Come on, my lads and lasses, there’s so much work to do and we must all work even harder.
Orr addressing his staff in Washington, where he was director-general of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation after the second world war
For the few readers who don’t know which mainland local authorities have no railway stations, they are: Midlothian and Scottish Borders.
The world of the children 1
Kenneth Roy
The world of the children 2
Angus Skinner and others
The world of the children 3
Maggie Mellon
Walter Humes
Was he nuts? Does he look nuts?
For all except the most dedicated political anoraks, the party conference season is a time of extreme tedium, in comparison to which a one-way trip to the Dignitas clinic in Geneva can seem quite attractive.
The content-free speeches, clumsy attempts at humour and choreographed audience reactions combine to induce a state of catatonic stupor in anyone hoping for a hint of original thinking. Vacuous slogans have replaced real debate. Ed Miliband’s ‘one nation’, repeated 46 times in his address to the Labour conference, is typical and continues the trend set by David Cameron’s ‘We’re all in this together’. One almost longs for the old days when Labour party conferences featured general secretaries of trade unions haranguing the leadership in passionate Nye Bevan-style addresses, or Tory backwoodsmen (and women) from the shires calling for the return of flogging and hanging.
Of course, slogans have always been a feature of political exchanges, but in the past they were an accompaniment to substantive policies, rather than a substitute for them. Some slogans have been more successful than others. The mantra ‘It’s Scotland’s oil’ helped the SNP to gain some electoral success in the 1970s by strengthening the economic case for independence. Labour’s electoral victory in 1997 was aided by the slogan ‘Britain deserves better’, reinforced by the catchy campaign song ‘Things can only get better’. The day after the election, a newspaper cartoon featured disconsolate Tory ex-cabinet ministers, with Ken Clarke in the foreground nursing a pint of beer. The caption read: ‘Things can only get bitter’.
Earlier examples of slogans that made an impact include Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech about immigration. In fact, the speech did not include the exact phrase ‘rivers of blood’ but did make a classical reference to ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. It caused a political storm, leading to the sacking of Powell from the shadow cabinet by Edward Heath.
Rather less contentious was Harold Macmillan’s boast that ‘You’ve never had it so good’, claiming credit for relative economic prosperity in the late 1950s following post-war austerity (though Labour did counter with ‘You’ve never been had so good’). In the campaigns against the poll tax and in support of the miners’ strike in the 1980s, ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie – out, out, out’ proved a popular chant at rallies, particularly in Scotland, where the continuing legacy of Mrs Thatcher has helped to ensure the marginalisation of the Conservatives.
The twisting of slogans by opposition parties is an occupational risk. In the 1964 presidential election in America, the extreme right-wing Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, was promoted by posters stating, ‘In your heart, you know he’s right’. This prompted his opponents to counter with, ‘In your guts, you know he’s nuts’. I suspect Barack Obama’s 2008 slogan, ‘Yes, we can’, would not go down well in Scotland. Given our national capacity to turn positives into negatives, it would only be a matter of time before graffiti appeared with an alternative reading: ‘Naw, ye cannae’.
During Michael Howard’s short period as Tory leader, the party’s 2005 manifesto and campaign posters asked the question: ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’. In view of Ann Widdecombe’s observation that there was ‘something of the night’ about Howard, this took on slightly sinister overtones, suggesting that some of his thoughts might be a bit creepy, and perhaps helped to ensure Tony Blair’s third election victory.
Successful slogans are often quite simple. The post-war US president, Dwight D Eisenhower, popularly known as Ike, won elections in 1952 and 1956 with campaign posters which said simply ‘I like Ike’ followed four years later with ‘I still like Ike’. However, I don’t think this would work with the current crop of UK leaders. The rhyming potential of ‘Dave’, ‘Ed’ and ‘Nick’ might prompt a burst of creativity from the image-makers but we can be sure that some less than flattering alternatives would be suggested by critics.
Some slogans have served as powerful rallying calls for international political movements or have entered the language in ways that extend far beyond their original application. Karl Marx’s ‘Workers of the world, unite’ spread from the pages of the ‘Communist Manifesto’ to encourage the emergence of labour movements worldwide. Harry S Truman’s ‘The buck stops here’ no longer applies only to the oval office in the White House but is used to refer to the principle of public accountability in all sorts of contexts.
The debate about Scottish independence has produced two campaign slogans, neither of which could be called exciting. The pro-independence lobby has come up with ‘Yes Scotland’ while those favouring continuing membership of the UK have settled for ‘Better Together’. Neither exactly sets the heather on fire or helps to bring into focus the serious issues at stake. Blandness, however, carries fewer dangers than anything more assertive such as ‘Freedom beckons’ or ‘A leap in the dark’. As the date of the referendum approaches, it will be interesting to see if the two campaigning groups move beyond emotive generalisation to engage properly with the hard economic, legal, institutional and security questions.
Political parties shell out big bucks to advertising agencies and PR companies to come up with fancy logos and catchphrases that will appeal to voters. Maybe we can’t expect anything else in an age which prefers the instant headline to the careful presentation of evidence and argument. But if that is the case, it should come as no surprise that most political speeches are boring and that the quality of political leaders is often disappointing.
Walter Humes held professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland and is now a visiting professor
of education at the University of Stirling
