Post 8

My eighth post in this blog is another spoof of the Conservative Party's election campaign posters. This one is another spoof of the "we can't go on like this" poster. This also seems to be produced by another left-winger who remembers the horrors of the Thatcher years (although I personally can't remember the Thatcher years myself, being only three months old at the time she resigned in November 1990). Many today who hated her at the time (she has been described as being like Marmite - you either love her or you hate her. I must be the only person in the world when it comes to sitting on the fence when Thatcher is discussed so to speak.) would describe her as an emotionless, evil woman, much like the Daleks in BBC TV's sci-fi programme Doctor Who, which is the point coming across in this parody of the famous Tory campaign poster.

(Image taken from http://www.mydavidcameron.com/posters/seb1)

However, Norman Fowler (his roles in Thatcher's and Major's Conservative cabinets has been described in the previous blog) said in a book of his, "A Political Suicide" (which charts the "extraordinary" path of the Conservative party, from immense popularity in 1979, through the rocky Thatcher years and the numerous political scandals, the tiredness of the public of conservatives in power and the weak John Major leadership of the early and mid-1990s) that this view of Thatcher by the Thatcher-hating public was fed by her appearances as a determined, shouting, almost angry woman during many speeches and TV appearances, and her puppet's appearances on Spitting Image, (back then an incredibly popular satirical TV programme which used rubber puppet caricatures of famous celebrities and politicians from the world over. It averaged 15 million viewers for a late Sunday night slot on ITV in 1989), which in itself was fed by how she regularly behaved on TV, on stage and on the radio. He describes her, when not on screen, as a kind, caring, sometimes patronising woman, treating others almost like a teacher in a nursery school treats well-behaved children. This idea was also used in Spitting Image a few times, when the cabinet all act like naughty public schoolboys, and she acts as the teacher angry with her boys' behaviour.

The line "we will exterminate all hope you have" is a reference to the fact that under Thatcher, the division between the poor and the more well-off was divided, although in real terms, the working class were better off in 1990 than they had been in 1979. The reference being that the Tories hope to further divide the division between the social classes, taking away many working class people's chance of moving up the career ladder.

Once again, this image is framed with the subject to the left and the main point in writing to the right.

In all, my personal view is that actually, this poster goes just a little too far to be used as an idea in a satirical sketch show, as personally, I think relating Thatcher to a Dalek is fine in public, but on TV, it would just seem a bit too silly to the public and it would be rather obvious that it was just trying to raise laughs rather than use comedy to make a political point, much like Spitting Image did.