Talk:Labour Isn't Working

A fact from Labour Isn't Working appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 January 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the picture in the Labour Isn't Working poster was used by both the UK Conservatives and the US Republicans in their respective 1979 and 2012 election campaigns?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Labour Isn't Working.

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Britain Isn't Eating[edit]

I think there should be a section about the Britain Isn't Eating campaign, that Church Action on Poverty is running. Big Mac (talk) 13:47, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Though you'll need the news coverage for sources. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 13:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Inaccurate article[edit]

This article is not quite accurate, as I can attest by my personal experience. I was touring the UK during the late summer of 1978. At that time, when I happened to be in England, I remember the "Labour Isn't Working" poster very vividly.

However, this article implies falsely that the poster only appeared in 1979, prior to the election of that year. The paradox can be explained by the fact that, in the late summer of 1978, it was widely assumed that the Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, would soon call a general election. It was in preparation for that anticipated election that the original poster first appeared.

On the day that I flew out of the UK to return to the US, the newspapers announced that Callaghan had decided *not* to call a general election that year, a decision largely regarded, then and now, as a major political blunder. (The so-called Winter of Discontent, which damaged Labour, occurred after that decision.) In 1979, when Callaghan finally called an election, the poster was then recycled with the slogan "Labour Still Isn't Working."

In addition, there was a famous long-form TV commercial, which I saw in my hotel in 1978, that conveyed the same message. In it, an elderly English woman was portrayed as suffering from Labour's policies. Later, this woman claimed in print that she had been misrepresented in the commercial, but more people saw the commercial than the woman's denial. I don't know if Saatchi & Saatchi was also responsible for this TV ad.

This page explains the timeline of the two posters: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O76224/labour-still-isnt-working-poster-rutherford-andrew/

This article should be edited to reflect a more accurate timeline.

Dylanexpert (talk) 12:37, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]