Street Art: Corbyn’s Other “Social” Media

The post-mortem of Labour’s surprisingly strong general election result are focusing heavily on the role that the internet and social media played in mobilising young voters but a much older form of communication was also at play. Street art.

That other medium was perhaps the oldest of all forms of visual art – the wall daubings that make up London’s street art.

The capital’s vibrant street art is most evident in youth-dominated areas like Shoreditch and Camden but its origins stretch all the way back to drawings by Neanderthals who used cave walls as their canvas to record what was going on around them.

And while it has been overlooked in most election analyses, it is one medium in which the 2017 dominance of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour was unchallenged.

The high-tech world of social media worked to Labour’s advantage by helping to energise the young and encourage them both to register and to vote but conservatives were also active online with paid campaigns and noisy discussions of the election issues.

On the walls of the city the argument was all one way, leaving young Londoners in no doubt about how most of their peers felt about Corbyn and Theresa May.

Corbyn as the Savior

In a hectic surge of street art, May was always demonised. Depictions of the Prime Minister carried universally negative connotations, whether she was shown in Islington dancing happily with Donald Trump or in Herne Hill glaring menacingly at passers-by like a demented Joker.

Those images were a potent backdrop in a city where street art has long been used to express views on just about anything. Not all residents of the inner city tune in to news broadcasts but they almost all walk past street art on the way to the Tube or the shops.  That constant exposure has made cult heroes of Banksy, Zabou and Robbo and an astute election campaign manager would be aware of their influence and the power of their medium.

While TV screens, newspapers and the radio waves were often a harsh environment for Corbyn the walls of the city were all his.  The 68-year-old had gone out of his way to try to engage young people in politics, appearing with musicians such as Stormzy and even pretending quite implausibly that he listened to grime music., and street art presented him as the “idol” of a generation.

He was portrayed as a dynamic and sympathetic figure, whether it was on a large mural next to Brick Lane or a wall in a backstreet behind Camden High Street that described him as “The People’s Champ”.

That landscape contributed to the growing excitement around his campaign. The election campaign saw the largest ever wave of voter registrations among the young, and the early indications are that the turnout among young voters – 66% according to Sky News – was the highest for many years.

 

By Kamelia Gantcheva

 

 

 

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