Culture Wars

by James Curran

  Whether Gould’s interpretation of the ‘voice of the electorate’ was, or was not, accurate is a moot point but it what is not in doubt is the fact that Blair, despite his above-quoted cynicism, put a great deal of store by Gould’s notion that the Party had to do more than simply create ‘New Labour’. It also needed its mirror image – ‘Old Labour’. This was because, even as late as 1994, it was clear, or at least clear to the modernisers, that the Party had still not succeeded in convincing significant sections of the electorate that the Party’s change was real and fundamental. Thus, rather than challenge this image Blair worked with it and, to some extent, sought to exaggerate it so that the differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Labour appeared greater than they actually were. In Fielding’s words: ‘he deliberately made the party’s break with its past appear more apparent than it actually was’.21

  This process can be observed at work in the way that, shortly after his election to the leadership, Tony Blair launched his revision of Clause Four of the Party’s constitution, the clause that, on paper at least, committed the party to public ownership of most major industries. In writing about his plan to confront the party with the abolition of Clause Four, Blair said that he was embarking on this course because: ‘It’s time we gave the party some electric shock treatment’.22 Blair told Gould that the only way they could build trust with the British people was by showing them that the Party had changed and therefore could be trusted with government; this could be achieved only by dramatic measures, or at least dramatic gestures. Revision of Clause Four would demonstrate how much Labour had changed – it would not initiate change, but would signal that change was already underway. As Stephen Fielding observes: ‘For Blair the point of revision was to cause a fuss … It was precisely due to its symbolic significance that Blair wanted the clause revised’.23 Tim Bale concurs with this analysis. He writes:

  A new rather audacious strategy was tried: rather than playing down its past difficulties, the Party would own up to them – and in spades. The encouragement of amnesia was replaced by the penitent’s promise to have changed for the better, and for good … demonstrating that New Labour had learnt its lessons and wiped the slate clean would boost both the electoral chances of the Party and what they hoped was their ever-tightening grip upon it.24

  In conversation, in 1996, David Miliband, then Tony Blair’s Head of Policy and later Foreign Secretary, was open and insistent that New Labour’s plans for its first term in office would be based on an underlying strategy of reassuring the British people that Labour could be ‘trusted’ in office.25

  In order to achieve this trust, New Labour had to continue to be seen to be confronting the Party’s left but also had to neutralise the persistent hostility that emanated from the largely right-wing national press. This obliged them to hone still further the ‘art’ of political spin that Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham, had developed. To do this, Blair recruited his own version of Ingham – the formidable Alastair Campbell – who can largely be credited with shaping New Labour’s communications’ agenda. Whatever the complexities of the relationship between people’s political allegiance and the media, it is undoubtedly true that since Margaret Thatcher, political communication had come to be seen as being at the very heart of government, and this trend accelerated under New Labour. Barely a year into office, Alastair Campbell told a House of Commons Select Committee: ‘In opposition we made clear that communications was not something that you tagged on the end, it is part of what you do. That is something that we have tried to bring into government’.27

  This mindset was, in its intensity, unique in the history of British governance. It had its roots in the mauling that the Labour Party – under Michael Foot, and then Neil Kinnock – had received over a long period at the hands of large sections of the Conservative-supporting press as recounted in earlier chapters. In particular, the mauling tended to focus on Labour’s real, or imagined, far left policies, hence this was the virus that New Labour sought to neutralise. In the 1987 campaign, for example, the Daily Mail had reported that:

  Labour’s hard left have revealed their hand on the programme they want Neil Kinnock to adopt if they win the election. A manifesto sent out yesterday details a chilling list of demands for the virtual creation of a workers state. It includes a threat to confront the bosses and the banks, repeal the public order laws, withdraw all troops from Ulster, the Falklands and Germany, pull out of the Common Market and open our doors to immigrants and refugees. The left want to impose punitive wealth taxes, abolish the monarchy and the Lords, and make the police, media and judges accountable to the working class.28

  But, as Brian MacArthur points out, not one of these items was in fact in the Labour manifesto. One can go back further. Reviewing the performance of the newspapers in the 1983 election, Martin Harrop noted that the anti-Labour bias of much of the tabloid press had been increasing in virulence since 1974. He quoted the Sun, which had described the Labour Party as:

  a desperate, irresponsible, extremist shambles which shows the ugly face of a rampant extremism and has been torn apart and taken over by Marxists with a grotesque parody of a programme which is extreme, extravagant and nightmarish and which would virtually wipe out freedom.29

  It was in response to this sort of treatment that New Labour’s inner circle decided on a media policy that would ensure that such coverage would be neutralised, if not eliminated altogether. The overall philosophy was outlined a number of years later by Campbell, who made it clear that the modernisers were determined that Blair would not suffer the same hostility from the press as had been handed out to his predecessors:

  it’s fair to say we were determined not to let Tony Blair get the same treatment as they did. So we did make a concerted effort to get a better dialogue with some parts of the media where before there had been pretty much none. This was of course about reaching their readers. It was also about preventing destruction by a hostile press. Competence with the media conveyed a general competence that was important to us in establishing ourselves as a competent Government.30

  The approach was to create a re-branded product. Labour Party conferences began to look like sales conventions; Clause 4 was dumped, and only the most on-message media-friendly politicians (that is, those not identified with the left) were put on public display. Indeed, Minkin describes how the party conference was ‘managed’ – tactics included having members positioned strategically around the hall to lead the applause and ensuring that the conference Chair called only speakers from the floor who had been vetted beforehand for ‘reliability’.31 Steps were also taken to ensure that both policies, and the way they were presented, would appeal to the proprietors, editors and readers of the Conservative press – to quote a chapter heading from the autobiography of Phillip Gould, ‘Reassurance, Reassurance, Reassurance’. And reassurance was the third plank of the modernisers’ communications project – reassuring the press proprietors that their business interests would not only be protected by New Labour but would even be promoted. This was symbolised by the visits that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made to Australia and the United States to meet with Sun proprietor Rupert Murdoch and his executives (similar meetings were held with Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere) to emphasise that Labour was no longer the party of the ‘loony left’. It also gave Blair a chance to assess Rupert Murdoch, and in so doing came to what was, for the leader of the Labour Party, a surprisingly positive conclusion:

  I came to have a grudging respect and even liking for him. He was hard, no doubt. He was right wing. I did not share or like his attitudes on Europe, social policy or on issues such as gay rights, but there were two points of connection: he was an outsider, and he had balls.32

  Perhaps the moment of greatest tension between New Labour and its ‘loony left’ past came in 1999 when the leadership was faced with Ken Livingstone’s bid to become the party’s candidate to be the first elected mayor of London. For many in the Labour leadership, Livingsto
ne personified all the worst elements of the ‘loony left’. Writing in the People, under the headline, ‘Why Red Ken is a Disaster for Labour’ former leader Neil Kinnock argued:

  The Loony Left had to be beaten before the voters would treat Labour seriously again … Arthur Scargill. Derek Hatton. Ted Knight. Linda Bellos. They were the names in the headlines that made people say: ‘Labour’s lost it now.’ And there was one name, above all, that made them say: ‘Labour’s lost me now.’ The name was Ken Livingstone. While he led the Greater London Council the stories of high rates, public money for stunts, control by soft-headed Hard Left groups poured out of the press almost every day.33

  Ever since the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) Ken Livingstone had assumed almost mythic proportions as an iconic hate figure of both the Tories and the Labour right, epitomising the ‘loony left’. In reality, he was an isolated figure on Labour’s back benches, an isolation enhanced by his constant criticisms of the economic policies of Gordon Brown, then Labour’s Shadow Chancellor. Thus, given his GLC background, it was not surprising that when the battle for Labour’s nomination for the London mayoralty began Livingstone was seen as a leading candidate. It was equally unsurprising that the antipathy of the Labour leadership towards Livingstone winning the post would be equally prominent. Both Blair and Brown had a fear that Livingstone, as Labour’s candidate, would re-awaken the sleeping dragons of the ‘loony left’ and the ‘London effect’. Tony Blair, in what must be an unprecedented attack for a leader of a mainstream political party on one of his own MPs running for high office, said:

  I was a foot soldier in the Labour Party in Battersea and in Hackney in the early 1980s. I canvassed and campaigned for Labour in London when we were at our lowest ebb. I remember knocking on doors in different parts of London only to see in the eyes of the people, time after time, that they thought the Labour Party was not for them. At that time the Labour Party was a byword for extremism. We were hopelessly divided and deeply unpopular… The leading figures in the Labour Party were people like Ken Livingstone, Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill. The policies were not just disastrous for Labour. They deprived the public of a choice that wasn’t the Tories. Now, this is the issue: has Ken Livingstone really changed? If he hasn’t, he would not be right for Labour or London.34

  New Labour’s hostility to Livingstone was not just a matter of public relations – their opposition was heartfelt. Liz Davies, a left-wing member of the National Executive, records that during a debate in the executive in 1999 as to whether Ken Livingstone was acceptable as Labour’s candidate for the mayoralty of London, the ‘loony left’ agenda loomed large. One of the strongest interventions against Livingstone came because of his record of campaigning in favour of gay rights – ironically the charge was made by a prominent gay activist, Michael Cashman who accused Livingstone of having been in part responsible for Labour’s defeat at the polls in 1987 and 1992. Cashman also argued that, by supporting lesbian and gay rights in the 1980s, Livingstone had been responsible for the introduction of the Conservative’s Section 28, which banned the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools (see Chapter 5). Liz Davies quotes Cashman as saying:

  I’ve spoken out against a particular candidate. I’m sick and tired of lesbian and gay rights being seen as the dustbin of good politics. Now we’ve moved, but we’ve taken thirteen years to get there. I will continue to be a pain in the side to anyone who is in opposition to me.35

  New Labour’s visceral hatred of Livingstone was of such an intensity that political writers had to work hard to explain the antipathy. According to an article in The Times:

  On one level, the deep-seated desire to prevent the former GLC leader assuming power is a matter of straight politics. Blairites believe he would use the post to embarrass, challenge and wherever possible damage the Labour Government. A psychiatrist may offer a different explanation, suggesting that Labour’s inability to come to terms with Mr Livingstone is more about their common roots than their differences. In the same way that family members can fall out because they are too similar, many Labour MPs see an uncomfortable reminder of their own past when they look at Mr Livingstone.36

  The Times’ cod psychology might, or might not be, a useful way of understanding New Labour’s reaction to Ken Livingstone’s re-emergence on the national political stage. What is undeniable is, as The Times observes, that New Labour, collectively, had a problem with coming to terms with its local government past. Many leading members of New Labour first tasted political power through their involvement with local government; throughout the 1980s, when Labour was out of power nationally and looking like it would be excluded for years to come, local government remained both the only route to achieving any sort of political power but also the best way that the public could judge what Labour in government might do. This enhanced the potency of ‘loony left’ stories in the media, particularly given the proximity of Fleet Street to the London councils that were controlled by Labour Left wingers.

  Because of the antipathy of the Labour leadership, Livingstone eventually ran for the mayoralty as an independent and was expelled from the Party as a result. However, in his first term in office, despite surrounding himself with colleagues who had been associated with left-wing groups in and outside the Labour Party, Livingstone was seen as a success. In particular, he successfully introduced a controversial congestion charge for central London in the teeth of intense opposition from much of the media and the studied indifference of the Labour leadership. In their opposition to the congestion charge, the press reverted to the ‘loony left’ agenda and sought to counterpoint the notion of ‘common sense’ against the left’s special pleading for ‘the other’. When the ‘loony left’ was first being identified by the press, the ‘other’ were gays, feminists and so on. Their presumed views were contrasted with media notions of ‘normality’ – the views of the silent majority, or whatever formulation was being used at the time, to represent those who were not black, not gay, not disabled – in other words the classic nuclear family with its 2.4 children.37

  If such is the norm in some parts of the UK, then it is decidedly not the case in London, a multicultural metropolis in which lifestyles, family structures and ethnicity are very different from the fabled norm. Yet, the congestion charge was portrayed as a policy designed for the minority, in contrast to the views and interests of ordinary tax-paying car-drivers. Yet, the irony was that the congestion charge was aimed at benefiting bus, tube and rail commuters who represented the vast majority of London’s travelling public, at the expense of the one in ten commuters who travelled into the capital by car. Nonetheless, sections of the press lost few opportunities to construct, or re-construct, a ‘loony left’ agenda out of what they took to be the motivations behind, and the consequences of, the introduction of congestion charging. In the Daily Telegraph, columnist Barbara Amiel told us that that the charge was part of an agenda that was intended to ‘coerce people on to public transport, and to eliminate the private car.’38 Sarah Sands, writing in the same paper, claimed that it was an ‘anti-family London tax’ because it would drain the life out of the capital by making it difficult for families to use cars to move around.39 On a later occasion, she accused the Mayor of ‘using congestion charges as class war by other means’.40 Simon Heffer in the Daily Mail, outraged by the apparent success of the scheme, turned his spleen on its supposed supporters, arguing they were the same people with the same agenda that he had been battling against over the years: ‘Only six days into London’s congestion charge, the usual Lefties and eco-freaks are queuing up to say what a success it is. In fact, it is yet another tax on the capital’s middle classes’.41

  The Sun used generalised images of inner city decay, some of which had become associated with left-wing Labour councils in the 1980s, and bracketed them with the charge: ‘Families put up with graffiti, street crime and high property prices. Now they can’t even drive on their own streets’42 . But the theme of ‘the loony left rides aga
in’ was best captured by Sun columnist Richard Littlejohn when he wrote, (perhaps with his tongue firmly in his cheek) that the charge was ‘a spiteful anti-motorist measure, pure and simple, dreamed up by Red Ken and his sexually-inadequate, Lycra-clad, Guardian-reading, cycle-mad, control-freaks at TfL (Transport for London)’.43

  Analysis of the use of the terms ‘loony left’ and ‘Red Ken’44 reveals that in the period January 2002 to the end of May 2003, the Sun, perhaps unsurprisingly, topped the table with twenty-nine references to ‘Red Ken’ and ten to the ‘loony left’. But it was only just narrowly ahead of the Daily Telegraph which referred to ‘Red Ken’ thirty-one times and the ‘loony left’ seven times. The detailed breakdown is shown in Table 9.1.