Why Do UK Political Parties Have Colours? A Short History

UK political parties use colours as a quick visual signal. A colour lets a voter recognise a party at a glance on a rosette, a poster, a leaflet or a results graphic, before reading a word. The national pattern most people know today, with the Conservatives in blue, Labour in red and the Liberal Democrats in yellow, is fairly recent. Until well into the 20th century, political party colours in the UK were set locally and could be different from one constituency to the next.

Where party colours came from

Colours were useful long before mass democracy. Elections were held before most people could read, and before the secret ballot and the printed ballot paper. Giving candidates a distinguishing rosette or ribbon helped voters and supporters tell rival sides apart. The phrase "political colours" entered the language as a way of describing someone's allegiance.

The oldest associations are disputed. One writer has traced red and blue to the Exclusion Crisis of 1679 to 1681, when red was linked to supporters of the Crown, the Tories, and blue to the Whigs. Yet William Hogarth's painting The Polling, which depicts an election of 1754, shows a blue flag for the Tories and a buff flag for the Whigs. Buff and blue are recorded as Whig colours from the early 18th century, and they were still in use around the time of the Reform Act of 1832.

In many places colours had nothing to do with national politics at all. They came from local coats of arms, or from the racing colours of the aristocratic families who dominated elections in a county or borough.

A patchwork of local colours

Because colours were local, the same party could look completely different a few miles away. Some recorded examples:

Place	Period	Colours used
Birmingham, Whitby, East Worcestershire	18th and 19th centuries	Tories in orange, pink and red respectively
Kendal, Marlborough, Wakefield	18th and 19th centuries	Whigs in blue, purple and orange respectively
Greenwich	1874 general election	The Liberal candidate in blue; his Conservative opponents in crimson
Walsall	1960s	Tory red, Liberal blue, Labour yellow
Many parts of Wales	Traditional	Conservatives in red
North East England	Traditional	Conservatives red, Labour green, Liberals blue and orange
Scotland	Traditional	Liberals red and yellow (from the Lion Rampant); Tories blue and white (from the Saltire)

Even within one party the variety was striking. Liberal colours included green across much of the Home Counties and Greater London in the late 1950s, red in parts of north-west England in the 1960s and yellow in Yorkshire. In 1964 The Times reported that a Manchester supplier of rosettes was stocking eight different colours or colour combinations to meet Liberal demand around the country.

How the national colours settled

Conservative blue

Blue became steadily more common for the Conservatives over the 20th century, and the choice was reinforced by a decision of the party's Central Council in 1949. Blue is now associated with centre-right parties in many countries, an association that is often traced to its use by the Tories in Britain.

Labour red

Red has long been the colour of the labour movement, in the UK and in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. The Labour Party's traditional anthem, "The Red Flag", refers to it directly. In places where another party already used red, local Labour parties sometimes chose other colours, such as yellow.

Liberal orange, then yellow

The Liberals had no national colour until the late 1960s. In the 1960s party headquarters encouraged local parties to use orange, which advertising professionals considered the colour that stood out most, especially in fluorescent "dayglo" form on posters. The party's publications department printed its material in orange, and by the general election of February 1974 Liberals were being encouraged to adopt it for national recognition. Even so, it is doubtful there was ever a formal central decision, and some local parties held on to their traditional colours for years. Yellow as a political colour in Britain has been traced to a Liberal publication of the 1920s, Britain's Industrial Future. Today yellow is used by the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, which has used yellow and black since it was formed in 1970.

Other parties

Plaid Cymru uses green and yellow, taken from the daffodil. In Northern Ireland, unionist and nationalist parties in the Assembly are often described as the "orange" and "green" blocs. Reform UK uses teal, which is seen as a variant of conservative blue. For what a party is and how it organises, see our explainer on what a political party is.

Why colours still matter

Recognition on the ballot paper

Colour was first a tool for telling candidates apart, and recognition is still the point. The Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 set up a register of party names and, because it allowed logos on ballot papers, a register of emblems too. Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, a party can register up to three emblems for use on ballot papers. The rules deal with names and emblems rather than colours, but in practice the two go together: a party's symbol and its literature carry the same national colour. One history of party colours names the use of logos on ballot papers as one of the forces behind national uniformity. Registering a name and emblem is part of starting a political party in the UK.

Branding

Modern campaigns aim for the same themes, logos and colours across the whole country, with approved variations for nations, regions and localities. Mass media encouraged this: a single colour per party simplifies the message. Politicians still show their colour on rosettes, ties and ribbons at public appearances.

Television and election maps

Television accelerated the change. A former Liberal MP has suggested that the arrival of colour television in 1967 was a principal driver towards national uniformity of Liberal colours.

The United States shows how strongly television can fix a colour scheme. There, red for Republicans and blue for Democrats only became settled around the 2000 presidential election, when the result took time to settle and the networks' electoral maps stayed on screen; as late as the 1990s Democrats were often shown in red. That is the opposite of the usual convention elsewhere, where red is linked with parties of the left. Outlets such as the BBC follow the American scheme when they cover US elections.

Colours still change and still vary

The national palette is a convention, not a law, and it has kept moving. The Liberal tradition went from many local colours to orange and then to yellow. Newer parties choose colours to place themselves in relation to older ones. Local traditions have not disappeared either: in Penrith and the Border the traditional Conservative colour was yellow, and at the 2010 general election Conservative candidates there and in Westmorland and Lonsdale wore blue and yellow rosettes.

So when you see a sea of one colour on election night, it reflects decades of standardisation for voters, printers and cameras, not a fixed rule that has always applied.