Page 167 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 146

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
concern to them, such as civil defence procedures or the activities of the British
Council abroad. In recent decades, however, the COI has been ‘co-opted’ into
a more overtly political role. In the early 1980s the Conservative government
employed it to counteract the activities of the anti-nuclear protest movement.
Later in the decade the COI’s spending on advertising tripled, largely to
publicise the government’s privatisation campaign. In so far as this com-
munication activity was intended to inform the British public about the fact of
privatisation, it did not breach the parameters of the COI’s traditional remit.
Much of the material produced was, however, clearly promotional in
function – advertising designed to sell the ideologically grounded policy of a
particular party and government. In 1988 the head of the COI, himself
concerned about the undermining of his agency’s neutrality, demanded a
public inquiry, which however was not granted (Harris, 1991).
Other ostensibly neutral state agencies, such as the Government
Information Service, have developed an equally ambiguous relationship to
the political process. The GIS was established in the 1950s ‘to give prompt
and accurate information and give it objectively about government
activities and government policy. It is quite definitely not the job of the
Government Information Service to try to boost the government and try to
persuade the press to’ (Lord Swinton, quoted in Harris, 1991, p. 113).
Current guidelines state that the publicity work of the GIS should be
‘relevant’ to the activities and responsibilities of the government, that it
should be ‘objective and explanatory, not tendentious or polemical’, and
‘should not be party political’ (quoted in Ingham, 1991, p. 368). That the
GIS was accused of flouting these guidelines in recent years is largely the
responsibility of Margaret Thatcher and her mould-breaking press secretary
Bernard Ingham. Tony Blair’s Labour government was even more con-
troversial, however, subjecting the service to radical overhaul (including
modifying its name to the Government Information and Communication
Service (GICS)). Many of the changes were sensible responses to changes in
the media environment, which no government, of whatever hue, could have
avoided. Others, such as the increased role of ‘special advisers’ appointed
from outside the civil service (whose numbers grew from 38 to 176 in Blair’s
time) and the downgraded status of traditional mandarins, have been greeted
with cries of ‘politicisation’ and many resignations. In this respect, Labour
was following the precedent established by the Tories, though adding some
new twists of its own. As noted above, New Labour’s information manage-
ment apparatus came under fire in 2003 as a result of the Gilligan affair, the
death of David Kelly, and the Hutton inquiry, leading to substantial reforms.
These can be seen as acknowledgement by the government that since its
election in 1997, its information apparatus had become overly politicised.
Gordon Brown’s premiership attracted criticism over the freedom it gave
special advisers such as Damian McBride to leak, brief and lobby against
political opponents. In April 2009 Guido Fawkes’ political blog exposed a

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