Margaret Scammell

The odd couple: marketing and Maggie

Margaret Thatcher enjoys an international reputation as a conviction politician. In her latter years as Prime Minister, and ever more since her resignation she has come to symbolize “principled politics” in contrast both to her own successor and her political opponents, who are perceived more ambiguously, bowing to public opinion and/or party pressure. Yet, in her early years as leader, it was Mrs Thatcher who was criticized as a “packaged politician”. Argues that she entrenched political marketing in modern British politics and her campaigns provided the model which her opponents have now followed. Set within a historical context, Examines the uses, successes and failures of marketing under Thatcher and argues that she managed to reconcile the superficially contradictory couplet of marketing and political conviction.

Government Publicity: Managing the News

Nowhere in British politics during the 1980s was the use of marketing techniques more extensive or more contentious than in the field of government publicity. Government’s relations with the media, particularly with television and the Westminster correspondents’ lobby, and the allegedly improper use of the Number 10 Downing Street press office, became political issues during Mrs Thatcher’s second administration. In her third term, the scale and nature of government advertising became matters of public debate and investigation by both the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury and Civil Service Committee. In the period 1987–9 government advertising attracted more criticism, comment, controversy, parliamentary questions and debate, than at any time since the Second World War. More than 100 parliamentary questions were asked on the subject in the session 1987/88 alone.

Government Advertising: Information or Propaganda?

The Central Office of Information (COI) was and remains the channel for the vast bulk of government publicity expenditure. It was established in 1946 to provide a central government agency for the supply of paid-for publicity material, services and advice. It was a peacetime version of the wartime Ministry of Information, shorn of censorship and security duties and with a reduced propaganda commitment overseas.

Marketing Triumphant: Falklands Fallout

Thatcher’s progress to the 1983 election landslide and, seemingly, complete dominance of the political scene could not have been predicted in the early months of her tenure. The government’s ‘honeymoon’ with the voters quickly began to wane. Inflation soared, aided by the doubling of VAT in Chancellor Howe’s June 1979 budget, and so too did unemployment, climbing to more than 2.5 million by April 1981.1 The Social Democratic Party, launched in March 1981, threatened to break the mould of British politics with two sensational by-election results, culminating in Shirley Williams’ win at Crosby in November. Opinion polls in the autumn of 1981 showed Thatcher as the least popular prime minister in modern British history: only 25 per cent of the public were satisfied with her performance and 62 per cent dissatisfied, according to Gallup. In December, the Tories trailed the SDP/Liberal Alliance by 27 per cent (23–50 per cent).2

The Image-Makers Unbound: Marketing in the Post-Thatcher Era

Political presentation in Britain reached a new milestone in the post-Thatcher period ending in the April 1992 general election. This was the most ‘professional’ campaign in British post-war history in that all the main political parties adopted many of the techniques and disciplines associated with political marketing. Labour offered, after 1987, the most ostentatious example in post-war history of a party remodelling its product in line with market research. The Tories ran a consciously marketing-inspired ‘branding’ exercise to distance Major’s party from Kinnock’s. The Liberal Democrats, guided by the pressure group veteran Des Wilson, mounted a highly disciplined communications campaign, in total contrast to the muddled shambles of 1987.

Thatcher’s Legacy: The Americanisation of British Politics?

Political marketing is now clearly woven into the fabric of British politics. It has been adopted by right and left of the spectrum, trade unions, pressure groups and charities. Thatcher’s Conservative Party led the way with the hiring of Saatchi & Saatchi in 1978 and the incorporation of marketing expertise at high levels of influence in the party organisation. By the late 1980s Labour had become the new marketing leaders, Peter Mandelson its driving force and the red rose its clearest symbol. Where once the Labour leaders had reacted with alarm and contumely to the ‘marketing of Margaret’, by the early 1990s the tables had turned. The Tories accused Labour of reducing politics to slick and phoney images, John Major renounced the image-makers and Harvey Thomas parted company with Conservative Central Office (CCO) complaining that the party was neglecting fundamentals of communications.

The Rise of Thatcher: Political Marketing’s Quantum Leap

Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party on 11 February 1975. Her election, as first woman leader of a major British political party, was an outcome that few predicted even a few months previously. The Conservative Party had been in open disarray since its ignominious defeat a year previously in the ‘Who governs?’ general election of February 1974. Norman Tebbit’s autobiography, Upwardly Mobile, makes no attempt to hide the humiliation many right-wing Tories felt at Heath’s policy U-turns, electoral tactics and unsuccessful attempt to cobble together a coalition with the Liberals.1 Mrs Thatcher, however, was few people’s ideal candidate for the leadership. Patrick Cosgrave, then of the Spectator and later a part-time writer for Mrs Thatcher and her biographer, was one of the first to champion her cause in an article soon after the February 1974 general election. Thatcher was apparently embarrassed at the suggestion.2 Her own loyalty was to Sir Keith Joseph, and she did not believe that a woman leader would be acceptable to the party. ‘I don’t see it happening in my time,’ she said in an oft-cited answer to a reporter from the Liverpool Daily Post in June 1974.

Introduction: Propaganda and Political Marketing

In the early 1980s, particularly on the Left, commercial ‘marketing’ was seen as taking a strong and potentially sinister grip on British politics. Lady Thatcher was regarded as central, both at a personal level and as populist leader. The ‘marketing of Margaret’ provided the common currency of political discussion: the Iron Lady image, the tabloid press cult of Maggie, the personal details of appearance and image, the deepening of her voice, the dental work, the change in style of dress and hair-do, and the copying of President Reagan-pioneered techniques, such as the use of the ‘sincerity machine’ autocue, photo-opportunities and ‘sound-bites’. Thatcher was ‘a willing instrument of all the latest wizardry of the political salesman’, according to Guardian commentator Hugo Young.2 The Labour Party’s deputy leader, Roy Hattersley, attributed Thatcher’s success to a ruthless exploitation of the murkier arts of image building.

Crusted Agent to Media Expert: The Changing Face of Campaigns

Even a cursory examination of political campaigning in the limited electoral democracy of the Victorian era offers parallels with modern-day activities and dispels any nostalgic idea that the past provides a state of grace from which modern campaigners have fallen. H.J. Hanham comments on the personalisation of elections around the formidable figures of the major party leaders, Gladstone and Disraeli, ‘in much the same way as the Conservatives magnified the appeal of Sir Winston Churchill in 1945’.2 Election campaigning issues were usually few, and frequently there was just one national topic, such as the abolition of income tax (1874) or Irish Home Rule (1886). The campaigning slogan, ‘the cry’, was handed down by party leaders to their followers.

Towards the Permanent Campaign: the 1987 Election

By 1987 there was an air of invincibility and inevitability about the Conservatives. Yet the Tories only edged ahead in the polls in the early months of 1987, some six months before the election. Despite the massive 144-seat majority, the 1983–7 parliament was punctuated by a series of crises for the government and for Mrs Thatcher personally. The first major challenge arose with the miners’ strike of 1984/85. There can be little doubt that the government’s determination to win the strike entrenched the public image of Mrs Thatcher as a tough and resolute leader, yet there appeared to be scant reward in terms of popular support. Norman Tebbit noted somewhat ruefully in his memoirs: It is a pity that the Government made almost no political gain from one of the most important political events of my time in politics. Governments had walked in fear of a coal strike for decades. Ted Heath had destroyed his own Government, but it was the miners who delivered the coup de grâce in 1974. Margaret Thatcher’s government had broken not just a strike but a spell. Parliament had regained its sovereignty … I doubt if any other Prime Minister would have had the courage to win a coal strike, yet within weeks of that victory we suffered heavy losses in the local elections and the polls showed us in third place. No wonder the government’s friends bemoaned our poor communications.1