by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal
“Thanks for winning the last election for us,” said the Tories to Lloyd George, “now bugger off.”
After cheerfully defenestrating their Liberal coalition partner, they installed Andrew Bonar Law in October 1922 as the new prime minister. Law immediately fired the starting gun on the general election, setting the 15th November as the date for the poll.
The Birmingham Gazette demonstrates the range of visuals that made their picture desk the envy of the world
Unfortunately, he forgot to mention this to his own party’s campaign machine, which was taken by surprise when the poll was announced.
Wrong-footed, they hurriedly selected candidates, grabbed a handful of key words from “Attacking Labour for Dummies” and rushed a selection of posters to the printers with the instruction “Anything with words ‘tax’, ‘socialism’, ‘debt’ and ‘spending’ is fine”.
