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CHARM 2017 Proceedings Staying in the Community but Leaving the Union 89 Jack Bunce and Neil Bendle (corresponding) Ivey Business School, Western University,Ontario, Canada Abstract Purpose - This research aims to better understand the communication strategies used by the political campaigns involved in the 1975 and 2016 UK referendums about leaving the European Community/Union. Design/methodology/approach - We combine a descriptive approach with text mining of materials related to the referendum. This involved digitizing leaflets from 1975 and comparing these to materials available on websites related to the 2016 referendum. We uncover word usage and examine how this changed between the campaigns. Findings - We note the role that the precise question wording played, the involvement of key participants, and the communication approaches used. Our text analysis suggests how the focus of the campaign changed in the four decades between 1975 and 2016. Research limitations/implications - The greatest limitation is the non-scientific sample of texts. As such our results are exploratory; we look for interesting features but do not provide a comprehensive and definitive assessment of all campaign activity. The practical implications are that the automated textual analysis method we employ has commercial application and great potential to aid future historical and comparative marketing research. How the campaigns changed over time gives an idea of each period’s big issues. We are also able to cast light on political marketing theory, specifically assumptions about voter decision making. Originality/value - Our topic is an important one at the intersection of politics and history. The comparison of similar marketing campaigns over time is a way to understand the evolution of marketing techniques in politics and beyond. Paper Type - Research Paper Our research looks at two referendums on the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe, one in 1975 and one in 2016. We describe key features of the campaigns and the communication strategies used. To better understand the messages used in the political campaigns we digitized print materials from the 1975 referendum on the European Community and downloaded data from the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum. We reviewed the official documentation used by the two official campaigns each year and some ancillary materials from political parties. This allowed us to understand areas of interest in both referendum, such as the role of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom (UK). We looked at the word use in both referenda seeking to uncover similarities and differences. From this material we are able to see clues to the messages used to sway the voters. Implicit in the use of messages by the campaigns is their views of what the voters care about, and the best way to communicate with the voters. Our approach is novel in that we are able to compare materials from a generation apart. We digitized materials from 1975 and analyzed this with materials from 2016 using text mining routines in Wolfram’s Mathematica, an advanced mathematical software that allows for programing and is ideally suited to textual analysis. We are able to analyze large amounts of text to see what the various campaigns were saying. Britain In Or Out Of Europe? The United Kingdom has had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with mainland Europe for many years. At various times a full involvement with the continent has been embraced. In such times the UK’s interests have been seen as irrevocably tied to those of the continent and foreign policy has revolved around maintaining influence over the affairs of the mainland. At other times the continent could be seen as an alien place, of little importance to the UK. A view exemplified by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Munich declaration in 1938. Chamberlain famously declared a proposed invasion of a European state a “quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know Staying in the nothing” (Faber 2008, page 356). Community but This ambivalence is encapsulated by the role played by the memory of the former Prime Leaving the Union Minister Winston Churchill in the 2016 referendum debate. Boris Johnson, widely seen as the leader of I those campaigning to leave, sought to emulate Churchill’s flamboyant style and claimed that Churchill would have voted to leave (Ross, 2016). This claim was seen as consistent with many people’s perception of Churchill (Bromund, 2016) as the epitome of an old-school Englishman, yearning for the 90 British Empire and interested mostly in English speaking nations (see for example, Churchill 1956). Yet despite this Churchill was an early proponent of the United States of Europe (Best, 2001; Klos, 2016) and so he can also be claimed by those who wanted to remain in the European Union. The European Referendums of 1975 and 2016 In 1973 the United Kingdom entered the European Community under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath. The main opposition, the Labour Party, was divided between pro and anti-Europeans. Labour’s division led its leader, Harold Wilson, to promise to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s membership and after this hold a referendum on whether to stay in the European Community. After Labour won two general elections in 1974 Wilson became Prime Minister and his promise resulted in a referendum. (The European Community at the time was also know as the Common Market and many referred to the vote as a referendum on the Common Market). The UK had no history of referendums, indeed it was not until twenty-five years later and the passage of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, that a formal referendum process was created (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 2000). This vote was so unprecedented, and disturbing for some, that Harold Wilson a few days after the vote even made an explicit promise never to repeat the experiment of the referendum (Nairne and Independent Commission, 1996). The 1975 referendum campaign saw the Conservatives, now led by Margaret Thatcher, and the Liberals actively campaigning for staying in the European Community. The Labour Party was still split on the issue of Europe. After his renegotiation the Prime Minister and most major political figures, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, and Shirley Williams, Secretary of State for Prices, supported staying in Europe. The Labour Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, even chaired the campaign to stay in the Community. Despite this many leading Labour figures campaigned to leave. Out campaigners, who were predominantly on the party’s left, included future Labour leader Michael Foot, Barbara Castle the Health Secretary, and the Secretary of State for Industry, Tony Benn. Given the issue divided parties to manage the referendum campaigns ad-hoc, but official, groups were formed. These were known as Britain In Europe (the In campaign), and the, surprisingly uninformatively named, National Referendum campaign (the Out campaign). These groups each sent a publicly funded pamphlet to every house in the country laying out their case. We included these pamphlets and other printed materials from the campaigns in our analysis. Example pages from these pamphlets are shown in Figure 1. CHARM 2017 Figure 1. Example Official Campaign Materials from 1975 Proceedings 91 Britain In Europe National Referendum Campaign The materials from the 1975 referendum are visually of modest appeal, relying upon words rather than photos or graphics. The materials often contain relatively dense textual appeals designed to be digested at length by the careful reader. The implicit assumption of how voters decide (Lau and Redlawsk, 2006) is of a careful voter diligently thinking through how the decision will impact the national interest and their family. When the results came in it was clear that the country had voted comprehensively to remain part of Europe with all the UK’s constituent countries voting to stay part of the European Community, see Figure 2. England and Wales had proved the most pro-European parts of the UK voting 67.8% and 64.8% respectively to stay in. Scotland was more mixed but still with a sizeable stay majority, (58.4% voted to stay). Northern Ireland was the least enthusiastic part of the UK towards the European Community. Here only a relatively narrow victory (52.1%) was obtained by the stay campaign. Figure 2. Referendum Results 1975 and 2016 Staying in the Community but Leaving the Union I 92 1975 2016 Over the next four decades there were many changes. The designation of the European Community changed to the European Union reflecting a gradual strengthen of ties between the constituent states (European Union, 2016). Between the 1975 and 2016 referendums there was a massive political realignment in the UK. The political stances of the political parties essentially reversed. Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative leader who had supported staying in Europe in 1975, became Prime Minister in 1979 and moved her party in an increasingly antagonistic direction towards Europe; known as Euroscepticism (Fontana and Parsons, 2015). European policy lay at the heart of internal party conflicts for years but over time the generally pro-European business friendly Conservatives lost power relative to their more Eurosceptical colleagues who emphasised the patriotic aspects of national identity. The Conservative party never fully rejected the European Union and some feared that this mixed message could lose the party supporters to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) – a new party focused almost exclusively on leaving the European Union. The Conservative leader David Cameron, who personally may have seen the arguments about Europe as an unnecessary distraction, promised another referendum on membership to placate his now quite Eurosceptical base of supporters. This maneuver led to the 2016 vote (Menon, Minto and Wincott, 2016). While the Conservatives became less convinced about the benefits of European ties the Labour Party went in the opposite direction but it was a winding process.