2026 sees the 50th anniversary of the reissuing (in colour) of the children’s classic, Ivor the Engine, created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. What is perhaps less well known is the longer political context of the Postgate family and how that influence may, in a small way, have made its way into the otherwise comforting world of Bagpuss and the Clangers.
On 23 February 2024 the Commons allowed themselves a remarkably good-humoured debate on the Space Industry (Indemnities) Bill. At heart a serious measure intended to underpin the country’s ‘dynamic space sector’ (as it was described by Jonathan Lord, MP for Woking), the Members were unable nevertheless to stop themselves from giving way to a few obvious sci-fi allusions. Referencing Star Wars, Chris Clarkson (MP for Heywood and Middleton) observed that ‘the Empire would not have been able to build the second Death Star if it had been on the hook for the price of the first one,’ which had, of course, been destroyed at the conclusion of Episode IV. Somewhat mixing his metaphors, or sci-fi worlds, the next speaker, Mike Kane (MP for Wythensale and Sale East) commenced with observing what an honour it was to follow on from Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek), before continuing with some more well-worn space-related quotations. [Hansard, 23 February 2024]
It was later in the debate, that the parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, Anthony Browne (MP for South Cambridgeshire) chose to throw into the mix a more peaceful fictional off-world, by observing that he thought it unlikely that in exploring the universe humanity would ‘find the Clangers or the Soup Dragon on some other planet’. This seems to have been the first time the gentle creation of Postgate and Firmin, the small blue moon inhabited by tiny, knitted, pink aliens, had made its way into Parliament and when the Commons returned to the business on 7 March, Jerome Mayhew (MP for Broadland and Fakenham) pointed out the contrasts between the ‘rather painful space puns’ employed by the Labour and Conservative benches.
From Labour Members, I am sorry to say that we have had references to Trekkies, “Flash Gordon” and “Star Wars”. From the Conservatives, we have had references to “The Clangers” and the Soup Dragon, which are much more patriotic. [Hansard, 7 March 2024]
The following year, on 4 June 2025, there was a second passing reference, this time to the world of Bagpuss, the ‘saggy old cloth cat’, who presided over ‘Bagpuss & Co.’, the shop which did not sell anything. Drawing together his remarks on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, Justin Madders (MP for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) compared another member with one of the shop’s stalwarts, Professor Yaffle, the wooden bookend, famously modelled on Bertrand Russell.
Given Oliver Postgate’s lively political antecedents, and his own quiet campaigning radicalism, it is perhaps surprising that parliamentarians have not made greater use of his creations to illustrate their points. Similarly little notice appears to have been made of Postgate’s father, the radical journalist, Raymond Postgate, though he was referred to in passing by Barry Sheerman (MP for Huddersfield) on 25 January 2024, responding to comments made by the then Leader of the House (Penny Mordaunt), a distant relation.
Alongside his pioneering work on the Good Food Guide, one of Raymond Postgate’s best-known publications was a 1930 biography of the 18th-century radical, John Wilkes. A closing description of the aging Wilkes might almost have come from an opening narration for one of Oliver’s later films: ‘a little thinner, a little more wizened perhaps, but still he was essentially the same squinting and grinning Wilkes in red coat and heavily powdered wig.’ [That Devil Wilkes, 236]
The family’s radical politics was further underpinned through Raymond’s father-in-law, George Lansbury, MP for Bow and Bromley, sometime cabinet minister under Ramsay MacDonald, briefly himself leader of the Labour Party, and with whom Raymond collaborated on publications such as Lansbury’s Labour Weekly. [ODNB] There may even be indications of much longer political antecedents.
The Postgate family had originally hailed from Yorkshire and there are intriguing glimpses of potential distant relatives voting as far back as the reign of Anne. One Michael Posgate voted for the unsuccessful Tory candidate, Sir Arthur Kaye, 3rd bt. at Yorkshire in 1708; Henry Postcatt from Scarborough, John Posgate from Newton and Sam Posgate from Scarborough all voted in the 1727 Yorkshire election – the first and third for Cholmley Turner, and second for Sir John Lister Kaye, 4th bt. For the 1734 Yorkshire election, Michael Postgate from Ayton Great voted for Cholmley Turner and Sir Rowland Winn, and it was presumably the same Michael Postgate voting for Turner again in 1742. A final snapshot of potential Postgate ancestors saw Christopher Postgate, a currier from Pickering, voting for Hon. Henry Lascelles (later 2nd earl of Harewood) and William Wilberforce in 1807. [ECPPEC]
It was in this heady world of political activism that Oliver Postgate was brought up, amid family retreats to what was affectionately dubbed Bloomsbury-on-the-Marsh (on the borders of Essex and Suffolk). There he came into contact with the likes of Bertrand Russell, an ‘elderly man with a thin ratty voice’ (later immortalized as Yaffle) and H.G. Wells, a ‘short wide frenzied man with a squeaky voice’. [Seeing Things, 25]
Of course, in most respects the worlds of Bagpuss and the Clangers are utterly non-political and rooted in simple childhood tales of generosity. But underpinning them might be seen elements of the kind of gentle radicalism exemplified by Oliver Postgate himself, whose activities varied from the creation of children’s television programmes to early efforts at harnessing solar power.
Most Bagpuss episodes have little political content, though there is one moment during the episode ‘The Ballet Shoe’ where the mice hold out for better working conditions by threatening to down tools if they are not allowed to sing while they work:
Mice like to sing. Mice not sing, mice not work. Mice strike!
More directly, the second general election of 1974 provided Oliver Postgate with an opportunity to enter the political fray by persuading the BBC to allow him to produce a short film dubbed Vote for Froglet, explaining the basics of party politics. There, perplexed by the noise emanating from Earth, the Clangers are informed of the fundamentals of the democratic process and encouraged to hold their own election.
Standing are a rather confused Soup Dragon and one of the Froglets (small orange jumping creatures), with the Soup Dragon campaigning on a platform of free soup for all (except for Froglets), while the Froglet gamely offers a manifesto of the reverse of whatever the Soup Dragon was offering. The result, three votes to two, with Mother Clanger giving the casting vote, is a narrow victory for the Soup Dragon. The whole thing, though, rapidly, and rather predictably, then descends into chaos with the Clangers and associates resolving to lay aside their differences and turn their backs on mankind’s odd interest in voting.
The narrator (Postgate) is left protesting: ‘it’s alright for Clangers to sit down together and settle their arguments, but people can’t do that… no well, I suppose people can… but whoever heard of political generosity? It’s a complete contradiction. Party politics is a question of power!’ [Vote for Froglet, 1974]
As far as the film was concerned, Postgate accepted that it was unlikely to have a profound effect on the political process. It was, he suggested, ‘a pleasant little Morality Play, but not something that would bring the world back to its senses’. It did, though, help him to clarify his own conception that ‘government was too important and delicate a process to be left to politicians’. [Seeing Things, 306-7]
RDEE
Further Reading:
Oliver Postgate, Seeing Things: A Memoir (rev. edn. Edinburgh, 2010)
Raymond Postgate, That Devil Wilkes (rev. edn. 1956)
Eighteenth Century Political Participation & Electoral Culture (ECPPEC): https://ecppec.ncl.ac.uk/