The origin of yellow being the color of liberalism

[Gary J]

In the UK originally individual areas had local traditions of what colour was associated with each party.

Henry Stooks Smith in The parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847 a compilation of election results first published between 1844 and 1850, re-printed in one volume in 1973) included notes detailing the practice in some areas.

For example in the Borough of Aylesbury, different candidates are identified with purple and white, pink, light blue, blue and buff, green and white, crimson and white or orange and white.

Presumably as parties became more organised the colours tended to become more standardised and eventually consistent nationally.

From my personal experience the UK Liberal Party, pre-1988, had not really completed this process. An attempt was made to standardise on orange, but some wards of the Borough of Slough preferred to use green.

When the Liberal Democrats were created, the national party introduced a much more prescriptive colour palette of a particular shade of yellow. Experience demonstrated that this shade of yellow was unsuitable for posters, so orange made a comeback.

The media found it easier to use orange to represent the Liberal Democrats, as it avoided confusion with the Scottish National Party which also used yellow.