Political Communications

Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997

John Bartle, Ivor Crewe, Brian Gosschalk, John Bartle, Ivor Crewe, Brian Gosschalk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136324871
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The dialogue conducted via the press, television, advertising and the opinion polls beween politicians and the people in the 1997 campaign and its run-up is analyzed here. Special attention is paid to the innovations and changes that marked the 1997 campaign.

PART I:

PARTY STRATEGIES

1

Why Labour Won

PHILIP GOULD

The election of the Labour government on 1 May was the end of a journey. Not just for me, and for those in the Labour Party who had been working so long to get Labour elected – 18 years certainly gives new meaning to the notion of a long campaign – but to many at the special post-election conference also. For four elections Labour electoral failure has been scrutinised, dissected and analysed. For Labour, almost, but never quite, a corpse, this procedure has always been less academic review, more autopsy.

As Labour stumbled from defeat to defeat it was never quite alone. The psephologists were always there: not quite participants, but never just observers, dedicated followers of failure, always wanting to make sense of yet another defeat, always willing to speculate that, yes, it was possible that one day Labour might win. If nothing else it was comforting to know that, even as we lost, somebody cared.

Not that we took their advice. In the aftermath of 1992 we were advised that leadership had not been a decisive issue, that tabloid attacks had had no effect, that we could raise tax without fear of electoral damage, that few Conservative voters would switch directly to us without stopping first at the Liberals. Needless to say we based our strategy on precisely the opposite precepts and just managed to scrape home. I am sure, however, that if we had let Major out-gun us on leadership, had told Murdoch to jump in a ditch, had hiked up taxes and left Tory switchers to the Liberals, we would have won by a landslide.

I would hate to think that Labour's magnificent victory in May 1997 would put this small army of political pathologists out of work. For there is a new corpse on the table, younger certainly, smaller definitely, but capable, of giving analysts many years of dissecting pleasure. Already the first pathological study, ‘Is Conservatism dead?’, is published, and I am confident that there will be many more to come.

It is invidious to mention names but I would like to make special mention of Ivor Crewe, for his early and emphatic understanding of the smashed link between voter aspiration and Labour reality; of Roger Jowell, for his understanding that, despite huge voter changes, the values still existed within the electorate that could sustain a Labour majority; and of Nick Moon, who was spot-on to the exact percentage point with his last private poll for the Labour Party. It is a pity his published polls were not quite so accurate, but you cannot have everything.

So after 18 years and hundreds of books, thousands of articles and hundreds of thousands of memos we finally got there. How did we do it?

The Labour victory of 1997 was the end of a journey that started in the 1950s with the first failed attempt at modernisation, which culminated in Gaitskell's failure to change Clause IV of the party's constitution. That was the crucial Labour failure, both the starting point of a period of modernisation that ended with the May 1997 triumph, and a defeat that condemned Labour to a 30-year struggle before it was able to gain final, ascendant victory.

Gaitskell's failure meant that Labour failed to become a modern party just as Britain was starting to modernise. It meant also that Wilson's governments were always essentially a fudge, balancing both wings of the party, not free to modernise Britain, because Labour had yet to modernise itself.

Wilson's defeat saw the ascendancy of the left and Labour's move from fudge to fundamentalism. This was a process which led directly to the defeat of 1983, which was without question the defining event of postwar Labour politics. ‘Defining’ is not a word used lightly, for it was this election, and the events leading up to it, that seared into the electoral consciousness of almost every voter in Britain an image so negative, so destructive, so alienating that it has taken 14 years, three leaders and a totally remade party to eradicate it.

The election of 1983 was the greatest betrayal by a progressive party of its supporters, and in particular its working-class supporters, that modern democratic politics has witnessed. It was not just that Labour was not listening. It was Labour declaring unrestrained war on the values, the instincts, the ethics of the great majority of hardworking, decent, ordinary voters. Labour unleashed upon its potential supporters the political equivalent of a first-strike nuclear attack, something incidentally it would not countenance in the event of genuine military attack from a mortal enemy.

The effect of this period and this defeat was devastating. Nothing about subsequent Labour politics can be understood without appreciating its full and awful damage. Like a freeze frame on a video, Labour's identity was frozen in time. Labour was the party of extremism, of union domination, of strikes, of roaring inflation and punitive taxation, of soft defence, of massive public ownership, of incompetence, of indiscipline, of disunity.

This negative Labour identity stuck, burrowing deep into the psyche of the British electorate, and casting a shadow of fear that was never truly removed until Labour had won and Tony Blair was in Downing Street.

It seemed that nothing could shift it – neither the extraordinary courage of Neil Kinnock nor the campaigning brilliance of Peter Mandelson. In 1987 we edged forward a couple of per cent, a tiny increase, but probably enough to secure the future of the party. In 1992 we achieved, again, only a tiny increase in the vote, despite the far-reaching changes of the Policy Review.

This time the Conservative majority was down to 20 seats and the enemy was in sight. But although we were now tantalisingly close, we were still separated from victory by a chasm.

This actual account of focus groups conducted in 1992 after the general election defeat illustrates the point:

1. Labour is judged by its past

Phrases associated with the party are:

• winter of discontent

• union influence

• strikes

• inflation

• disarmament

• Benn/Scargill

• Brent/Islington

• miners’ strike/three-day week

2. Labour's values are negative, aimed at depriving people of:

• wealth, in the form of taxes

• choice in education and health

• ownership, in the form of council houses

3. Labour is hostile to:

• people who have money/savings/even pensions.

• people who want to start their own businesses; and

• people who want the best for their kids.

4. Labour is no longer the party of ‘ordinary working people’

People are saying,

‘I’ve left the Labour Party and the Labour Party has left me.’

‘It's obvious isn't it: the better you are doing, the more money you have got, the more likely you are to vote Tory. It's hardly surprising.’

This was Labour's political landscape in 1992, and it had not substantially changed by the summer of 1994, when Tony Blair became leader. John Smith helped Labour, and he certainly healed Labour, but he did not transform perceptions of Labour. I conducted focus groups throughout this period and the identity of Labour was simply not improving. In the spring of 1994, just before John Smith's tragic death, levels of voter identification between the two parties were still running neck and neck.

The response of the new Labour leadership to this was categorical. Labour could not win an election unless it was effectively razed to the ground and rebuilt.

Rebuilding Labour had four components:

• a new party

• new campaigning principles

• new campaigning organisation

• new political purpose.

Making Labour a new party was the core, the absolute heart, of Labour's strategy; both for electoral success and success in government. This meant if not a new name, then at least a new designation. It meant shock not stealth, summed up by a completely uncompromising slogan: New Labour, New Britain. It meant the ditching of the old Clause IV of the party's constitution – which had, in theory, committed the party to wholesale nationalisation – and a doubling of membership, as well as new positions on business, the family, trade unions and crime. New Labour was our key to election victory. In the last few weeks of the campaign, as doubts grew, it was New Labour that saved us; New Labour that gave nervous voters the confidence to make the final jump.

But New Labour was not enough, and it certainly was not all we could offer. The new party was built on a set of ten new campaigning principles. These were:

1. Concede and move on: This was a subtle instinct, but it was an important one. It was to accept that on privatisation, on crime, on markets, the issue was settled. We decided to accept it and move on to new battles.

2. New dividing lines: This meant not accepting the political landscape as it stood. We wanted to remake the political map by establishing new dividing lines, new prisms through which politics was perceived. Not tax and spend, but save and invest; not private versus public, but partnership between the two.

3. Take their ground (or rather take our own ground back): We would become the party of business, of the family, of responsibility, of enterprise, of getting on, of aspiration, of the people.

4. Balance the positive with the negative: We believed that negative hits would simply not get covered unless they were connected to a positive story. The electorate would not accept negative attacks unless they were balanced by positive messages and themes.

5. Work with the news, rather than against it: Broadcasting news has its own agenda and it is pointless fighting it. Shape the agenda certainly, but also exploit the agenda that is in place.

6. Never compromise on trust: Trust is completely indivisible. You cannot be a bit trusted. On any issue involving trust, we were emphatic. On tax, on public expenditure and on crime, we did not fudge.

7. Put substance before style: At a simple level this recognised that the electorate wanted real policy, real change, real commitment. They wanted always to look below the surface. But there i...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I: PARTY STRATEGIES
• PART II: CAMPAIGNING AND OPINION POLLS
• PART III: THE CAMPAIGN IN THE PRESS
• PART IV: THE CAMPAIGN ON TELEVISION
• PART V: THE REGULATION OF TELEVISION IN ELECTIONS
• Index