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This obvious tension was undoubtedly one of the reasons why the Labour Party was
more reluctant to use all available means to court voters, but not using all the modern
means available was also recognised by certain members of the Labour Party as a great
impediment to its progress. Herein lie many of the tensions that have perpetually
confronted the Labour party: desire for change and modernisation as against
continuity and tradition; old methods of working as against the newer ones; newer
forms of organisation as against older ones, and most dramatically, a continuing
attachment to old principles as against adapting them to meet new circumstances. All
these tensions play themselves out as the Labour Party modernised itself in the run-up
to its victory in the 1997 general election, creating in the process a veritable model of a
professional party.

New Labour and the 1997 election
The Labour Party lost both the 1979 and 1983 elections having run campaigns that
many – including its own advisers – considered particularly weak and structures-less; it
was no match for the Conservative party.

The Conservative election campaign in 1979 was professionally planned and
executed; perhaps it was the most professionally run Conservative campaign ever.
The party hierarchy was aware of the need for professional research (both
quantitative and qualitative), for proper analysis of that research and for
sophisticated use of the information so gained in the planning and execution of the
pre-election and election political propaganda (Rathbone,1982,p.43).

According to Tim Bell, Conservative party advertisers were directly linked, via Gordon
Reece, the party’s Director of Public Relations, to the ‘controlling group’of four, chaired by
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
the party chairman.The ‘agency was able to see virtually any relevant piece of information
(they) wanted concerning party policy or party research’(1982, p. 11). Labour, by contrast,
had multiple centres of control and direction,and no real strategy (Delaney,1982).

The 1983 election also proved to be disastrous for the Labour Party. It had done little
public opinion research and there had been little forward planning (Grant, 1986,
pp. 83–84), but this may have been a reflection of the political turmoil that it was itself
undergoing. As a consequence of that, and in no small measure because of the election
of a new leader (Neil Kinnock),‘a total overhaul of its [Labour’s] approach to campaign
and communications was an early priority….’(Shaw,1994, p.54).That overhaul included
the setting up of a single body – the Campaigns and Communications Directorate – to
coordinate ‘all campaigning and communications functions’. In October 1985, Peter
Mandelson took over as Director of Campaigns and Communications. He urged ‘even
greater disciplined communications and expertise in projecting key policies to target
audiences’, and he called for an agreed communications strategy, a cohesive
presentation of messages and proper use of outside professional support (Shaw, 1994,
pp.55–6; see also Gould,1998).
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