Anti-Socialist or not, some of those posters are pretty inventive.

You do realise you’re like an archive of archives.

August

Yes and when people believed that poster and voted the Tories in they got massive cuts to public services, 3 million unemployed for a decade, and appeasement leading to a World War.

Hm, not so sure you’re on strong ground there Luke. Labour spent most of the 1930s vehemently opposing the expansion of the British armed forces, which - if they had had their way - would have meant that we’d have been well and truly caught with our pants down by 1939/40. Or perhaps you think a Labour government with a decaying military and a policy of non-appeasement would have stood us in good stead during the 30s?

Besides, it wouldn’t have happened. On 22 May 1935, the day after Hitler had made a speech claiming that German rearmament offered no threat to peace, Attlee asserted that Hitler’s speech gave “a chance to call a halt in the armaments race”.

Yeah, right.

I’ve just checked that “3 million unemployed for a decade” claim too, and wouldn’t mind knowing where you got it from.

From what I’ve found, unemployment peaked at about 3 million in 1932 under Ramsay MacDonald’s government. Unemployment didn’t fall under 1 million for the rest of the 1930s, but actual employment rose by 17%. Weekly earnings were twice as high in 1938 as they had been in 1913. In addition, there had during this period been a significant fall in the price of goods, especially of food. The cost-of-living index fell by a third between 1920 and 1939. Real wages rose steeply in the 1930s.

A slightly more complex picture, really, isn’t it?

By 1932 it was a National Government with just 13 National Labour MPs and 400+ plus Tories. The Labour opposition was a tiny rump of around 50 MPs.

To be honest, I really don’t think that either Tory or Labour supporters should try to use the 1930s as an example of how the other lot are worse. Both favoured appeasement and rejected the Kenysian policies which would have made a real difference to the economic situation.

Exceptions to appeasement, yeah, I think we all know about that.

Economics: the exceptions were Lloyd George and Oswald Moseley (how different things might have been if Labour had gone along with ideas).

Oh and as for Northern Rock, isn’t it the other way round? The run on the bank had shag all to do with the government, which has now intervened to keep it open.

The real criticism is that it took an age to decide what to do and there are many who don’t think it should have been nationalised at all. (Not me, I should add.)

Well yes. As I said, it is rather more complex than Luke suggests. I didn’t say why the poster reminded me of Northern Rock, but since you ask it was because a bank run is still a gift for the opposition. Incidentally, I think it should have been allowed to collapse.