Public Faces in Public Places
By DAVID WATT
WE are all going to get pretty sick of the word 'dynamic' (whatever that means) before we finally succeed in electing ourselves a new Government. So much is clear from a comparison of the first volley of political advert- isements in what must really be regarded as the next election campaign. It is true that we don't yet know much officially about 'Labour's new Plans for making Britain dynamic and prosper- ous again' except that they are sponsored by no less a person than Mr. Harold Wilson, but no doubt we shall hear more anon. And though the average reader may think that 286 column inches of newsprint are more than enough of the Tory Party's s • dynamic get ahead programme' for transport, industry and education, that doesn't mean we have heard the last of them. In other words, as a Liberal politician remarked rather bitterly the other day, 'this election looks like being a question of who can shout "modernisa- tion" loudest.' (He added that the Liberal voice in this chorus was not going to amount to much for the simple reason there is no cash available.) As keynotes go it is not a bad one, since if both sides go on like this they may end by acting °n what they say—though one naturally looks in vain for any suggestion that modernisation may be a very uncomfortable process. But if Labour and the Conservatives have reached the same general answer it is already evident that they have reached it by very different calcula- tions and have put very different glosses on the result.
We are lucky, on the Tory side, to have been vouchsafed a glimpse of the working of the minds of Lord Poole and Mr. Macleod in the document on the strategy of the campaign which they circulated last week to MPs and party organisers.throughout the country. When stripped of the usual flummery (does one detect the hand of Messrs. Colman, Prentis and Varley even here?) this amounts to an extremely shrewd appraisal of the biggest Tory. problem. How does one distract the minds of the electorate from the fact that the party has been in office for eleven years, of which Mr. Macmillan has been Prime Minister for six? How does one get over the healthy time-for-a-change feeling and remove the memory of unpleasantnesses such as unemployment and high rates? The answer, of course, is to brush aside the past with an airy kind of the hand—'people are sated with this kind of bickering and point-scoring'—and march abreast forward into a rosy future. It Will be immediately clear that this 'we-said- we-wouldn't-look-back' policy imposes some limitations and difficulties. In the first place the Field of attack is narrowed, and issues like the past record of Labour lose some of the attrac- tio.n: nor do the foreign policy issues lend them- selves very easily to the rosy future treatment. In other words, at this stage in the proceedings the nationalisation scare and the independent deterrent seem likely to play a smaller part than one had supposed. Another by-product of the P°11cY may be that we see rather less of the Prime Minister during this campaign than we did during the last—no more need be said of this difficulty than simply to imagine a vast picture of the Prime Minister above the inscrip- tion 'Harold Macmillan explains the new Con- servative plan for making Britain dynamic and prosperous.'
The first Tory advertisements last Sunday were no doubt by way of sighting shots—there is a long way and probably -nearly another half- million pounds to go—but they were obviously a conscientious attempt to put the master strategy into effect. The attempt has certainly shown up another major drawback to the approach. It is all very well to say 'no banging of drums, no high-sounding phrases: just hard-hitting factual evidence.' But, as a number of Tory MPs have been complaining this week, the result is apt to read more like a company prospectus than a clarion call to the new frontier. Apologists point out that at this stage the main task is to improve the morale of party workers or, as the Central Office circular puts it, 'alert local organ- isations.' Consequently the advertisements are preaching to- the converted. There is no reason, however, why even the party faithful must be bored stiff; certainly modifications will have to be made if the party is to 'tune in to the public direct.' Connoisseurs should note in passing the emphasis of the three separate advertisements (all in relatively safe party newspapers) last Sunday— transport for the commuting professional classes who are presumed to read the Sunday Telegraph, educational opportunities for the aspiring lower middle classes who are supposed to pore over the gossip column of the Sunday Express, and solid aims-of-industry stuff for the tycoons of the Sunday Times.
The spectacle on the Labour side is even more fascinating. The party is not only grappling with ks strategic difficulties; it is also grappling with its conscience. There are still many Labour mem- bers who take the grudging attitude to party advertising that since the Tories have been taste- less enough to go in for it they suppose Labour had better make some kind of show but that the whole business is somehow rather immoral and distasteful. This feeling has almost certainly reduced the effectiveness of the effort. Not only has it caused them to rely on their own publicity director and a few volunteer advisers from ad- vertising to direct the campaign, it has also helped to determine the amount of cash actually set aside for the operation: £150,000 is the amount in question. It is certainly larger than at the last election, but it is likely to be very considerably less than the Tory allocation for the same purpose.
So far as the content is concerned Labour seems to have calculated that by and large the Tories will be hanged by their own abysmal record, that the Labour programme is good and must be promoted, though there is no point in being too intellectual about it, and that the main problem is 'image-building.' There is no doubt a good deal in this thesis but it has been ominously interpreted in the first Labour advert- isement with its enormous picture of Mr. Wilson and its short, banal wording. 'Image-building' is a catch-phrase which is in real danger of be- coming an obsession amongst those Labour publicists who pride themselves on being 'with it.' There really are people influential in the party who are so contemptuous of the public that they believe the main task is to get people used to Harold Wilson's face and that if it is seen often enough people will develop a kind of affection for it. When the campaign was originally planned the layout did make some sense, for the face which was to appear was that of Hugh Gaitsketl, who had earned his image by hard experience (and, incidentally, by losing the last election). The rapid substitution of another face whoSe character is less accepted is a tricky operation, since in the absence of supporting evidence the public is liable simply to look at the face and to take the natural view, in the case of Mr. Wilson, that it is a picture of a man trying to start a fight in a. pub. Many Labour MPs, and not only those who do not particularly like Mr. Wilson's face, have been critical of this approach and are' prepared to concede that while neither party has got off to what can really be called a flying start the Tories' publicity methods are slightly more attuned to the mood of the public.
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