Page 183 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

unemployment kept the unions very much subordinate parties in
industrial relations, skilled use of the media produced many symbolic,
if rarely actual, defeats for the government and private employees.
Disputes by ambulance drivers and nurses in the National Health
Service were characterised by the participation in media coverage of
eminently reasonable, sympathy-inducing public spokespersons, with
government ministers frequently being made to appear miserly and
brutal. On the other hand, the violent picketing by print workers at
Rupert Murdoch’s Wapping newspaper plant in 1986 (much of it
provoked by the police) produced media images which were less
than helpful in building public support for the printers’ cause.
The impact of media management on the outcome of an
industrial dispute will never be as great as the environmental
factors already referred to, such as the level of unemployment,
the political strength of a government, and the nature of legal
constraints on unions’ collective action. However, in so far as
governments and employers must take public opinion into account
when pursuing such disputes (and that will depend on a range of
factors) unions have learnt that there is much to gain, and little to
lose, by playing the media game. 2

PRESSURE GROUPS

Trade unions may be viewed as ‘subordinate’ political actors in
capitalist societies, because it is their duty and function to represent
the interests of labour against those of capital. This frequently brings
unions into conflict, sometimes of a violent nature, with government
and the repressive apparatus of the state. Another form of subordinate
organisation is the single-issue or pressure group, which exists to
campaign on a particular issue of special importance. The pressure
group, too, will often find itself confronting established power,
challenging positions which are dominant. This they will typically
do from a ‘resource poor’ position, compelling them to find ways of
participating in and contributing to public debate which do not
require material or cultural ‘capital’. For such groups, the use and
manipulation of the media to communicate political messages is
potentially the most effective way of achieving this intervention,
though even if media access is realised, it imposes many limitations
on the form and content of that message.
Pressure groups, unlike trade unions, comprise more or less broad
cross-class coalitions of individuals, united in their readiness to act

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