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Mazda's Maps and Mwikiboxes

More evidence to my theory that it was Socialism uniting the Protestant and Catholic working classes that was the main concern to Big House Unionism pre 1969 rather than Republicanism, on the whole.
That was absolutely the central fear, hence the matching of Anglo welfare state developments after 1945 when the Unionists A) didn't believe they were a good idea in themselves, obviously, and B) didn't have to implement them. It was a rearguard action against a class which they believed to pose a threat to them.

Of course, this belief was only held because of the lack of social interaction with Catholics. Especially if you were a politician, because the Nationalists were abstentionist until 1965 and there was no reason to canvass Catholics even on the rare occasions when your seat was contested.
 
More evidence to my theory that it was Socialism uniting the Protestant and Catholic working classes that was the main concern to Big House Unionism pre 1969 rather than Republicanism, on the whole.

Considering in 1919 while the First Dáil was convening in Dublin a month long general strike saw the Belfast Corporation forced to concede to the demands of the strikers to shut of the electricity supply until they got shorter hours, at the same time the equivalent strike in Glasgow fizzled out under some Mark V tanks, I'd say they had cause for concern if they didn't divide and conquer.
 
Have now given in to temptation and done the entire 20th-century history of the Irish Labour Party. I probably won't do any more inter-war maps, because no two sources seem to agree on which Independent candidates were In Fact members of the minor parties I want to map. I will, however, do an effortpost about the National League Party for Borys tomorrow.

Note that, in the first election they contested, Labour vastly underestimated their popularity. They failed to nominate candidates in half the constituencies and didn't nominate enough where they did stand. They regretted this for the rest of their existence.

Also, I've been really well-behaved so far, but I do have to mention Social Credit at least once in this series. Everyone whose knowledge of Social Credit is based on nothing more than Wikipedia tends to mention Oliver J. Flanagan in relation to Social Credit and leave it at that. Flanagan was a rural right-wing TD from Laois-Offaly who was first elected on a Monetary Reform Party ticket (essentially just his personal vehicle, although there was a random Monetary Reform Party Councillor in Carlow until the 60s) and made a hella anti-Semitic maiden speech but was subsequently welcomed into Fine Gael and into Cabinet. However, there was a certain amount of support on the Left as well. During the 1940s, Labour policy in the area was based on the Second Minority Report of the Banking Commission, which was similar to orthodox Social Credit, and the Editor of their Party newspaper was a certain Mrs B. Berthon Waters, who was a firm Social Crediter. The policy seems to have been dropped in the 50s or possibly the 60s, but I haven't looked into it too much. I would hypothesise that Irish Labour's hero-worship of the NZ Labour Government might have had something to do with the adoption of the policy.

Another body of people on the Commission issued a Third Minority Report which was even more unorthodox and seems to have been virtually identical to Social Credit. This Report formed the basis of Clann na Poblachta's economic policy and Sean MacBride was very keen on talking endlessly about the drier aspects of it whenever he addressed a public meeting. In fact, it attracted much more of his interest than Foreign or even Constitutional affairs, to the extent that he was quite naturally pencilled in as Finance Minister in the first draft of the Coalition formation deal in 1948. Fine Gael obviously had grievous misgivings about letting him Do Social Credit, so he was moved to External Affairs in the final agreement.

Anyway. Massive Labour map.

dd2hepa-b9f998d1-d28a-42d8-aca4-c72edbb0095b.png
 
Same TL as these Lists
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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.

CentreLogo.png
 
Pitch: a widely tolerated celebrity who can pull off a great Concerned Nod drives from Blackburn to Belper in a clapped-out Leyland Princess, attempting to travel by way of constituencies in which the BNP saved a deposit at some point.

Impossible I'm afraid. Pendle-Keighley can be done using a minor road, and I thought you could do Keighly-Halifax using Cold Edge Road because the southbound carriageway is on the right side of the Halifax/Calder Valley boundary, but there's just a couple of points where the road is entirely within Calder Valley.
 
Here's a sort-of OTL map.

As fans of a certain TL will know, the 1999 European elections reported by counting areas corresponding to the Westminster constituencies then in existence, while all future Euro elections have counted by Council area, which is no use to anybody.

Previous to 1999, European elections had been conducted on a FPTP basis on Euro constituencies cobbled together out of existing Westminster constituencies. For some reason, the Boundary Commission drew up a new batch of FPTP Euro constituencies for the 1999 Euro elections, based on the 1997 Westminster seats. This was presumably on the off-chance that the Government would renege on the promise of Proportional Representation, which made sense on the basis of historical precedent. However, they reckoned without an EU directive forcing the UK to implement PR for the 1999 Euros. Side note: the drawing of the Euro seat boundaries in Wales and Scotland wasn't an entirely wasted effort, as these formed the initial boundaries for the List Regions in their devolved Parliaments.

As we have the results for 1999 by Westminster constituency, and we know how the FPTP seats would have been drawn, we can map the OTL results onto the proposed map, and this is what I've been chosen to spend literal hours of my life on. Best moment: noticing that the BNP got 1,488 votes in Devon and East Plymouth.

Obviously this isn't entirely realistic, as the introduction of PR influenced voter choice, particularly in terms of the Green and UKIP votes.

Be that as it may, you will note that the SNP gain Mid Scotland and Fife from Labour, Plaid Cymru break into the European Parliament for the first time (this was, of course, during the year or two when they swept all before them) and the Lib Dems lose their two hard-won gains of 1994, Cornwall and Plymouth West and Somerset and North Devon. Presumably if this map had actually been used, they would have run a more targeted campaign and not lost so many protest votes to UKIP, who saw their greatest support in the South West IOTL. However, 1994 was the only time they won Euro seats under PR [EDIT: sod off Thande], so 1999 may have seen a return to normal service anyway.

1994 also saw Labour winning 62 seats out of 87, which obviously couldn't have been maintained. The large size of these constituencies means that small-town Labour voters are jumbled in together with half a dozen blue ribbon seats, and that's without mentioning that Labour did very poorly in this election, losing 16% of their 1994 vote and losing places like Birmingham West.

EuroParl 1999FPTP.png

Seats
Conservative - 50 (+32 from '94) (+14 from OTL)
Labour - 29 (-33) (-)
SNP - 3 (+1) (+1)
Plaid Cymru - 2 (+2) (-)
Lib Dems - 0 (-2) (-10)
 
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Here's a sort-of OTL map.

As fans of a certain TL will know, the 1999 European elections reported by counting areas corresponding to the Westminster constituencies then in existence, while all future Euro elections have counted by Council area, which is no use to anybody.

Previous to 1999, European elections had been conducted on a FPTP basis on Euro constituencies cobbled together out of existing Westminster constituencies. For some reason, the Boundary Commission drew up a new batch of FPTP Euro constituencies for the 1999 Euro elections, based on the 1997 Westminster seats. This was presumably on the off-chance that the Government would renege on the promise of Proportional Representation, which made sense on the basis of historical precedent. However, they reckoned without an EU directive forcing the UK to implement PR for the 1999 Euros. Side note: the drawing of the Euro seat boundaries in Wales and Scotland wasn't an entirely wasted effort, as these formed the initial boundaries for the List Regions in their devolved Parliaments.

As we have the results for 1999 by Westminster constituency, and we know how the FPTP seats would have been drawn, we can map the OTL results onto the proposed map, and this is what I've been chosen to spend literal hours of my life on. Best moment: noticing that the BNP got 1,488 votes in Devon and East Plymouth.

Obviously this isn't entirely realistic, as the introduction of PR influenced voter choice, particularly in terms of the Green and UKIP votes.

Be that as it may, you will note that the SNP gain Mid Scotland and Fife from Labour, Plaid Cymru break into the European Parliament for the first time (this was, of course, during the year or two when they swept all before them) and the Lib Dems lose their two hard-won gains of 1994, Cornwall and Plymouth West and Somerset and North Devon. Presumably if this map had actually been used, they would have run a more targeted campaign and not lost so many protest votes to UKIP, who saw their greatest support in the South West IOTL. However, 1994 was the only time they won Euro seats under PR, so 1999 may have seen a return to normal service anyway.

1994 also saw Labour winning 62 seats out of 87, which obviously couldn't have been maintained. The large size of these constituencies means that small-town Labour voters are jumbled in together with half a dozen blue ribbon seats, and that's without mentioning that Labour did very poorly in this election, losing 16% of their 1994 vote and losing places like Birmingham West.

View attachment 10056

Seats
Conservative - 50 (+32 from '94) (+14 from OTL)
Labour - 29 (-33) (-)
SNP - 3 (+1) (+1)
Plaid Cymru - 2 (+2) (-)
Lib Dems - 0 (-2) (-10)
Very nice work! I wasn't aware the Boundary Commission had drawn up proposed 1999 FPTP seats. I'm not sure if they're more or less ugly than the 1994 ones.

Minor typo, I think you meant to write "However, 1994 was the only time [the Lib Dems] won Euro seats under FPTP".

I like how the number of Labour seats is identical under both systems - what are the chances of that?
 
Very nice work! I wasn't aware the Boundary Commission had drawn up proposed 1999 FPTP seats. I'm not sure if they're more or less ugly than the 1994 ones.

Minor typo, I think you meant to write "However, 1994 was the only time [the Lib Dems] won Euro seats under FPTP".

I like how the number of Labour seats is identical under both systems - what are the chances of that?
Yes, I should have should have put a trigger warning for Border Gore in my post, really. It's mostly sort of acceptable, but then you get to Notts-Derby-Staffs and then the nausea sets in. Erewash is in the Peak District constituency, which ought to have fallen foul of EU consumer protection rules.

It would be interesting to do an STV map for 1999, as that was a potential alternative to the List PR system we ended up with (and was the main Euro PR proposal in the late 70s, when the Liberals could very well have got Labour to introduce it if they'd forced the issue), but I can't guarantee the map would look any nicer.
 
Yes, I should have should have put a trigger warning for Border Gore in my post, really. It's mostly sort of acceptable, but then you get to Notts-Derby-Staffs and then the nausea sets in. Erewash is in the Peak District constituency, which ought to have fallen foul of EU consumer protection rules.

I was about to say. It looks like some sort of Eldritch Abomination crawling out of the midlands.

And I thought we'd slayed the Derby Octopus 25 years previously!
 
Yes, I should have should have put a trigger warning for Border Gore in my post, really. It's mostly sort of acceptable, but then you get to Notts-Derby-Staffs and then the nausea sets in. Erewash is in the Peak District constituency, which ought to have fallen foul of EU consumer protection rules.

It would be interesting to do an STV map for 1999, as that was a potential alternative to the List PR system we ended up with (and was the main Euro PR proposal in the late 70s, when the Liberals could very well have got Labour to introduce it if they'd forced the issue), but I can't guarantee the map would look any nicer.
How would you model preferences for an STV election?
 
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