Operation Black Vote has unveiled a new campaign poster recreating the famous Bullingdon photo but replacing the youthful David Cameron and Boris Johnson and their cohorts in the Oxford dining club with models from contemporary, diverse Britain.
The poster’s aim is to highlight claims that the European referendum is similarly dominated by white men at the top of the political and social ladder.
The original photograph featured 10 white immaculately coiffured, smug, white young men dressed in their £1,000 uniforms of blue bow ties, tails and biscuit-coloured waistcoats. The substitutes, similarly attired, are black, white, Chinese, Asian, male and female.
One female stand-in on the poster wears a hijab. The figure replacing Cameron, exact in gait and demeanour, is a lanky black man with lengthy dreadlocks.
Explaining the rationale behind the ad, OBV’s director, Simon Woolley, said: “We felt it important to speak out because this referendum and its debate will shape the nation’s future for a generation. It should not be driven by the few, and certainly should not be decided by a minority of small interested parties, even privileged parties.
“We felt the juxtaposition of the infamous image replaced by a snapshot of the UK’s minority communities, in so many ways couldn’t be more stark: the powerful versus the powerless; the constantly heard against the voiceless.”
The Bullingdon club was known for hard drinking and bad behaviour. Members were said to have vandalised restaurants and trashed student accommodation.
The ad is the second provocative campaign from OBV in recent weeks. An image released last month of an elderly Asian woman being confronted by an aggressive white skinhead was condemned by Brexit campaigners, notably Nigel Farage and Priti Patel, who said it “plumbs new depths in scaremongering”.
