Page 134 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

ADVER TISING

National Health Service, and homelessness. Aesthetically, they were
unsuccessful, being described by one author as ‘dark, depressing
montages’ (Myers, 1986, p.122).
On a television discussion of political advertising produced in 1989,
presenter Michael Ignatieff and then Labour Director of
Communications Peter Mandelson looked back at the amateurishness
and clumsiness of the campaign with barely suppressed disbelief and
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mockery, but the party leadership’s approach to the agency, and the
management of its own campaign (see next chapter) were equally
lacking in skill.
The transformation in the Labour Party’s approach to advertising,
which by the 1987 election saw them being widely praised for having
the best campaign, was provoked firstly and most obviously by the
uniquely poor result of the 1983 election. The party in Parliament
was reduced to 209 MPs, with even that number reflecting a
significant over-representation of its voting performance, thanks to
the British first-past-the-post electoral system.
There can be little doubt that after the 1983 election Labour was
facing the loss of its post-war status as the junior partner in a two-
party system, and along with it any realistic hope of access to
government. Clearly, something had to be done to halt the decline. A
change in approach was further encouraged by the experience of the
Labour-controlled Greater London Council in its struggle with the
Thatcher government.
In 1983 the abolition of the GLC was announced by a government
which detested the thought of this nest of ‘reds under the beds’ running
the capital city. Led by Ken Livingstone, the GLC was unmistakably
‘hard left’, promoting and implementing a wide range of progressive,
socialist-inspired programmes, such as cheap fares on public
transport, anti-sexism and anti-racism in schools, and public services
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for gay, ethnic and other minorities. While in these terms ‘left’, the
GLC administration differed from the traditionalists in the Labour
Party in understanding the role which advertising could play in their
campaign against abolition.
London was essentially a Conservative heartland, and the GLC
the archetypal ‘loony left’. Livingstone and his colleagues
appreciated that the battle with the government could not be won
by the left’s preferred tactics of public demonstrations and rallies.
Consequently, the GLC hired the agency Boas, Massimi and Pollitt
(BMP), who had worked for unions and local governments but
were primarily a commercial organisation. For BMP, in the words
of its accounts director Peter Herd, ‘developing advertising in a

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