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The visual identity of the Centre Party has a complex history, coming as it does from a variety of traditions. The Party was formed in 1968 by a merger of the National Liberal Party, the National Labour Party and the Liberal Party. However, by the 1960s, barely anyone could remember what colours and symbols the Nat Libs had used before they became an undifferentiated mass within the Conservative Party (which had been trending towards using blue over the previous decades), so despite being the largest bloc of MPs in the Centre Party, they added little to the brand.
The Liberal Party, meanwhile, had jealously guarded its independence in the post-war period, but virtually every constituency Liberal Party, in turn, jealously guarded its independence from the others. Their main rosette wholesaler stocked no fewer than eight colour combinations for Liberal clients, and other constituency parties refused even to deal with him. In general, Scottish Liberals used the red-and-gold of the Lion Rampant flag, Welsh Liberals used red, West Country Liberals used purple-and-yellow (the horse-racing colours of a wealthy donor in the 19th century) and those in London and the South-East tended to use green. However, this is an egregious generalisation and independence was fiercely guarded: after one round of boundary changes, Liberal canvassers visiting one constituency were ordered to carry two rosettes and switch between them every time they crossed the old boundary.
Perhaps the most unified visual identity of the proto-Centre Parties was that of National Labour. You see, the Labour Party in the North East of England used to use green (legend has it, the aim was to appeal to the Catholic vote, but it is also worth noting that the Conservatives had already laid claim to the colour red in the region), so when Ramsay MacDonald contested Seaham in 1931, he aggressively marketed himself as the legitimate Labour candidate by putting up green posters before the Labour candidate could get his to the printers. Other National Labour candidates followed suit, although the Mosley family wore green-and-black rosettes until this became uneconomical in the 1950s. Incidentally, Susan McDonnell’s recent victory in the Easington by-election marked a homecoming of sorts – a green-wearing candidate for a successor party winning back Ramsay Mac’s old seat.
When the founders of the Centre Party found themselves having to weld together such disparate design traditions – to say nothing of political traditions – a certain amount of compromise had to be sought. Green was adopted as the primary colour on the grounds that it would be acceptable to both of the more extreme wings of the new party: National Labour were viewed by both sorts of Liberals as being dangerously authoritarian on the grounds that they wanted houses to be built in Liberal backyards; meanwhile, the London Liberals were the most likely to have resisted the Martellite domination of the Party and retain a social-liberal character which was out of step with National Labour and most National Liberals. Allowing them to retain their rosettes was therefore a conscious attempt to minimise disruption.
In other constituencies, green was paired with blue in constituencies where the Nat Libs predominated, or with purple, red, orange or some other colour in seats with a Liberal history. Over the course of the 70s and 80s, there was an increasing pressure to unify the Party’s design elements as campaigns were centralised to save money and television became a more important medium. The secondary colours have therefore been largely dropped, save for a few perverse local parties.
Of course, the 1968 attempt at keeping the Party united through branding failed, as we are all well aware. The social liberals, already a minority faction against the ordoliberal turn orchestrated by Martell and Grimond, now found themselves an even tinier minority in a Party dominated by moderate patrician Tories and working-class Nat Labs. Eric Lubbock and David Steel resigned the whip in 1969 and the former became the first leader of the Radical Party, which used dayglo orange based on advertising research which showed that it was the most ‘in-your-face’ colour on the market. Since merging with the Environmental Party in 1989, the combined Green Radical Party has used chartreuse (somewhere along the green-yellow spectrum) while the Centre Party has moved to darker greens in order to maintain their visual differences from the other centrist party.
So much for colours. The symbol of the Centre Party had to be striking and meaningful: this, of course, was in the era when Labour made much of the torch of liberty, as against the meaningless red rose with which they woo the electorate today – while, ironically, the Tories have copied the effective torch motif. One school of thought in the 60s was that the Centre Party could become a British analogue of the Nordic agrarian parties (after all, most Liberal and Nat Lib seats were in the country) and it was noted that the Swedish and Norwegian farmers’ parties had done well for themselves since adopting the ‘Centre Party’ name in the late 50s. It was therefore decided to tie the British Centre Party in with that brand by copying their emblem of a four-leafed clover.
This decision was an utter disaster, provoking such witticisms as “Centre MPs will be about as rare as four-leafed clovers”, “You’ll need all the luck you can get if you want to get in”, etc. Even worse, Moseleyite National Labour MP for Ormskirk, Harold Soref, refused to have “that bloody shamrock” on his posters and leaflets due to his firm opposition to the IRA. He was also an outspoken supporter of Rhodesia and capital punishment, and the party gave a sigh of relief when he retired in 1976, to be succeeded by Robert Kilroy-Silk.
Of course, by this time, Charles Hill had been followed as leader by Malcolm Muggeridge, who despised the clover symbol as a superstitious pagan hangover. It was he who introduced the modern Centre Party emblem – a key. This was seen as representing aspiration, home ownership (Centre Party councillors were engaged in selling off council houses long before Thatcher made a virtue of it), privacy, private property and the opening of doors locked by the Establishment. Centre Party elections slogans have often been related to the key: ‘Unlock Democracy’ in 1979, when their major campaign themes were devolution and proportional representation; ‘The Key to Prosperity’ in 2000 when post-Martellite thinking was predominant in the Party; ‘A Doorway to the World’ in 2012 when Hugo Swire was making the case for leaving the European Union.
Today, the bow of the key forms the letter ‘C’ in ‘Centre’, a visual device first introduced in the 1986 revision but briefly dropped in the 90s when the computerised 3D rendering of the key made the task of putting lettering directly onto it both difficult and exceedingly ugly. The teeth of the key mimic the form of a rising line graph to represent growth (both economic and electoral) – a surprisingly recent design innovation. Finally, the Liberal and National Liberal traditions see their reflection in the orange and blue lines to the right – however, the very strong North Cornwall Centre Party have introduced a motion to add a purple element to the logo at every Assembly since 1971. You’ve got to admire them for trying.