Culture Wars
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24. R. Pendlebury ‘Will he now marry the mother of his son? And why isn’t he on the birth certificate?’ Daily Mail September 27, 2010.
25. Pierce and Pendlebury op cit.
26. Black Dog ‘Now it’s Orange Ed’ Mail on Sunday 3 February 2013.
27. Letts, Q “Red Ed points the finger” Daily Mail 14 December 2012.
28. N. Jones, ‘Is the “Twitter mob” taming the Daily Mail? How online reaction influences mainstream news’ 2013 www.nicholasjones.org.uk/articles/34-media-trends/271-is-the-twitter-mob-taming-the-daily-mail-how-online-reaction-influences-mainstream-news.
29. S. Cohen Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London, Routledge 2011).
30. Media Coverage of the 2015 General Election, Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, University of Loughborough. http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/general-election/media-coverage-of-the-2015-campaign-report-5/.
31. Sun 6 May 2015.
32. K. Kahn-Harris ‘Is the Sun’s “save our bacon” election front page antisemitic? Guardian 6 May 2015.
33. British Election Study 2015. www.britishelectionstudy.com/news-category/2015-general-election/.
34. Broadcast journalists tend to deny that they give undue prominence to the news agendas of the right-wing press but private conversations between the author and current broadcast journalists suggests that recognition of this ‘bias’ is now accepted and is consciously being combatted, see later in this chapter for further discussion of this issue.
35. ‘Are you Michael Foot in disguise? We ask as Corbyn vies to lead Labour’ 24 July 2015.
36. J. Daley ‘I’ve lived under Jeremy Corbyn’s rule – it was what turned me into a Tory; the views of this “loony left”-winger resulted in class hatred and Soviet-style stagnation in the Seventies’ Sunday Telegraph 26 July 2015.
37. J. Warner ‘Corbyn has just appointed a nutjob as Shadow Chancellor’ Daily Telegraph 14 September 2015.
38. M. Lynn ‘Why we should all start feeling nervous about Corbyn-omics’ Daily Telegraph 31 July 2015.
39. T. Utley ‘What’s Labour come to when the scumbag who applauded my friend’s IRA murderers is Shadow Chancellor?’ Daily Mail 18 September 2015.
40. J. Lyons and R. Henry ‘Hard left plot to infiltrate Labour race; Harman urged to halt leadership vote’ Sunday Times 26 July 2015.
41. A. Boulton ‘No beard, no loony leanings: meet Labour’s real next leader’ Sunday Times 26 July 2015.
42. D. McBride ‘Labour must use Cameron’s pin to pop the Corbyn bubble’ Sunday Times 26 July 2015.
43. M. Brown & J. Deans ‘Robert Peston: BBC follows the Daily Mail’s lead too much’ Guardian 6 June 2014.
44. P. Myerscough, ‘Corbyn in the media’. London Review of Books 37(20) 2015 pp. 8–9. Available from www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n20/paul-myerscough/corbyn-in-the-media.
45. See I. Gaber ‘Bending over backwards: the BBC and the Brexit campaign’ in EU Referendum Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the Campaign by D. Jackson, E. Thorsen, and D. Wring (eds), (Bournemouth: Political Studies Association and Bournemouth University 2016).
46. L. Barber ‘Here’s to you, Mr Robinson’ Sunday Times 15 November 2016.
47. R. Mason ‘BBC may have shown bias against Corbyn’ Guardian 12 May 2016.
48. Roger Mosey private correspondence with author 8 June 2016.
49. Private conversation with author.
50. Feedback BBC Radio 4 16 September 2016.
51. ‘Media reform trust Corbyn’s first week: negative agenda setting in the press’ www.mediareform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Corbyns_First_Week-Negative_Agenda_Setting_in_the_Press.pdf.
52. ‘Journalistic representations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British press: from watchdog to attack dog’ Media@LSE Report p. 1. www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn.
53. Op cit, p.12.
54. ‘Should he stay or should he go?’ Television and Online News Coverage of the Labour Party in Crisis Media Reform Coalition op cit, p. 4.
55. Robert Peston speaking on The Media Show, BBC Radio 4 20 December 2017.
56. S. Cushion ‘Were broadcasters biased against Jeremy Corbyn? It’s the details that count’ New Statesman 21 June 2016.
57. Loughborough University Centre for Research in Communication and Culture ‘A tale of two leaders: news media coverage of the 2017 General Election’ 19 June 2017. http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/general-election/tale-two-leaders-news-media-coverage-2017-general-election/.
58. Daily Mail ‘Labour’s apologists for terror: The Mail accuses Corbyn troika of befriending Britain’s enemies and scorning the institutions that keep us safe’ 8 June 2017.
59. Ipsos Mori www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/most-capable-prime-minister-trends.
60. The challenge to the mainstream media that began with Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign and extended to the 2017 election is discussed in more detail in Chapter 12.
61. J. Waterson ‘This was the Election where the newspapers lost their monopoly on the political news agenda’ Buzzfeed 18 June 2017. www.Buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/how-newspapers-lost-their-monopoly-on-the-political-agenda?utm_term=.ywrmrqrRE4#.qevJdodNjw.
62. www.filmsforaction.org/articles/this-facebook-comment-about-the-uk-election-is-going-viral/.
63. S. Winterbottom ‘Theresa May’s Tory manifesto SCRAPS THE BAN on elephant ivory sales after bowing to millionaire antique lobbyists’ Evolve Politics 20 May 2017. http://evolvepolitics.com/theresa-mays-tory-manifesto-scraps-ban-elephant-ivory-sales-bowing-millionaire-antique-lobbyist/.
64. R. Colville ‘The truth about Jeremy Corbyn: not a spy but a fool who hates capitalism and the West’ Daily Telegraph 22 February 2018.
65. D. Finklestein ‘Communism Explains a Lot About Corbyn’ The Times 21 February 2018.
66. K. Ferguson and K. Southern ‘Czech agent claims Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn were ALL spying for the Russians along with 12 other senior Labour figures’ Daily Mail 18 Feb 2018.
67. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport ‘Leveson Inquiry – Report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press’ 2012. www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press.
68. D. Sabbagh ‘Spying row: how Corbyn seized chance to take on the Sun; Labour used to woo the right-wing press; the age of social media has changed all that’ Guardian 21 February 2018.
69. J. Stevens ‘Corbyn’s response to Spy Row: no answers and a chilling threat to Britain’s free press’ Daily Mail 21 February 2018.
70. The Sun ‘The Sun Says Jeremy Corbyn’s war on press is a hostile attempt to silence negative stories about him’ 22 February 2018.
71. Mail Editorial ‘Memo to the BBC: he will come for you too’ Daily Mail 22 February 2018.
12
RETURN OF THE REPRESSED
James Curran
During the 1980s, the new urban left was rendered toxic. It was reviled by the press, demonised by Conservative government minsters, denounced by Labour’s leadership and viewed as a liability by a large part of the Labour movement. Its project was widely dismissed by the end of the 1980s as a failed experiment – a view that solidified in the 1990s.1 The phrase ‘loony left’ entered the English language to denote a deluded socialism that warranted only ridicule. Nothing more needed to be said, no additional arguments needed to be mustered: the ‘loony left’ stood for all that was absurd about an unhinged, zealous, politically correct strand of social radicalism.
Yet, quietly and unobtrusively, the new urban left’s political agenda was incorporated into mainstream politics. Their once derided policies gave rise to new laws, new business practices and revised social norms. This shift came about because the new urban left, dominated by people born in the late 1940s and shaped by the cultural ferment of the 1960s, were the outriders of change. They controlled some London town halls, the foothills of power, in the 1980s. But by the 2000s,
members of this baby boomer generation, and their successors, were heading the government, opposition parties, leading public institutions and large business corporations, and advanced the derided politics of the ‘loony left’.
Of course, this account contains an element of simplification. Generations are not homogenous: there were ardent social liberals in the pre-1945 generation, and zealous social conservatives in the next. Furthermore, the new urban left was not the principal authors of political innovation: they were responding primarily to external pressures generated by new dynamic forces within the wider community.2 But while not implying a monistic explanation of change, a generational shift was an important factor in making acceptable attitudes and policies that had been scorned by middle-aged Conservative politicians and journalists in the 1980s.
Gay liberation
The issue that generated the greatest hostility towards the new urban left was sexuality. The AIDS panic began in 1983, and reached its peak in the mid-1980s, exacerbating already widespread animosity towards gays and lesbians. The stance of the new urban left, that no social stigma should attach to being gay and lesbian, that the Gay Liberation movement should be supported and that homophobia should be actively confronted, was viewed by much of the press as dangerous and irresponsible. It ‘pretended’ that unnatural sex, proscribed by religion and social convention, was natural. It promoted, it was argued, sexual activity which spread the ‘gay plague’, AIDS, and endangered ‘innocent’ people. It ‘encouraged’ suggestible teenagers into abhorrent behaviour. It supposedly placed children at risk since, it was then believed, homosexuals were especially prone to be paedophiles.
The new urban left’s support of Gay Liberation in the 1980s challenged the liberal political bargain that had been struck in the 1960s. Although sex between gay men aged over twenty had been decriminalised in 1967, gays and lesbians had been denied the same legal entitlements as heterosexuals. By attacking this compromise, the new urban left was waging war on two fronts: against social conservatives who thought that gay sex should never have been legalised in the first place, and against traditional liberals who, while not wanting gay men to be jailed, did not think that the state should approve (and ‘encourage’) their way of life.
The new urban left paid a heavy price for flouting prevailing views in both the press and public life. So ardent was the Sun’s hostility towards homosexuals during the AIDS panic that it even offered British gay men a one-way air ticket to Norway, under the headline, ‘Fly Away Gays – and We Will Pay!’3 Britain’s best-selling daily regularly denounced what it called ‘the lunatic fringe of the Labour Party, which has adopted homosexuality as a political cause’.4 Along with other popular papers, it fuelled animosity both towards gays and to the political movement that spoke up for them.
However, the prejudices that fed this newspaper bigotry receded. Whereas 74% said that same sex relationships were always or mostly wrong in 1987, only 16% took this view in 2016.5 In 1983, only 41% thought it was right for a homosexual person to be teacher at a school, compared with 83% in 2012. Similarly, a bare majority (53%) in 1983 thought that it was acceptable for a homosexual ‘to hold a responsible position in public life’ whereas nearly everyone (90%) was comfortable with this position in 2012.6 While social disapproval of gays and lesbians did not disappear, the proportion of people opposing the adoption of children by gay couples more than halved between 1983 and 2012.7
This remarkable shift was mainly a product of generational change. As Alison Park and Rebecca Rhead conclude on the basis of three decades of survey data, ‘each successive generation has more liberal views on homosexuality than the one before’.8 In addition, ‘all generations have become more liberal [on the issue of homosexuality] over time’.9 In brief, the municipal left of the 1980s were reviled for holding opinions that became commonplace by 2012.
In line with this shift of public opinion, state discrimination against gays and lesbians was overturned through successive reforms. In 2000, the policy of banning homosexuals from the armed forces was dropped. In 2001, the age of consent for gay sex was lowered from twenty-one to sixteen (same as for straight sex). In 2002, same sex adoption was legalised. In 2003, the notorious section 28 was repealed, and discrimination against gays and lesbians was made illegal. In 2004, gay couples were given the same rights as heterosexual couples through the Civil Partnership Act. In 2007, discrimination against gays and lesbians in the provision of goods and services was outlawed through strengthened legislation. In 2013, gay and lesbian marriage was legalised by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act.
The position adopted by the new urban left in the 1980s that gay and lesbian relationships should be ‘normalised’ thus became part of mainstream politics. The derided margins became the centre ground of British politics. The extent of this change is illustrated by the different political responses that occurred over time. In 1986, Labour Leader Neil Kinnock, and his team, rebuked the new urban left for championing gays and lesbians because they feared that this was alienating Labour’s core support.10 In 2004, Tony Blair broke with this caution by establishing same-sex civil partnerships. And in 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron faced down opposition in his own party to introduce gay marriage. Where a Labour leader had feared to tread in the 1980s, a modernising Conservative leader marched confidently forward and introduced historic legislation.
Feminism
Something not dissimilar happened in relation to women’s rights. The second wave of feminism had helped to secure major gender equality legislation in the 1970s. However, feminism still attracted widespread derision and hostility during the early 1980s. It was attacked as ‘man-hating’, and associated with lesbianism and the militant left.11 When the new urban left championed women’s liberation, it was castigated by popular national papers for questioning ‘the traditional values of the sexes’12 and ‘turning all accepted ideas upside down’.13
But, as with homosexuality, a sea-change occurred in public attitudes. Whereas in 1987 48% of the population agreed that ‘a man’s job is to earn money’ and ‘the woman’s job is to look after the home and family’, only 13% took this view in 2012.14 This reflected a generational shift. In 2012, support for a gendered division of labour between the male breadwinner and the female homemaker was much more pronounced among old people (those aged sixty-six years and over) than among the young.15 In particular, younger people were much more inclined than the older generation to say that it was acceptable for women with young children to go out to work.16
Attitudes towards opposing gender inequality also changed, although in a qualified way. The traditional stigma attached to feminism lingered on. In 2015, only 7% of British adults (and 9% of women) defined themselves as feminists,17 principally because feminism was associated with being extreme, polarising and political.18 But the woman’s movement became stronger from the 1980s onwards partly as a consequence of gaining increased support from the right, and also from men. By 2015, large majorities in Britain agreed that gender equality was desirable, that it had not been achieved and that more needed to be done to rectify this.19 Indeed, 67% said that they were sympathetic to feminism.20 Feminism-lite became mainstream.
Gender inequality lessened21 but still remained pervasive. In 2015–6, women made up 39% of senior civil servants, 14% of police commissioners, 21% of high court judges, 17% of university vice-chancellors and 26% of FSTE 100 board directors.22 In 2012, men spent an average of eight hours per week on housework compared to thirteen hours spent by women.23 This prompted six out of ten women to complain that they did more than their fair share of household work.24
Continuing inequality generated pressure for reform. In 2017, the ‘Me Too’ hashtag campaign targeted powerful men who sexually harassed younger women. As a result, a number of prominent figures in politics and the media in both Britain and the United States were forced to resign. Public debate is now causing what is acceptable and unacceptable to be redefined.
Changing times made the femin
ist politics espoused by the new urban left seem less contentious. Thus, the women’s committees set up by radical councils in order to offset the male dominance of local politics, and strengthen the voice of women in local government decision-making, had been attacked in the right-wing press in the early 1980s. Yet, this affirmative action approach was later adopted in a new form that changed national politics. After the 1992 general election, the Labour Party introduced, in some constituencies, women-only shortlists for the selection of parliamentary candidates. This was largely responsible for the number of women MPs doubling between 1992 and 1997 general elections.25 The selective adoption of women-only shortlists continued during the New Labour era, and beyond, helping to change the composition of the Commons. The number of women MPs increased from just twenty-three in 1983 to 208 in 2017.26
Women-only shortlists were not adopted by the Conservative and Liberal parties, and were denounced in right-wing newspapers. However, a softer version of this ‘positive action’ approach – affirmative targeting – became part of the new consensus both in business and politics. Thus, in response to pressure from a Conservative government, the FSTE 350 companies set a target of securing 33% of women on their boards by 2020.27
In addition to creating women’s committees, radical councils in the early 1980s funded more nurseries; adopted working practices that encouraged the retention and promotion of female council staff; and supported women’s groups in order to strengthen the voice of women in the local community. None of these policies appeared controversial in the twenty-first century. The expansion of nursery provision accelerated during the early 2000s. The women-friendly employment policies of left-wing councils in the 1980s – such as cre`ches, flexible working hours, job-share posts, in-service training, multiple points of entry and new routes for career progression – were later adopted in numerous large organisations from Goldman Sachs to the National Health Service. The funding of women’s groups – whether by the government, the Arts Council or charitable bodies – no longer causes eyebrows to be raised. Once again the passage of time resulted in policies championed by the new urban left becoming part of the mainstream of public life.