Page 142 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

ADVERTISING

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 amateurish-
ness and clumsiness of the campaign with barely suppressed
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disbelief and 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 first 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 perform-
ance, 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 half 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 govern-
ment 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,
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and public services 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
political context is just the same as developing it in a commercial
context. You find out what it is you can reasonably achieve, who
you will have to persuade in order to do that, and then research to

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