On the Point of My Pen by Michael Cummings

It's all the same ink

Same old, same new, features morph

Pen stuck on repeat

Cartoonist of Post-Histoire

On the Point of My Pen: The Best of Cummings

Michael Cummings

Milestone Publications 1985  ISBN 0903852691

Michael Cummings was the cartoonist for the Tribune and then, definitively, the Express. Quite interestingly, his father was the political editor of the News Chronicle; Dirk Bogarde's father was the art editor of the Times. Michael Cummings attended the Chelsea School of Art; Dirk Bogarde (Jericho) attended the Chelsea School of Art. Someone once said that environment determines consciousness, and one wonders if this particular environment induced a predilection for exasperation. 

Cummings informs us that "my father was a political journalist, and my first political experience was when he took me on a picnic with David Lloyd George, since when I have always been interested in politics." Michael Foot encouraged him to draw for the Tribune. Then he wrote to Lord Beaverbrook to get a job at the Express. He was accused of being, as he would have it, anti-everyone; though he clearly loved Thatcher. Of course a top politician would rather be caricatured than not, Emanuel Shinwell saying to him: "My boy, however angry politicians may be by the way you draw them in your cartoons, they'll be more angry if you leave them out!" The politicians were far more likely to get in if they had something drawable about them: your Healeys (eyebrows), your Foots (hair), your Thatchers (sex bomb). Apparently, Cummings had no shortage of inspiration – things were crazy out there, a sentiment that never seems to alter. 

His working method was to get up at 7, listen to Radio 4, read the papers, and have some ideas in rough by lunchtime to show the editor. He would then spend three to six hours working on the selected cartoon (I am reminded of Dylan Thomas' routine, although he didn't get up quite so early). Of course the subject matter determines how long a cartoon took to draw, "Mrs Thatcher dressed as Britannia with a trophy on the tip of her trident" being much quicker than filling out the House of Commons.

Political cartoonists are perhaps not best known for subtlety; Cummings was an exemplary political cartoonist. His single most successful cartoon in this compendium for my eyes is the bold and simple 'The Empties' (14 May 1978) – challenged perhaps by Evil Heath (General Election Day 1970). Rather more interesting than the aesthetics is the fact that with a little tweaking, many of the cartoons could simply be rebadged for today: inflation (Mr Rising Price), world economic climate (stormy), the Battle of the Sexes, breakaway parties, index-linked pensions for civil servants (up 10.1% as of 10 April 2023 by the way), TV Trendies & arts delinquents, the impeding communist takeover of our cherished democracy, Royals going out with commoners, boats in the Channel, British Leyland in 1998, European NATO spending (lack of), the Russian War Machine, pipeline dependence on Russian energy, R.I.P. Afghanistan, and so on. If the more things change, the more things stay the same, it would be intriguing to know what precisely Cummings meant by the cartoon of 23 December 1968 in which the Serpent of the Garden of Eden tempts both Adam and Eve and astronaut Adam and Eve. One thing we do know is that the "Denis Healey Annual Jubilee Plan" (7 June 1977) has finally been successfully implemented; one must hope that the balance of payments responds accordingly.

© Bryn Roberts 2023

Published 5 July 2023