Learning to love the microphone

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By Giles Edwards Producer, BBC Radio 4's Learning to Love the Microphone

When Barack Obama stormed to victory in November, politicians around the world scrambled to see how he had used social networking and the internet.

Chamberlain had an extraordinary empathy with his audience

These new media, together with 24 hour TV news, have transformed how the public get their political news, and politicians are understandably keen to find out how they can benefit from it.

Could they learn some lessons from how a previous generation of politicians grappled with a previous generation of "new media"?

In the 1920s and 30s, radio and cinema sound newsreels totally changed public perceptions of politicians.

For the first time, they could be heard in people's homes and a single speech could reach an audience of millions.

As early as 1923 the managing director of the new BBC, John Reith, said that the prime minister of the day only had to give him five minutes notice and he would have access to two million people.

According to Professor Sean Street of Bournemouth University, Reith repeated this boast two years later to Stanley Baldwin, and Baldwin never forgot it.

The sound newsreel was just as revolutionary, creating what film historian Linda Kaye, from the British Universities Film and Video Council, calls "a heightened realism".

One cameraman at the time called it the "eighth wonder of the world".

Two heroes

Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were the two unlikely heroes of this new media age.

Both mastered the new media - above all understanding the need to leave a positive impression, rather than just convince on the arguments.

They also understood the need to address their audiences as individuals in their own homes, rather than a traditional speech to a much larger audience.

By the late 1930s everyone realised that they could not avoid the new media, and the game was on to try and master them

So while Labour politicians would sometimes repeat speeches given during election campaigns, these Conservative leaders worked hard on understanding who they were speaking to, and how they should tailor their message appropriately.

Baldwin used comforting tones, a moderate message and reassuring settings to convey the image of an uncontentious national leader above the party political fray.

Chamberlain developed an extraordinary empathy with his audience, sometimes speaking more conversationally than many politicians would try even today.

Left behind

All of this innovation left the opposition Liberal and Labour parties behind.

The Liberals focused on policy research, while many Labour politicians were concerned about the nature of the new companies.

According to Laura Beers, who has studied Labour's communications policy in the inter-war years, it was the capitalist nature of the large press conglomerates and the newsreel companies which caused Labour politicians such anxiety.

By the late 1930s everyone realised that they could not avoid the new media, and the game was on to try and master them.

But by then, the Conservatives had another big advantage: a publicity director by the name of Sir Joseph Ball, who surely ranks as one of the most ruthless of political operators.

Ball had been working at MI5 before joining the Conservative party in the 1920s, and over the next 15 years he worked closely with both Baldwin and Chamberlain.

He professionalised the operation and pushed the party leaders to think carefully about how they communicated on the new media.

But behind the scenes he could also rely on very close relations with major newsreel companies and ran a mini spy network inside the Labour party.

Ball secretly ran a newspaper which he used to smear opponents and under Chamberlain even had the prime minister's opponents bugged.

In today's more open political climate, that may not be a lesson today's politicians want to learn, but they could do much worse than look to how Baldwin and Chamberlain learned to love the microphone.

Learning to Love the Microphone is on Radio 4 at 2245 on 14 and 21 June, and repeated at 2045 on 17 and 24 June.