Heffer was right about one thing: I had never sought detailed NEC approval for the new approach and the new look. I knew I would never have got it. At the very minimum, there would have been endless debate over every dot and comma. The most that would have come out of it was a hugely scaled-down version that would not have had anything like the same impact. I did, of course, have the NEC’s endorsement for the central themes of freedom and fairness. I reassured Larry Whitty, as I had told Neil, that our job had simply been to find a new and effective way to get people to listen to that message.
This would set the pattern for much of my future dealings with Larry and the NEC. I recognised that they were my bosses, and was careful to follow the letter of their directives. But I hoped, and became increasingly confident, that by pushing the limits of the spirit of their decisions we could make a major impact on how the party and its policies were seen. I discovered one important tactic early on. When I received an especially heavy-handed policy pronouncement – on the economy, on trade unions, on defence – for our latest party publicity, I would have the text squeezed onto the right-hand side of the page. I would then sit down with the increasingly enthusiastic and hard-working team around me at Walworth Road, people like Jim Parish, Anna Healy and Jackie Stacey, and go through every vote-losing word, picking out the most attractive-sounding phrases – about growth and prosperity rather than state control, or support for a strongly defended Britain rather than unilateral disarmament – and highlighting them in big, attractive type in the wide margin.
Over time, I would find myself applying similar methods to almost every aspect of our presentation and communications. I remember one major policy pronouncement, otherwise fairly forward-looking, in which the NEC instructed us to insert the text of our socialist credo, Clause IV. It did go in, but not in the document that I initially released to the media, only on the inside cover when it was printed. I could do little about the rousing rendition of ‘The Red Flag’ that closed the Labour conference, but I could try to ensure that it was not the lasting image voters kept in their minds. In this, I usually failed, but sometimes I would be able to choreograph the final speeches so that the concluding hymn would come after live TV coverage had ended. If we couldn’t change the policy, at least we could change the way we were seen.
The reporters I dealt with every day were less easily finessed. They knew it was policies that ultimately mattered, and that ours hadn’t changed. My daily, and often nightly, dealings with the press did become less wearing, however. Their copy was still almost unremittingly hostile, but personal relationships were being built up. I was their one-man, one-stop source for what Labour was doing, thinking and saying. In that sense, they needed me. It went without saying that I needed them if our public image was ever going to change. Some of the journalists were simply cynical hacks with a settled, utterly negative, view of Labour dictated by their news desks. It was a narrative they knew by heart, and could write up almost automatically before heading off for a drink at the Press Bar or in Strangers, the meeting place for MPs and others on the Thames side of the Houses of Parliament. The facts, and what I or anyone else at Labour said, didn’t really matter to them.
My reputation for toughness, or worse, with the press began with journalists like that in these early days. But many of the more serious, and more influential, writers and broadcasters were at least open-minded. I think they also had a bit of sympathy for my plight as I struggled to find ways to give Labour a new, more reasonable face. Most weeks I would have lunch with one or another of these reporters – sometimes, at their invitation and on their expenses, at one of the fancier restaurants around Westminster, but more often in the Commons press cafeteria. I kept telling myself that over time, if and when Labour had a better story to tell, they would help us tell it.
Even in this part of my job, I sometimes had to look over my shoulder. The first problem involved Rupert Murdoch’s stable of British newspapers – The Times and Sunday Times, the News of the World and the Sun. After prolonged and fruitless negotiation, Murdoch had forced through the introduction of new technology, over the protests of striking print union workers, and opened up a new plant in Wapping. His titles continued to publish, with most journalists crossing increasingly violent and heavily policed picket lines. The NEC voted in a ban on any contact with reporters from the Murdoch papers. It was the classic 1980s Labour response. Not only was it on the wrong side of where most voters thought we should be, but in theory it would keep me from talking to the very journalists I needed if I was to have any hope of improving the party’s image. At the news conference at which I announced the NEC boycott, I duly asked the Times and Sun reporters to leave the room. I felt ridiculous. I also realised that to do otherwise would have been the equivalent of handing in my notice.
However, I made it a point privately to continue briefing, and talking to, the Murdoch journalists. In the Fulham by-election, that was obviously not going to be sufficient. Once the campaign got under way, reporters would build their day around each of the three parties’ main news conferences. They were not going to have the time – or presumably the desire – to oblige me by sharing a private Castello pizza to receive my daily spin on the campaign. If we wanted our side of the story to appear in Murdoch’s papers, we would have to include their journalists in our news conferences. Making common cause with Patricia Hewitt, and with the support and understanding of Larry Whitty, I persuaded the NEC to suspend its boycott for the duration of the campaign. As I had hoped, it was then quietly forgotten.
The ‘Freedom and Fairness’ launch was never going to be enough fundamentally to change Labour’s look or its image. The next step was more audacious, and had a more far-reaching effect. In Philip’s stock-take, we had told the NEC that we planned to review ‘every aspect of Labour’s corporate appearance’. Though I imagine most members glossed over this bit of advertising-speak, there was never any doubt in my mind where the remake had to begin. The defining core of our image was our fluttering red flag. Eric Heffer, as an NEC member, had seen the report when it came up for approval, but neither he nor the other sceptics would have imagined that we would actually go ahead and fold up the red flag. Had he realised this at the ‘Freedom and Fairness’ launch, he might literally have combusted. For months, we worked at finding a new logo. It was Neil who first suggested borrowing a symbol from the Scandinavian social democrats: a red rose. We all liked the idea, and I consulted the design expert Michael Wolff, of Wolff-Olins fame, who recruited the artist Philip Sutton. The rose evoked England’s gardens. It suggested growth in fresh soil. Sunlight. Optimism. The challenge was to ensure that it would pass muster – with Neil, but above all with the NEC – in time for party conference at the end of September.
In July, Patricia, Philip, Michael Wolff and I went to see Philip Sutton in his studio in south London. Hanging up on clothes pegs on a washing line running along the studio walls were scores of images of different roses. Over a stretch of two hours, we went around the room, gradually narrowing down our search for the perfect rose and agreeing a shortlist of half a dozen prototypes. Three weeks later the artwork had been refined on each of them, and we had to decide from a final batch of three. I picked what I thought was the best, and it went to Neil for his approval. He loved it – or almost: he wanted the stem shortened.
On the eve of conference, however, came a familiar last-minute hesitation. I had already got the design through the NEC publicity subcommittee. It was chaired by my early Walworth Road ally Gwyneth Dunwoody, who deftly and deliberately underplayed the significance of the party’s new symbol. It was just a ‘campaign logo’, she said. We had also designed a conference wallet to contain every delegate’s papers. It was salmon pink, emblazoned with the red rose and the word ‘Labour’ in big, bold letters. Now I was summoned to see Neil in his Commons office. His wife Glenys was there too, looking upset and worried. Neil was holding up one of our salmon-pink wallets. ‘Do you really think the mineworkers’ delegation are going to prance around conference holding this? They’re not going to be caught dead with these things,’ he said. ‘You can’t