Page 184 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 163

PRESSURE-GROUP POLITICS
Ruddock in the UK) were well-educated members of the middle class –
liberal, rather than radical, as were many of CND’s ordinary members. It
was able to draw on the resources of many supporters in the creative
professions – musicians, designers, writers, and actors. And it was explicitly
committed to a strategy of ‘non-violent’ opposition to nuclear weapons.
To exploit these attributes, the peace movement developed a political
communication strategy which saw it successfully gain access to the main-
stream news agenda in Europe and the US. Huge demonstrations were
organised in London, New York, and other cities in the early 1980s, pro-
viding television news organisations in particular with highly attractive
visual material. While some broadcasters deliberately excluded such images
from their output (on the curious grounds that it did not contribute anything
3
to the ‘debate’ – a criterion of newsworthiness which, if applied consistently,
would leave our television news screens blank for most of the time) the
majority reported the demonstrations and the other spectacular events
organised by the peace movement in these years. Even symbolic actions
undertaken by relatively small groups of people, such as the vigils carried out
by women at the Greenham Common nuclear airbase or the ‘die-ins’ staged
outside the London Stock Exchange, were reported on main news pro-
grammes. In their innovative design and effective execution of such events,
peace movements in Britain, the US, Germany, and elsewhere ‘manufactured’
news and turned the media into transmission belts for a potent political
message – there is a growing risk of nuclear conflict between the super-
powers, and we are here to protest about it.
The perceived threat to political stability posed by the demonstrators, and
growing popular opposition to a central tenet of the Western powers’
strategic military policy, was sufficient to generate a sustained counter-
offensive on the part of NATO governments. In Britain, the Defence Minister
Michael Heseltine was frequently filmed at the Berlin Wall, warning citizens
of the ‘threat’ against which NATO’s nuclear weapons were the only
protection. On one famous occasion he took part – suitably attired – in a
military expedition to ‘retake’ the Molesworth cruise missile base from
protesters who had camped outside its perimeter fence. This event, indeed,
was largely responsible for Mr Heseltine’s acquiring the nickname of
‘Tarzan’, which haunted him for the rest of his time in government.
These events, like those of the peace movement on the opposite side of the
political divide, were symbolic acts of political communication, designed to
highlight the nature of the Soviet threat on the one hand and the resolution
of NATO governments on the other. Their impact on public opinion at the
time is difficult to ascertain, but they had the unintended effect of increasing
the newsworthiness of the peace movement, adding to its ‘cultural capital’
and legitimising it as a definer of events. Once it became clear that members
of the politico-military establishment took CND and the other anti-nuclear
organisations seriously, media organisations followed suit. In one notable

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