competes for attention headline-to-headline in newsagents
shop-windows, unlike in countries where there is a strong regional
press each with its own distinct market.
The drive for readers may also have indirectly influenced the shift
in partisanship, if papers decided to follow, rather than lead,
changes in popular support for the government, although evidence
here remains inconclusive. At the start of the campaign, according
to MORI polls from January 1st to March 17 1997, out of nineteen
daily and Sunday papers, only the Express and Telegraph had an
overall majority of readers who said they would vote Conservative
(see Table 2). Papers may have believed that they could not expect
to retain their popularity if they advocated policies which failed
to get the support of the majority of their readers. This was
publicly acknowledged by Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Mail, in
the aftermath of the election, who was asked whether the editor,
Paul Dacre, would be allowed to continue to express his
Euroscepticism:”It is a free country, and he is entitled to his
views and to express them. But, of course, if they start to affect
the circulation that will be different.” 14In many countries which
used to have a strongly partisan press, like the Netherlands,
political coverage is now driven more strongly by an autonomous
‘media logic’ in the fierce competition for readers rather than by
traditional allegiances or the politics of their proprietors.
“Modern media are more powerful, more independent, and more
determined to pursue their own interests through a professional
culture of their own making.”15. This dealignment has increased the
complexity and uncertainty of media management for parties, who can
no longer rely on getting their message out through a few well-known
and sympathetic sources.
The Growing Fragmentation of the Electronic Media
Although newspapers have shrunk, the electronic media expanded
during this same period, with far greater diversification in the
1990s. The erosion of the BBC/ITV duopoly of viewers proceeded
relatively slowly in Britain, compared with the fall in the network
share of the audience in wired countries like the United States, the
Netherlands and Canada. Channel 5 covered about two-thirds of
Britain when launched in March 1997, although with a modest
audience, and this added to the choice of four terrestrial channels.
But today the BBC and ITV duopoly faces the greatest competition
from the rapid evolution of digital, cable and satellite television
narrowcasting, and also from new forms of interactive communications
like the Internet.
The first satellite services became available in Britain from Sky TV
in February 1989, followed by BSB the following year. By 1992, about
3 percent of homes had access to cable TV, while 10 percent had a
satellite dish. In contrast by 1997 almost a fifth of all households
could tune into over fifty channels on satellite and cable. In these
homes, more than a third of all viewing was on these channels.
During the campaign, between 10-15 percent of the audience usually
watched cable and satellite programmes every evening. Occasionally
when there was wall-to-wall election on the terrestrial channels,
like on Thursday 24th April, a week before the election, the
proportion of cable and satellite viewers jumped to almost a quarter
of the audience. Moreover, Sky News, CNN, Channel 5, and BBC Radio’s
Five Live, have altered the pace of news, to brief headlines on the
hour every hour.
While probably only political junkies surfed the internet, the easy
availability of the BBC’s Election ‘97, ITN Online, the online
headlines from the Press Association and Reuters, party home pages,
as well as electronic versions of The Times and The Telegraph,
dramatically speeded the news cycle. The BBC’s Politics ‘97, with
easy access to RealAudio broadcasts of its major political
programmes, promises the shape of things to come. With 24 hour
coverage, the acceleration of the news cycle has dramatically
increased the need for parties to respond, or get knocked off their
feet, by a suddenly shifting agenda.
Strategic Party Communications during the Permanent Campaign
As press-party loyalties have declined, and the outlets for
electronic news have diversified, politicians have been forced to
respond to a more complex communications environment. Parties have
been transformed by the gradual evolution of the permanent campaign
where the techniques of spin doctors, opinion polls, and
professional media management are increasingly applied to routine
everyday politics. The central role of Peter Mandelson in the Labour
campaign, and the high-tech developments in media management at
Millbank Tower, are not isolated phenomenon16. Supposedly modelled
on the war room in the Clinton campaign, the Millbank organisation
had a tight inner core, including Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown, the
press secretary Alastair Campbell, the pollster Philip Gould,
Blair’s personal assistant Anji Hunter, Lord Irvine of Lairg and
Jonathan Powell. The interior circle was surrounded by about 200
staffers connecting via fax, modem and pagers to key shadow
spokespersons and candidates out in the marginal constituencies, to
keep the party ‘on-message’. Briefings were sent out nightly,
sometimes twice a day. The Labour party designed their
communications strategy down to the smallest detail, with a rebuttal
unit (and the Excalibur programme) under the direction of Adrian
McMenamin, ready for a rapid response to anticipated attacks.
After 1992 Labour realised that elections are not usually won or
lost in the official campaign, and they subsequently designed their
strategy for the long-haul. Labour renewed their interest in
constituency campaigns, although local contests became increasingly
professionalised by strategic targeting of key voters under the
guidance of Millbank Tower. For two years before polling day a
Labour task force was designed to switch 5000 voters in each of 90
target marginals. Those identified as potential Labour coverts in
these seats were contacted by teams of volunteers on the doorstep,
and by a canvassing operation run from twenty telephone banks around
the country, coordinated from Millbank during the campaign. In
January 1997 get out the vote letters were sent to each type of
target voter, and young people received a video of Tony Blair17.
Candidates in marginals were each asked to contact at least 1,000
switchers. Information from the canvassing operation, especially
issues of concern raised by voters, was also fed back to Philip
Gould, to help shape Labour’s presentations.
Opinion polling was carried out regularly from late 1993, and Philip
Gould and Deborah Mattinson conducted a programme of focus group
research to monitor reaction to Labour’s policies. Strategy meetings
were conducted almost daily from late 1994, tackling Labour’s
weaknesses on taxation, trade unions, and crime well before the
official campaign came close. The manifesto, New Labour: Because
Britain Deserves Better was designed to focus on five specific
pledges: cutting class sizes for under seven year-olds; fast-track
punishments for persistent young offenders; reducing NHS waiting
lists; moving 250,000 young unemployed into work; and cutting VAT on
heating. By launching the draft manifesto New Labour, new life for
Britain as a dry run a year earlier, Labour had ample opportunity to
iron out any pledges which proved unduly controversial. The main
theme of Labour’s advertising was “Britain Deserves Better”, fairly
bland and safe, if unmemorable. To press home the message, Tony
Blair visited 60 constituencies, travelling about 10,000 miles by
road, rail and air, and providing controlled photo-opportunities
rather than press conferences for the media. The membership drive
launched by Blair was also part of this long-term strategy,
increasing grassroots membership by almost two-thirds, up from
261,000 in 1991 to 420,000 by the time of the election18. This
achievement was in stark contrast to Conservative party membership
which has fallen, perhaps by half, to an estimated 350,000 to
400,000, from 1992-9719. Lastly Labour’s assiduous courting of the
city, including launching the special business manifesto, was all
part of this careful planning to anticipate and batten down any
lines of potential weakness.
In contrast Conservative Central office more often appeared to be
knocked off message by events out of their control, with the topics
planned for press conferences torn up at the last minute. The
campaign was led by the party chairman, Brian Malwhinney, the deputy
leader Michael Heseltine, Danny Finkelstein, head of Tory party
research, and advised by Lord Saatchi, although up to twenty people
attended strategy meetings, each with different priorities. During
the long campaign the Conservatives seemed unable to decide whether
the most effective strategy was to attack Old Labour (the party of
trade unions and taxes) or New Labour (the party of ’smarmy’,
‘phony’ and untrustworthy Blair). Tory briefings, and posters,
veered back and forth uncertainly 20. Their most effective slogans
were probably “Britain is Booming – Don’t let Labour Blow it”, or
“New Labour, New Danger”, but their advertising was generally
regarded as unconvincing (indeed their ‘Tony and Bill’ poster was
widely believed to be a Labour advertisement).
Labour suffered a wobbly day or two in early-April, over
privatisation of the air traffic control service, with contradictory
messages coming from Blair and Prescott. There were also some
wobbles in the second week over the unions, and Blair made an
embarrassing ‘parish council’ slip over Scottish devolution. In the
sixth week a rogue poll by ICM for the Guardian, suggesting the
Labour lead was closing, also induced concern in the Labour camp.
But these were minor upsets. In contrast the Conservatives became
deeply mired in divisions, arguing with each other not addressing
the public, as the splits over Europe burst open again. On 14th
April the Mail published a list of 183 Conservative candidates who
had come out against EMU in their constituency leaflets, in
contradiction to the official ‘wait and see’ line. In response John
Major tore up the PEB planned for 17th April, and instead broadcast
an impromptu appeal on Europe. But the internal row only intensified
the following day with publication of a Conservative advertisement
showing Blair as a puppet on Kohl’s lap, which brought public
criticism from Edward Heath and Ken Clarke, (as well as offence from
Germany) thereby only highlighting Conservative splits. Other
diversions included speculation about the Tory leadership election
to replace Major, and comments like Edwina Currie’s prediction of
Conservative defeat in the twilight days of the campaign. In short,
the Conservative message of Britain’s economic health was drowned
out as much by internal conflicts, fuelled but not caused by the
media, as by anything the opposition did or said. The Mail may have
tossed the lighted match, but the row between Eurosceptics and
Europhiles was a conflagration waiting to happen, based on years as
a party tearing itself apart.
The shift towards the permanent campaign in Britain has still not
gone as far as in the United States, in part because of the pattern
of longer electoral cycles21. Nevertheless the way that the
techniques for campaigning are becoming merged with the techniques
of governing was symbolised by the way that Tony Blair, once elected
Prime Minister, announced monthly ‘meet the public’ sessions, to
attract popular support and publicity outside of his appearances in
the Commons, following the example of President Clinton’s
‘town-hall’ meetings. Moreover, many of those who played a key role
in controlling Labour campaign communications were transferred to
Number 10, with the aim of adopting the same techniques in
government. New Ministers, for example, were told that all press
briefings had to be cleared centrally with Peter Mandelson, Minister
without Portfolio in the Blair administration. Whether this process
succeeds or not remains an open question but what it indicates is
that, given a more complex communications environment, modern
parties have been forced to adapt, with greater or lesser success,
to the new communications environment if they are to survive
unscathed.
The 1997 election therefore suggests that the evolution to a
post-modern campaign currently remains in transition in Britain, and
certain components are more clearly developed than others. In
particular, the full impact of the digital television revolution and
the internet remains uncertain, and if Britain experiences an
explosion of channels the next election is probably going to be
fought in a very different broadcasting environment. Nevertheless
these trends seem to be producing a distinctively new context for
the process of political campaigning in Britain, as elsewhere,
characterised by dealignment of the press, an increasingly diverse
and fragmented electronic media, and, in response, more strategic
attempts by parties to maintain control and remain on-message. The
term ‘post-modern’ seems appropriate to describe a communication
process which has become increasingly diverse, fragmented, and
complex. Similar developments have been identified in many
industrialised democracies, although the impact of
technologically-driven change is mediated by each nation’s culture,
political system, and media structure22. The consequences of this
transition remain a matter of dispute. Some critics, reflecting on
similar patterns in the United States, fear these developments will
serve to disconnect leaders and citizens, to over-simplify and
trivialise political discourse, and to produce a more cynical and
disengaged public which tunes out from politics altogether. Others,
however, remain more sanguine, while some speculate that the
fragmentation of media outlets may provide a positive opportunity
for more varied, and less mainstream, cultural voices to be heard23.
Who Won the Battle of the Campaign Agenda?
Within this environment, what was the contents of coverage of the
1997 campaign? And, in particular, did Labour win the battle of the
campaign agenda, as well as the election? Here we can turn to
content analysis of the national press provided by CARMA, who
monitored 6,072 articles in the national daily and Sunday newspapers
from the announcement of the election (18th March) until polling day
(1st May). CARMA analysed whether the article featured the
Conservative party (4,827 articles), Labour (4,536), the Liberal
Democrats (1,390) or the Referendum party (319), then for each party
classified the major topic of these articles using 150 coding
categories (such as inflation, education and trade unions). CARMA
counted the number of articles (although not the length) which
mentioned each topic every day, as well as estimating the
favourability or unfavourability of each story24.
This analysis suggests that about a fifth of all the election
coverage in the press (19 percent) focussed on campaigning, such as
stories about party strategy, the prospects for marginal seats, and
much speculation about the (in the event non-existent) television
debate. The minutiae of insider electioneering, such as campaign
battle buses (complete with layout colour maps), high-tech and
wooden soap-boxes, and Blairforce One were described in detail by
journalists bored by listening to the standard leadership speeches.
If we break the analysis down in more detail, (see Table 3) we find
that one quarter of this coverage, but in total only 10 percent of
all news stories, was about opinion polls, far less than in recent
general elections. As others have noted, the media commissioned
fewer polls than in 1987 or 1992, and they gave them less coverage.
About a fifth of all front-page lead stories in the national press
were devoted to the polls in 1987 (20 percent) and in 1992 (18
percent) compared with only 4 percent in 199725. Coverage of the
polls on television news dropped from 14 percent in 1992 to only 7
percent in 199726. This was probably due to new guidelines on