INTRODUCTION
This paper will argue that both the Conservative campaign as well as the perception of the Labour government were equally important for the result of the 1979 general election. It will first outline the Conservative campaign and show how it effectively targeted government failures to help curate a perception of the Labour party. It will then outline how the perception of the Labour party was shaped by its failings in government, as well as failings within its campaign strategy. Finally, it will argue that both elements operate symbiotically, and both are responsible for creating the perception of both parties which led to the election of a Conservative government.
THE CONSERVATIVE CAMPAIGN
The Conservative campaign of 1979 was noted to be a highly organised and well executed campaign, one which utilised key public perceptions of the salient issues being debated within the election, as well as cleverly utilising a strategy which placed its leader at the centre of media coverage. The utilisation of advertising agencies and the acceptance of external professionals within the campaign is arguably what won the campaign for the party.
The use of advertising agencies by the conservative campaign to effectively manage public opinion was an innovation which the Conservative party utilised very effectively during their campaign (Butler, David, Kavanagh 1980). Conservative Central Office, through use of focus group professionals and internal polls had found an association between the party and notions of emotionlessness or a lack of care towards the electorate. This realisation allowed the party to be more targeted in their election strategy and instead of focussing on policy, which was already fairly agreed upon by the electorate, the party focussed on building an image which moved the more detachable Labour vote towards themselves and adding to its base (Butler, David, Kavanagh 1980). The Conservatives used Saatchi & Saatchi advertising to focus public opinion on dissatisfaction with unemployment and other salient issues through posters such as “Labour isn't working” - as well as utilising broadcasting and filming techniques to target younger demographics (Worcester, Harrop 1982). This systematic method of public opinion analysis allowed the party to effectively design marketing to align or disalign target voters. One could argue that this methodology which focusses so much on qualitative evidence does not provide a positivist and effectively objective view of electorate views as it is so concentrated (Savigny 2007). However, the systemic nature of a focus group with an unbiased moderator and effective selection of the group itself leads to significant clarity, without which the Conservatives would not have been able to exploit gaps in public opinion which they could target.
Further to this, the party’s focus on the Thatcher as a leader, and effectively packaging her was key to how the party would keep its image professional during the campaign. 1979 as an election was noted for its heavy media centralisation on its leaders. In general, the presidentialisation of the media coverage of elections has been a common theme since the 1960’s with Harold Wilson’s campaign methodology which put himself at the centre of the party image (Butler, D. E., Stokes 1981). The Conservatives had a good understanding that this election would be no different and that media concentration across all parties would have to be on the leaders themselves and less on local MPs and cabinet politicians. Thatcher’s radical ideological stance and unwelcoming personality compared to Callaghan’s moderate and well-liked personality which through polling was shown to be preferred by the electorate meant that Conservative party officials strategically put effort into supporting her image (Butler, David, Kavanagh 1980). Because of this the Conservatives created a strategy known as the “Media Event”. A media event effectively was a campaign stunt which aimed to bring positive attention of the party to the paper, with no real appeal to policy or actual election issues (Mughan 2000). For example, Thatcher consistently had media events where she was portrayed doing things in a good light, such as walking around with a shopping basket, swinging a broom in a factory or even cuddling a baby lamb (Butler, David, Kavanagh 1980). All of these were staged but their goal was to build an image of the party leader in an election in which the media focussed heavily on the leaders themselves and less on the issues being discussed.
The Conservative's professional management of both their advertising campaign as well as their understanding of how to package a leader which they knew would not be as palatable as the opposition, was arguably what won the Conservatives the election. This organisation, which the Labour party were less keen on utilising, could be argued to be why the Conservatives were able to sweep such a victory on the polling day. However, it could be argued that the Conservatives' advantage given by the discontent held towards the Labour party especially due to the poor economic situation at the time, effectively guaranteed a win to the Conservatives, and their strategy merely ensured a significant majority. This paper will now examine this element of the election.
THE PERCEPTION OF LABOUR
While the professionalism of the Conservative campaign was certainly pronounced, there are several factors regarding the perception of the Labour party, without which the Conservatives’ strategy would have been less successful or would have even failed.
The perception of Labour between 1978 and 1979 was very poor, and polling showed that the public perception of labour was that of a party which had an unfavourable policy agenda, and an unfavourable track record. In the three months before the election, the Conservative’s lead increased from seven and a half percent to twenty percent between January and February, and then to fourteen percent in March (UK Polling Report 2023). The lead the Conservatives benefitted from, extended beyond general views of the party itself, and even views regarding Labour’s ability to achieve policy was also compromised. According to a Gallup poll in March 1979, Across: Common market, immigration, law and order, education, employment, cost of living, economy, strikes and labour relations and national health the party was disapproved by the public with 62% disapproving on national health policy and 48% on strikes and labour. In only old age pensions did the Labour party receive a 9% approval (Butler, David, Kavanagh 1980). Across inflation, unemployment and law and order the Conservatives lead by 5%, 1% and 7% (Butler, David, Kavanagh 1980). As such a large minority of the Labour voter base approved with Conservative policies on reforming trade union behaviour, a key issue during the election itself. This put Labour in a position of having to compete at a significant disadvantage. While some recovery had been made in the latter part of 1978 by Labour, Gallup found that 53% expected the economy to slide further, compounding an already weak perception of the party itself (Butler, David, Kavanagh 1980). Polling holds a highly complex relationship with the election results themselves. In general, polls have been shown to have a wide array of effects on election results. Specifically, many argue that polls push voters to change voting decisions depending on how they viewed the political climate (The House of Lords 2018). Potentially, this could mean polls themselves shift the public perceptions of the parties, and in turn could be an inaccurate measure of how receptive the public are to certain parties. While Polls certainly did become closer in the final week of the campaign, potentially prompting the mobilisation of quieter Conservative supporters at the last minute - Butler (1980) found that there was no real evidence to say that the polls themselves shifted public opinion towards the Conservatives, instead of the poor perception of Labour itself.
Polling does show that the public perception of Labour, while dynamic, was certainly not highly positive. The public in general were tired of having five years of Labour government as well as poor industrial relations which had stalled the country. It might be convincing therefore to state that the Conservatives would have won the election regardless of how much effort they put into their campaign. This paper takes issue with this view and will dispel it in the next section. Certainly, Labour’s lack of a positive perception would have been partially produced by their time in government, but it also was the product of Conservative campaigning.
PART 3: THE INTERPLAY OF BOTH
This paper will now investigate the interplay of both factors to produce the result. Having outlined the arguments for either side, it will now show that both factors contributed equally to the result of the election.First, the Conservative campaign would not have been successful had it not been able to utilise the poorer perception of Labour against them. The campaign was fundamentally built out of exploiting public sentiment towards the winter of discontent. Kavanaugh (1995) states that the Conservative campaign was built on “anticipatory campaigning”. This sort of campaigning focusses on anticipating weaknesses of both you and the opposition party. Kavanaugh then claims that effectively the Conservatives tried to pin the winter of discontent on the Labour party itself and attached the period to the Labour party firmly. This is certainly corroborated with the campaign slogans the Conservatives utilised, such as “Labour is not working” clearly aimed to attach the issue to Labour (Worcester, Harrop 1982). Tim Bell the chief strategist of Thatcher’s campaign also supported this by arguing that the overall strategy of the campaign was not necessarily to promote an image of the Conservatives being better, but rather the problems of the time were of a direct consequence of Labours policies and leadership (Worcester, Harrop 1982). Such a campaign was not possible if some sort of pessimism around Labour’s handling of the crisis did not exist. Kavanaugh (1995) does claim that potentially the party would not have needed such a campaign if the impression Labour left was so negative. However, this paper disagrees with this assertion. While the dissatisfaction towards Labour policy existed before the general election, the Conservatives had an understanding that such dissatisfaction had to be reinforced, with the increasing popularity of Callaghan as a leader, especially once the winter of discontent had come to its conclusion. Had the Conservatives not had such a campaign, they might not have kept such an impression present after the election itself. Beyond this, because the Conservative campaign was so strong, Labour itself was unable to catch up in building their own image. Had Labour been able to divert their image as a party who caused or mismanaged the winter of discontent, they might have been able to utilise the much better image of Callaghan compared to Thatcher to their further advantage. Norris (1999) outlines three key elements to a successful campaign. First a clear and solidified campaign strategy, effective campaign communication and clear civic engagement and an avoidance of negative campaigning. Looking at the Labour campaign, there were significant gaps across all these elements. In Callaghan’s decision to run the campaign so centrally, there was a significant disconnect between the main party machinery and political advertising professionals. This disconnect according to Delauney lead to a misdirection of the campaign and a decentralisation in the style of press advertising and a lack of continuity across the campaign (Worcester, Harrop 1982). Furthermore, because of this disconnect campaign communication was not efficient, with politicians such as Shirley Williams walking into live televised interviews without much planning or preparation because of the lack of coordination within the campaign. Finally, we find that the campaign was too focussed on negative campaigning and disengaged the public. Tim Delauney, who played a role in directing the campaign, admitted that campaign posters and party election broadcasts were too focussed on attacking the Conservatives themselves - instead of allocating time to building an image that centred around the issues they were tackling as well as their leader (Worcester, Harrop 1982). The strength of the Conservative campaign across all these domains meant that Labour was unable to catch up utilising Norris’ key factors of campaign success - even with the strength of their leader and closing the polling lead after the winter of discontent.
As such, both the impression of Labour, and the professional nature of Conservative campaigning in this election, were equally important and held a symbiotic relationship with each other. For the election result to come out the way it did, the Conservative campaign was built on and exploited Labour’s poor impression, and the Labour campaign ultimately had to struggle against a strong Conservative campaign as well as a weak internal strategy, resulting in a Conservative victory.
CONCLUSION
This essay has argued that both the professionalism of the Conservative campaign and the poor impression of the Labour party operated together to result in the Conservative victory, rather than just one of these factors being the primary reason. It has argued this through showing that the Conservative campaign relied on the poor impression of Labour to facilitate their campaign, and because such campaign reinforced sentiments about the Labour party, the party was unable to catch up.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BUTLER, D.E. and STOKES, D., 1981. Political change in Britain: forces shaping electoral choice. Comparative political studies, 14(1), pp. 31-47.
BUTLER, D. and KAVANAGH, D., 1980. The British General Election of 1979. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
KAVANAGH, D., 1995. Election campaigning : the new marketing of politics. Oxford, England ;: Blackwell.
MUGHAN, A., Professor, 2000. Media and the Presidentialization of Parliamentary Elections. Gordonsville: Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
NORRIS, P., CURTICE, J., SANDERS, D., SCAMMELL, M. and SEMETKO, H.A., 1999. On Message: Communicating the Campaign. 1 edn. London: SAGE Publications, Limited.
SAVIGNY, H., 2007. Focus Groups and Political Marketing: Science and Democracy as Axiomatic? The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9(1), pp. 122-137.
THE HOUSE OF LORDS, 2018-last update, Select Committee on Political Polling and Digital MediaThe politics of polling. Available: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldppdm/106/10602.htm [28/12/, 2023].
UK POLLING REPORT, 2023-last update, Opinion polling for the 1979 United Kingdom general election. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_1979_United_Kingdom_general_election [28/12/, 2023].
WORCESTER, R.M. and HARROP, M., 1982. Political communications : the General Election campaign of 1979. London: Allen & Unwin.