Wednesday 23rd December 2009

Keeping up with some of my university friends, I thought I would publish one of my recent essays on the blog. This one is entitled Critically examine the representation of politics in the press since 1979 and its impact on political culture. Merry Christmas to all.

1979 was a hugely significant year in British politics, as Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives began an 18 year reign in power and changed the political landscape of the UK forever with the birth of Thatcherism. According to Andrew Marr in A History of Modern Britain (pages 381-382) “Thatcherism heralded an age of unparalleled consumption, credit, show-off wealth, quick bucks and sexual libertinism.”
But what effect did the political press have on Thatcher’s government and the governments of her successors John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown?

The most apparent observation looking at the UK Press since 1979 is that it became more partisan and right wing. For example, the Sun, under it’s previous name the Daily Herald, had supported Labour during general elections, but in the four general elections between 1979 and 1992 it came out in full support for the Conservatives.

“After 1979 Conservative papers dominated at all three market levels. Not only did they have the support of the downmarket leader, the Sun, but they dominated even more strongly in the upmarket and midmarket. This meant that pro-Conservative papers day after day (as well as during elections) were leading the news agenda for the press, and inevitably, to at least some extent, for television and radio as well.”

- Newspaper Power: The New National Press in Britain, Jeremy Tunstall

Perhaps the obvious explanation for the sudden right wing press was the emergence of proprietor Rupert Murdoch, who by 1981 had acquired both the Sun and The Times. The Sun replaced the Labour supporting Daily Herald in 1964 and by 1979 Murdoch’s tabloid had displaced the Daily Mirror as the circulation leader. As well as the support from the Sun, the Conservatives could also rely on the backing of midmarket papers the Daily Express and Daily Mail, along with the upmarket titles the Daily Telegraph and Murdoch’s Times for all four general elections up to 1992. In contrast, Labour only had the support of one tabloid and one broadsheet during this period, the always loyal Daily Mirror and Guardian respectively.

However, during the miner’s strike of 1984 the Guardian and Daily Mirror joined the right wing press in becoming hostile towards the miners and supporting the government. This is a true testament as to how right wing the press had become in the 1980s, as the only support the miners had was from the small far left publication the Morning Star.

Margaret Thatcher could rely on the right wing press, particularly the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, to support her government throughout her premiership, according to Andrew Marr:

“... papers like the Sun and the Sunday Times proved far more effective public advocates of her (Thatcher’s) revolution than most Tory politicians. She in turn courted them and used them against nay-sayers and ‘wets’ in her own government.”

- My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism, page 186, Andrew Marr

This suggests Margaret Thatcher could use the press as a tool to persuade the public to keep her in power and Murdoch’s publications were even more effective than individuals in her own party in doing this. In fact, it appears Thatcher had such a grasp on the press that she could use it to discredit ‘wets’ in her own government, a term used by Thatcher to describe those who supported the ‘one nation’ consensual approach to politics often associated with Benjamin Disraeli (definition of a ‘wet’ from Dictionary of British Politics, page 296, by Billy Jones).

So the alignment of a right wing press from 1979 was largely down to the political beliefs of the most powerful proprietor (in terms of newspaper circulation) Rupert Murdoch.

“According to Neil (Andrew, editor of the Sunday Times from 1983 to 1994), ‘Rupert expects his papers to stand broadly for what he believes: a combination of right-wing republicanism from America mixed with undiluted Thatcherism from Britain’.”

- Power Without Responsibility, pages 70-71, James Curran and Jean Seaton

This goes a long way towards explaining the sudden right wing shift in the UK press in the initial period from 1979.

The relationship between the government and the press during the Thatcher era had its benefits for both parties involved, according to Raymond Kuhn:

“Prime Minister Thatcher, for instance, benefited from the adulatory support of an overwhelming majority of national newspapers during the 1980s. Not surprisingly, the government calculated that a system based largely on the rights of newspaper proprietors to run their newspapers as they saw fit was perfectly consonant with the Conservative’s electoral self-interests.”

- Politics and the media in Britain, page 33, Raymond Kuhn

So in return of remaining loyal to Thatcher the right wing press were largely rewarded by being exempt from reform and censorship. This was a very convenient relationship for both sides; the government could expect not to be criticised and held to account, whilst proprietors had much freedom from regulation and state intervention.

But as Britain moved into a new decade the political press alignment began to change. Margaret Thatcher was forced out of office by her own party in November 1990 and her successor John Major could not expect as much support from the press. Murdoch’s newspapers, the Sun and The Times, along with the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express, continued to support the Conservatives during the 1992 general election, but by the mid 1990s the press gradually became less supportive of the government and far more critical.

The turning point was perhaps ‘Black Wednesday’, September 16th 1992, when Britain was forced to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This embarrassing episode of devalued currency was met by heavy criticism from newspapers who had up until now been very loyal to the Conservative governments since 1979, with the Sun leading the backlash against the government the morning after Black Wednesday with the headline “NOW WE’VE ALL BEEN SCREWED BY THE GOVERNMENT”, a sharp contrast from the unquestioned support it gave the Conservatives during the election campaign just five months previously.

But the worst was still yet to come for John Major and his government when the press exposed the sleaze of established political figures in the Conservative party.

“In November 1993 Major circulated a memo inviting ministers to come up with ideas around the theme of ‘back to basics’, which was the focus of his Conservative Party conference speech. Interpreted by some right-wingers and journalists as a campaign for a return to family values and traditional sexual morality, it backfired badly. Between October 1993 and February 1994 eight MPs, some of them ministers, were exposed by the tabloids as currently having or having had illicit sexual affairs.”

- Dictionary of British Politics, page 258, Bill Jones

It was the tabloid press which brought these affairs to the attention of the public. However, the most extreme example of sleaze was exposed in late 1994 when The Guardian revealed that Conservative MP Neil Hamilton had received payment from wealthy business Mohamed Al-Fayed in return for asking questions in the House of Commons about Mr Al-Fayed’s rejected passport application. Although it was the consistently left wing Guardian newspaper that exposed the cash-for-questions scandal, this period in the political press showed that newspapers were once again the ‘fourth estate’ which held the powers that be to account and this was something that had been somewhat missing from the press during the Thatcher years.

By 1997, it would be fair to say that the political press could no longer be characterized by being pro-Conservative, after circulation leader the Sun ditched the Conservatives and began to support Tony Blair’s New Labour just weeks before the general election of that year. When the Sun switched its allegiance in March 1997, the Conservatives were hugely unpopular in the opinion polls (thanks largely to the economic repercussions of Black Wednesday and the sleaze stories all over the tabloid press), so this suggests that representation of politics in the UK press, particularly in the Sun is formed by public opinion.

Examples of the Sun following the mood of its readers can be found more recently too. In September 2009, with Gordon Brown’s Labour government 11 points behind the Conservatives in the latest opinion poll, the Sun claimed “Labour’s lost it” and made the “historic announcement” that after 12 years they will no longer be supporting Labour. Whereas rival tabloid paper the Mirror has always stuck by the Labour party, the Sun appears to float between Labour and the Conservatives, depending on who is more popular with the public and therefore more likely to win the next general election.

The Daily Mail and Murdoch’s other title The Times also dropped the Conservatives in favour of Tony Blair and Labour, so the pro-Conservative press of the 1980s which had played a key role in helping Margaret Thatcher stay in power was now no more.

By the mid 1990s press alignment had changed completely from the previous decade. Peter Hitchins, at the time a journalist for the Daily Express, described this transformation of newspaper’s political position as “a move from a ‘Tory’ press to a ‘Tony’ press” (Packaging Politics, page 142), as the increasing unpopularity of Major’s government benefited Tony Blair, who was being backed personally by The Sun and other publications.

On 17th March, 1997, just weeks before the general election, The Sun led with ‘The Sun Backs Blair: Give Change A Chance’, suggesting that the individual Tony Blair had made his Labour party electable. This was a huge contrast from five years previously, when The Sun carried out a ‘character assassination’ of the then Labour leader in the build up to the 1992 general election, which the Conservatives won by 65 seats.

The Sun were hugely critical of Neil Kinnock in this campaign and editor Kelvin McKenzie, under the watchful eye of Rupert Murdoch, would go to extreme lengths in order to ensure the electorate didn’t vote for Kinnock as Prime Minister. For example, weeks before polling day, The Sun ran a feature on “Kinnock flee zones” (Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1992), advising their readers of parts of world they could go into hiding if the Labour leader became Prime Minister. And on 9th April, 1992, the day of the general election the newspaper’s front page screamed “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights” (Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1992, page 144).

However, it wasn’t just the Sun who were using individuals to persuade readers who to vote for.

“Neither the Sun or the Mirror had a consistent practice of referring to a Kinnock/Major government rather than a Labour/Conservative government. But each attached the leader’s name to stories that were not in the direct sense ‘about’ him.”

- Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1992, page 144, Colin Seymour-Ure

The practice of referring to individuals rather than their respective parties perhaps suggest that representation of political culture in the 1990s had an added emphasis on personality. The Labour party under Kinnock in 1992 had changed by 1997 when Tony Blair faced the electorate, but the fact that it was Blair leading the Labour party and not Kinnock helped convince Rupert Murdoch that his publication should support them.

“Blair wasn’t Kinnock, whom Murdoch and his lieutenants thought wholly unequipped for the premiership… the Sun’s attitude to the Labour leader, if not to the Labour Party, noticeably mellowed.”

- Political Communications: Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997, pages 116-117, David McKie

It was no secret that Tony Blair and other key figures in the party worked hard to win the backing of Rupert Murdoch (there are number of entries in the diaries of Blair’s spin doctor Alistair Campbell, The Blair Years, in which the two meet Murdoch and his staff) and this contributed to Labour winning the 1997 general election and forming a government for the first time in 18 years.

However, Blair’s Labour government became notorious for using spin as a defence mechanism against the press. According to the Dictionary of British Politics (page 265), spin is “the process by which messages are changed or otherwise massaged by politicians, especially by specialist spin doctors.”

The government of the late 1990s and early years of the 21st century became synonymous with its excessive use of spin, with Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell and key cabinet minister Peter Mandelson in particular implicated as making New Labour the party of spin, but Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham had previously used this concept in British politics.

“Ingham pressed on her (Thatcher) his own carefully edited highlights and lowlights of the morning’s papers. As like as not, this would include the consistently supportive tabloid the Sun, which was vital for the almost sexual stimulation of the new C2D2 aspirant middle-classes that were to keep her in power for more than a decade…”

- The Death of Spin, page 16, George Pitcher

New Labour, above all Alastair Campbell, were quick to embrace this idea of spin by taking control of and dominating the news agenda to portray the government in the most favourable light possible.

“The government information machine which Campbell controls is by far the most powerful and coherent in British peacetime history. The attention to detail is awesome. No stone is ever left unturned so that the government can get the message it wants to the British voting public.”

- Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Rise of the Media Class, pages 1-2, Peter Osborne


The government’s concentration on the flow of information is an important part of political culture and was to the dismay of the press, whose job was made harder by the state paying every bit of attention to how news was released. But to the delight of many, New Labour’s use of spin backfired in September 2001 and in July 2002 Blair was forced to admit to the chairs of parliamentary select committees that his government “had been too obsessed with spin” (Dictionary of British Politics, page 265)

Press awareness that spin had been overused was triggered by the events on 11th September, 2001 when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in New York and Washington DC. On this day, government spin doctor Jo Moore sent an email around the Department of Trade and Industry that it would be a good day to bury any bad news, as it would be overshadowed by the tragic events in America on the day’s news agenda. This email was leaked to the press and met with “concern at such a cynical and opportunistic attempt to manage the news” (Packaging Politics, page 3, Bob Franklin).

Bob Franklin claims that this was when it became clear that the government had become so conscious of how they were perceived in the press that they had to dominate the news agenda:

“While this incident attracted widespread media attention and understandable public opprobrium, the significant revelation of this story of this story was not the moral misjudgement or culpability of an individual government spin doctor, but the extent to which politicians’ determination to set the news agenda, to use media to inform, shape and manage public discourse about policy and politics, have become crucial components in a modern statecraft which I wish to describe as the packaging of politics.”

- Packaging Politics, page 3, Bob Franklin

This idea of “packaged politics” has become a vital component of political culture and suggests that in the UK, particularly in the period from 1997-2001, it is not the press which set the news agenda, but in fact, the government.

More recently, the emergence of online blogging may mean that the political press are now as much the story as the politics they are supposedly reporting. A fresh example includes the Sun in November 2009, when the paper lambasted Gordon Brown after he had spelt the name of a soldier killed in Afghanistan wrong when writing a letter of condolence to his mother. The Sun used this to try and discredit Brown, but other titles such as the Guardian picked up on this and were highly critical of the way they exploited the grief of a soldier’s mother to attack the Prime Minister.

Media analysts such as Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade ensure that its not just the state that are held to account, but also the political press and this added online presence has changed the landscape of political culture. Also, stories such as the one the Sun ran recently which attacked the Prime Minister’s handwrittng indicate that political culture has shifted from emphasis on party policy to less trivial matters such as spelling names correctly.

In conclusion, I think that representation of politics in the UK press since 1979 can be divided into three periods. The press of the 1980s can most definitely be characterised as right wing, but shifted to the left when Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister in November 1990. Then, the early to mid 1990s saw an increased stress by the press of the individual who was governing or potentially governing, as we saw the characteristics of John Major, Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair closely examined by the political press. This focus on character has continued into third period of political culture I have looked at, the post 1997 years, which can be summed up as an age when UK governments and political parties appear to be obsessed with the management of news.

As for political culture, it has changed drastically since 1979 and we could say that the recent Sun story on Gordon Brown’s condolence letter exemplifies the fact that the priorities of what the UK press consider to be important today is very different to what was considered important 30 years ago.