Culture Wars
Page 22
Of course, the damage that the ‘loony left’ campaign inflicted on the Labour Party extended across the country, including London. But this damage was made worse by the way in which the Kinnock team mishandled the press assault. They implicitly endorsed the attack, reinforcing its damaging impact. Only in the final phase, shortly before the general election, did the Labour leadership opt for the strategy that it should perhaps have adopted in the first place. It attacked some ‘loony left’ stories as lies, and sought to play down the whole issue as overblown.58 By then, it was too late.
Absence of sustained retribution
If voters did not especially punish the London left in the 1987 general election in the way that was mytholgised, perhaps they exacted retribution in local council elections. After all, it was radical local councils in the capital that were at the centre of controversy.
Borough council elections in London were held in May 1986, when the popular press campaign against radical London councils had been running for several years. Those singled out for special press attack before May 1986 were Camden, Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth, and Islington councils. Yet, Labour’s share of the vote in five out of these six ‘loony’ boroughs actually increased – in two cases by a margin of ten percentage points or more.59
The 1990 local election in London provided another opportunity for local electorates to send their ‘loony’ councillors packing. By then, the right-wing popular papers had branded some ten London councils as ‘loony’. Yet, there were positive swings to Labour in seven of these boroughs, (whereas there was a 0.5% swing to the Conservatives in the capital as a whole). In only three of these local boroughs did Labour do worse than the London average.60 This was perhaps due to the popular press’s assault, although other factors were also involved.61
The absence of sustained local retribution in 1990 was probably down to three things. Some councils had radical constituencies; some made a pitch that they had moderated their radicalism; and there was widespread public distrust of the national popular press.
Thus, Islington was a radical borough of long standing. In 1987, the majority under the age of forty-five in Islington supported higher rates/taxes in order to try to reduce poverty in the borough. Two local polls – conducted in 1984 and 1987 – indicate that satisfaction with Islington council actually increased even though it continued to be the butt of right-wing press attacks.62 In the event, there was a strong swing to Labour in the 1990 Islington Council election.
The credibility of the national press was low. In 1988, only 12% thought that tabloids like the Sun were truthful, and only 25% said the same of middle-market papers like the Daily Mail.63 Furthermore, there were alternative sources of information. In local surveys, the most often cited source of information about local councils were the local councils themselves, the local weekly press, and friends and neighbours.64
But if the electorate in radical areas were often unmoved by the ‘loony left’ assault, this was less true of local political activists. The press’s assault contributed to intense faction fights in some radical London councils in the later 1980s. It was personally traumatising for some, like Linda Bellos, leader of Lambeth council, who was deeply upset by the way in which she had been stigmatised in the press as a ‘black lesbian’.65 She dropped out of municipal politics.
A further reason why the new urban left project faltered in the 1980s was that rate-capping and the exhaustion of creative accounting (with no Labour government bailout in sight) heavily limited what left-wing councils could do. Councils became so neutered that immersion in municipal politics was judged by some radical activists to be a waste of time and energy.
Decline of local democracy
During the 1980s, ten major statutes reduced the functions, resources or discretion of local councils and had the cumulative effect of extending central government control.66 The financial autonomy of local councils was greatly curtailed; local council responsibility for housing and education was diminished; and local power to regulate and subsidise public transport was also limited. Competitive tendering for key local government services, first introduced in 1988, was greatly extended under John Major’s administration (1990–7).67
This emasculation was justified partly by the need to curb the ‘loony left’, and address the underlying malaise that had allowed left-wing councils to flourish. Councils were elected, it was argued, on low turnouts. Low-income voters were exempted from paying local rates, and were free therefore to vote ‘irresponsibly’. Council services were inefficient due to the absence of competitive market forces, and undue union influence. Above all, some council administrations went beyond their core role of delivering essential services. As Margaret Thatcher complained, a ‘whole batch’ of Labour councils are engaged ‘not in crime prevention, but in police prevention’, and seek to impose gay propaganda ‘on innocent children’.68
Yet, a sustained attack on seemingly unpopular councils failed to win consent for the restructuring of local government. Although the poll tax was initially welcomed by a slim margin of 4% in June 1987, it soon became unpopular. Two-thirds of the public opposed it by late 1987, and almost three-quarters by early 1990.69
The government’s plans for compulsory tendering of local government services encountered growing opposition. Although welcomed in principle by many in 1987, it was a different matter when it came to outsourcing in their area. In 1988, the large majority opposed the sub-contracting of their local council services. Indeed, the majority of Conservative supporters believed that their council would do a better job than private enterprise or central government in administering all but one service.70 MORI studies during this period show that people opposed privatisation of local council services for three main reasons: they feared that prices would rise, quality would decline and local community control would be reduced.71
More generally, people showed little enthusiasm for escaping from the incompetent and oppressive town hall commissars of tabloid legend. In nine local studies between 1987 and 1989, the proportion of councils’ tenants wanting to retain council management ranged between 69 and 94%.72 Although parents supported, in principle, the right for schools to opt out of local authority control, successive polls in 1987–8 showed that those wanting schools in their area to opt out were a small minority.73
Two reforms – council house sales and the introduction of the national curriculum – won enduring public support. But what is striking is how little public acceptance there was for most of the measures that eroded local democracy in the 1980s. Given the outpouring of official justifications for these measures, and the scale of negative coverage of left-wing councils that legitimated local government reform, this lack of public support requires an explanation.
One reason was that many people were not as disenchanted with local government during the 1980s as critics on the right (and also on the left) imagined. The Audit Commission survey of local government in England and Wales in 1986 found that 53% were satisfied with their local council, compared with 26% who were dissatisfied.74 Dissatisfaction with central government (52%) was in fact double that for local government.75 The level of satisfaction with local councils was also higher in 1986 than it was in 1981.76 In short, there was no consensus that local government needed to be ‘fixed’.
The second reason was that the nature of the ‘fix’ – greater market provision and increased central control – did not accord with contemporary public attitudes. In the 1980s, the majority disapproved of the privatisation of British Gas, British Telecom, electricity and water supply.77 This absence of a neo-liberal consensus helps to explain why so many people were opposed to privatisation of local government services.
The third reason is that people also did not favour a greater role for central government in local affairs. In 1986, the large majority believed that increased government control over local council spending would result in worse services and reduced local accountability.78 In 1987, only 15% said that councils should be controlled more b
y central government.79 And only 5% thought that national government had too little power, compared with 48% who said that it had too much.80 This was at a time when there was growing criticism of government heavy-handedness.81
The fourth reason why many local government reforms lacked support was that they were presented, especially in the later 1980s, as a way of curbing ‘problem’ councils. Reform did not seem relevant therefore to many people as a way of improving the unproblematic council in their area.
But if the public did not approve of the revolution in government that was inaugurated in the 1980s, this did not seem to register in official circles and much of the national press. Thus, Kenneth Baker, then Education Minister, talked confidently about the ‘tremendous consensus we have got to be moving down this road [of local government reform]’.82 Asked why Labour had made major gains in ‘notorious’ Haringey in the 1990 local elections, Baker expressed bafflement. ‘Possibly in Haringey’, he suggested, ‘they are more insulated to the extravagances of Labour authorities than elsewhere’.83 It was not just Conservative newspapers but also some prominent liberal voices who cheered the curbing of local government. For example, Alan Watkins, a much-admired Observer columnist, wrote of Margaret Thatcher: ‘She has removed two fears, even hatreds, from the lives of working people: of trade unions and of Labour local authorities’.84
Sustaining this illusion of public approval for local government reform was a cumulative crisis of opposition. As noted earlier, the defence of the GLC had brought into a being a formidable political alliance, drawing support from across the political spectrum. This coalition fell apart in the later 1980s. It became politically difficult for Conservatives to rally to the cause of local democracy when it was embodied by the ‘loony left’ in London and Trotskyist Militants in Liverpool. It also became politically inexpedient for the Labour leadership to make too much fuss about creeping centralisation when this invited the media to identify it with ‘indefensible’ zealots in local government. The campaign against the poll tax in the late 1980s and early 1990s perhaps provided an opportunity to recreate a political coalition in defence of local democracy. However, a tactical decision was taken by Neil Kinnock to concentrate almost exclusively on the regressive nature of the poll tax.85
Local councils were forced to fall back on their own resources in defending local democracy. However, local authorities split along party lines, and did not present a united front. The municipal left itself split over how to respond to rate-capping. In some areas, polls indicated support for militant action. For example, 36% of Islington residents wanted in 1985 their council to refuse to set a lower rate ‘even if this means breaking the law’ and a further 37% wanted the council to resign in protest and call a special local election, while only 21% wanted the council to set a lower rate demanded by the government.86 In neighbouring Southwark, 56% wanted their council to break the law over rate-capping.87 However, left-wing councils in the 1980s did not have a mass movement to call upon, unlike the militants of Popularism in the 1920s.88 They also lacked significant support in parliament and the media. There was really not much they could do to arrest the increasing centralisation of government.
In short, the right-wing press did not win public support for the emasculation of local government. But it deterred cross-party opposition to the erosion of local democracy, and strengthened the government’s determination to outsource local government services and impose greater central control. Once again, the influence of the press was seemingly greater at Westminster than in the country as a whole.
Notes
1. J. Curran, Media and Power (London: Routledge, 2002).
2. For overviews, see S. Iyengar, Media Politics, 3rd edition (New York: Norton, 2015), especially chapter 8; R. Nabi and M. Oliver (eds.) Handbook of Media Processes and Effects (Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage, 2009); R. Preiss, B. Gayle, N. Burrell, M. Allen and J. Bryant (eds.) Mass Media Effects Research (New York: Routledge, 2007).
3. For an overview of this tradition, see J. Tulloch, Watching Television Audiences (London: Arnold, 2000).
4. Belief in the brainwashing power of the media is based partly on irrational fears and discontents. See M. Barker and J. Petley (eds.) Ill Effects, 2nd edition. (London: Routledge, 2001) and L. Blackman and V. Walkerdine, Mass Hysteria (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
5. See Chapter 6.
6. K. Young and P. Garside, Metropolitan London (London: Edward Arnold, 1982).
7. K. Young, ‘The conservative strategy for London, 1880–1975’, London Journal, 1, (1975); K. Young and J. Kramer, Strategy and Conflict in Metropolitan Housing (London: Heinemann, 1978).
8. A. Forester, S. Lansley and R. Pauley, Beyond Our Ken (London: Fourth Estate, 1985); K. Young, ‘Metropolis, R.I.P.?’ Political Quarterly, January–March, 1986; B. Pimlott and N. Rao, Governing London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
9. Young and Garside, Metropolitan London.
10. B. O’Leary, ‘Why was the GLC abolished?’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 1987; B. O’Leary, ‘British farce, French drama and tales of two cities: reorganizations of Paris and London governments 1957–86’, Public Administration 65, (1987).
11. Department of the Environment, Streamlining the Cities (London: HMSO, 1983), p. 4.
12. Interview with Lord Jenkin (Patrick Jenkin) by the author.
13. Ibid.
14. See Chapter 4.
15. This is documented in detail in chapter 5 of the first edition of this book (J. Curran, I. Gaber and J. Petley, Culture Wars (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005) and outlined in Chapter 10 of this edition.
16. See Chapter 6.
17. See Note 15.
18. Conservative Research Department, ‘Red-print for Ruin: The Labour Left in Local Government’ (London: Conservative Party, 1986); ‘Labour in Power: Profiles of Municipal Militancy’ (London: Conservative Party, 1986); ‘Labour in Power: More Profiles of Municipal Militancy’ (London: Conservative Party, 1986).
19. The Times, 18 November 1986.
20. Interviews with Peter Mandleson (Director of Labour Party Communication (appointed in 1985)), Patricia Hewitt (Press Secretary to Leader of the Opposition) and Charles Clarke (Chief of Staff, Kinnock’s Office) by the author. All three subsequently became cabinet ministers.
21. BBC TV, Six O’Clock News, 27 February 1987.
22. Daily Mirror, 27 February 1987.
23. Guardian, 28 February 1987.
24. The Times, 8 March 1987
25. Sun, 6 March 1987.
26. Sun, 13 May 1987 et passim.
27. Guardian, 2 June 1987.
28. M. Harrop, ‘Press’, in D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), table 8.3, p. 169.
29. Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1987, pp. 212, 222–3 and 241.
30. W. Miller, H. Clarke, M. Harrop, L. Leduc and P. Whiteley, How Voters Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
31. For example, W. Miller, Media and Voters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); K. Newton and M. Brynin, ‘The national press and party voting in the UK’, Political Studies, 49 (2), (2001); A. Reeves, M. McKee and D. Stuckler, ‘“It’s the Sun wot won it”: Evidence of media influence on political attitudes and voting from a UK quasi-natural experiment’, Social Science Research, 56, (2016), among others.
32. D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983 (London: Macmillan, 1984).
33. MORI private polling on behalf of the Labour Party, May–June 1983. Its devastating findings were succinctly summarised in internal memoranda by Adam Sharples.
34. D. Butler and G. Butler, Twentieth-Century British Political Facts 1900–2000 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 275.
35. G. Philo, Seeing and Believing (London: Routledge, 1990).
36. A more detailed analysis of the causes of the Conservative victory in 1987 is provided in chapter 9 of Curran, Gaber and Petley, Culture Wars, first edition.
37. BBC Gallup Survey, 10–11 June 1987.
38. IFF Post Election Survey, 1987, presented to Labour’s National Executive Committee.
39. Kinnock, Hewitt and Clarke originated from the centre left, and for them this was an intellectual journey. Mandelson was by the early 1980s on the militant right of the Labour party.
40. Election ’87, BBC1, 12 June 1987.
41. Quoted in J. Lloyd and J. Rentoul, ‘Londoner’s Diary’, New Statesman, 10 July 1987.
42. D. Hatton, ‘Kinnock kicks me out’, The Sunday Times, 14 February 1988.
43. J. Connell, ‘Open letter to Tony Benn’, Voice of the Unions, October 1987.
44. G. Smith, ‘Why Labour lost in Ealing’, Tribune, 18 May 1990.
45. ‘Capital service’, New Socialist, August/September 1990.
46. Guardian, 5 August 1991.
47. Ibid.
48. Tribune, 11 May 1990.
49. Sunday Times, 26 January 1992.
50. B. Campbell and M. Jacques, ‘Goodbye to the GLC’, Marxism Today, April 1986, pp. 8–10.
51. M. Jacques, ‘From gesture to realism’, The Times, 2 May 1990.
52. R. Coward, ‘Now we are all children of the revolution’, Guardian, 31 March 1997.
53. P. Toynbee, ‘Interview’ (with Chris Smith), Independent, 3 June 1997.
54. This was explored more fully in chapters 7 and 9 of the first edition published by Edinburgh University Press, and is developed here in Chapter 8.
55. Sun, 6 May 1987. This claim seems to have been based on some focus groups – based on tiny samples – which suggested that the GLC’s championship of ‘minorities’ was having a negative impact on the Labour vote. See in particular ‘Research De-Brief’, March 1986, Kinnock Papers (KNNK-2-1-72), Churchill College, Cambridge. My thanks go to Colm Murphy for drawing this to my attention.
56. ‘Public Opinion and Choices’, MORI, 23–27 January/6–10 February 1987, conducted on behalf of the Labour Party.
57. This draws on J. Curtice and M. Steed, ‘Appendix 2’ in D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, British General Election of 1987 (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1988).