Page 180 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

PRESSURE GROUP POLITICS

difficult. Mass picketing was outlawed, compulsory ballots of
members before strikes introduced, and ‘sympathy’ action by one
union on behalf of another made illegal, with sanctions for breach
of the law including the ‘sequestration’ (seizure by the court) of a
union’s assets. This shifting of the industrial balance of power away
from the workforce and towards employers was accompanied by an
ideological campaign which encouraged managers to ‘exercise their
right to manage’. Compromise and negotiation with the unions,
particularly those on the left, was frowned upon by government in
its own dealings with the nationalised industries, and private capital
was encouraged to follow the example. Thus, the unions became
weaker, and industrial disputes more brutal, as the 1984–5 miners’
strike and the 1986 Wapping dispute showed.
In Jones’s view these environmental changes heightened the role
of the media in the pursuit of industrial disputes. As the traditional
channels of negotiation and compromise were closed down, both
sides in disputes were required to compete more actively for the
support of public opinion. And in this competition, the mass media
were the main channels of communication available. The unions,
in particular, had to learn to use the media to overcome the
overwhelmingly negative public image which they had acquired in
the late 1970s, redefining their social and political role in the context
of an unremittingly hostile government and business community.
In this cultural shift they were prompted by the sophisticated news
management techniques of some key business leaders, such as
Michael Edwardes of the nationalised car manufacturer British
Leyland.
In the 1970s British Leyland came to epitomise Britain’s industrial
relations ‘problem’, being the site of several bitter disputes, frequently
involving strike action. The GUMG argued in their Bad News and
More Bad News studies that the tendency of the media at the time to
‘blame the workers’ while ignoring the role of management and other
factors for which the unions had no responsibility was part of the
pattern of bias referred to earlier (1976, 1980). Be that as it may, by
1977 the company was in deep crisis, and the then Labour government
appointed South African industrialist Michael Edwardes to rescue it
on behalf of the taxpayer.
Edwardes pioneered, in the British context, a variety of media
management and communication techniques which had the effect of
circumventing established management—union channels, weakening
the authority of the union leadership and the solidarity of the
workforce. Edwardes and his management adopted a strategy of

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