Joe Public Enemy
Forty years ago this month, a country that had lived through two General Elections in the space of a year went to the polls yet again; in June 1975, however, voters were participating in Britain’s first nationwide referendum, one that would determine whether or not the UK remained a member of the Common Market, an institution it had only joined in 1972. Regardless of the outcome (which is a debate that will run and run and run), archive footage of the campaign highlights the passions on both sides to an electrifying degree.
At a public meeting of the No Campaign, far-right opponents of EEC membership (some belonging to the National Front) infiltrate the hall and cause the kind of chaos utterly alien to a political rally in the twenty-first century, invading the platform and chanting in the manner of a football crowd so the speakers cannot be heard. Similar chaos breaks out at a meeting of the Yes Campaign as a bag of flour is hurled at the stage containing the speakers and Roy Jenkins ends up looking like a guest at an Elton John birthday party who sneezed at an inopportune moment. Sweaty and clearly inebriated men shout abuse at Jenkins and those that don’t express their opposition with words do so with two fingers; Jenkins’ countenance passes through fifty shades of red as he tries to articulate his anger and make it heard above the melee. These remarkably raucous gatherings look more like punk rock gigs than political meetings.
Another rally from the same campaign has Harold Wilson, still PM at the time, struggling to get through a speech with constant barracking and heckling from the floor. Irate anti-Market protestors picked up by the camera resemble the kind of wild-eyed fanatics one would normally associate with the politics of 70s Ulster than England; but there are no burly bouncers or porky security men forcibly removing Wilson’s hecklers; they are tolerated because the politicians had been educated at the school of hard-knocks, honing their skills on the market-square soapbox, not as a novel gimmick ala John Major, but for real, back in the pre-24 hour news media age. They can handle whatever the public throws at them, whether verbal insult or bag of flour.
Roy Jenkins is again focused on as he argues his point surrounded by fervent anti-Market protestors outside a venue – a member of the Cabinet actually engaging with the electorate and not being afraid to look them in the eyes. All of this footage shows how interaction between politician and public was once a contact sport. Flesh was pressed and minders kept their distance. How times have changed.
Don’t expect history to repeat itself if the Hokey Cokey plebiscite takes place in a couple of years. The campaign will be choreographed as though it were a West End musical and the kind of rough ‘n’ ready ordinary Joes who made their feelings clear in 1975 won’t be allowed within a mile of the venues. Today’s equivalent political rallies remind me of the difference between the ad-hoc and somewhat shambolic free festivals of the same era as the EEC Referendum and the corporate gang-bang that passes for Glastonbury in 2015. Politicians are now as distant and detached from their public as whichever megastar will be flown down to Somerset on a private jet this summer, going through the motions onstage before jetting off again with numerous noughts added to their bank balance.
There seem to be two clear reasons as to why this situation has arisen. The first, which has already been touched upon, is down to a modern political education. Why should an MP need to sully his hands with a few hundred members of an unpredictable general public in a grubby hall when he can address millions via the media? And, come the conference season or Election time, any public speaking is done before cherry-picked party activists who would greet a tin of spaghetti as though it were Nelson Mandela as long as it was wearing the correct coloured rosette. Not that this is made evident to viewers at home, who assume they’re seeing the MP in question exuding popularity. A generation of MPs didn’t gain experience of how to communicate with ‘ordinary people’ because their rise through the Public School/Uni/Spad ranks didn’t include them. This then leads on to the second reason.
Witness how ineptly Tony Blair dealt with Sharron Storer, wife of a cancer victim for whom there was no bed at the Birmingham hospital she confronted the PM on the doorstep of during the 2001 General Election campaign – or, more infamously, Gordon Brown’s ‘Bigot-gate’ encounter with Gillian Duffy nine years later. These two incidents, particularly the latter, have served to further increase the party machine’s fears of letting their MPs anywhere near people who won’t read from the script. The impression given is that politicians are terrified of meeting the electorate in person. In turn, the public come to the conclusion that their elected representatives are too remote to relate to them anymore. I never saw hide nor hair of any of the candidates standing at my constituency at the last Election out and about in the weeks leading up to polling day – and I didn’t expect to either.
Okay, so a climate change protestor once provoked a spontaneous round of applause from the nation when she emptied a bucket of green custard on Peter Mandelson; but she didn’t point a revolver at him. The only Prime Minister assassinated in this country was Spencer Perceval, shot dead in the lobby of the Commons two-hundred years ago. Is there really any need for today’s political class to surround themselves with an army of bodyguards whenever they set foot outside of their Victorian Gothic towers? When Ted Heath left his constituency count at the 1970 General Election and headed back to London, the journey between venue and vehicle necessitated a brief walk amongst a generally euphoric crowd. That didn’t stop some wag stubbing out a cigarette on the new Prime Minister’s fat neck. How did Heath react? He stuck a plaster on the blister and carried on. Contrast that with the heckling pensioner who was physically ejected from the Labour Party conference a few years back for having the nerve to voice his disagreement with a Jack Straw speech – a lone voice raised in a different political environment and out of time.
I have an appointment to see my local MP at his surgery in a couple of weeks, the first such time I’ve had cause to come into contact with my elected representative. It will be weird actually meeting him close-up, almost (albeit not quite) like meeting Madonna. That’s how separate from my life the men and women of Westminster feel to me, and – I should imagine – many of us out there. This situation simply has to change if politicians are ever to inspire confidence again. They are supposed be our servants, not our masters.
Petunia Winegum
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June 12, 2015 at 9:09 am -
One of the best examples of ‘doorstepping’ of a politician, was this from downunder:
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June 12, 2015 at 9:25 am -
Back in, oh, the early 90s I had cause to phone my local MP. I got him at home, having a family breakfast in the kitchen of his , no doubt converted farmhouse. I could tell that it was breakfast by the sounds of toast crunching and mugs of Earl Grey swilling.
For those few commentators here born after, oh say, 1990, let me break this down for you: I needed to talk to my MP. Back then there were almost no cell phones and everyone had a thick book of telephone numbers called a ‘Directory’. I thumbed through my copy of said ‘Telephone Book’ and found the home number for my local MP. Yes really. I kid you not. Back then MPs would have their home telephone numbers on public display.
Crazy right? I mean ANYONE could have phoned them at any time of the day or night?
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June 12, 2015 at 9:34 am -
The rise of violent behaviour has no doubt had a significant part to play here. It’s not so long ago an MP was knifed at their surgery. On the other hand Fatty Arbuckle Prescott’s left and right hooks did a lot to explain why a ponce like Blair kept the fat old bastard in the government all those years….
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June 12, 2015 at 10:16 am -
The rise of violent behaviour has no doubt had a significant part to play here
having a family breakfast in the kitchen of his , no doubt converted, farmhouse and with the telephone resting atop a , no doubt, well stocked gun cabinet
Don’t forget this was in Tonymartinshire, preBlair…and my MP probably still had his Grandfather’s old Webley in the bedside drawer.
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June 12, 2015 at 10:27 am -
But post the failed coup attempt in Brighton in 1984, which seems more lamented for it’s failure by the chatterati, than for it’s monstrous evil that has since spawned the inexorable rise of global terrorism that they profess ro loathe, but in truth are merely scared shitless by because it’s not the right people being killed and maimed.
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June 12, 2015 at 9:28 am -
Second paragraph, first sentence: “At a public meeting of the No Campaign, far-right opponents of EEC membership (some belonging to the National Front) infiltrate the hall and cause the kind of chaos utterly alien to a political rally in the twenty-first century…”
Surely you mean 20th century, don’t you? Fire the sub-editor.
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June 12, 2015 at 9:32 am -
Que?
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June 12, 2015 at 9:34 am -
My misunderstanding. Ignore me.
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June 12, 2015 at 9:35 am -
Yes Mr. Fawlty. I go tell Chef…..
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June 12, 2015 at 11:52 am
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June 12, 2015 at 9:28 am -
John Major’s unexpected victory was in part due to his soap-box antics. he was widely derided by the Establishment media and chatterati, but I suspect ordinary folk saw a person who was not afraid to get dirty feet and deal with the unexpected hoi polloi. The icing on the cake for the Tories that time was then the contrast of the Nuremberg Labour rally in Sheffield. The difference between the parties was never writ so large.
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June 12, 2015 at 10:33 am -
Ask Douglas Carswell about politicians going about their normal business in public these days. The vast majority would just treat him like any other person catching the bus home, but the vast majority of us ordinary folk would not be surrounded by a mob of loony lefty dickheads calling us fascists and acting in such a threatening manner that about a dozen police officers are required to restore order, and feel it necessary to take us to a place of safety in a police van.
However robust political meetings were in the 1970s, I rather doubt any politician of any stripe would have been threatened on the street by a thuggish mob.
Mind you, says more about the mob than about the politician that the mob thinks it’s a smart way to do politics. Do they really think using threatening behavior will win any political arguments?
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June 12, 2015 at 12:20 pm -
The point you make is a good one Engineer, and is a reflection of the organised nastiness that passes for political disagreement.
It isn’t always so. I didn’t vote for him, but my local MP Nick Herbert turns up to do local things, unaccompanied, seems to speak common sense (without a mic). I suppose though he ‘s not involved in a loony infested areas of politics.
It does seem odd that behaviour once seen as the badge of right wing extremists has in recent years become the norm for the left.
The consequence of indulgence of the loonies of ALF & the WRP?
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June 12, 2015 at 10:42 am -
* Do they really think using threatening behavior will win any political arguments? *
Seems to work quite well. You say something they don’t like. They complain to the police about your “threatening behaviour” and the police carry out their duty to investigate on behalf of the victim, and you end up like Carswell too.
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June 12, 2015 at 1:52 pm -
Is that a deliberate stratagem taken from the Far Left political playbook? If it is, why do the police go along with it, and not pinch serial complainants for wasting police time?
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June 12, 2015 at 12:19 pm -
Off-topic, but I need your advice, please.
Exaro news are up to something with like-minded “journalists” on the continent. I suspect they are working on a conspiracy theory of a pan-european VIP pedophile network, linking their UK VIP theories to Belgian, French, Dutch and Denmark VIP pedophile conspiracy theories.
I have information about the Zandvoort CDs and the child sexual abuse images on them – technical stuff about how those images were compiled, where they came from, whats likely to be on the CDs, etc. – perhaps more importantly, what CANNOT be on those CDS and why, and also information about illegitimate/criminal misuse of those images by Marcel Vervloesem & Morkhoven Action Group as well as by journalists in France and Germany. I also have a little bit of information and documentation about fraudulent “victim” testimony that has been incorporated into the massive Dutroux VIP ring conspiracy mythology. I think this information could be of interest and importance to rationalists/conspiracy skeptics attempting to separate fact from fiction with respect to pan-european VIP pedophile conspiracy theories. Would this info be of interest to you? Whom else, in the UK, could be trusted to make good use of such info and how would I contact those parties? -
June 12, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
Enjoy your face-to-face with your elected representative, although in ‘surgery mode’ an MP is usually still an MP, anxious just to move on to the next whingeing nimby much of the time and probably just firing off a letter on your behalf to some mandarin, getting him/her off the hook. That’s the truth of most MPs’ constituency lives.
My own current MP has dined here on occasions and has reciprocated chez-him, and that’s an entirely different environment. You get to see more of the real person behind the role and, if you’re lucky, even get some inside gossip on his colleagues if he trusts you not to blab outside. If you’ve got the facility, I’d advise getting a tableful of constituents together and invite the MP over – he/she will enjoy it far more than the turgid surgery role and your group will all get to know him/her and vice-versa far better, which augers well if you ever really need help. You can have some good debates over the cheese & port (or Maxwell House) and may manage to influence him/her. -
June 12, 2015 at 12:59 pm -
For what it’s worth, my last 3 MPs (all Tory) have been happy to engage with extremely small groups of supporters and electorate. I have been canvassing with 3 or 4 colleagues and an MP (or indeed, PPC). The MP always attends my branch AGM, where on occasion we have had as few as 8 members present (this particular part of the constituency isn’t natural ground for the Tories) and about 50% of the time attends branch functions AND PAYS. It isn’t uncommon for a sitting MP to present prizes at a primary school (OK, Mrs Fan was a parent governor) if asked.
Mudplugger is dead right: these are human beings, and the average visitor to a surgery is likely to be a political opponent with timewasting on their mind.
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June 12, 2015 at 1:15 pm -
In defence of my local MP, Vince Cable, he was often seen around and about, attending some church do or at the local amdram, for example. No sign of any entourage. Still didn’t vote for him though.
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June 12, 2015 at 1:15 pm -
Of course we never voted on the European Union. We voted for a Common Market which was basically pretty much the same as EFTA which we were already in anyway. Nobody mentioned political union or common currencies – but then as the traitor Ted Heath once famously said “If we tell them the truth, they’ll never go for it!”
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