Page 156 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 135

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS
the media. Most notoriously, when he attended the 1982 ceremony of
Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London dressed in a duffle coat, standing
as protocol demanded alongside the power-dressed figure of Margaret
Thatcher, his ‘fitness to govern’ (always a predictable Tory allegation
against any Labour leader) was publicly questioned.
In the wake of the 1983 defeat, not only did Labour transform its
approach to advertising and public relations in general, it selected in Neil
Kinnock a leader whom it was felt could compete with the Conservatives,
on the terrain of image as well as policy. Like Margaret Thatcher, he
permitted his dress-sense, hair-style, and voice to be coached and shaped.
His successor, John Smith, was equally adept at image-management,
although the constituents of his image (intelligent, reliable, safe) were
different from Kinnock’s (passionate, tough). Smith’s successor, Tony Blair,
was elected largely because of his perceived ability to look and sound good
for the cameras, and to communicate, with his image, to the electorally
crucial voters of southern England. Nick Jones argues that Blair was indeed
the first UK party leader to have been chosen for his ability to say ‘only
what he wanted to say and what he believed to be true’ (1997, p. 9).
It may be, of course, that the importance of image is overstated, and
that audiences have gradually learned to ‘read’ the practices of image-
management and discount them. Thatcher’s successor John Major was
widely perceived as ‘lacking’ in image, meaning that his style was rather
plain and simple. During the 1992 general election campaign Major
adopted the old-fashioned practice of addressing the public from a ‘soap
box’ erected outside his campaign bus. Notwithstanding the occasional egg
or flour bomb, Major’s simple, homely style of campaigning did not pre-
vent victory on 9 April and may indeed have contributed to it. In the view
of some commentators the ascendancy of John Major as Conservative
leader and Prime Minister signified a retreat from – or backlash against –
the sophisticated image management techniques which characterised British
politics in the 1980s. On the other hand, Major’s ‘lack’ of image may in
itself be read as a careful construction, calculated to position him, brand-
like, in the political marketplace. While Neil Kinnock displayed a slick and
glossy self, John Major would be seen as the ‘real thing’, unadorned and
transparent.
In Brendan Bruce’s view, Major’s image comprised the following elements:
comparative youth; good looks; modest social background; courteousness;
‘ordinariness’ and the common touch (considered to be an advantage after
eleven years of Thatcher). In short, Major was all the things which Mrs
Thatcher was not. Major’s image-managers also stressed his love of cricket
(Bruce, 1992, p. 93). Under the chairmanship of Chris Patten, the Tories’
public relations strategy was to portray Major as representing ‘Thatcherism
with a human face’. As Patten put it, ‘we are trying to achieve incremental
change to fit a change of Prime Minister. In supermarket terms we want to

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