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  Partial rehabilitation

  The Livingstone administration had, by mid-1983, also connected to other sources of support. Its ‘new politics’ of environmentalism, feminism and support for ethnic minority and gay rights had won good will among a younger, affluent section of the local population (who were then predisposed, as a group, not to be Labour supporters). At the same time, the Livingstone administration also cultivated its traditional Labour, working class base through policies such as concessionary fares for pensioners and job creation through the Greater London Enterprise Board.

  This coalition was inherently unstable because the GLC’s working class base and new supporters had, in important respects, different politics.11 In a normal context, the council administration could easily have fallen between two stools: alienating some of its traditional, working-class supporters with policies they disliked (such as funding gay and lesbian groups) without fully winning over the new constituency. However, the government’s determination to close down the GLC changed the dynamics of this coalition. Its two wings came together and united, providing an extended base of support for the GLC.

  By 1983, the GLC had also gained a second wind after its initial, traumatic mauling by the popular press. The key issue that helped to rehabilitate the GLC, and win it grudging respect, was its battle over transport. In 1981, the GLC introduced a 25% reduction in bus and tube fares funded out of the rates. The council argued that something had to be done to persuade people to return to public transport in order to ease traffic congestion in central London. Cheaper fares would improve London’s environment, and also assist those on low incomes to travel more often and get more out of what the city had to offer.

  This policy was successfully challenged in the courts by Conservative-controlled Bromley council, one of the few boroughs not served by London’s underground transport network. The Appeal Court and the House of Lords ruled that the fares reduction and GLC’s supplementary rate were unlawful on the grounds that London Transport should be run ‘economically’. This produced a public outcry, including outspoken criticism from some papers usually strongly hostile to the GLC. Why should unelected judges, it was asked, be able to override a council administration elected by the people, especially when its cheap fares policy had been a prominent part of its election manifesto. The impolitic wording of some of the legal judgements that were handed down did little to enhance the public reception of their Lordships. Lord Denning (then aged eighty-two) argued that the GLC should set its election mandate to one side and ‘consider what it was best to do’, while Lord Justice Watkins referred to the council’s ‘abuse of power, which totally disregarded the interests of the rate-payers’.12 Their judgements were subsequently criticised with great eloquence by Robert Carnwath (now a Supreme Court judge), who voiced concerns about the erosion of local democracy.13

  But while the GLC’s cheap fares policy was struck down in 1981, a more modest version of it was allowed to go ahead in 1983. The GLC’s policy did in fact lead to an increased use of public transport, reversing a downward – and, some had argued, unalterable – trend that had begun in the 1950s. The evident success of this policy, and the obstacles that had been placed in its path, altered public attitudes. In 1981, 77% of Londoners were opposed to public transport fare reductions funded from the rates.14 Yet, by 1985, 78% of Londoners (including 77% of Liberal/SDP voters and 69% of Conservative voters in the GLC area) were in favour.15 A once controversial initiative had become consensual.

  The GLC was also a centre of power in its own right. Its political leadership possessed the democratic legitimacy of being directly elected by Londoners. Its officials had more information and expertise about governing the capital than Whitehall – something that was important in the battle for elite opinion. Immediately after the 1983 general election, the GLC was also placed on a war footing. Direct lines of control were established from the leader’s office over all areas of the GLC in order to extract the greatest possible political and public relations benefit from everything it did.16 The GLC also found itself with an overflowing war-chest. It had imposed a sharp increase in the rates to support its cheap fares policy. But this policy had been trimmed, due to a court ruling, creating surplus revenue to fund new initiatives and defend the GLC against the government. Tony Wilson, the council’s public relations chief, estimated that the total cost of the ‘Save the GLC’ campaign, over two-and-a-half years, was approaching £ 30 million (of which its anti-abolition advertising campaign accounted for £ 12 million).17

  In short, the GLC was not the broken-backed institution that it appeared to be in 1983. The council commanded considerable resources. Press attacks had been offset by more positive broadcasting coverage. The council administration could call upon support from its Labour base, and was earning a widening circle of goodwill among the young middle class and the minorities it championed. Attitudes towards the council were critical but often not entrenched.

  What followed next is worth documenting in detail since it offers a classic case study of an effective political campaign.

  Benefits of victimhood

  What really transformed the GLC’s position in the community was the government’s decision to close it down. The GLC became a symbol of London pride, and of resistance to an autocratic government.

  The GLC appealed to local patriotism in the elevated register of defending local democracy. It argued that a city as big as London needed a council to oversee its affairs, and represent its interests. If the GLC was abolished, London would be the only major capital in Europe without a council. This was both a telling argument, and also an emotive call to local civic pride. Many people living in the capital thought of themselves as Londoners rather than as members of a local borough (as, for example, Mertonians, Islingtonians or Lewishamites), though this was less true of people living in some of the outer suburbs. A strong London identity underpinned the belief that London should have its own local government, and led to widespread rejection of the government’s claim that the GLC was not needed. Thus, in April 1984, 68% of Londoners disagreed with the view that ‘the GLC is an unnecessary level of local government’, while only 20% agreed.18 The influence of a metropolitan identity is also apparent in later survey evidence. In 1985, the second most often given reason for opposing the GLC’s abolition in response to an open-ended question was that the council was ‘specially for Londoners/knows our needs’.19

  The GLC also took advantage of the mistrust of the Thatcher administration, and of central government more generally. It argued repeatedly that the plan to close down County Hall was intended to silence a political opponent, and not, as the government claimed, to improve the management of London services. This argument had a wider resonance because it chimed with growing criticism of the prime minister’s ‘dictatorial style’ that extended beyond a Labour-voting minority. In 1984–5, substantial majorities disapproved of the government’s rate-capping of local councils, its banning of trade unions at the intelligence communications centre GCHQ, and its attempt to suppress the BBC Real Lives television documentary about Northern Ireland.20 Between 1983 and 1985, there was also a significant increase in the number of people who predicted that the government’s term of office would result in less personal freedom.21

  Above all, the GLC’s claim that it was a victim of a political vendetta was also widely believed because it accorded with how the authority was represented in the right-wing press. Abolishing the GLC, the Daily Express (29 September 1983) bluntly explained, was a way of ‘jettisoning the extremist rubbish’. ‘The government does not need to produce arguments for killing off the GLC’, declared the Sun (5 December 1984) since ‘Red Ken’s antics says it all’. ‘The abolition of the Greater London Council’ the Daily Telegraph (18 January 1984) concluded approvingly, ‘is a sentence of execution for bad behaviour’.

  This rhetoric from the government’s press supporters undermined the credibility of the government’s claim, set out in its White Paper, that it wa
s closing down the GLC only in order to simplify local administration in the interests of better democracy and greater efficiency.22 Instead, Conservative press outbursts strengthened the impression – fostered by County Hall – that the government’s real agenda was to suppress political opposition. Londoners’ responses confirmed that the Conservative press campaign against the GLC ‘boomeranged’, and hit the Conservative government rather than its intended target. In January 1984, 54% of Londoners agreed with the view that the GLC was being abolished ‘to silence a political opponent’, while only a quarter disagreed. By contrast, a mere 21% thought that ‘the government was trying to abolish the GLC in the interests of Londoners’, whereas 59% dissented from this view.23

  Classic advertising campaign

  The government compounded its credibility problem by announcing that it intended to cancel the 1985 GLC elections. The government feared that a re-elected Livingstone administration would spend public money with reckless abandon in the last year of the GLC’s life. It therefore proposed that joint boards, made up of nominees from the London borough councils, should be installed to manage the council’s affairs in its last year. This meant cancelling elections that the Conservatives might well lose, and imposing a Tory regime of nominees at County Hall since the majority of London borough councils were then Conservative-controlled. This proposal thus reinforced the impression that the government’s policy towards the GLC was both partisan and undemocratic. It aroused widespread criticism not only from the government’s opponents but even from within the Conservative party itself. In the words of the former Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath, the government’s plan laid ‘the Conservative Party open to the charge of the greatest gerrymandering of the last 150 years of British history’.24

  The Livingstone administration exploited this apparent own goal through a skilful advertising campaign masterminded by the leading advertising agency, Boase, Massimi and Pollitt (BMP). Most Labour councillors had wanted the advertising campaign to focus on how the GLC’s abolition would undermine the council’s services to the capital.25 However, the agency persuaded the GLC that there was another, more effective way of mobilising public support. BMP focus groups revealed that most people did not know about the government’s plans to cancel the GLC elections and install a Tory regime at County Hall, but that those who did tended to strongly disapprove, regardless of which party they supported. This suggested, the agency argued, that the advertising campaign should draw attention to the government’s cancellation plans with the slogan, ‘Say No to No Say’. The slogan conveyed the subliminal message that the council’s abolition would permanently remove the people’s ‘say’.26

  This was a classic agenda-shifting strategy. To have focused on the loss of GLC services to the community – as GLC councillors proposed – would probably have renewed controversy about council policies, and elicited a polarised response. By redefining the terms of the debate, and shifting attention away from the tabloid agenda of left-wing excess to local democracy, it communicated a powerful message which people were already predisposed agree with: that their right to vote should not be curtailed. It also invited a bipartisan response, enabling Conservative- and Liberal Alliance-supporting Londoners to side with the GLC without modifying their views. And it reached out to people who did not know that the government was intent on cancelling the GLC elections, and sought to persuade them through imparting additional information.

  The first phase of the advertising campaign focused on the cancelling of elections. It was typified by a large poster of Ken Livingstone, with the headline ‘If You Want Me Out You Should Have the Right to Vote Me Out’. This proved to be highly effective. Between January and April 1984, there was a sharp increase of unprompted awareness of the government’s plans for the GLC; a significant reduction in the number of people who were undecided on the issue; and a rise of twelve percentage points in the proportion of Londoners who opposed the GLC’s abolition.27 However, it is important to reiterate that the campaign, which began in March 1984, merely strengthened opposition to abolition: it did not create it (see Table 4.1).

  TABLE 4.1  Londoners’ Attitudes Towards GLC Abolition, from 1983–5

  Data is from market research companies: aHarris Research Centre; bMORI; cAudience.

  The second phase of the GLC’s advertising campaign depicted the alternative to the GLC as more central government control, with the implication that it would be more bureaucratic and expensive, and less responsive to the needs of Londoners. It featured images like a bowler-hatted snail, a bowler-topped brick-wall, and poster boards bound with red tape, with the slogan ‘Imagine What London Would be Like Run by Whitehall’. Its centralisation message failed to convince the majority: in September 1984, only 40% thought that abolition would result in the GLC’s functions coming under central government control.28 At best, this second phase may possibly have deflated the government’s counter-message that the abolition of the GLC would promote better, more localised democracy. But it had nothing like the impact of the first phase.

  The third phase of the campaign focused on the extent of support for the GLC. It was summed up in the poster slogan ‘74 per cent say No’. This was a misleading reference to a rogue result that was out of kilter with other polls (which indicated that just under two-thirds rather than three-quarters of Londoners disapproved of the GLC’s abolition, with a significant minority abstaining). The main purpose of this third phase was to strengthen opposition to abolition in Parliament.

  Community campaigning

  When the Livingstone administration turned to an advertising agency, celebrated for its promotion of Smash Instant Mashed Potato (Cadbury Schweppes) and John Smith’s Yorkshire Bitter (Courage), to mount a political advertising campaign against the government, it was breaking new ground. It also innovated by funding and choreographing public events in order to promote its new politics. It recruited professional impresarios – with experience in organising rock festivals and concerts, but in some cases drawing inspiration from royal jubilee celebrations and other royal pageants29 – to stage major public events for Londoners. These were dismissed by critics as concealed bribes designed to win approval for the GLC at public expense. In fact, they operated at a more sophisticated level than these critics grasped: they were more than just free entertainments, the equivalent of Roman ‘bread and circuses’.

  The GLC used festivals as a way of promoting specific political campaigns (Fares Fair in 1982, Peace Year 1983, London Against Racism 1984, Jobs Year 1985 and Farewell celebrations 1986). The council also mounted other events such as the family-oriented Thames Day Festival and London Horseshow, conveying the message that the council was for everyone. A typical GLC festival took the form of an extended pop concert accompanied by political side-shows, street theatre and stalls of all kinds. They usually communicated a political message through visual means. For example, the Jobs Festival had a maze in which doors displaying government policies led nowhere, while those featuring GLC policies provided the way out. However, the unifying meaning of all these major public events – and their prime significance in terms of the anti-abolition campaign – was that they affirmed a communal London identity. They were occasions of festivity when normal conventions of separateness and reserve were set aside in favour of a liminal sense of togetherness (in which people talked freely to strangers). They also expressed a sense of community in ways that celebrated the cultural diversity of the capital – through the eclecticism of the music (from advanced rock to black gospel and jazz), through the different cuisines (from Chinese to Caribbean) on offer, and above all through the mass participation of people (several hundred thousand in some cases) drawn from different parts of London and from different ethnic groups. They were thus ‘social rituals’ that fostered a plural, multicultural understanding of what it was to be a Londoner.30 Their implicit message was also that the GLC was the institutional embodiment of London, and needed to be defended against central government and its allies.

>   When the government attempted to champion local borough government against the GLC, County Hall moved swiftly to supplement these major events with smaller ones in local boroughs. GLC organisers fanned out from County Hall, offering financial backing and practical help to any local group willing to mount a public event that explicitly opposed the abolition of the GLC. Their reports back to County Hall read like those of nineteenth-century Christian missionaries: full of hope, frustration, and (one suspects) overstated success. However, the scale of their activity, when it was in full swing, can be gauged by what happened in March 1985: County Hall’s ‘link team’ organised or intervened in thirty-four local meetings, events and festivals (as well as nine general, London-wide events) in one month.31

  The GLC also broke new ground by becoming a major sponsor of the voluntary sector. Its funding of self-organised groups rose from around £ 6 million in 1980 to over £ 50 million in 1984.32 By the time the GLC was closed down, it was funding over 2,000 organisations. These included not only feminist, ethnic minority, gay and left-wing organisations – that generated so much tabloid hostility – but a much larger number of ‘mainstream’ organisations such as myriad local community associations, crèches, playgroups, nurseries, law centres, training centres, groups for the handicapped and disabled, pensioners’ groups, tenants’ groups, sports and recreational associations and organisations linked to the churches.33 Their unaligned character is further underlined by the correspondence that took place between GLC-funded organisations and County Hall in 1983–4. Numerous organisations refused to submit a formal objection to the GLC’s closure, as part of the government’s consultation exercise, on the grounds that they did not want to get involved in politics. Yet, some funded organisations were drawn into the GLC’s orbit and supplied helpers to organise local borough and other events. Though this was not the original intention (since, initially, the GLC’s grants policy was an expression of its sixties distrust of bureaucracy) the council developed what amounted to a quasi-clientelist system of patronage. It was effective precisely because it extended beyond the left to take in a large swathe of the voluntary sector, and won goodwill among public spirited, community volunteers who were often significant sources of personal influence.