Public relations
A Thatcher suicide?
Paul Johnson
he public relations of the Thatcher min- i. istry are the most inept of any govern- ment I have known, and they grow steadily worse. The only way to judge PR is by results, and in this case the results speak for themselves, loudly and lamentably. Item: a fundamental reform of the National Health Service is necessary and urgent, but it has been ruled out for the foreseeable future because the Government has got itself branded as a bunch which would willingly butcher the NHS if only it dared. Item: local government is perhaps the least effi- cient element in Britain's entire admin- istrative machinery, and the GLC is, or was, by far the most unpopular unit in that element. The Government campaigned strongly during the 1983 election to abolish the GLC and other metropolitan counties as part of a much-needed, reform of local government. It received an overwhelming constitutional mandate to carry through this change. Since then, the Government's case, unanswerable though it is, has been knocked for six by a huge and brutal GLC propaganda campaign, financed by public money, and backed by the unions, the Labour Party and a great many other inter- ested parties. Most people have now been persuaded that the Government's Bill is anti-democratic, anti-London, wicked and, above all, quite unnecessary. There has been an almost total failure to put the Government's arguments to the public. As if this were not bad enough, we now face the distinct possibility that the Govern- ment will lose the PR battle over the miners' strike. Until a week or two ago, I would have thought this was impossible. Arthur Scargill has no case at all, in logic, economics or morals. What he is saying, in essence, is that 200,000 miners have a divine right to jobs in perpetuity, irrespective of what it costs the taxpayer, the price of the coal they mine, and whether or not it can be sold. What is more, these 200,000 also have the right to much higher wages, to shorter hours, longer holidays, and conditions of work which will virtually double the cost of employing them. Britain's coal, far from being a national asset, is a national liability, and Scargill's campaign will make it more so. He proposes to raise the cost of each miner to the nation from £10,000 a year to about £20,000 a year. And he intends to achieve this result by denying the democratic rights of members of his union and by imposing his will on the country by physical force.
You would have thought that even a government as hopeless at PR as Mrs Thatcher's would have no difficulty in deal- ing with such a preposterous case — helped, moreover, by the loathsome brutality of Scargill's stormtroopers seen nightly on TV. Yet it seems to me that the Government is gradually losing the PR battle here too. Scargill has many backers in the BBC and ITV; he puts his case plausibly if mend- aciously virtually every day — sometimes several times a day — on TV and radio. He is backed by innumerable union leaders, such as Ray Buckton, who also have easy access to the screen, and by all the propag- anda resources of the Labour Party. Neil Kinnock may hate and despise Scargill, but he and his colleagues have to speak up for their paymasters, and they do so, continual- ly.
Meanwhile, the Government, bound by its policy of non-intervention in the dispute, remains silent. Mrs Thatcher seems to-think that the arguments in the dispute speak for themselves, and that Scargill is bound to lose. Alas, that does not follow at all. Peter Walker also keeps silent, barring the occa- sional answer to questions in the Com- mons. It is his policy which the Government has followed throughout the dispute, a 'masterly inactivity', low-profile strategy, and since he is an extremely devious and ambitious fellow, I sometimes wonder if his object throughout — perhaps only sub- consciously formulated in his own agile mind — is to use the dispute to destroy Mrs Thatcher as well as Scargill.
Mrs Thatcher has been twice elected with clear mandates. These include bringing the unions to book and imposing a bit of peace and quiet on our streets. What the public now sees is Scargill and his mobs smashing up the economy and treating the law with contempt, while the Government does absolutely nothing, leaving all the work to the police. Mrs Thatcher may say that this is a monstrous misrepresentation of the facts. That may be so, but my summary is how the crisis is perceived by a growing number of people, most of whom are, or were, well- disposed to her. If the perception is wrong, then it is entirely the fault of the Govern- ment's PR machine.
One says 'machine', but that implies coordination, purpose, drive. No such things exists in the present Government. The Number 10 PR set-up is more adept at mak- ing enemies that keeping friends. One of the most powerful editors in Fleet Street, a warm admirer of Mrs Thatcher, recently told me a gruesome tale of the kind of brush-off he gets from these self-important flunkeys. As for the overall coordination of Government policy-presentation, that has been a farce from start to finish. At least in the days of Angus Maude, it was the prin- cipal task of a senior minister. Then it was appended to the duties of the Leader of the House, being performed, or rather not per- formed, by Francis Pym and then John Bif- fen. Following criticism, it was shoved onto Viscount Whitelaw, presumably on the ground that he has not got enough to do. It would be difficult to think of anyone less qualified to make effective propaganda of the kind needed to beat ruthless operators like Scargill and Ken Livingstone. Mrs Thatcher has been unusually pig- headed over this issue. She must be made to understand that it is no use employing the brilliance of Saatchi and Saatchi to win the electoral battle, if you then let a booby like Willie Whitelaw lose the five-year war that follows. Electoral victories are only a means to an end: the end is good government. And good government is impossible today with- out intelligent, professional and sustained public relations. It is tragic to see an ad- ministration which, in essentials, is well- founded, hastening towards disaster for lack of the skill to put its case.
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