Chrome badge issued by the Conservative Party to members of the Vermin Club.
This is an original badge from c.1948. It is not a reproduction. From a hoard of Conservative badges discovered in a party office. A scarce political badge.
Measures: 20 x 22mm
Condition: Excellent
The Vermin Club (information from The Vermin Club, 1948-1951, History Today, June 1997): On the evening of July 4th, 1948, Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Government's Minister of Health, gave a speech in which he attacked the Conservatives as 'lower than vermin'. It was a controversial remark, and was widely criticised in some quarters of the Press. The response from grassroots Conservatives was to form the Vermin Club.
Vermin Clubs seem to have been independently started in response to the national newspaper sensationalisation of Bevan's speech. The earliest references to them in the files are firstly an advert in The Times on July 28th, 1948, appealing for: `organisers of Vermin Clubs, now springing up spontaneously all over the country...' to contact a box number with a view to national co-ordination. Secondly, a report appeared in the Birmingham Evening Despatch, probably from early August 1948, in which it is reported that 'a local metal-worker has started to manufacture badges and brooches for use by Conservative Party members'. These badges were plain chrome with a picture of a rat and the word `Vermin' underneath.
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