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THE POLITICS OF MARKETING THE LABOUR PARTY

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 June 2006
Published date01 June 2006
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00020.x
AuthorEric Shaw
502 REVIEWS
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006 Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (479–515)
THE POLITICS OF MARKETING THE LABOUR PARTY
Dominic Wring
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 262 pp., £16.99 (pb) ISBN: 0333689534
There is now a received wisdom about Labour ’ s electioneering. It runs
something like this. Until the mid-1980s it lagged hopelessly behind an in-
novative Conservative party, barred by ideological prejudice from adopting
the new techniques of mass persuasion. This culminated in the disastrous
1983 campaign. What then followed was a ‘ paradigm shift ’ as, under the in-
spired leadership of modernizers like Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould, the
party embraced ‘ political marketing ’ . Not the least of this book ’ s merits is
that it demonstrates how misleading this account is. For example, the elec-
toral campaigns for London conducted in the 1930s by Herbert Morrison
(grandfather of Peter Mandelson) were precursors of many modern tech-
niques. Sydney Webb was an early student of ‘ stratif‌i ed electioneering ’ , that
is gearing different messages to differing social groups. In other respects,
however, the party did betray a reluctance to adapt and a degree of organi-
zational inertia.

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