BRITISH PARTY ELECTION BROADCASTS in the 1950S What Was the American Influence?
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BRITISH PARTY ELECTION BROADCASTS IN THE 1950S What was the American influence? Ralph Negrine The debate about the American influence on political communication practices worldwide has raised a range of issues about how such a process might work. Much of the research in the field, however, has examined possible influences on practices in the last quarter of the twentieth century. By then, it could be argued, common global practices had become established in many Western Democracies. The aim of this paper is to explore a period before these changes had taken place, namely the 1950s and the 1960s, when television was still in its infancy in both Britain and the US, when new and different practices were being tried out and a period in which it might still be possible to look at influences at the dawn of political broadcasting. By focusing on the emergence and development of a specific form of political communication, namely, dedicated, unmediated, paid-for or free party election communication, in the US and in Britain in this early period, it might be possible to examine if, and how, American practices might have influenced British ones. Using unpublished work drawing on a range of archives and personal interviews that focus on interactions across the Atlantic, this paper argues that in this period, the two countries developed a range of different practices that cannot easily lend support to the idea of Americanisation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need for more research into the domestic negotiations of transatlantic interactions. KEYWORDS party election broadcasts; Americanisation; political television in 1950s; American influence on election broadcasts; Grace Wyndham Goldie; political parties and pebs in the 1950s Introduction In the 2010 British general election, the leaders of Britain’s main political parties engaged in head-to-head debates for the first time. This was exactly 50 years after the televised KennedyÁNixon US presidential debates. That it has taken so long to make this happen is a testament to the enduring power of specific cultural and political considerations within the British political environment, but it is also a reminder of how far ‘behind’ other countries British practices were since France and Germany have had such debates since the 1970s. Whether this commonality can be explained by referring to a version of the idea of Americanisation (see Blumler and Gurevitch) or as evidence of the emergence of a ‘hybrid’ model of modern campaigning styles (Plasser and Plasser 350) is still a matter of debate. What is less a matter of debate is the fact that by the twenty-first century, a particular almost universal model of ‘modern campaigning’ had become established in modern democracies (Swanson and Mancini). Much more intriguing as a research question is whether one can identify when and how the processes of imitation or convergence took place. As I shall argue below, much research into the emergence of commonality draws on work undertaken from the Media History, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2011 ISSN 1368-8804 print/1469-9729 online/11/040389–15 # 2011 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2011.602858 390 RALPH NEGRINE mid-1960s onwards by which time change*in political parties, in television practices, in leadership styles*had already taken place. Little, if any, research has focused on ‘transatlantic media interactions’ (Wiener and Hampton 6) in the early days of television when election campaigning on television first emerged on both sides of the Atlantic and on whether those ‘interactions’ can reveal something about the imitation, adoption or adaptation of practices from one to another context. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to explore the emergence of a specific form of political communication*Party Election Broadcasts (pebs)*in Britain in the 1950s and early 1960s with a view to identifying the different processes (and ‘interactions’) that fed into their development and, in so doing, reveal the direction and significance of flows of influences, if any, from the US. Whilst the focus on pebs as dedicated, unmediated and free election communication may seem rather narrow since it is only a minor part of the totality of political communication, it is important to remember that they represent the only ways in which political parties could communicate in an unmediated fashion with voters. In Britain, as in the US, they were/are the vehicles for the parties to use as they wish. Significantly, they are also those moments when political parties might be tempted to copy the skills and the professionalism of ‘foreigners’ especially if they were believed to be working in a more sophisticated and developed broadcasting and political environ- ment such as the US. It follows that by looking at the nature of ‘transatlantic media interactions’ in the 1950s in the context of the development of election campaigning on television in both countries, it might be possible to shed some light on flows and directions of influences, specifically and discussions of Americanisation more generally. This paper is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the broad outlines of the Americanisation thesis and the research questions. The second explores the ‘transatlantic media interactions’ in the context of the development of political broad- casting and the third, the concluding section, raises key questions for further research. Studying the American Influence The broad outlines of discussions relating to developments of modern campaigning practices, of which political communication practices are a critical part, are fairly straightforward and essentially contrast positions that favour accounts of exogenous change, that is the American influence, and those that insist on the importance of endogenous factors. For some, the use of the idea of Americanisation is justified because practices observed elsewhere, including Britain, ‘have been inspired by or (are) variations on techniques that emerged first in the United States’ (Swanson and Mancini 248). Those who question the appropriateness of the term point out that countries other than the US can also be sources of innovations and their importance must not be underestimated (Swanson and Mancini 249). Furthermore, that one country has adopted practices from another country may be the result of factors that favour the adoption of such practices or even of technological change. So, whilst the ‘diffusion theory’ of Americanisation is essentially a unidirectional model whereby countries ‘imitate, import or adapt’ American practices, it contrasts sharply with those who argue that the Americanisation of election communication is ‘the consequence of an ongoing structural change in politics, society and the media system’ (Plasser and Plasser 16), that is of modernisation whereby societies BRITISH PARTY ELECTION BROADCASTS 391 become similar in their political and social organisations. As Plasser and Plasser (18Á19) also point out: In ‘adopting selected innovations and techniques of American election campaigns’, two different processes might be involved. One is ‘the shopping model’ whereby certain practices are selected and used. This gives rise to ‘hybridisation’ where new and old, domestic and foreign, practices are combined. The other is the ‘adoption model’ in which American practices are simply adopted in such a way as to ignore domestic considerations. This gives rise to ‘standardisation’‘following the US role model of electioneering’. Whilst such discussions have pre-occupied many, they have mainly drawn on research and literature from the 1960s, or later, and to a time when political and broadcasting systems and communication practices had already to an extent converged. It could thus be argued that from the vantage point of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s most of the ‘features of modern campaigning’ (Plasser and Plasser 350) such as the centrality of television had already become well-established in Western democracies. In which case, seeking to identify directions of influence was likely to be problematic since it would probably focus on processes that had already emerged. To seek to study directions of influence, even from the US to Britain, one ought to go to a period when practices of political communication were in their infancy so that one could begin to observe how different practitioners in politics and communication interacted and responded to changes and challenges. The 1950s and early 1960s is just such a period. Apart from the fact that in both countries television was just emerging as a mass medium, the two broadcasting systems*and the approaches to political commu- nication in general*were at their most different: Britain had, until 1955, a non-commercial public service monopolistic broadcasting system, the US a commercial and competitive one (Goldie Facing 311Á13; Blumler and Kavanagh). When it came to election campaign- ing, whilst political consultants and advertising experts were commonly used in the US, advertisers*and not consultants-did not get involved in British election campaigning until 1959 (Negrine). Furthermore, in 1950s Britain, political parties were still very dominant political forces and the leaders of the parties occupied a less-presidential role than they do today (see Mughan). Discussions about the changing ideological nature of European political parties*something that made them similar to American political parties-only emerged towards the end of this period (see Epstein; Kirchheimar). To a significant extent, then, those