Comments on: Colours

By: John Locke's Ghost

John Locke's Ghost — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:26:28 +0000

This is actually a little bit marginal issue for me, so I’m not quite sure about it, but I have the understanding that the Liberal Party adopted yellow as their colour during the leadership of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery. Of course one of the predessors of Whigs was the Green Ribbon Club, so Huhne’s choice of colour has some historical justification, as well, though I doubt that he was thinking about that when he chose the colour for his site.

By: tristan

tristan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:23:58 +0000

I think gold/orange/yellow was always the colour of the Liberals. Nationally at least. I can’t find any documentary evidence for this though.

The Red/Blue thing is very recent anyway, and in the US the Republicans appear to be adopting red (although officially there is no colour for the two main parties).

In the 50s, some Conservative associations still campaigned with red colours and officially the Conservative colours are red, white and blue (and apparently in Cumbria it uses yellow…)

By: Julian H

Julian H — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:19:26 +0000

Was orange not originally the colour of liberalism even before socialism was born and adopted red?

By: John Locke's Ghost

John Locke's Ghost — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:46:07 +0000

If Labour would indeed have adopted purple, that would have been highly symbolical, since purple is a mix of red and blue.

Orange, too, is a mix of two colours, yellow and red. As red is generally associated with socialism, you’d think that orange means a shift towards a more centralised government and economy.

Therefore it’s a bit ironical, that a book that was meant to remind liberals of their roots in *both* political and economic liberalism, used this colour as its symbol (”golden” would perhaps have been better). Ironically it’s name was probably a reference to Keynes’s and Lloyd George’s “Yellow Book” of 1929, which shifted the Liberal Party to a more socialist direction.