Page 162 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

Tarbuck. In 1992 and 1997 Labour employed ‘alternative’ comedians
Ben Elton, Stephen Fry and others to emphasise what its advisers
hoped to present as a younger, more progressive set of values. For
the Labour Party, as for the Alliance and Leicester building society, 6
endorsement from such sources was assumed to carry weight with
the target audience.

Internal political communication

The marketing techniques and promotional devices described in
this chapter and the previous one are not pursued in isolation but
as part of a communications strategy which will ideally be co-
ordinated and synchronised. Parties, like commercial
organisations, must develop channels of internal communication,
so that members (and particularly those involved in a public
capacity) are aware of the ‘message’ to be delivered at any given
time, and to ensure that the different elements of the public
relations operation are working with each other effectively. Failure
to put in place such channels can result in public relations disasters
and electoral failures, as the Labour Party found to its cost in the
1983 campaign. Hughes and Wintour note that ‘the party [in 1983]
ran an inept and disorganised campaign, led by one of the least
appropriate figures ever to head either of the two dominant
political parties’ (1993, p.6). We have already referred to some of
the problems associated with then Labour leader Michael Foot’s
personal image. Equally damaging, if not more so, to the party’s
campaign in 1983 was the general lack of co-ordination and
planning in the public presentation of policy. Heffernan and
Marqusee agree that the 1983 campaign was ‘badly organised
and its media strategy non-existent’ (1992, p.28), and that defence
policy in particular was mishandled. ‘A spreading cloud of political
double talk obscured the basic humanistic message about nuclear
disarmament which, opinion polls had shown, was capable of
commanding substantial public support’ (Ibid., p.32).
Elsewhere I have examined in some detail Labour’s handling of
its defence policy in 1983 (McNair, 1988, 1989). An analysis of
television news coverage of the campaign revealed that Labour’s
leadership failed to make a coherent statement of the policy, not
least because Denis Healey, Michael Foot, Roy Hattersley and other
senior figures appeared to disagree on important aspects of it. While
the Conservatives in 1983 fought an incisive and aggressive campaign
against Labour’s non-nuclear defence programme, the public

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