The cruel art of exaggeration
Peregrine Worsthorne
STABBED IN THE FRONT: POST-WAR GENERAL ELECTIONS THROUGH POLITICAL CARTOONS by Alan Mumford Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent at Canterbury, £14.95, pp. 148, ISBN 1902671201 Considering the unpromising provenance of this book — the University of Kent's Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature — it is not as academically jargon-ridden as the reader would have good reason to fear. Predictably its unrealistic aim — to analyse the effect of political cartoons on all the British elections between 1945 and 1997 — is not fulfilled, but since in its pursuit the knowledgeable author, Alan Mumford, entertains us by recalling a great number of the best and most amusing political cartoons of the last half-century, why should we complain?
For the benefit of those who did not live through this period and know no contemporary history — not his students, one hopes — the author helpfully explains who all the characters are — Winston Churchill, de Gaulle, Stalin etc — and also the point which the cartoonist is trying to make, which is a bit like the editor of a book of 20th-century jokes feeling the need to explain each and every one of them. Given, however, the undoubted need nowadays for such a commentary, Alan Mumford meets it with admirable economy, accuracy and perception.
His introduction, too, contains a useful reminder of how greatly the political cartoonist's art has triumphed during the period under review, to the point where instead of the cartoon being a mere accessory, occupying little space, to the leading article, the leading article is now increasingly a mere accessory, occupying little space, to the cartoon. Having been a writer of leading articles during the same period, I have watched this transformation, which has coincided almost exactly with the span of my own career, with some dismay.
When I began writing Daily Telegraph leaders in the early 1950s, there was no political — or any other — cartoonist to worry about and the written word held
unchallenged sway, but by the time I retired in the early 1990s the cartoon on the leader page of all the broadsheets, including the Sunday Telegraph, held centre stage, quite overshadowing its accompanying editorial. By then, however, as editor, I was responsible for both choosing the cartoon and writing the editorial, which made the job of balancing these two imperial interests, which were seldom complementary. quite awkward.
For very often in the middle of composing a long electoral leading article urging readers to vote Conservative, my cartoonist colleague — initially John Jenson and later Nicholas Garland — would interrupt my scribbling with a brilliant cartoon which, with a flick of the pen, turned my argument on its head. I used to dread that knock at the door, knowing that it presaged not only an interruption of my train of thought but very often its complete reversal. In my early days, the balance of power would favour the leader writer's views, but by the end of my time, a well-drawn image, however heretically inimical to the paper's ideological bent, would always come out on top.
On balance I regret this. Cartoons seldom, if ever, do justice to the complexity of a political controversy. However skilful the cartoon may be, it is always, however sophisticated, an oversimplification, providing not so much food for thought as the spicy sauce which makes the food easier to swallow, rather as pictures play the same role in the news coverage. This book illustrates the resulting decline in journalistic standards, since in it readers will find much to titillate their prejudices but little to
increase their comprehension.
Not that this means that the influence of cartoons is negligible; it could well mean the opposite. A hilariously funny cartoon — about, in this election for example, Mr Prescott's egg — may well help to change a few votes one way or the other, justly or unjustly; but not necessarily, I fear, in any rational manner. Vicky's famous image of SuperMac in the 1959 election, for example, was intended to destroy Harold Macmillan and instead turned him into a loveable card. Most political victims love their cartoon tormentors, and hang the original of even their nastiest works on the walls of their WCs, for the delectation of their visitors. It is all a bit of fun, if not always good or clean. In any case, most of us — such being the perversity of human nature — enjoy a cruel and malicious cartoon particularly if it is at the expense of a political friend, whose humiliation in no way affects our faith in his cause; indeed, out of guilt for our personal disloyalty, we will probably redouble our faith in the party.
Alan Mumford writes in his introduction: The artistic quality of the drawings was not one of my criteria [for including them], as I do not have the knowledge or sensitivity to make a selection of that sort.
Nor, I fear, does this reviewer. Even so, I am convinced that it is the art which makes all the difference. Of all the cartoonists included in this volume, only Garland and Vicky, I would suggest, have much chance of being remembered, not for their political impact — supposing they had any — but for the pleasure their work must surely give even to the most undiscerning eye.
Previous page
