Thursday, 9 April 1992

WELL, ALL RIGHT?


Tribune, 9 April 1992

Paul Anderson was at Labour's rally in Sheffield, with all its razzmatazz. But the real campaign has been rather more mundane

“Yesterday was another day of achievement for Britain and British actors at the Oscar cere­monies in Hollywood," John Smith told the thousands of Labour supporters in the Sheffield Arena for Labour's "Rally of the Decade” last Wednesday.

"A triumph for Anthony Hopkins that is well deserved," he went on. "But I have to admit that one long-running saga failed even to get a nomi­nation. Starring John Major, the Conservatives' very own box-office disaster - Honey, I Shrunk the Economy."

At least it was better than John Major's feeble line in cinematic humour when he warned of a "Nightmare on Kin nock Street". It wasn't very good, though. Nor, frankly, were any of the other gags at the Labour extravaganza. The music was pretty dire too.

But none of that really mattered. It didn't mat­ter either that the giant hall wasn't quite as full as the party had hoped, with rows of empty seats at the back and along the sides. It didn't even matter that the harsh acoustics and lighting and the giant video screen behind the podium gave most of the speakers a sinister demagogic air.

This was the Labour Party with the scent of power tingling in its nostrils. Nothing in the world could have stopped every Labour-support­er present from experiencing the show as a run­away success. Three opinion polls earlier in the day had given Labour the sort of lead it needs to win a thumping Commons majority. No one knew as the rally got under way that the next batch of polls, while still giving Labour a lead, were less favourable. Everyone, from Neil Kinnock down to the 10,000 or so ordinary Labour Party members who had come to the rally by coach and car from all over the country, was in triumphalist mood.

The audience lapped up everything, no matter how routine or corny. They cheered when the Shadow Cabinet marched down the central aisle waving and smiling, they went wild when the giant video screen showed Neil and Glenys arriving outside in a helicopter, they erupted into ecstatic whoops when the spotlight picked out the Kinnocks making their way into the arena, shaking hands, saluting the crowd, embracing what appeared to be long-lost friends.

John Smith gave a typically competent speech. Roy Hattersley sounded positively radical in his egalitarianism. There were endorsements from show business celebrities - Mick Hucknall, the singer with Simply Red, Steve Cram, the athlete, Nigel Kennedy, the violinist, Stephen Fry, the actor. Barbara Castle nearly brought the house down when she declared: "This is like 1945. They never dreamed we could win then and we did."

But the climax was Kinnock, cocky and expansive – “Well, all right!” he shouted at the audience as he came on stage, Mick Jagger-style. There followed a rousing attack on the Tory record concentrating on education and housing policies: "The decent people of Britain are revolted by: Government that has broken the consensus of 40 years, a government that has created poverty as a matter of policy just as it has used unemployment as the main instrument of economic management," he said. He even tried another film joke. "Recall their impeccable timing on the day that Anthony Hopkins won the Oscar in Hollywood, when they described me as ‘Hannibal’,” he grinned. Needless to say, it worked a treat.

* * *

Sheffield got plenty of coverage on the television and in all the papers, not least because it was the glitziest and biggest political rally ever held in Britain. It also produced some useful film clips for use in Monday's party election broadcast.

But its main purpose was to boost Labour morale before the last week of the campaign. In 1987, the big razzmatazz rally of the Labour campaign took place in London on the Sunday before polling day - and it effectively marked the end of Labour's national campaign. After the ral­ly, Labour sat exhausted on its laurels for four days, watching the Liberal-Social Democrat Al­liance, which it thought it had effectively squeezed, claw its way back in the opinion polls at Labour's expense.

This time, Labour has done all it can to inten­sify, the campaign over the last week, making a particular point of trying to woo wavering centre voters.

The most spectacular part of this was the re­launch of Labour's constitutional reform proramme by Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley at the end of last week, which has dominated the agenda for the heavy newspapers ever since.

In many ways, however, the effort on the ground in the marginals has been more impor­tant. By the end of last week, Labour had shifted nearly all its resources and personnel into its target seats and had let its local activists know that there should be no let-up before the ballot boxes were sealed.

Labour's daily agents' briefing, Winning Post, made the strategy clear: "Momentum means in­creased campaign visibility relative to the con­tenders - showing that we are moving forwards the last three weeks. We must be positive, urgent and attractive.” Parties were urged to increase their presence on the streets, "blitz" selected ar­eas with propaganda, balloons and stickers, get as many posters into windows as possible and continue canvassing right up to the last day of the campaign.

"The Liberal vote is very soft," the briefing went on. "The chances are that you won't have a high number of defined Liberal supporters show­ing up in your canvass figures." In the final week, local Labour parties were directed to "con­centrate strongly on the key issues of concern to Liberal voters: health, the economy and particu­larly education, while emphasising that "the choice is between a Labour government and a Conservative government". In Scotland and Wales, the same tactics were recommended to deal with the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru.

According to Labour headquarters, the local parties in the marginals have responded vigorously to the call to arms. "It's going very well in­deed. Very positive," said Sally Morgan, Walworth Road's key seat co-ordinator, early this week.

* * *

Of course, no one will know until the results are in whether such optimism is justified. But, whatever the result, Labour has good reason to be pleased with the way that the campaign has gone. Although in 1987 Labour had, on the whole, a bet­ter national campaign than the Tories, the party failed to make its national campaign timetable dominant, and locally Labour's efforts were patchy.

Not everything has gone completely according to plan this time. The “war of Jennifer's ear" over Labour's health party election broadcast a fort­night ago threw Labour severely off balance. Al­though the party recovered, the affair meant that it has since been unable to give health the prominence that had originally been sketched into the schedule. The furore also eclipsed one Labour attempt to make an issue of poll tax (al­though the party had another go last weekend) and upset the timing of its push on education policy, which looked dangerously like a desperate attempt to catch up with the Liberal Democrats by the time it came last week.

Nevertheless, Labour has dominated the cam­paign agenda nationally as it was never able to in 1987, and the Tories' undoubted incompetence is by no means the only reason. From the shadow budget onwards, Labour's initiatives have been detailed, sensible and fully costed, forcing the Tories to respond rather than develop their own campaigning themes. Labour's senior politi­cians have been better briefed than at any time in living memory, and they have come across as confident and competent on television and radio: gaffes have been relatively few and far between. Perhaps most important, the early stages of the campaign this time did not rely over-heavily on Kinnock, the focus of the 1987 campaign. As a re­sult, he has looked much fresher than the other party leaders since being moved to the centre of Labour's campaign in the final week.

But the main difference with 1987 is the way in which Labour has managed to intervene local­ly. In the past five years, communications be­tween headquarters and local parties have been transformed. Everything from poster distribution to policy briefings has been better in this cam­paign than ever before. If there's no room for complacency, there's plenty for pride in a job done as well as it could be done. Let's hope that it has all been enough.