Catalogue Number
NMLH.2018.201
Object Name
Banner
Title
'Camden Labour Briefing. âI thought you said Camden was a pushover Ridley!!!"'
Place
Camden, Westminster, Houses of Parliament, London
People
Dave Bangs (artist), Labour Party, Labour Briefing (magazine), Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, Nicholas Ridley
Date
1985
Creator(s)
Description
This rectangular banner is painted with a crowd of people in grey and black shades, jeering at the figures of three politicians including Margaret Thatcher and Nicholas Ridley. The politicians are in the foreground at the bottom of the banner and are a much smaller scale than the crowd. Thatcher is speaking, saying âI thought you said Camden was a pushover Ridley!!!" At the back of th scene are the Houses of Parliament in red, and the words 'Camden Labour Briefing'.
This banner was made by socialist activist Dave Bangs in the mid-1980s and was taken on demonstrations in Britain against council cuts, rate capping, the Poll Tax, and to show support for the 1984-85 Miners' Strike. The imagery, showing the crowd of ordinary people as large figures and the politicians as much smaller may have been intended to invoke the notion that the people as a whole were larger and thus could be more powerful than any government if they acted. Thatcher's statement âI thought you said Camden was a pushover Ridley!" is a reference to the Ridley Report, written in 1977 as a strategy document for how a future Conservative government could fight and defeat the kinds of large strikes by mine workers and other nationalised industries that had brought down the Conservative government in 1974.
London Labour Briefing was founded in Camden, London, in 1980 as a magazine for local Labour Party activists. It became popular nationwide and is still published today as a national magazine simply called Labour Briefing.
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