 the color orange had another benefit: it was otherwise unclaimed. With the Scottish National Party growing in prominence in the 1970s, switching from a clashing yellow made it easier for the Lib Dems to differentiate themselves.\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n Hollie Adams\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

\n Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, during an election campaign visit in Frome, UK, on May 30, 2024.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n Indeed, for recent newcomers \u2014 like the short-lived Referendum Party in the 1990s (pink), or the UK Independence Party (purple) \u2014 distinct colors may simply help them stand out in a crowded political marketplace.\n <\/p>\n

\n And while some colors have historical links, none are indelibly tied to ideologies. Elsewhere in Europe, orange is associated with both the Christian Democrats and, in the east, post-Soviet uprisings (see Ukraine\u2019s so-called \u201cOrange Revolution\u201d). In other countries, green may represent Islamic parties rather than environmental ones. And while brown has longstanding links to Nazi groups, it also features prominently in the logo of the Marijuana Party of Canada.\n <\/p>\n

\n Even the simple idea that blue and red represent right and left-wing parties, respectively, is inconsistent. In the US, Democrats are blue while the more conservative Republicans are red (though before the 1988 presidential election, TV networks often did the opposite, and the current notion of \u201cred states\u201d and \u201cblue states\u201d did not come into common parlance until the 2000 presidential run-off).\n <\/p>\n

\n Of course the irony, in both the US and Britain, is that despite the color-coded campaigning, when people get to the polling booths on voting day, the various shades won\u2019t be displayed for their final, crucial decision \u2014 that\u2019s because the ballot papers are printed in black and white.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 With the UK\u2019s general election just days away, British voters have seen their TV screens, mailboxes and newsfeeds fill with color. Just like commercial brands, political parties know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[499,501,500,62],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Britain\u2019s political parties got their colors - Frisco Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With the UK\u2019s general election just days away, voters have seen their TV screens, mailboxes and newsfeeds fill with color. 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