Which political party responded most effectively to innovations in political communications and why? Flashcards
Change-over to sound-film in Britain
1930-2
By 1932 all newsreels also available w soundtracks
Rowson 1934 survey of the cinema-industry
4305 registered cinemas in England, Scotland, Wales
Average weekly admissions = 18.5 million
British population 1934
45.09 million
1939 cinema audience
weekly average ranging from 20-23 mill
Areas of highest cinema concentration
Industrial areas of Scotland, Lancashire, North of England, South Wales, Yorkshire, Midlands
43% cinema admissions for seats of 6d or less
Social Survey of Merseyside
Confirmed manual working-class went to the cinema more frequently than those immediately above them
1938-9 daily newspaper circulation
10.48 million
Number of radio licenses 1938-9
8.95 mill
Newsreel companies
Gaumont-British Movietone Pathe Paramount Universal
each produced two newreels a week
CT Cummins, editor of paramount
nothing must be included which the average man will not like
Newsreel censorship?
Not technically subject, but not a right taken for granted. Editors of diff companies met to discuss policy regarding touchy subjects
Newsreels and political criticism
Newsreel companies went out of their way to avoid giving any aids to critical viewings. Stories constructed to move as fast as poss
The press and the party system between the wars-C. Seymour-Ure, 1975, in Gillian Peele, Chris Cook, The Politics
Of reappraisal, 1918-1939 ArticleFurther
Diff between old journalism and the new. The one = highly political and linked financially to the party system; the other = broader in range and based in the market economy
dislocation of the press and the party system
Overall trend = towards a set of dominant national newspapers, squeezing out the provincials; whereas before the war the nationals were more accurately described as ‘metropolitan’ and the provincials flourished
Growth of newspaper chains
decline of metropolitan evening press
decreasing party competition in the provincial press
less scope for expression of regional particularisms
Less opportunity for the reflection of nuances of debate inside the parties about policy and personalities
Labour party growth unaccompanied by corresponding devel of Labour rpess
The press and the party system between the wars-C. Seymour-Ure, 1975, in Gillian Peele, Chris Cook, The Politics
Of reappraisal, 1918-1939 ArticleFurther
Diff between old journalism and the new. The one = highly political and linked financially to the party system; the other = broader in range and based in the market economy
dislocation of the press and the party system
Overall trend = towards a set of dominant national newspapers, squeezing out the provincials; whereas before the war the nationals were more accurately described as ‘metropolitan’ and the provincials flourished
Growth of newspaper chains
decline of metropolitan evening press
decreasing party competition in the provincial press
less scope for expression of regional particularisms
Less opportunity for the reflection of nuances of debate inside the parties about policy and personalities
Labour party growth unaccompanied by corresponding devel of Labour press
By 1939 party leaders had lost control over the finances of the press
Papers decreasing and circulations soaring
New breed of owners and managers had partisan opinions but were not party men
Economic pressures all worked towards concentration of ownership and a reduction in the number of newspapers.
At the same time they confirmed the depoliticisation that had started with the original attempt to attract a new readership
Politics became subordinate
The newspaper developed a broad social function, as distinct from a narrowly political one
Now, newspapers’ political loyalties rested only on sentiment.
Newspaper proprietors untrammelled by party machinery
With Beaverbrook and Rothermere the dislocation of the press and party system came close to the actual displacement of party by newspaper
Decline in provincial mornings
43 in 1919
25 in 1939
growth of national papers
Circulation nearly doubled in 20 yrs
facilitated by growth of Manchester as a centre for printing northern editions, pioneered by Northcliffe w Daily Mail in 1900
Lack of national paper domination
Northeast, well under half families taking a national newspaper in 1935
Decline of the Liberal press
Before the war, 3 London morning papers vs 7 Conservative papers; 2 evening papers vs 4
By 1930, Conservatives 6 morning and 2 evening papers; Liberals 1 of each
1920s parties continuing to subsidise papers
Lloyd George Daily Chronicle ownership
Morning Post purchase by Conservative syndicate incl Duke of Northumberland in 1924
1930s decline of parties’ subsidisation of papers
Morning post no new supporters when tottered again in 1937
National Labour efforts to counter Labour hostility 1931 on
fortnightly News-Letter
1932 weekly - Everyman
The Economist, halfway through the interwar period
With a few notable exceptions, the British Press consists no longer of “organs of opinion”
introduction of tabloid journalism
1935, Daily Mirror
Rothermere and Beverbrook independent political action
anti-waste campaign
Empire Free Trade movement, 1930. Threatened Baldwin’s position as Conservative leader
populist political style - seen as a threat by establishment.
Short articles and pungent prose, favouring assertion more than argument, with no room for elaborate syntax of exposition and qualification
The Conservative Party and Film Propaganda between the Wars-Hollins, T. J.1981
Left Wing Film ‘Movement
little significance as contemporary influences upon the beliefs of the general public, being limited in exhibition almost exclusively to the converted, at political meetings and film societies.
official labour party,
conservative and slow to act in matters of party publicity, and continued until I938 to rely on traditional methods for direct politicalmeetings, pamphleteering and street-corner oratory were becoming increasingly unsuited to the changed conditions of the mass electorate
conservative party, unlike the labour, was always most progressive where its own organisation was concerned.
Conservative Central Office’s principal publicity devices had, until 1925, been pamphleteering, the use of professional street and public meeting speakers, and the encouragement of good relations with the sympathetic press, including the provision of editorials for such papers as would take them.
Local constituency associations organised meetings, fetes and other events designed both to raise money and to stimulate interest in the party’s activities
is only by the production and use of our own cinema vans that they can be placed before the public, the managers of cinematograph theatres being unanimous in their opposition to the exhibition of any film of a political character
with the reduction of ordinary Central Office speakers and pamphleteering, the number of people reached by conservative publicity probably did not increase greatly
Conservative speakers
6 months Nov 1928-April 1929, speakers’ section arranged 13,849 days of engagements for ‘staff’ speakers
slide lecture lending library had been established for use at local Conservative constituency meetings
1924
Conservative introduction of use of cinema van
August 1925
audiences of over 1000
operator would show films for only half an hour, give an hour’s speech himself and answer questions for an hour
Conservative Central Office commissioning films
1926
cartoons lampooned the opposition leaders, showing MacDonald and Snowden as incompetent plumbers or Lloyd George as a garage mechanic whose hamfisted attentions ruined the ‘car of state’ driven by John Bull.
Conservative film propaganda by 1930
twelve outdoor cinema vans and twelve smaller vans carrying portable equipment for indoor use
Labour refusal of cinema van
1933 the Daily Herald offered the labour party and T.U.C. jointly one van, which was rejected on the grounds of excessive running costs
no other party used cinema van until
1939
Formation of Conservative and Unionist Films Association (CFA)
May 1930
party’s new chief publicity officer, Sir Patrick Gower, replaced Central Office’s Film department with the independent but party financed CFA, under new honourary organising director, Clavering
largely responsible for the good relationship that existed between the party and the commercial cinema industry throughout the 1930s.
Film magnate
National Publicity National Publicity Bureau, which co-ordinated national government publicity, established its own film department
1935
Conservative conviction of film propaganda’s success
CFA’s annual budget always equalled, and in 1934 was triple that of the Publicity Department itself. In contrast the number of staff speakers was considerably reduced after 1931, whilst the mid-i 930s appear also to have seen a loss of confidence in the traditional methods of pamphleteering and local constituency canvassing
Conservative film propaganda’s reach
journal ‘World Film News’ estimated that in the months immediately prior to the 1935 General Election 1.5 million people saw films from party and National Publicity Bureau vans.
Newsreels and party politics
193 i, before the election, Sanger of Movietonequoted with approval the opinion of a Movietone agent in Cardiff that: ‘British Movietone News is definitely helping the National Party’
Undoubtedly the national government received the bulk of publicity accorded by the newsreels to the opposing parties in the 1931 election
March 1935, a clear but highly secret link between Isodore Ostrer of Gaumont British and the National Publicity Bureau was established.
At the prime minister’s request, the whole emphasis of a projected story on German rearmament was altered in order to stress that the country stood for peace, and to conclude with a speech by Sir John Simon, for the government.
Written on the Wind: The Impact of Radio during the 1930s-Alice Goldfarb Marquis1984
critique of radio in Britain tended to be the opposite of that in America: the BBC was too serious, too highbrow, too dull. The announcers, despite (or perhaps because of) elocution sessions with Professor Lloyd James, sounded like ‘a sort of superior being, educated at a public school and talking down to you’
severest criticism of the BBC was that it never reached the working class
The BBC charter was a careful compromise among major parties designed to keep radio out of politics. It guaranteed that while the BBC would not become the mouthpiece of a particular government, it would remain the creature, albeit thinly insulated, of government
Administratively, the BBC was under the Postmaster General, who collected and disbursed license fees. Its charter required it to transmit whatever a department of government gave it and to suppress whatever the Postmaster General ordered it to; in an emergency, it could be requisitioned by the government. Only self- restraint by government in exercising these powers gave the BBC a veneer of independence. A General Advisory Council, set up in 1934, was described as ‘about 30 eminent Victorians
(of America) Radio also set a standard for cultivated speech; dialects and regionalisms began to disappear from everyday discourse. In a larger sense, radio unified the country in speech, tastes, customs and moral standards as no other medium ever had or until television - ever would
one can conclude that in the realm of world affairs during this crucial period, the British listener was not well served by radio. By its charter no less than by the social bent of its personnel, the BBC was nudged toward betraying its chief responsibility to its listeners: to inform.
BBC chartered as a public corporation
1927
Sir Tyrone Guthrie, who was an early participant in BBC drama workshops
felt that ‘the BBC has subordinated the question of popular appeal to Principles of Moral Philosophy
Churchill conscious of radio’s political potency
He brought a typed script to the studio and asked Grisewood to listen and critique.
BBC’s competition
. In 1930, the International Broadcasting Co. was formed specifically to beam commercial programmes from France to the British Isles. In June 1931, the Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Radiodiffusion, a French-financed firm, began to blanket Europe with commercial programmes on 100-watt transmitters. By October 1931, Radio Normandie at Fecamp enveloped all of southern England, playing hit records on Saturday nights in what the BBC called a ‘blatant American manner’
British listeners to foreign stations
by 1935 fully 50 per cent of British listeners were tuned to foreign stations on Sundays and 11 per cent on weekdays
BBC’s reach
In 1925, some ten million listened to the king opening the Empire Exhibition at Wembley
1933, the BBC began a series called Scrapbook, ‘a powerful whiff of nostalgia’, which, though no surveys prove it, drew an estimated thirty million listeners in 1937
BBC’s poor news reporting
When Anthony Eden resigned as Foreign Minister on 20 February 1938, in protest against appeasement of Hitler, CBS broadcast to
America his speech to his constituents at Stratford-upon-Avon. The BBC did not, and hundreds of Britons phoned CBS’ London office asking if they could hear the broadcast.
Rhetoric and politics in Britain, 1850-1950-H.C.G. Matthew, 1987
How did politicans cope with the post-1867 electorate?
At a local level, there was a marked development
of political clubs, small versions of the House of Commons,
flourishing in many towns and villages
The local parliaments show that the dribe toward oratory
was self-generated, and not merely an imposition from above
the old days of the 1840s and 1850s when leisured debates on the ‘condition of the people’ took up to ten days gave way
to Parliaments dominated by the details of committee work.
Government majorities, except at certain times such as
1885-86, became after 1867 more predictable: the role of
rhetoric in the Commons in immediately influencing the
survival of the ministry as in the 1850s and 1860 became
less important, and consequently less exciting for newspaper readers.
The extension of the franchise
made extra-parliamentary speechmaking necessary; the
continuing limits on the electorate made it effective.
thoroughness and regularity of the stump ‘season’ was new.
In the mid-century, politicians, as a rule, visited their
constituencies, and rarely any other than their own constituencies,
at election times or for some special occasion.
Palmerston, following his mentor, Canning,
was an unsung pioneer, with a series of public speeches in
the 1850s, but he was not at first followed up. Gladstone’s
speeches between 1864 and 1868 in Lancashire were the most prominent examples of a growing tendency of Cabinet Ministers to talk on a wide range of political subjects directly to the people.
two audiences: first the audience actuall present and,
second, the audience to be reached through the press. The
latter was clearly the more important.
MP’s position in league table of speech reporting was of great importance for reputation.
If could get from summary to ‘full’ report category, could substantially improve political position. Commons import
Lloyd George Boer War attacks on Chamberlain leading to incr prestige
Liberal prioritisation of speeches/ speechmaking. Importance of belief in rational argument - class and personal interest not the determining factor in voting behaviour. Speechmaking and good press coverage essential to strategy
Vast new electorate and changing press structure meant that the complex structure of extra-parliamentary national debate never recovered rude late-Victorian health
Incr politicians’ words reached only the ‘professional’ audience
Partisanship of reporting increased markedly
During the inter-war years chief means of political communication of the late Victorians had become the whim of an agency editor
Number of mock houses of commons
Blanchard Jerrold estimated in 1883 that there were
over a hundred Houses of Commons (including four each in
Glasgow and Manchester) with about 35,000 members
Date from which most famous speeches were extra-parliamentary
1872
1879 Biograph’s assessment of changes in the press
Provincial journalism entered upon a new phase with the repeal of the paper duties and the extension of the telegraph system. Daily newspapers soon became a necessity for all large centres … and with their establishment
a change has followed, which Mr. Gladstone was, perhaps, the
first public man to recognise
Disraeli’s extra-parliamentary speeches
Manchester in 1872, which lasted three and a half
hours (during which he drank two bottles of white brandy,
believed by the audience to be water) and at the Crystal
Palace in London, also in 1872: both of these speeches were,
significantly, to assemblies of Tory Party workers rather than
to open audiences.
Speech series directly to the electors on a
big scale began
Gladstone’s orations on Bulgaria in
1876-77
By this date, regular tours of autumn speeches - mini-Midlothians - had become the rule for most MPs
1890s
Predominant importance of the second audience of the press
meeting in St George’s Hall, Liverpool, in 1868: Gladstone was shouted ·
down by the Tories in the hall: ‘He proceeded, however,
peaking to the reporters who were just below him
est. of Press Association
London in 1868 to act as
a central news agency for the expanding, largely Liberal
provincial press
Telegraph Act
1868 - agencies
such as the PA and Exchange Telegraph, which mainly acted
for the London paper from its establishment in 1872,
received very favourable rates of transmission
System for assessing demand for speeches
each week each paper got a list of ‘fixtures’ - the whips
arranged between themselves that there should not be classes
such as Gladstone and Salisbury peaking the same evening,
- and on Monday the papers sent in orders for the coming
week. There were three kinds of report, (a) a verbatim (sometimes
as much a fi e columns, (b) ‘full’ (first-person report
but judicious! trimmed and shortened to about 1112 columns
from the verbatim), and (c) third-person summary, usually
half a column. On the basis of the papers’ order, the agency
decided which of these sorts of report to arrange
1886 press change
British press became predominantly Unionist
having been overwhelmingly Liberal. In 1884, there were 518
Liberal newspapers to 293 Tory; by 1901 the figures were
403 Liberal, 456 Unionist
After about 1888 independent papers had on the whole
become definitely Unionist in tone
London press more dominant by…
1870s and 80s
Liberals, Boer War and the press
Boer War of long-term help to the Liberals by promoting to the ‘full’ level several unknown Liberal politicians
Liberal leadership incr distance from rank-and-file
Decline of Whiggery, loss of Chamberlain
Rhetoric incr depended upon as link w the party as well as the electorate
Gladstone, Morley, Asquith - controlled no machine, spent no money on politics, no base in localities. Absence of formal party structure
WT Stead
introduced new techniques into Br press in 1880s, inspired by US press
Radio reach by 1939
75% of households
Lloyd George on broadcasting
vital to enable the vast mass of the electorate to know what the issues were… he did not know of any other way by which [politicians] could get at them
