OI! SUN! That's My Design You've Nicked

Go back in time to 2001. There was an election coming and the Shrewsbury branch of UKIP had not got any leaflets. I called head office and they suggested I designed my own. Which I did.

As I'm overseas right now, I cannot scan the one in that I made, to show you the similarity with The Sun's excellent 'son of' version above - but as far as I know, I was the first in the UK to use a Dad's Army theme in euro-politics.

I had about ten possible graphical ideas for the leaflet in 2001, and it was when a lady in our local - The Coach And Horses, in St Johns Hill - said that one of the designs reminded her of the entry pictures from Dad's Army that I followed that through and created one titled 'Who's Kidding Us This Time?'

I emailed 'Captain Mainwaring's' (Arthur Lowe's) son in NZ to get permission to use his father's image on the leaflet which he gladly gave, saying that his father would have approved of the sentiments expressed very much. But later on the BBC decided that we were not allowed to use it. We replaced Mainwaring with a Bulldog off a poster, but Churchill with 2 fingers would have been a much better idea - which we didn't have. We were working with no deadline time at all, of course with the election bearing down.

Te response rate to the leaflet had been amazing with between 2-9% response rate with donations and joining subscriptions sufficient to cover costs. It would have made a self financing campaign. We printed 2 million copies, all with a PO BOX address in Shrewsbury. The money was rolling in. UKIP NEC adopted the leaflet as its leaflet for the GE 2001 before Sykes came in a bit late.

Then the responses died. A local postman told us that 7 mail bags were removed from the local Post Office, full of our responses. Under the enemy aliens act, from WW1, the government can remove mail without giving any reason. We lost around UKL25,000 pounds, which we never recouped. We met a constant stream of people out on the street asking why we had not replied to their coupon.

Then IDS was elected as Conservative leader, and I called Owen Paterson and informed him I was coming back home to the Tories. He welcomed me back by telling a large meeting what a bunch of fools we'd been backing UKIP!

I was later approached by two ex-UKIPPERS in 2004 for an anti-EU Constitution leaflet which I made for them. It had a rusty old rocket flying out of the EU towards London - very similar to the central arrow marked 'EU Constitution' in the above graphic.

The Sun has done a good job.

THOUGHT - Who would have thought that Blair-supporting Murdoch would take a leading role in redefining Britain's relationship with Europe? It makes it far easier for Cameron and the Conservatives to challenge Gordon Brown's European Policy. If they won't hold a retrospective referendum on the Constitution, what will they do? We are all waiting with baited breath.

Comments

[William Humbold Jr]

You can already now vote Yes to Free Europe Constitution at www.FreeEurope.info - or vote No.