Page 182 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

masonic rules drawn up in Queen Victoria’s time. A system
which had been designed to preserve the quintessentially
English atmosphere of a gentleman’s club had been
imported into the television age.
(1991, p. 82)

The main criticism of this system of non-attributable media
briefings was that it permitted manipulation of journalists by
politicians to a degree that is unhealthy for and damaging to the
democratic process. Cockerell et al. argue that ‘it secretiveness
mirrors the secrecy that surrounds so much of government in
Whitehall and allows the government of the day to present its own
unchallenged version of reality’ (1984, p. 42). This is can do simply
because journalists are forced to respect the rules, or face exclusion
from the system and the valuable information it supplies. In the
extremely competitive environment of the contemporary media
industry this is not a realistic option, although the Guardian and the
Independent voluntarily withdrew for a period in the 1980s, in
the hope (unfulfilled) that change to the system would follow.
When, for example, Margaret Thatcher wished to leak damaging
information about ministerial colleagues who had fallen from
favour, she frequently employed Ingham, and the Lobby system,
to do it, in the knowledge that nothing said in briefings could be
attributed to her personally. John Biffen, Leon Brittan, and Nigel
Lawson were among those ministers who in the 1980s found their
credibility and positions threatened in this way. Nigel Lawson,
indeed, went so far as to accuse Number 10 and Ingham of ‘black
propaganda’ in their dealings with him (Harris, 1991, p. 176).
In his memoirs and elsewhere, Ingham denies that he ever used
the Lobby system, or any of the communication channels available
to him, in an improper way. There can be no doubt, however, that
the Thatcher–Ingham era was accompanied by an unprecedented
centralisation and politicisation of the governmental communi-
cation apparatus, the potential for abuse of which was of concern
to many, Right and Left on the political spectrum, not least as the
previous section suggested, because the even more centralised, even
more ruthlessly politicised governmental information system of the
Blair government could and does claim a precedent for its approach
in the Thatcher years.
As for the development of prime ministerial public relations
under the Blair–Campbell regime, there have been some important
positive changes in the direction of openness. After November 1997

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