The origin of yellow being the color of liberalism

[darklordoftech]

What is it? Usually I hear that blue is the color of conservatism because of the term "blue-blooded" and red is the color of socialism and communism because of the blood of those who died to overthrow King Louis XVI.

[Aboa]

I think the association mostly comes from British Liberals you can already see orange flags signifying Whigs in 18th century paintings like this one, orange being the colour of House of Orange and Protestants. I guess over time orange simply turned yellow.

The use of yellow among the actual Liberal parties is nowhere near universal and at least in Europe blue might be at least as if not more common. Oftentimes using yellow is pretty recent thing too like with German FDP which only adopted it in the 70s.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Yes, and since 2000, the color blue for secularism or atlas red for socialist has replaced it

[Yeahsayyeah]

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This does not seem to be the case. They used it in their 1949 "Macht die Mitte stark " ("Strengthen the center!") campaign posters, at least - contrasting it with socialist red and catholic black. It seems they uses yellow and black-white-red in the fifties, generally.

For those interested, you can see a collection of campaign posters since 1949 to 1998 here

http://www.bpb.de/lernen/grafstat/grafstat-bundestagswahl-2013/150415/wahlplakate-1949-1998

[completely dead account]

These days though, yellow is associated with CLASSICAL liberalism. Social liberalism is blue in the US, red elsewhere. For example, the UK uses red to associate with the left wing Labour Party.

[darklordoftech]

These days though, yellow is associated with CLASSICAL liberalism. Social liberalism is blue in the US, red elsewhere. For example, the UK uses red to associate with the left wing Labour Party.

Classical liberalism is what I meant.

[Izzyeviel]

These days though, yellow is associated with CLASSICAL liberalism. Social liberalism is blue in the US, red elsewhere. For example, the UK uses red to associate with the left wing Labour Party.

The Republicans used to be social liberals? That's a funny thought.

[darklordoftech]

These days though, yellow is associated with CLASSICAL liberalism. Social liberalism is blue in the US, red elsewhere. For example, the UK uses red to associate with the left wing Labour Party.

The Republicans used to be social liberals? That's a funny thought.

In America, the parties and ideologies had no colors besides red meaning communism until 2000.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

These days though, yellow is associated with CLASSICAL liberalism. Social liberalism is blue in the US, red elsewhere. For example, the UK uses red to associate with the left wing Labour Party.

In the UK self-identifying 'social liberals' will be found mostly in the Liberal Democrats, who use the colour yellow or orange. Very few of them in Labour (e.g. Tony Blair identified as a socialist or social democrat).

[Del Tachi]

I wonder if it had anything to do with the movement to repeal corn laws in Britain, since corn is yellow.

[Karpatsky]

I wonder if it had anything to do with the movement to repeal corn laws in Britain, since corn is yellow.

Corn means any grain in the British context.

As far as a Wikipedia dive is credible in this context, apparently it originates with revolutionary sympathizers in the British parliament during the American revolution, particularly the allies of Charles James Fox, who would dress in blue and buff on the parliament floor - the colors of the Continental Army. Evidently the buff stuck better than the blue, and eventually came to represent the whole Whig party, and then liberalism on the whole.

[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.