Electoral History of Eric Robert Poole
- Anti-Partition League candidate for Glasgow Govan, 1951
- Clann na Poblachta candidate for Dublin North-East, 1957
- League of Independent Voters candidate for Vauxhall, Liverpool MBC, 1959
- League of Independent Voters Councillor for Vauxhall, Liverpool MBC (1960-1968)
- League of Independent Voters candidate for Liverpool Scotland, 1966
- National Democratic Party Councillor for Vauxhall, Liverpool MBC (1968-1973)
- National Democratic Party MP for Liverpool Scotland (1970-1974)
- National Democratic Party candidate for Liverpool Scotland Exchange, Feb 1974
- National Democratic Party candidate for Liverpool Scotland Exchange, Oct 1974
- SNP candidate for Glasgow Garscadden, 1978
- Unity/Irish Independence Party MP for Mid Ulster (1979-1982)
- Ecology Party MP for Mid Ulster (1982-1983)
- Ecology Party candidate for Mid Ulster, 1983
- Green Progressive Accord/Political Party of Radicals candidate for the Netherlands, 1984
- Irish Civil Rights Association candidate for Battersea, 1987
- The Greens candidate for Vauxhall, 1989
A Scottish-born shipbuilder of Irish parentage, Eric Poole (fictional), first became involved in politics in the attention-raising campaign of the Irish Anti-Partition League in several Great British constituencies in 1950, standing on his own account in the more limited attempt which came the next year. With his national sense kindled, he became one of the few people to emigrate from Glasgow to Ireland, and became involved in the left-wing Republican party Clann na Poblachta, where he encountered the ideas of Catholic Social Action, Distributism, monetary reform and environmentalism that would shape all of his future political activities. However, the depressed economic situation of Ireland at that time pushed him to return to Britain - this time to Liverpool, where Poole encountered a small group of Social Credit obsessives organised by Anthony Cooney.
Cooney's circle began to contest local elections in Liverpool under the name of the 'League of Independent Voters', following C. H. Douglas' anti-party precepts. Fortuitously, the choice of this name enabled the group to print leaflets bearing the motto "Vote L.I.V - E. R. Poole", which are generally supposed to be the only reason why Poole won a seat on the Council. Largely taking Catholic and above all Irish voters from Labour, Poole encountered resistance from the Liverpool Protestant Party, and ultimately the local political scene became mired in a bitter struggle between the two groups - especially once the Troubles hotted up. Come 1970, the parliamentary seat of Liverpool Scotland was won with about a quarter of the vote by Poole, beating the Protestants, a new Labour candidate and the Tories. But by this point, he had become so associated with the 'Ulster issue' that he had joined the National Democratic Party, which had been established earlier in the 60s to revitalise mainstream nationalism.
Poole immediately became notorious for his condemnations of human rights abuses by Stormont and, later, the British Army. However, before he'd got his feet under the table of the Commons tearoom, the National Democratic Party had voted to join up with the newly founded SDLP - which didn't want to make trouble by contesting British seats, and therefore rejected Poole's application to join. For the rest of the term, Poole sat under the designation of his own 'continuity' NDP, based entirely on his Liverpudlian machine. Adverse boundary changes and an increasing hostility to Irish nationalism lost him his seat, and Poole next showed up trying to jump on the bandwagon of the SNP surge of the 1970s - right after the peak of the wave.
Now hungry for prominence, and unqualified for any equally remunerative profession, Poole went to Ulster and got involved in the IIP (inheritor of the Nationalist tradition and of some Republican sectors), in whose interest he intimidated the SDLP into standing down in Mid Ulster at the subsequent election. However, the internal contradictions of the IIP were heightened through the H-Block protests and Poole ultimately broke with them over the IIP's abstention from the 1982 constitutional convention elections, fearing that they would also abstain from supporting him at the next election. Instead, he analysed the situation and concluded that the next big thing would be the Green movement. Having espoused afforestation since the 1950s, and considering their sub-anarchist philosophy to be compatible with his continuing distributism and social credit economics, he joined up, thus becoming the country's first green MP. As a bonus, he didn't have to change the colour of his election posters.
After his loss in 1983, Poole essentially became irrelevant to any genuine conception of 'politics'. A Catholic environmentalist party invited him to be a celebrity candidate at the next European elections, but only as a 'Listdouwer'. This got him a mention in the mediocre final series of the Rik Mayall sitcom
The New Statesman, which will probably be his most lasting legacy. Finally settling in London, he stood in '87 for the Irish Civil Rights Association (consequently being expelled from the Irish Civil Rights Association, who hadn't been consulted) and was then recruited by the Humanist movement of the Chilean prophet Silo, who encouraged him to stand as a spoiler candidate against the genuine Green Party in the Vauxhall by-election. The latter were increasingly of the opinion that climate change was real, which was somewhat beyond the environmental outlook of Eric Poole. If he hadn't stood, his vote would probably have gone en bloc to David Icke, who would consequently have won the seat.
This was the last political activity taken by Poole, although he continued to write Social Credit pamphlets (and, regrettably, satirical poetry) until his death in 2012.