Page 59 - The Professionalisation of Political Communication Chaning Media, Changing Europe Volume 3

Political Communication.qxd 12/7/06 7:30 pm Page 56
Political Communication.qxd 5/1/07 15:05 Page 58

56 | THE PROFESSIONALISM OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

One other point to note about advisers in the British political context is that, by and
large, they are politically committed. Some become politicians: Peter Mandelson,
Patricia Hewitt and Charles Clarke all became Labour MPs and Ministers; while others
continue with their work but remain allied to particular parties. Philip Gould and
Maurice Saatchi are good examples of this and both continue to offer advice to the
Labour and Conservative parties respectively. A younger generation of advisers may be
less committed: the Conservative Party’s short-lived marketing director, Will Harris – he
stayed in post a mere nine months – had voted for Tony Blair in 1997. 7

If there is an aversion or antipathy to the use of experts/professionals, it is an aversion
that grows out of a fear that they are leading the political party rather than lending it
their support, skills, and knowledge. This can be seen in the reluctance of the Labour
Party to embrace the ‘new tools’of polling and advertising in the early 1950s, but it was
overcome in due course: it used the medium of television to great effect in the late
1950s, just as it used the lessons of advertising and polling post-1983 (see Gould, 1998).
In many important respects, then, political parties are rarely averse to using new means
of communication or persuasion to gain electoral advantage. The way they have
embraced the internet is a good example in support of that point.

A final point to make in relation to experts and professionals is that the nature of the
relationship between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ has oscillated over the last half century.
Harrop (2001) has suggested that in the immediate post-war period, campaign
professionals, principally advertisers, were called upon to help the political parties
(mainly the Conservatives) to advertise their policies, but that in the mid-1960s, both
advertisers and pollsters became more acceptable within political parties, although
their role ‘remained ancillary’ (2001, p. 61). From 1965 onwards, one begins to see a
The Professionalisation of Political Communication
more fully integrated campaign being run with campaign professionals almost at the
heart of all activities, with either campaigns under the direction of advertisers (e.g.
Saatchi) or under the full control of the party (e.g. ‘Mandelsonian’ model). Equally
significant for Harrop is the fact that different eras have seen different types of
professionals being favoured: in the 1960s and 1970s the opinion pollsters, in the 1980s
the qualitative researchers and the advertising agencies vying for ascendancy. In the
1990s, the changes taking place are taking place, according to Harrop, within the
political parties,with the parties once again calling in help from outsiders.

Recent developments within the Conservative Party throw much light on the above
discussion.With the forced departure of the Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, the
new leader, Michael Howard, lost no time in restructuring the party organisation in
order to create a framework that was more in line with his principles and views: out
went the professional servants of the old leader, in came new ones, and in came
Maurice Saatchi with an expectation that he will bring with him his own team. Is this
the model of the professionalised party in control of all political communications but
always at the ready to hire other professionals when the need arises? Is this a variant of
58