Internal political communication –

Internal political communication – Labour
The marketing techniques and promotional devices described in this chapter
and the previous one are not pursued in isolation but as part of a communications
strategy which will ideally be co-ordinated and synchronised.
Parties, like commercial organisations, must develop channels of internal
communication, so that members (and particularly those involved in a public
capacity) are aware of the ‘message’ to be delivered at any given time, and
to ensure that the different elements of the public relations operation are
working with each other effectively. Failure to put in place such channels can
result in public relations disasters and electoral failures, as the Labour Party
found to its cost in the 1983 campaign. Hughes and Wintour note that ‘the
party [in 1983] ran an inept and disorganised campaign, led by one of the
least appropriate figures ever to head either of the two dominant political
parties’ (1993, p. 6). We have already referred to some of the problems
associated with then Labour leader Michael Foot’s personal image. Equally
damaging, if not more so, to the party’s campaign in 1983 was the general
lack of co-ordination and planning in the public presentation of policy.
Heffernan and Marqusee agree that the 1983 campaign was ‘badly organised
and its media strategy non-existent’ (1992, p. 28), and that defence policy in
particular was mishandled: ‘A spreading cloud of political double talk
obscured the basic humanistic message about nuclear disarmament which,
opinion polls had shown, was capable of commanding substantial public
support’ (ibid., p. 32).
Elsewhere I have examined in some detail Labour’s handling of its defence
policy in 1983 (McNair, 1988, 1989). An analysis of television news
coverage of the campaign revealed that Labour’s leadership failed to make a
coherent statement of the policy, not least because Denis Healey, Michael
Foot, Roy Hattersley, and other senior figures appeared to disagree on
important aspects of it. While the Conservatives in 1983 fought an incisive
and aggressive campaign against Labour’s non-nuclear defence programme,