How to utterly fail at winning over minority voters

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A famous political poster from the early 1980s:



Note not only the risible text (which, naturally, demonstrates a total failure to understand the lives and priorities of West Indian and African voters in the cities of England in 1983), but the man in the picture and, more importantly, what he's wearing.

The suit is too large. The cut is unfashionable. The impression, therefore, is not of a prosperous and worthy citizen of Britain going about his business, but of the desperate variety of job interview or (worse) a court appearance. Which sends (or rather sent) an interesting message about how the Tories viewed black people...

lol

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's the way suits were in the 80s and 90s.  And even so, the suit would look perfectly fine if they hemmed the pants.

It's true that those decades were not good ones for such clothing, but, basically, the picture screams 'the accused' and that was certainly how it was read at the time...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's the way suits were in the 80s and 90s.  And even so, the suit would look perfectly fine if they hemmed the pants.

It's true that those decades were not good ones for such clothing, but, basically, the picture screams 'the accused' and that was certainly how it was read at the time...

You must dress your perps extremely well in your country.

The dressing of defendants in suits that are obviously not theirs is a long and storied tradition in Britain. Thus the following appalling joke: 'what do you call a Liverpudlian in a suit? The accused.'

It is also true of footballers.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's because the advertising industry now attempts to sell ourselves to ourselves (and so, almost incidentally, products) rather than sell products directly. Or something like that. It is late.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But the point of that kind of ad is not to get minorities to vote for the Tories, it's a counterpoint to people calling Tories racist. So the target audience are White conservatives who don't like to be called racist.

Ah, a cynic

Yes, there's definitely a bit of that going on (and so well observed). But it's important to understand that in the 1980s that non-white voters (still generally referred to as 'immigrants' in a generic sense - even 'New Commonwealth Immigrants') were regarded by elements of the political class and the commentariat as being somehow up for grabs, even though the reality was that Tory rhetoric - and by this point overt support for police racism - and their own awareness of their marginal economic and social status (c.f. Grunwick) meant a fairly uniform lining up behind Labour by the end of the 1970s. Tory MPs who attracted even a handful of non-white supporters generally bragged about it in a way that seems bizarrely tin-eared in retrospect.