Crusted Agent to Media Expert: The Changing Face of Campaigns

Abstract

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.

With the growth of the mass media political communciation has become an increasingly important element in the effective application of political power … What is needed now is a greater awareness of what is being done by those who occupy themselves in communicating messages of a political character with an intention to persuade. Politicians as well as the press need to be more rigorous in seeking out who are the people behind the campaigns and leagues and lobbies. Party organisations should also be scrutinised to see who is exercising power in what way and by what right.

Lord Windlesham (1966)¹