While still teaching, Bell did unpaid work providing the magazine
Birmingham Broadside with illustrations, including a
comic strip featuring
Maxwell the Mutant who changed into someone different every time he drank a pint of
mild. He had been a friend at university with another student,
Kipper Williams, who had become a freelance cartoonist. Bell followed his lead, and some contacts, and despite rejections including being turned down for
The Beano he persevered and obtained paid work for part of 1978 with the comic strip
Dick Doobie the Back to Front Man for
Whoopee!. He made repeated attempts to get work in the London
listings magazine Time Out. When the
premiership of Margaret Thatcher began in May 1979, ''Time Out's
news editor Duncan Campbell invited Bell to meet the need for a comic strip on the new government. Maggie's Farm
, with animal characters, He has appeared in a radio programme about the life of 18th-century caricaturist James Gillray. Earlier in his career, he wrote and drew the Gremlins
comic strip for the British comic Jackpot''.
William Hogarth's
The Gate of Calais about the ban on UK meat exports following outbreaks of
foot-and-mouth disease and bovine
BSE; and – before the
2005 United Kingdom general election when it briefly seemed as if the
Liberal Democrats might seriously threaten the
Labour Party –
J. M. W. Turner's
The Fighting Temeraire, in which a chirpy
Charles Kennedy as
tug-boat towed a grotesque and dilapidated
Tony Blair to be broken up. Following the death of Thatcher, for his cartoon the next day, 9 April 2013, Bell adapted
an illustration by
Gustave Doré of
Farinata in
Dante's
Inferno, giving Thatcher the speech bubble "Why is this pit still open??" with reference to the closure of coal mines after the
UK miners' strike (1984–85). Bell's cartoons regularly feature grotesque caricatures, and have sometimes caused controversy as well as receiving critical acclaim. During the
November 2012 Israel/Gaza conflict The Guardian published a cartoon by Bell showing the Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu as a puppeteer controlling
William Hague and Blair.
Dave Rich, blogging for the
Community Security Trust, said that the illustration was comparable to those featured in Nazi and other
antisemitic publications. While Bell defended his cartoon, the newspaper's readers' editor Chris Elliott concluded in an article on 25 November: "While journalists and cartoonists should be free to express an opinion that Netanyahu is opportunistic and manipulative, in my view they should not use the language – including the visual language – of antisemitic stereotypes." The UK's
Press Complaints Commission received 22 complaints, but ruled on 19 December that it was unable to take the matter further and that it was "unable to establish a breach of the Code". In the run-up to the
2015 United Kingdom general election, there was outrage on
Twitter over an
If... cartoon strip depicting
Scottish National Party (SNP) leader
Nicola Sturgeon as refusing to compromise on their "core demand... for incest and
Scottish country dancing". Numerous tweets branded Bell as racist, while others said that it was no more outrageous than his cartoons mocking other politicians. There were more than 300 complaints made to
The Guardian and nearly 1,000 comments under the online cartoon, mostly negative. The wording referred to a quotation attributed to Sir
Arnold Bax, who said a Scottish friend had told him: "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing." During the
2014 Scottish independence referendum, Bell's cartoon strip depicted Sturgeon's "Yes" campaigning as promising "No Noness ... and Yes Yesness; Nationalism, Socialism: together they go so well!!" In July 2019, Bell sent an angry email to
The Guardian after his
If... cartoon strip was pulled. The cartoon portrayed the then
Deputy Leader of the Labour Party,
Tom Watson, as the "antisemite finder general" for being critical of what he called
antisemitism in the Labour Party. In June 2020, Home Secretary
Priti Patel, while listing her experiences of racism in the House of Commons, mentioned a cartoon of Bell's published in
The Guardian of being portrayed as "a fat cow with a ring through its nose, something that was not only racist but offensive, both culturally and religiously". On 15 July 2020,
The Guardian announced planning to cut jobs due to expected losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The Media Group said "We will discuss all our proposals, including redundancy terms, during collective consultation with our employee and trade union representatives." Online social media including Twitter spread a rumour that Bell's annual contract (due to expire in 2021) would not be renewed, without confirmation from
The Guardian or from Bell himself. The UK
Press Gazette was told by Bell that his annual freelance contract has always been a process of negotiation. For some time he had been in talks with editor-in-chief
Katharine Viner about reducing his workload, and "Sadly this probably spells the end for the 'If…' strip after 39 and a half years, which I enjoy doing immensely, but is a hell of a lot of work for an old codger like me, particularly in full colour. I do hope to continue after next April doing large editorial cartoons." In October 2020, the
Equalities and Human Rights Commission accused the Labour Party of having broken equalities laws regarding its handling of antisemitism allegations.
Jeremy Corbyn said the problem had been "dramatically overstated" by political opponents, and his membership was immediately suspended. Bell produced a cartoon, published in
The Guardian, of
Keir Starmer presenting Corbyn's head on a platter, based on
Caravaggio's portrayal of
Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist from the biblical story in the
New Testament.
The Guardian received 32 complaints of antisemitism. Labour peer
Lord Andrew Adonis described the cartoon as "repellent".
Dismissal from The Guardian In October 2023, Bell announced that
The Guardian would no longer be using his cartoons after 42 years of working together. This followed a cartoon Bell produced within the context of the
Gaza war featuring Netanyahu, with his shirt open, wearing boxing gloves and holding a scalpel over a dotted shape of the
Gaza Strip on his stomach. The caption reads: "Residents of Gaza, get out now." Due to what has been seen by some as a reference to Shakespeare's
Shylock's "pound of flesh", it prompted accusations that it was antisemitic. Bell said that he was inspired by the 1960s "Johnson's Scar" cartoon by
David Levine of then U.S. president
Lyndon B Johnson within the context of the
Vietnam War. In December 2023, former
Guardian editor
Alan Rusbridger commissioned Bell for the Christmas edition of
Prospect magazine. ==Awards and honours==