Eccentric election candidates/political parties in the 70s/80s

[Richard1978]

Re: Eccentric election candidates/political parties in the 70s/80s

I remember the Natural Law being mentioned in the media a lot in the early 1990s but never seemed to make any headway & faded away.

I've noticed a lot of fringe parties aim for a niche area of politics, but if one of the mainstream parties start to occupy that niche the smaller ones don't have a chance.

[Silver Bear]

Re: Eccentric election candidates/political parties in the 70s/80s

Lord Buckethead.

Still going strong I see (if it's the same chap each time).

[I. R. Fincham]

Re: Eccentric election candidates/political parties in the 70s/80s

Lord Buckethead.

[Silver Bear]

Re: Eccentric election candidates/political parties in the 70s/80s

And The USA have Trump

The USA also have millions of religious fundamentalists who are completely off the wall. And it's also the homeland of Political Correctness.

[Jay Mc]

Re: Eccentric election candidates/political parties in the 70s/80s

And The USA have Trump

[Silver Bear]

I remember (because I used to collect election literature as a hobby) that the candidates and range of political parties back in the day seemed zanier than today. There was an old chap called Bill Boaks who stood at by-elections all over the country as 'Democratic Monarchist Public Safety White Resident' and would usually collect about 50 votes. Then there was the Workers Revolutionary Party, which was a bit-like a souped-up Tooting Popular Front and had Vanessa Redgrave as a prominent member (Bernard Levin called them 'Vanessa's Loonies'). They wanted to replace Parliament with a 'workers government' but didn't say what that meant. Patrick Moore formed his own political party called The United Country Party: I remember that my mother thought it was about protecting the countryside but in fact it was to the right of the Tories who were 'too wet'.

The obscene racist graffiti of the National Front seemed to be in every city, suburb and town and I think they had an offshoot called the National Party in the North-West. Then - although this might have just been a London thing - there was the Socialist Party of Great Britain which wanted to 'abolish money' in the early 80s when most of the country was skint. Nice one. In 1979, Auberon Waugh stood against Jeremy Thorpe for the Dog Lovers Party as a tribute to Norman Scott's assassinated Great Dane.

Have I left anyone out? Oh yes: Sreaming Lord Sutch. We still have Howling Laud Hope (yes it is Laud not Lord) and the Elvis Lives Party, but they seem to be survivors of a bygone age.