Heckling and the hair of the dog – when elections were more fun

In the 1964 general election there was an independent Conservative candidate called Charles Ford, who went without holidays for 10 years to build up enough money to fund his campaign.

At the first door he knocked on, he was asked to help catch an escaped chicken. Having spent an hour doing so, he secured the vote of the grateful householder, only then to realise that she had confused him with his Liberal opponent. At the second, he was asked to help with a pet dog that had a bone stuck in its throat. Using some pliers from his toolkit, Mr Ford extracted the bone, only for the voter to confess that she was voting Labour anyway.

By now, he’d had enough. “I was tired, dishevelled and covered in dog hair”, he said, “So I went home. I haven’t been out since”. For most of us, the 2017 campaign has been about as much fun as Ford’s was in 1964.

Partly, this is an understandable reaction to the two terrorist attacks. But even before then, the campaign had hardly caught fire. One poll of voters carried out just before the Manchester bombing found that a third could not recall a single memorable moment from the campaign. The most often cited was Diane Abbott’s sub-optimal interview over police funding. To that you could maybe add Brenda from Bristol (“Oh for God’s sake… There’s too much politics going on at the moment”) and the Prime Minister trying to eat chips like a human. It’s not really what the Chartists had in mind when they advocated extending the franchise.

While there are often complaints about elections being dull, one reason this campaign has felt so long is that it has been so long. Elections used to take place about a month after being called. If we still stuck to that timescale, this one would by now have been over for almost three weeks. It has lacked any obvious structure, too. The opinion polls have provided the only excitement – despite everyone resolving two years ago that they would never again be allowed to dominate coverage.

But it’s also because elections used to be more lively – and we are sanitising them. If you doubt this, take a look at Joseph Strick’s film The Hecklers made for the BBC in 1966. It’s 45 minutes of the Great British Voter shouting abuse at candidates and candidates giving it back in spades. Strick noted that in the US anyone heckling in a similar manner would be expelled from the meeting, which is perhaps another way in which our politics have become more Americanised.

We can be a bit prissy about the ruthless stage management that the parties employ. The media’s desire for “genuine” interactions between the public and politicians is often just code for wanting scenes in which politicians get embarrassed, and elections aren’t run for the benefit of journalists. So there’s been no real equivalent in 2017 of Gordon Brown’s encounter with Gillian Duffy (2010) or Tony Blair’s with Sharon Storer (2001). Jeremy Corbyn’s rallies were genuinely impressive, but they were mostly just rallies of the faithful.

But we shouldn’t be too miserable. Once again a handful of wacky candidates are seeking our votes: a “Mr Fish Finger” is taking on Tim Farron; “Lord Buckethead” is standing against the Prime Minister. And there is still election night to come – something memorable always happens on election night.

Philip Cowley is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London