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This is the story of the rise of an idea
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that has come to dominate our society.
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It is the belief that the satisfaction of individual
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feelings and desires is our highest priority.
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Today we are going to tell you how to get whatever you want.
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I wanted to live a different life that was not available for me
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in the image I was born.
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Well, I'm here, look at me, notice me!
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Previous episodes have shown that this rise of the self
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was fostered and promoted by business.
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They had used the ideas of Sigmund Freud to develop techniques
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to read the inner desires of individuals
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and then fulfill them with products.
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This final episode is about how that idea took over politics.
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It tells the story of how politicians on the left
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in both America and Britain,
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turned to these techniques to regain power.
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They believed that they were creating a new
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and better form of democracy,
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one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individuals.
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But what the politicians didn't realize was that
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the aim of those who had originally created these techniques
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had not been to liberate the people but to develop a
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new way of controlling them in a new age of mass democracy.
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Century of the Self
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Part Four:
Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
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The roots of the story lie way back in the America of the 1920s with one man.
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He was called Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
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Bernays had been one of the inventors of the profession of public relations
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and he was fascinated by his uncle's theory that human behavior
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was driven by unconscious sexual and aggressive drives.
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Many of Bernays' clients were large American corporations
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and he was the first person to show them how they could sell many more products
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if they link them through images and symbols
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to those unconscious desires that Freud had identified.
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Stuart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations -
The strategy he offered them
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was that people could now look at the goods
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that emerging within the society and not merely view those goods
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as things that they needed in order to deal with some specific material want,
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but also as goods which will stroke and respond to deep emotional yearnings.
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You know, how this bar of soap or this bag of flour
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will make me a happier more successful more sexually appealing,
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less fearful person.
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Somebody to be admired rather than reviled.
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The powerful people in that world are those people
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who are capable of reading the public mind and giving the public
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what it wants in those terms.
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-And bernays was at the heart of it? -Bernays was the guy who was
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the foremost articulator of the theories which were driving this new system.
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By the 1980s Bernays' ideas had come of age.
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A vast industry had grown up in America
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devoted to reading the inner desires of consumers.
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At it's heart was the technique of the focus group.
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Previous episodes have shown how the focus group was invented by psychoanalysts
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employed by US corporations.
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The aim was to allow consumers to express their inner feelings and needs
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just as patients did in psychoanalysis.
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The information was then used to promote and design new products
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which would fulfill those desires.
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And Edward Bernays who was now nearly a hundred years old
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was celebrated as the founding father of this marketing world.
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Hi doctor! Good to see you! Come on up over here! There you go!
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Doctor! Tell me again what the doctor is! What are we dealing with?
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-You're the father of public relations!
-Well, what we'rea dealing with, really, is the concept
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that people will believe me more if you call me doctor!
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-So...That's a good idea!...
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And Bernays' ideas and techniques
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were also about to conquer Britain in the 1980s.
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Unlike America the ruling elites in Britain
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had always distrusted the idea of pandering to the masses.
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It was epitomized by the patrician elite who ran the BBC.
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Even as late as the 60s, the popular programs were referred to as 'ground bait'.
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Their real job was to lure the viewers into watching more serious programs
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the elite knew was good for them.
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And market research reflected this attitude.
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Individuals were observed and classified by market researchers
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according to their social class, from A through C2, D and E.
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-They might be C2...
-Yes, I think...babies,...the way they carry their luggage...
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No taxi,...and all stuffed in the bags like that... I think the lady posibly set her own hair...
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-Yes!...Shurely they're nicely dressed...
-Yes, they are!...
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-Probably a skilled worker...
-Yes! A skilled worker i think!
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-...we agree then...C2?
-Yes! C2! We think so, yes!..
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When people were asked their opinion about both products and politics
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they were selected by social class and asked only strictly factual questions
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about what they thought.
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-On leaving this end participant, put this on one side, who do you think will win this coming election?
-Ughh, Labour!
-Labour?
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-..and tell me which you preffer?...
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- which party do you think you will you be voting for? -This time, the liberals...
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-You'll be voting for the liberals...
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-And who do you think will be second? - *//'#%^&...
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-This one! -Thank you!
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The idea that one might ask people what they themselves felt and desired
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and then give it to them was seen as alien to the ruling elites
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and to challenge their belief that they knew was best for the public.
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Michael Shields, M.D. National Opinion Polls, 1962:
There's evidence that in other countries, in the United States for example,
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there were polls that have been used before the elections, to interpret the mood of the public,
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and then you give people what they want to have, and that's what they want to have...
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But , again, this could be less or more democratic,... I don't know...
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This could be very dangerous ground I think, though, when polls are used in that way..
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But then, in the economic crisis of the mid-70s
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British industries were forced to begin to pay attention
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to the inner feelings of consumers.
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As the recession deepened, consumer spending fell dramatically
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and the advertisers insisted that the only way for companies to survive
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was to make their advertising more effective.
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And to do this, they would have to delve into people's
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underlying psychological motives for purchasing.
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The advertising industry started to bring in Americans
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to run focus groups, with British housewives.
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Everyone is a unique person and even though you are a group of 10 today,
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we don't want a group opinnion. We want to know your ideas, your thoughts,
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no matter how crazy it might be...
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Please let your imagination wild, because that's how very crazy things like instant coffe got born
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Now,...so, can we get somebody, ...this lady,.. to be a kitchen sink?
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And, kitchen sink, how do you fell, with these things that are being used, to clean you up?
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Well, I've got to feel clean, I've got to be kept clean...
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I feel that I should hate if I was all greasy, so I've got to be easy to clean...
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Ok...now the housewife...this lady...
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What would you use to clean your kitchen sink?
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Umm, it's getting harder... Of course a cloth to apply things on...and plenty of water...
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And how do you fell as you're doing this chore?
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-Do you feel satisfied? -Well satisfied, when I have done it,... yes...
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i'm doing my duty, I feel it's a job well done..
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The consumers were encouraged to play at being products
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from household cleaners to car seatbelts.
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The aim was not to talk rationaly, but to act out and reveal
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the inner emotional relationship to products.
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-...which fermely and unmistakebly underlines...
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And then, a politician emerged who also believed that people
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should be allowed to express themselves.
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Instead of being controlled by the state the individual should become the central focus of society.
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Some socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer...
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We believe they should be individuals..
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We're all unequall...No one, thank Heavens, is quite like anyone else..
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However, much, the socialists may pretend otherwise,...
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And we believe that everyone has the right to be unequall,
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But to us, every human being is equally important...
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A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property,...
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to have the state as servant and not as master..
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They are the essence of a free economy...and on that freedom, all our other freedoms depend...
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Mrs. Thatcher's vision, was of a society in which the wants and desires
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of millions of individuals would be satisfied through the free market.
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This, she believed, would be the engine to regenerate Britain.
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And with her ascent to power, the advertising and marketing industries flourished.
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Their task was to find out what the British people really wanted
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and then sell it to them.
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In this new climate, the focus group flourished,
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and those who ran them borrowed from the techniques of psychotherapy
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to delve ever deeper into people's feelings about products.
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We're trying to understand how people feel about brands, how they relate to brands,
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that is to see what the brand's personality is, as far as consumers are concerned..
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There are a number of techniques wich are very very helpful for getting to that,
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to their understanding,..
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The consumer is given crayons, to doodle, to express their feelings, to go inside their own head
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to put out their feeling and to somehow get them onto paper...
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And here's our ordinary drinkers, expressing their feelings about drinking Guiness
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here you see a rich, very female aspect of Guiness,
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so if you were describing a woman, who somehow to you, had that caracter...
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-What sort of person is it? -Paullie A...She used to lay in bed,
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surrounded with magazines and chocolates, like a 50s starlet..
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Out of this research the marketeers began to detect a new individualism.
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In particular among those who had voted conservative for the first time in 1979.
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They no longer wanted to be seen as part of social classes
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but to express themselves.
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And crucial to this were the products they chose to buy.
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Stephen Wells - Co-founder, Consumer Connection -
We found that there was this trend towards
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what we called individualism where people still wanted to be part of a crowd
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but to express themselves as individuals within it.
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To have their own personalities, to be, I suppose, their own man.
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I didn't want to be the same as anybody else..
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I wanted it to be little bit different, little bit individual...
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It's quite individual upstairs, it's not remarcable, but I think it's quite individual...
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It is expensive, it's italian, it's good quality, quite different...
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We want to set our own standards, so no one else has got what we've got...
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we just didn't want to be the same as everybody else, we wantted to be different..
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Business responded eagerly to this new individualism
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and it soon became one of the main forces driving the growing consumer boom in Britain.
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Using the data from the focus groups, manufacturers created new ranges of products
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that allow people to express their individuality.
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Business also recategorized people.
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They were no longer divided by social class
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but by their inner psychological needs.
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John Banks - Chairman, Young and Rubicam -
If the primary need is security and belonging we call the groups Mainstreamers,
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if it's status and the esteem of others then it's Aspirers,
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if it's control it's Succeeders, and if it's self-esteem it's Reformers.
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And this new marketing culture began to take over the institutions
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previously dominated by a pattrition elite, particularly the world of journalism.
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The assault was led by the profession of public relations.
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In the past PR had been seen as seedy and corrupt,
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but now it became a glamorous business, promoting products and celebrities.
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And one of the rising stars was another member of the Freud family,
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Matthew Freud, the son of the liberal MP (Member of Parliament) Clement.
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What Freud and other PRs realized was that they could use their celebrities
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as levers to infiltrate their advertising into the editorial content of newspapers.
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The newspapers were offered exclusive interviews with celebrities
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but only if they also agreed to mention products
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made by Freud's corporate clients, in terms dictated by the company.
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Matthew Wright - Tabloid Journalist 1993-2000 -
What happened with Freuds was you effectively got some kind of product placement
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or even product-- the manufacturers of products got some degree of control over how
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their products would appear in print.
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So if for example you wanted to write about Caprice's passion for stuffed crust pizza
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you would sign a contract which guaranteed that you would mention the firm Pizza Hut
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at least twice in certain positions in the introductory paragraph of the article
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and you would agree to run the Pizza Hut logo at such and such a size and such and such a place
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and of course that you would agree to run the enclosed pictures
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of Caprice eating her stuffed crust pizza.
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There was no choice about you would run this article in the press,
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as you were effectively told how to run the article in the press by Freuds.
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It's a rise of the corporate culture and the rise of business.
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To traditional journalists, this infiltration of advertising into the editorial pages
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was a corruption of their profession.
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But to Mrs. Thatcher's allies like Rupert Murdoch who owned The Sun and The Times,
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it was part of a democratic revolution against an arrogant elite
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who had for too long ignored the feelings of the masses.
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Rupert Murdoch - Owner, Times Newspapers (interview from that period) -
They hate to see someone communicating with the masses.
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They feel that newspapers, the written word is not for the masses.
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That should be left to television or perhaps to nobody.
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I'm very proud of The Sun and The Sun was not represented tonight in your film
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you just took page three which everyone seems so fascinated with,
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what about page one, or page two, every other page of the paper.
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That was typical piece of slanting and elitism by the BBC, who after all
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in order to get viewers for this program, put on a very sexy episode of Star Trek
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which I was just watching out in the room there.
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Interviewer:
I don't think they put it on to get us viewers I think we are just lucky to follow them.
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Murdoch:
They try to carry viewers into these programs, I know how it's done.
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By the late 80s Mrs. Thatcher and her allies in advertising and the media
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had brought the desires of the individual to the center of society.
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As last week's episode showed it was the same transformation
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that President Reagan had brought about in America.
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Both politicians had encouraged business to take over from government
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the role of fulfilling the needs of the people.
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In the process, consumers were encouraged to see the satisfaction of their desires
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as the overriding priority.
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To Thatcher and Reagan this was a new and better form of democracy.
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But to their opponents in the parties of the left,
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they had summoned up the most selfish and greedy aspects of human nature.
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Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 -
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher both embraced an economic philosophy
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that says the unit of judgment was not only the individual
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but it was the individual's personal satisfaction,
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the individual's own unique happiness and well being.
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00:17:09,228 --> 00:17:15,480
It was in a sense the triumph of regarding individuals as purely emotional beings
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who have needs and wants and desires that need to be satisfied
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and can be satisfied unconsciously.
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00:17:23,415 --> 00:17:28,655
It goes way back to the early part of the 20th century to Freud,
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to notions of the unconscious,
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00:17:33,467 --> 00:17:38,509
the assumptions that in terms of our rational minds we are little corks
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00:17:38,779 --> 00:17:43,698
bobbing around on this great sea of hopes and fears and desires
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of which we are only thinly aware and that the world of a marketer,
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00:17:49,121 --> 00:17:52,982
the role of somebody selling something, including a politician
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00:17:53,492 --> 00:17:59,072
is to appeal to this great swamp of desire, of unconscious desire.
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The left believed the opposite.
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That the way to create a better society,
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was not to treat people as emotional isolated individuals,
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but to persuade them to realize that they had common interests with others.
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To help them rise above their individual feelings and fears.
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President Roosevelt - 1933
Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
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Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror
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which paralyzes needed efforts, to convert retreat into advance.
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00:18:42,249 --> 00:18:46,213
This idea had flourished in America in the depression of the 1930s.
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President Roosevelt faced with the chaos caused by the Wall Street crash
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00:18:51,152 --> 00:18:53,878
encouraged Americans to join together in trade's unions,
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to set up consumer groups, and to pay for a welfare system
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for those trapped in poverty.
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His aim was to create a collective awareness
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which would become a powerful weapon against the unfettered power of capitalism
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which had caused the crisis.
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That idea had driven the democratic party for 50 years.
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But now, Roosevelt's inheritors railed vainly against the effects of the self-interest
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00:19:20,827 --> 00:19:23,004
encouraged by President Reagan.
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Mario Cuomo - Democratic Party Convention 1984 -
There is despair Mr. President in the faces that you don't see.
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Maybe Mr. President if you stop in at a shelter in Chicago
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and spoke to the homeless there,
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Maybe Mr. President, if you asked the woman who had been denied the help she needed
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to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break
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00:19:50,671 --> 00:19:54,425
for a millionaire, or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.
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Mario Cuomo - Governor, New York 1982-95 -
The worst thing Ronald Reagan did
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00:19:59,220 --> 00:20:01,691
was to make the denial of compassion respectable.
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00:20:01,499 --> 00:20:04,325
He said you've worked hard, you've made your money,
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you shouldn't have to feel guilty about refusing to throw it away on people
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00:20:10,688 --> 00:20:14,338
who choose to be homeless and who choose not to work.
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That's what he said.
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He said it with an elegance and kind of a benign aspect
283
00:20:20,660 --> 00:20:22,771
that disguised it's harshness.
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-You think we can do anything about it?
-Well, why not?
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-If we can work together now to look after the lives of the people,here..
286
00:20:30,020 --> 00:20:32,689
I don't see how we couldn't work together afterwards to clean up the mess
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00:20:32,962 --> 00:20:35,971
and help build a better world in wich these things can't possibly happend..
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00:20:35,971 --> 00:20:38,819
The qualities we've learned from camaradeship and common suffering,
289
00:20:39,072 --> 00:20:41,709
are not to be wasted after this war...
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It's out of experience, like ours, that a better world will be built
291
00:20:47,388 --> 00:20:51,372
That same idea - marshalling the collective force of the masses
292
00:20:51,620 --> 00:20:54,243
to challenge the entrenched power of wealth and business
293
00:20:54,243 --> 00:20:57,605
had also led the labor party to power in Britain after the war.
294
00:20:59,594 --> 00:21:04,466
But in the 80s, labor like the democrats in America lost election after election
295
00:21:04,705 --> 00:21:08,424
as millions who had once voted for them switched their allegiance
296
00:21:08,424 --> 00:21:10,405
to the conservatives.
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00:21:12,631 --> 00:21:16,500
There it is, going blue just about everywhere, swipping the country...
298
00:21:17,220 --> 00:21:23,772
For they are the party of yesterday...and tomorrow is ours...
299
00:21:24,948 --> 00:21:27,879
In the face of this, a growing number in the labor party
300
00:21:28,111 --> 00:21:30,800
became convinced that if they were ever going to regain power
301
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:33,956
labor would have to come to terms with the new individualism.
302
00:21:35,413 --> 00:21:38,517
One of them was an advertising executive called Phillip Gould
303
00:21:39,053 --> 00:21:40,912
who had been a life long labor supporter.
304
00:21:42,377 --> 00:21:45,439
Gould believed that labor's leadership had become corrupted
305
00:21:45,439 --> 00:21:49,664
by the same patrician arrogance that dominated all of Britain's institutions.
306
00:21:50,283 --> 00:21:54,553
They denigrated and disapproved of the new aspirations of working class voters.
307
00:21:55,820 --> 00:21:59,116
Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day -
Labor stopped listening to these people.
308
00:21:59,116 --> 00:22:03,709
And I remember the best example of this was after the election of 1983
309
00:22:03,709 --> 00:22:06,256
which was the election above all
310
00:22:06,477 --> 00:22:09,364
where the people's voices were just not heard.
311
00:22:09,804 --> 00:22:14,432
And I had dinner with a leading labor party figure
312
00:22:14,754 --> 00:22:18,915
who had been heavily involved in the defeat and his wife said
313
00:22:19,177 --> 00:22:24,521
'God these working class people we give them an education
314
00:22:24,521 --> 00:22:26,900
and give them chances in life and what do they do they read The Sun
315
00:22:27,148 --> 00:22:28,746
and they just don't vote for us.'
316
00:22:28,952 --> 00:22:34,303
And there was such a gap between these people just trying to make better lives
317
00:22:34,544 --> 00:22:39,697
for themselves and the kind of elitism of the labor party
318
00:22:39,697 --> 00:22:43,884
there was just this chasm that had to be filled.
319
00:22:44,899 --> 00:22:50,076
Gould became part of a small group of modernizers centered around Peter Mandelson.
320
00:22:50,076 --> 00:22:53,256
Their aim was to reconnect labor with the lost voters.
321
00:22:55,054 --> 00:22:58,837
To do this, Gould turned to the technique that he knew well from his work
322
00:22:58,837 --> 00:23:01,311
in advertising - the focus group.
323
00:23:02,419 --> 00:23:05,653
Gould commissioned focus groups in suburban areas across the country
324
00:23:05,965 --> 00:23:08,778
with small groups of voters who had switched to Mrs. Thatcher.
325
00:23:10,716 --> 00:23:13,627
People were encouraged not to talk rationally about policies
326
00:23:14,045 --> 00:23:16,369
but to express their underlying feelings.
327
00:23:17,763 --> 00:23:21,480
And what Gould discovered was a fundamental shift in people's relationship
328
00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:22,893
to politics.
329
00:23:23,175 --> 00:23:26,438
They no longer saw themselves as part of any group but
330
00:23:27,158 --> 00:23:32,124
as individuals who could demand things from politicians in return for paying taxes.
331
00:23:33,348 --> 00:23:36,540
Just as business had taught them to do, as consumers.
332
00:23:38,872 --> 00:23:43,157
Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day -
And I found that people had become consumers,
333
00:23:43,374 --> 00:23:46,735
you know people wanted to have politics and life on their own terms.
334
00:23:46,735 --> 00:23:49,785
I mean not just in politics but in all aspects of life too.
335
00:23:50,046 --> 00:23:55,234
People see themselves as they are, as autonomous powerful individuals
336
00:23:55,553 --> 00:23:59,380
who are entitled to be respected, who are entitled to have the best
337
00:23:59,641 --> 00:24:06,827
not just in Tescoes and whatever, but the best in terms of health and education too.
338
00:24:07,924 --> 00:24:10,802
All this was about getting the labor party to understand
339
00:24:11,971 --> 00:24:14,583
that people really really really had changed
340
00:24:14,899 --> 00:24:18,148
and unless the labor party changed it would not win.
341
00:24:18,850 --> 00:24:21,846
Philip Gould now set out to try and persuade the labor party
342
00:24:22,163 --> 00:24:26,663
they would have to make concessions to what he called the new aspirational classes.
343
00:24:27,449 --> 00:24:29,613
He was going to face implacable opposition.
344
00:24:31,049 --> 00:24:35,159
In the run up to the 1992 election, Gould argued that the only way to win
345
00:24:35,541 --> 00:24:38,703
was for labor not to put up (raise) taxes.
346
00:24:39,098 --> 00:24:41,991
But the Shadow Chancellor John Smith angrily refused.
347
00:24:42,474 --> 00:24:44,666
Labor would stick to it's fundamental policies.
348
00:24:45,144 --> 00:24:47,802
They would fight the election with the promise of tax increases
349
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:50,022
to create a fairer society.
350
00:24:52,540 --> 00:24:55,709
And as the campaign began it seemed as if Philip Gould was wrong.
351
00:24:57,042 --> 00:24:59,976
The traditional polls consistently showed labor ahead
352
00:25:00,223 --> 00:25:03,321
despite the conservative campaign message that labor government
353
00:25:03,567 --> 00:25:04,887
would put up (raise) taxes.
354
00:25:09,507 --> 00:25:13,012
Even the conservatives oldest allies in the press became convinced
355
00:25:13,279 --> 00:25:16,974
that by harping on about tax, the conservatives were cutting their own throats.
356
00:25:17,961 --> 00:25:21,528
The way of the torries must be that they're not at the moment conveing
357
00:25:21,747 --> 00:25:24,086
a sense of grip in being at control
358
00:25:24,352 --> 00:25:27,574
and unless they can do better than that, I think they're going to lose...
359
00:25:27,574 --> 00:25:31,568
The other thing is that they still say they are going to go on and on
360
00:25:31,822 --> 00:25:37,307
with this one message of tax and I think, in part, the difficulty this morning
361
00:25:37,526 --> 00:25:41,664
was that you had a whole lot of people who'd benn going to the same press conferences
362
00:25:41,905 --> 00:25:46,808
for 7 days, had virtually the same message, and they're getting bored
363
00:25:47,089 --> 00:25:49,167
and hitting back on him.
364
00:25:49,420 --> 00:25:53,898
I think the media sensed the big story comming, in the torryes being defeated...
365
00:25:55,227 --> 00:25:59,621
And the labor party too, was convinced it would win and finally return to power.
366
00:26:00,182 --> 00:26:06,526
It's now time to meet the men and women who will form the next government
367
00:26:12,346 --> 00:26:19,200
And now , it's time, time for the new prime-minister, Neil Kennet
368
00:26:20,030 --> 00:26:23,518
Those running labor's campaign believed that by modern presentation
369
00:26:23,916 --> 00:26:28,627
they would attract back the voters yet keep the old policies.
370
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,420
But Philip Gould was convinced that labor were going to lose.
371
00:26:34,307 --> 00:26:36,863
Through his focus groups, he knew that the very people
372
00:26:37,091 --> 00:26:40,013
that were telling the traditional pollsters they would vote labor
373
00:26:40,341 --> 00:26:43,890
were in reality preparing to vote conservative out of self-interest
374
00:26:45,154 --> 00:26:46,828
but they were too embarrassed to admit it.
375
00:26:49,824 --> 00:26:51,651
And John Major also knew this
376
00:26:52,286 --> 00:26:55,328
because his focus groups were telling him the same thing.
377
00:26:59,058 --> 00:27:02,283
-Why aren't you making a poll which puts labour 5 points ahead?
378
00:27:02,294 --> 00:27:05,256
I shouldn't worry about that. It's the feel good on the streets that matters..
379
00:27:05,738 --> 00:27:08,804
-Is it feeling good on the streets? -It is feeling good on the streets...yes..
380
00:27:09,081 --> 00:27:11,866
It has been felling surprisingly good on the streets for some time...
381
00:27:12,517 --> 00:27:16,218
Quite surprisingly...quite out of line...with opinion polls..
382
00:27:16,881 --> 00:27:20,375
don't ask me to expect it, because it feels right...
383
00:27:20,790 --> 00:27:23,617
Now, let's sit down, we're ready to go!...
384
00:27:25,582 --> 00:27:29,439
John Major's victory in 1992, was a disaster for the labor party.
385
00:27:31,584 --> 00:27:35,034
The small group of reformers centered around Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould
386
00:27:35,364 --> 00:27:38,055
were convinced that the only way for the party to survive
387
00:27:38,269 --> 00:27:40,455
was to change it's basic policies.
388
00:27:41,259 --> 00:27:45,064
But their ideas were rejected by John Smith who had now become leader.
389
00:27:46,587 --> 00:27:49,802
Philip Gould left Britain to go to work for the campaign to elect
390
00:27:50,019 --> 00:27:52,113
Bill Clinton President in America.
391
00:27:53,126 --> 00:27:56,143
Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day -
The 1992 election, during and afterward
392
00:27:56,353 --> 00:28:00,793
people felt under great strain and really did feel demoralized and dejected
393
00:28:01,010 --> 00:28:04,734
and to from this to the Clinton campaign was an extraordinary experience
394
00:28:04,939 --> 00:28:10,689
because here suddenly I found articulated many of the ideas I had
395
00:28:10,896 --> 00:28:15,504
but not fully myself been able to encapsulate or to articulate.
396
00:28:16,012 --> 00:28:19,181
Do you want a president who will restore the middle class,
397
00:28:19,587 --> 00:28:23,355
reclaim the future for the middle class and restore the american dream?
398
00:28:23,829 --> 00:28:27,057
Vote for Bill Clinton and you have surely sent the signal to the country
399
00:28:27,278 --> 00:28:29,760
that we are coming, together!...
400
00:28:30,272 --> 00:28:33,527
What Gould discovered was that like the labor party, the democrats
401
00:28:33,527 --> 00:28:36,107
had also been doing focus groups with swing voters.
402
00:28:36,732 --> 00:28:40,297
The difference was that Bill Clinton had decided to tailor his policies
403
00:28:40,558 --> 00:28:42,637
to fit with these voters desires.
404
00:28:43,401 --> 00:28:47,126
Above all, with their ferocious belief that they should only pay tax
405
00:28:47,126 --> 00:28:51,094
for things that benefitted them, not for the welfare of others.
406
00:28:52,668 --> 00:28:56,188
I have no idea what percentage of my tax-dollars go to welfare, but,
407
00:28:56,451 --> 00:29:01,681
even if it's a minuscule percentage, even if it's a core percent,
408
00:29:02,002 --> 00:29:06,277
it's still too much...for people that are receiving these benefits
409
00:29:06,277 --> 00:29:08,716
that are basicly non-productive...
410
00:29:09,406 --> 00:29:12,935
The Clinton team decided that to win they had to promise tax cuts
411
00:29:13,156 --> 00:29:15,453
for these suburban voters.
412
00:29:15,691 --> 00:29:18,734
And they also used the focus groups throughout the campaign
413
00:29:18,734 --> 00:29:21,721
to check every appearance, speech and policy
414
00:29:21,721 --> 00:29:23,872
with them for their approval.
415
00:29:24,517 --> 00:29:28,327
What Clinton called the forgotten middle class became central figures
416
00:29:28,582 --> 00:29:30,656
in a new type of reactive politics.
417
00:29:33,303 --> 00:29:35,808
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 -
Candidates for the presidency of the United States
418
00:29:35,808 --> 00:29:40,078
has been pre-packaged and designed for many many years.
419
00:29:40,311 --> 00:29:47,578
What was new, was an attempt to use very sophisticated or pseudo-sophisticated
420
00:29:47,788 --> 00:29:51,174
techniques to plum the public psychology to find out precisely
421
00:29:51,451 --> 00:29:56,050
what the desires of the individuals were and then to come up with
422
00:29:56,341 --> 00:30:02,498
a candidate and a platform and images and words that exactly responded
423
00:30:02,722 --> 00:30:03,798
to those deep desires.
424
00:30:04,235 --> 00:30:06,888
This was packaging at a new level.
425
00:30:07,188 --> 00:30:10,096
This was polling at an extreme.
426
00:30:10,898 --> 00:30:12,780
I'm not gonna raise tax for the middle class!
427
00:30:13,056 --> 00:30:14,627
...and the middle class needs a break...
428
00:30:14,925 --> 00:30:17,582
The government is in the way...
429
00:30:17,846 --> 00:30:21,508
Is taking more of your money ang giving you less in return...
430
00:30:22,754 --> 00:30:27,641
In the name of the hard working americans who make up our forgotten middle class
431
00:30:28,316 --> 00:30:33,073
I proudly accept your niomination for president of the United States...
432
00:30:33,375 --> 00:30:36,830
Stay focused! Talk about things that matter to people!...You know?
433
00:30:37,695 --> 00:30:40,410
It's the economy, stupid!.. OK?...
434
00:30:41,489 --> 00:30:45,088
But Clinton's campaign team led by James Carvell and George Stephanopolus
435
00:30:45,351 --> 00:30:48,142
did not believe that they were capitulating to the selfish desires
436
00:30:48,142 --> 00:30:49,926
of the middle classes.
437
00:30:50,297 --> 00:30:53,412
Tax cuts were the price they had to pay to regain power.
438
00:30:54,401 --> 00:30:58,144
But once in power they would still fulfill traditional democratic policies
439
00:30:58,895 --> 00:31:01,913
and help the poor who had been neglected under Reagan,
440
00:31:02,286 --> 00:31:04,587
above all with the reform of health care.
441
00:31:05,897 --> 00:31:09,129
They would pay for the tax cuts by cutting defense spending
442
00:31:09,355 --> 00:31:11,638
and increasing taxes on the very rich.
443
00:31:12,326 --> 00:31:15,059
In this way, they believed they were forging a coalition
444
00:31:15,318 --> 00:31:19,118
of the new and the old voters both of whom, could be satisfied.
445
00:31:19,836 --> 00:31:23,932
Probably for the first time in a generation, tomorrow, we're gonna win...
446
00:31:23,932 --> 00:31:27,193
And that means that more people are going to have more jobs,
447
00:31:27,431 --> 00:31:30,571
people are going to appeal a little less to healthcare, get better care,
448
00:31:30,833 --> 00:31:33,911
and more kids are going to get better schools...
449
00:31:34,416 --> 00:31:36,308
Umm,...So,... thanks...
450
00:31:41,042 --> 00:31:43,773
But the democrats optimism was to be short-lived.
451
00:31:45,342 --> 00:31:49,172
In November 1992, Clinton was triumphantly elected President.
452
00:31:50,038 --> 00:31:53,280
But within weeks, his administration discovered that the budgets deficit
453
00:31:53,557 --> 00:31:55,897
was far greater than they had anticipated.
454
00:31:57,402 --> 00:32:00,148
At a meeting in the White House, in January 1993
455
00:32:00,523 --> 00:32:03,369
the head of the Federal Reserve told them that the deficit
456
00:32:03,369 --> 00:32:05,730
was nearly 300 Billion dollars.
457
00:32:06,469 --> 00:32:09,638
There was no way they could borrow more without panicking the markets
458
00:32:09,842 --> 00:32:11,417
and causing a crisis.
459
00:32:12,075 --> 00:32:15,791
The only way to pay for the proposed tax cuts, would be to cut
460
00:32:16,110 --> 00:32:19,355
government spending not just in defense but on welfare.
461
00:32:22,559 --> 00:32:26,448
Clinton was faced with a choice between the old politics and the new
462
00:32:26,824 --> 00:32:28,811
and he chose the old.
463
00:32:29,391 --> 00:32:32,520
The tax cuts were dropped and he tried to inspire the country
464
00:32:32,812 --> 00:32:35,701
with the old democratic ideal of government spending
465
00:32:35,996 --> 00:32:38,358
to help the poor and disadvantaged.
466
00:32:39,670 --> 00:32:42,468
Tonight I want to talk with you about what government can do,
467
00:32:42,704 --> 00:32:46,582
because i believe the government must do more to put people to work now
468
00:32:46,827 --> 00:32:50,959
to create a half a million jobs, jobs to rebuild our highways and airports
469
00:32:51,203 --> 00:32:54,981
to renovate housing, to bring new life to rural communities and spread hope
470
00:32:55,207 --> 00:32:57,599
and oportunity among our nation's youth.
471
00:32:58,124 --> 00:33:03,398
-Healthcare reform sounds like a great idea to me!
-Well, I know, but some of these details sure scarre the hack out of me!
472
00:33:03,657 --> 00:33:05,621
-Like what?
-Like...
473
00:33:05,829 --> 00:33:09,295
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 -
At the start of the Clinton administration
474
00:33:09,295 --> 00:33:12,640
many of us, including I believe President Clinton himself
475
00:33:12,902 --> 00:33:14,545
reverted back to an older tradition,
476
00:33:14,786 --> 00:33:21,360
tried to lift the public to talk about genuine ideals beyond the individual.
477
00:33:21,628 --> 00:33:25,516
And that reformed agenda being, not only universal health care, and child care,
478
00:33:25,905 --> 00:33:31,002
and dealing with the widening inequalities in our society, and homelessness,
479
00:33:31,364 --> 00:33:36,103
many things that many citizens - particularly middle income citizens
480
00:33:36,330 --> 00:33:38,310
just didn't want to deal with.
481
00:33:39,021 --> 00:33:41,482
But the suburban voters who had been promised tax cuts
482
00:33:41,862 --> 00:33:43,866
were not inspired by Bill Clinton's vision.
483
00:33:44,548 --> 00:33:47,157
They felt betrayed and wanted revenge.
484
00:33:50,647 --> 00:33:54,815
Their opportunity came in 1994, with the congressional elections.
485
00:33:55,471 --> 00:33:58,808
The Republicans led by Newt Gingrich promised huge tax cuts
486
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:01,600
and to dismantle the welfare system.
487
00:34:02,432 --> 00:34:05,566
The voters who had defected to Clinton switched sides yet again
488
00:34:06,221 --> 00:34:09,634
and the Republicans won both houses of Congress in a landslide.
489
00:34:10,675 --> 00:34:14,036
Well, i think it's a tremendous vote in favor of a smaller government and
490
00:34:14,259 --> 00:34:17,884
lower taxes in a sense of a renewall of a Thatcher-Reagan tradition
491
00:34:18,355 --> 00:34:20,150
and that interest is pretty decisive...
492
00:34:20,674 --> 00:34:23,222
It means that the welfare state is going to be less hospitable
493
00:34:23,725 --> 00:34:27,026
for people who are not willing to take responsability for their own situation
494
00:34:27,683 --> 00:34:28,519
no question about it...
495
00:34:28,878 --> 00:34:32,240
I think today is the begining of the end of the welfare state...
496
00:34:33,722 --> 00:34:35,916
For Clinton it was a disaster.
497
00:34:36,482 --> 00:34:40,420
Faced with a hostile congress there was no way for him to get his reforms through.
498
00:34:40,997 --> 00:34:44,179
His personal popularity plummeted and it seemed certain
499
00:34:44,399 --> 00:34:46,631
he would not be re-elected in two years time.
500
00:34:48,479 --> 00:34:50,666
In desperation and without telling his cabinet
501
00:34:50,929 --> 00:34:53,456
Clinton turned for help to one of America's most ruthless
502
00:34:53,456 --> 00:34:56,276
political strategists, Dick Morris.
503
00:34:57,339 --> 00:35:00,009
-What did he want you to do?
-Save his butt...
504
00:35:01,464 --> 00:35:06,659
Dick Morris - Strategy Advisor to President Clinton 1994-1996 -
Clinton was in serious trouble, he had lost the 94 election,
505
00:35:06,910 --> 00:35:10,664
he had lost control of Congress, and he hired me to come back help and save him.
506
00:35:10,953 --> 00:35:14,456
So he was basically asking me to perform roughly the same role as
507
00:35:14,698 --> 00:35:17,177
a life preserver would if you are drowning.
508
00:35:18,053 --> 00:35:20,604
What Morris told Clinton was that to win re-election
509
00:35:21,082 --> 00:35:24,270
he would have to transform the very nature of politics.
510
00:35:25,698 --> 00:35:29,837
The crucial swing voters in the suburbs now thought and behaved like consumers.
511
00:35:30,732 --> 00:35:34,179
The only way to win them back was to forget all ideology
512
00:35:34,428 --> 00:35:37,786
and instead turn politics into a form of consumer business.
513
00:35:39,177 --> 00:35:43,197
Clinton must try to identify their personal desires and whims
514
00:35:43,540 --> 00:35:45,190
and then promise to fulfill them.
515
00:35:45,941 --> 00:35:49,263
If he followed those consumer rules they would follow him.
516
00:35:51,025 --> 00:35:53,965
Dick Morris - Strategy Advisor to President Clinton 1994-1996 -
I said that I felt the most important thing for him to do
517
00:35:54,545 --> 00:35:59,150
was to bring to the political system the same consumer rules philosophy
518
00:35:59,413 --> 00:36:01,916
that the business community has.
519
00:36:02,432 --> 00:36:07,352
Because I think politics needs to be as responsive to the whims and desires
520
00:36:07,575 --> 00:36:09,825
of the marketplace as business is.
521
00:36:10,229 --> 00:36:14,586
And it needs to be sensitive to the bottom line - profits or votes
522
00:36:14,976 --> 00:36:16,090
- as a business is.
523
00:36:16,538 --> 00:36:21,791
I think all of this involves really, a changed view of the voters
524
00:36:22,156 --> 00:36:25,745
so that instead of treating them as targets you treat them as owners.
525
00:36:26,141 --> 00:36:29,405
Instead of treating them as something that you can manipulate
526
00:36:29,728 --> 00:36:31,977
you treat them as something you need to learn from.
527
00:36:32,308 --> 00:36:35,203
And instead of feeling that you can stay in one place
528
00:36:35,542 --> 00:36:39,292
and you can manipulate the voters you need to learn what they want
529
00:36:39,701 --> 00:36:42,138
and move yourself to accommodate them.
530
00:36:43,439 --> 00:36:45,715
To get inside the minds of the swing voters,
531
00:36:46,030 --> 00:36:49,399
Morris brought lifestyle marketing into politics for the first time.
532
00:36:50,781 --> 00:36:53,704
He went to one of America's most prominent market research firms
533
00:36:53,929 --> 00:36:58,870
called Penn and Schoen and commissioned what they called a neuro-personality poll.
534
00:37:01,135 --> 00:37:03,765
It was a massive survey of hundreds of thousands of voters
535
00:37:04,619 --> 00:37:08,063
but the only political questions it asked were to find out if someone
536
00:37:08,309 --> 00:37:10,435
was a swing voter or not.
537
00:37:11,763 --> 00:37:14,624
All the other questions were intimate psychological ones
538
00:37:14,891 --> 00:37:19,779
designed to see whether swing voters fell into identifiable psychological types.
539
00:37:20,967 --> 00:37:23,965
Mark Penn - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 -
Well we were asking people questions like
540
00:37:23,965 --> 00:37:26,128
do you think you're the life of the party?
541
00:37:26,128 --> 00:37:31,502
Do you think when you see things you like to have a list and organize them?
542
00:37:32,154 --> 00:37:38,735
Do you tipically, like to plan things ahead or be more spontaneous?
543
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:43,197
Where do you like to go? What sports do you like to play?
544
00:37:43,623 --> 00:37:46,705
What would you do with your spouse on a romantic weekend?
545
00:37:47,363 --> 00:37:50,829
So we were asking people some very personal questions about their own lives
546
00:37:51,310 --> 00:37:54,569
to see were the kinds of people that were likely to change their vote
547
00:37:54,988 --> 00:38:03,064
also possessing a certain kind of personality traits and in fact they were.
548
00:38:04,925 --> 00:38:09,405
The neuro-personality poll allowed the Clinton team to segment swing voters
549
00:38:09,405 --> 00:38:11,393
into different lifestyle types.
550
00:38:11,671 --> 00:38:16,139
They were given names like Pools and Patios, or Caps and Gowns
551
00:38:16,139 --> 00:38:18,834
who were urban intellectuals living in university towns.
552
00:38:20,423 --> 00:38:23,830
From this, the team could identify ways in which they could make individuals
553
00:38:24,087 --> 00:38:26,728
feel more secure in their chosen lifestyles.
554
00:38:27,704 --> 00:38:29,911
Just as business had learned to do with products.
555
00:38:31,457 --> 00:38:33,597
Dick Morris called it small-bore politics.
556
00:38:34,292 --> 00:38:37,149
Tiny details of peoples personal lives and personal anxieties
557
00:38:37,408 --> 00:38:40,596
which politics never even thought about or noticed before
558
00:38:41,612 --> 00:38:44,401
but which now had become the key to winning power.
559
00:38:46,301 --> 00:38:52,946
Doug Schoen - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 -
It was an America that focused on day to day practical concerns
560
00:38:52,946 --> 00:38:59,631
- should I wear seatbelts, should I stop smoking, should I wear a school uniform,
561
00:38:59,881 --> 00:39:01,989
is my neighborhood being protected...
562
00:39:02,385 --> 00:39:07,605
It was not so much a new individualism as the social order
563
00:39:07,871 --> 00:39:11,134
as we had known it had broken down so we got into people's heads,
564
00:39:11,369 --> 00:39:15,070
understood their psychology about lifestyle, about values,
565
00:39:15,356 --> 00:39:19,165
what they thought was important, what issues they wanted politicians
566
00:39:19,426 --> 00:39:21,152
and the president to address.
567
00:39:21,381 --> 00:39:23,457
And these issues proved to be very very different
568
00:39:23,685 --> 00:39:25,590
from what the conventional wisdom had suggested.
569
00:39:26,759 --> 00:39:30,182
As the election campaign began, Clinton revealed Morris's new approach
570
00:39:30,382 --> 00:39:32,196
to a shocked White House.
571
00:39:32,997 --> 00:39:35,130
All traditional policies were to be dropped.
572
00:39:35,432 --> 00:39:39,117
Instead he would concentrate exclusively on policies that targeted
573
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,146
the worries of swing voters.
574
00:39:41,616 --> 00:39:44,569
V-Chips would be fitted into televisions to prevent children
575
00:39:44,778 --> 00:39:49,448
from watching pornography and mobile phones would be fitted into school buses
576
00:39:49,696 --> 00:39:51,993
to make parents feel more secure.
577
00:39:53,105 --> 00:39:56,249
Dick Morris also persuaded the president to spend his leisure time
578
00:39:56,479 --> 00:39:58,996
in the same way as particular swing voters.
579
00:40:00,219 --> 00:40:04,281
He sent Clinton on a hunting holiday, dressed in exactly the Goretex outfits
580
00:40:04,508 --> 00:40:07,071
the group called Big Sky Families liked.
581
00:40:07,934 --> 00:40:11,010
The aim was to reflect swing voters lifestyles back to them.
582
00:40:12,043 --> 00:40:14,962
The liberals in Clinton's cabinet hated this approach.
583
00:40:15,700 --> 00:40:20,415
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 -
I would say Dick why have a campaign if all the president is going to do
584
00:40:20,621 --> 00:40:25,479
is offer up all these little bite-sized miniature initiatives
585
00:40:25,733 --> 00:40:30,510
that appealed to people desires like consumers buying soap.
586
00:40:30,817 --> 00:40:34,621
V-Chips that you could put in your televisions so you'd make sure
587
00:40:34,842 --> 00:40:39,365
that your children could not have pornography and ... school uniforms.
588
00:40:39,681 --> 00:40:43,861
Why talk about them, they're so mundane and they're so tiny,
589
00:40:43,861 --> 00:40:47,799
and he would say if we don't do this we may not get re-elected.
590
00:40:48,764 --> 00:40:51,624
And I would say what's the point of getting re-elected if you have no mandate
591
00:40:51,933 --> 00:40:53,764
to do anything when you're re-elected
592
00:40:53,981 --> 00:40:57,205
and he'd say what's the point of having a mandate if you can't get re-elected?
593
00:40:58,281 --> 00:41:00,231
Isn't the ultimate goal getting re-elected?
594
00:41:02,833 --> 00:41:05,890
But Morris's new politics were an extraordinary success.
595
00:41:06,409 --> 00:41:09,066
Clinton's ratings among the swing voters began to soar
596
00:41:09,831 --> 00:41:14,218
and Dick Morris along with the marketeer Mark Penn, took effective charge
597
00:41:14,437 --> 00:41:16,049
of making White House policy.
598
00:41:16,328 --> 00:41:20,893
Mark Penn set up a huge call center in an office block in Denver
599
00:41:21,940 --> 00:41:24,863
and every night, hundreds of telephone operators called swing voters
600
00:41:25,660 --> 00:41:30,728
in suburbs across the country, to check with them every detail of policies
601
00:41:31,142 --> 00:41:33,238
Clinton was proposing.
602
00:41:34,103 --> 00:41:38,535
James Bennet - Washington correspondent, New York Times -
The policy was made by a group of people manning telephones
603
00:41:38,784 --> 00:41:42,051
in Denver Colorado placing calls to voters in places like
604
00:41:42,257 --> 00:41:47,939
Westchester and Pasadena and asking them what they wanted from their government,
605
00:41:48,423 --> 00:41:51,901
and asking them very specifically about specific policies that
606
00:41:52,144 --> 00:41:53,662
Bill Clinton was considering.
607
00:41:53,891 --> 00:41:56,602
Would you be more likely to support him if he offered this particular
608
00:41:57,400 --> 00:41:59,564
government service or if he offered that one.
609
00:41:59,865 --> 00:42:02,833
Those people told them what they thought, Mark Penn transmitted that
610
00:42:03,052 --> 00:42:05,458
to Bill Clinton and it came out of his mouth.
611
00:42:05,743 --> 00:42:09,944
So essentially it was suburbanite voters, suburban voters in the 90s
612
00:42:10,305 --> 00:42:15,772
were creating American domestic policy and some of it's foreign policy as well.
613
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:20,129
-Really?
-Yeah, Mark Penn was polling on questions like
614
00:42:20,348 --> 00:42:23,268
whether we should bomb in Bosnia, things like that.
615
00:42:24,020 --> 00:42:27,992
Morris also insisted that Clinton make a symbolic sacrifice of the old politics
616
00:42:28,490 --> 00:42:30,724
to convince the swing voters to trust him.
617
00:42:31,534 --> 00:42:36,257
In August 1996, Clinton signed a bill which ended the system of guaranteed help
618
00:42:36,535 --> 00:42:38,146
to poor and unemployed.
619
00:42:39,066 --> 00:42:43,363
Welfare would be cut back after two years in order to force people into work.
620
00:42:44,472 --> 00:42:47,844
The new system was called "Welfare to Work" and would he said
621
00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:50,786
be a hand up not a hand out.
622
00:42:53,467 --> 00:42:56,283
It was the effective end of the guaranteed welfare system
623
00:42:56,521 --> 00:42:59,126
created by President Roosevelt 60 years before.
624
00:43:00,765 --> 00:43:04,148
For many in Clinton's cabinet it was also the end of the
625
00:43:04,148 --> 00:43:07,798
progressive political ideal that Roosevelt had represented.
626
00:43:08,786 --> 00:43:10,994
The belief that one used a position of leadership
627
00:43:11,237 --> 00:43:14,868
to persuade the voters to think and behave as social beings,
628
00:43:15,370 --> 00:43:17,690
not as self-interested individuals.
629
00:43:19,441 --> 00:43:22,718
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 -
Dick Morris and the pollsters had won.
630
00:43:22,718 --> 00:43:28,225
And by that I mean the people who ultimately got to the president
631
00:43:28,450 --> 00:43:33,711
shaped the president's mind, were those who viewed the voters
632
00:43:33,970 --> 00:43:37,925
as just a collection of individual desires that had to be catered to
633
00:43:37,925 --> 00:43:39,041
and pandered to.
634
00:43:39,740 --> 00:43:42,368
It suggests that democracy is nothing more and should be nothing more
635
00:43:42,989 --> 00:43:51,056
than pandering to these un-thought about very primitive desires.
636
00:43:51,490 --> 00:43:54,866
Primitive in the sense that they are not even necessarily conscious,
637
00:43:55,460 --> 00:43:59,420
just what people want in terms of satisfying themselves.
638
00:44:03,241 --> 00:44:06,838
And the same triumph of the politics of the self was about
639
00:44:07,056 --> 00:44:08,571
to happen in Britain too.
640
00:44:10,558 --> 00:44:13,886
In 1994 Tony Blair had become the leader of the labor party
641
00:44:14,539 --> 00:44:18,149
and the reforming group centered around Peter Mandelson became all powerful.
642
00:44:20,963 --> 00:44:25,349
Almost every night Philip Gould ran focus groups with swing voters in the suburbs,
643
00:44:26,125 --> 00:44:28,325
but this time he was listened to.
644
00:44:28,588 --> 00:44:31,058
The desires and fears of the new aspirational classes
645
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:34,712
became the force shaping labor party policies.
646
00:44:36,089 --> 00:44:41,038
Philip Gould - New Labor Strategy Advisor Election Campaign 1997 -
In that period I was talking to people who used to vote conservative
647
00:44:41,038 --> 00:44:44,101
and were considering voting labor and they want it understood
648
00:44:44,341 --> 00:44:48,261
that they are financially pressed and there are limits to the extent to which
649
00:44:48,463 --> 00:44:52,000
taxation can be improved, and they think crime is an issue that matters to them,
650
00:44:52,231 --> 00:44:58,020
and should be respected, they want welfare to go to people who deserve welfare
651
00:44:58,432 --> 00:45:00,416
not to people who do not.
652
00:45:00,869 --> 00:45:03,725
This was seen by many in the labor party as selfish.
653
00:45:04,054 --> 00:45:09,199
I never saw that it was selfish, I believed that Dad or Mom doing the best
654
00:45:09,416 --> 00:45:12,169
for their families was not selfish they're just doing the best for their families,
655
00:45:12,388 --> 00:45:13,491
that's what people do.
656
00:45:13,206 --> 00:45:16,393
I crack down on those who make life hell in their local neighbourhoods
657
00:45:16,393 --> 00:45:18,003
through noise or disturbance
658
00:45:18,003 --> 00:45:20,817
Law and order is a Labour issue today!
659
00:45:23,219 --> 00:45:29,112
Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 -
The philosophy of the campaign is let's concentrate on swing voters
660
00:45:29,314 --> 00:45:32,453
let's focus group them to find out what they want and what will appeal to them
661
00:45:32,665 --> 00:45:35,421
and let's just relentlessly push those things in the election.
662
00:45:37,531 --> 00:45:41,395
Something is happening to you!...
663
00:45:41,834 --> 00:45:44,413
After promising to put money in your pocket,
664
00:45:45,632 --> 00:45:49,471
the conservatives are quietly taking it away...
665
00:45:50,429 --> 00:45:55,805
Philip Gould was crucial, because he gave the 'raw material' if you like
666
00:45:56,314 --> 00:46:00,709
for these politicians to do this kind of politics,
667
00:46:01,397 --> 00:46:04,134
in that when he came up with stuff they'd follow it,
668
00:46:04,539 --> 00:46:06,441
pretty much without exception.
669
00:46:07,039 --> 00:46:10,947
Blair himself would pour over these sort of twelve page memos
670
00:46:11,589 --> 00:46:13,289
and say well this is what we must do.
671
00:46:14,334 --> 00:46:18,527
We want people to earn more, to consume the good things of life,
672
00:46:18,852 --> 00:46:20,395
we want people to pay lower taxes...
673
00:46:22,005 --> 00:46:25,974
Gordon Brown says a labour government would hold the main tax-rates unchanged...
674
00:46:26,303 --> 00:46:29,507
The labour government will not increase the tax..
675
00:46:31,014 --> 00:46:34,169
I want to make it clear that I will not increase the basic rate of tax..
676
00:46:34,710 --> 00:46:37,036
In fact, the labour party does stand for Middle England...
677
00:46:37,318 --> 00:46:41,223
Those who'd asipre to do better, to get on in life and be ambitious
678
00:46:41,473 --> 00:46:43,711
for themselves and their families, will do better with labour...
679
00:46:44,135 --> 00:46:47,494
Groups of eight people you know dinking wine and eating Cheerios,
680
00:46:47,774 --> 00:46:54,320
what they thought, determined effectively everything that the labor party did.
681
00:46:56,057 --> 00:46:59,090
And although those running the campaign would like to portray the new approach
682
00:46:59,090 --> 00:47:02,928
as their invention it was in fact copied from the Americans
683
00:47:03,777 --> 00:47:06,735
even down to the phrases that the American marketeers had tested
684
00:47:06,735 --> 00:47:08,555
on their swing voters.
685
00:47:08,890 --> 00:47:13,047
Doug Schoen - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 -
Peter Mandelson and their team were in the United States watching what we did
686
00:47:13,295 --> 00:47:18,122
and copied almost verbatim our approach in their 1997 campaign.
687
00:47:18,335 --> 00:47:25,273
The benefit system should be about giving people a hand up, not just a hand out..
688
00:47:26,241 --> 00:47:28,665
Mandelson is not a fool and if he's anything ...
689
00:47:28,893 --> 00:47:31,464
he saw something that worked and said why not do it.
690
00:47:31,749 --> 00:47:34,731
And I can remember reading their manifesto and say to myself:
691
00:47:35,403 --> 00:47:37,620
they just took it lock stock and barrel.
692
00:47:39,124 --> 00:47:41,829
You know on the one hand you're proud and on the other hand you're saying:
693
00:47:41,829 --> 00:47:42,980
son of a beach!
694
00:47:43,497 --> 00:47:47,686
And as in America, labor was forced to drop policies that would not
695
00:47:47,686 --> 00:47:49,308
directly benefit the swing voters,
696
00:47:49,666 --> 00:47:52,168
even if it meant sacrificing it's fundamental principles.
697
00:47:53,278 --> 00:47:55,142
The commitment to public control of industry
698
00:47:55,637 --> 00:48:00,345
which was enshrined as Clause Four of the party constitution was dropped.
699
00:48:01,287 --> 00:48:05,106
The aim of Clause Four had been to use the collective power of the people
700
00:48:05,388 --> 00:48:07,780
to challenge the unfettered greed of business.
701
00:48:08,512 --> 00:48:11,099
But now, Tony Blair was faced with crucial voters
702
00:48:11,401 --> 00:48:14,808
who no longer saw themselves as exploited by the free market.
703
00:48:15,825 --> 00:48:19,341
They saw themselves as individual consumers who were fulfilled
704
00:48:19,341 --> 00:48:22,451
and given identity by what business delivered them.
705
00:48:23,405 --> 00:48:26,094
The new Clause Four, promised not to control the free market
706
00:48:26,437 --> 00:48:27,876
but to let it flourish.
707
00:48:28,358 --> 00:48:33,501
Bussines is more powerful than government, it is quicker, it is more creative..
708
00:48:33,841 --> 00:48:37,251
Bussiners is the lifeblood of the country..
709
00:48:37,580 --> 00:48:42,815
From this, come all the benefits that society needs...employment, investment...
710
00:48:43,045 --> 00:48:45,993
I think frankly there's only one party: getting bussines right
711
00:48:45,993 --> 00:48:47,468
and that's new labour
712
00:48:48,922 --> 00:48:52,648
Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 -
What new labor did was suit people who exert power in society
713
00:48:52,648 --> 00:49:00,051
not through the political system or not through the democratic political system,
714
00:49:00,287 --> 00:49:05,047
so it's big business, and it suits interest, interest suits in the status quo
715
00:49:05,755 --> 00:49:11,064
those three things are what the labor party is supposed to be
716
00:49:11,776 --> 00:49:13,471
a counter-force to.
717
00:49:13,864 --> 00:49:18,382
What that means is big business get to carry on exerting their power
718
00:49:18,885 --> 00:49:21,525
behind the scenes getting their way
719
00:49:21,740 --> 00:49:23,485
because their no count of adding pressure
720
00:49:23,695 --> 00:49:26,354
because you know count of adding pressure is not going to come from
721
00:49:26,354 --> 00:49:28,114
eight people sipping wine in Kettering.
722
00:49:40,537 --> 00:49:43,362
But those who masterminded labor's victory in 1997
723
00:49:43,803 --> 00:49:47,683
saw it as a triumphant vindication of a new form of democracy.
724
00:49:48,745 --> 00:49:52,182
By understanding and fulfilling people's inner desires through the focus group
725
00:49:52,532 --> 00:49:57,144
they were giving power to individuals, not treating them as faceless groups
726
00:49:57,413 --> 00:50:00,352
who were told by politicians what was good for them.
727
00:50:02,975 --> 00:50:08,200
Philip Gould - New Labor Strategy Advisor Election Campaign 1997 -
I don't see the focus group as some marketing tool
728
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:12,727
I see the focus group as a way of hearing what the people have to say.
729
00:50:13,148 --> 00:50:17,474
And I see the focus group as a way to a new form of politics.
730
00:50:19,045 --> 00:50:23,478
What the people give, the people can take away..
731
00:50:23,819 --> 00:50:27,368
We are the servants, they are the masters now
732
00:50:29,032 --> 00:50:34,053
1997 was I think fundamentally important in that I think it is the end
733
00:50:34,351 --> 00:50:40,495
of elitist politics that has dominated Britain for so much
734
00:50:40,718 --> 00:50:42,977
of the last hundred years.
735
00:50:50,156 --> 00:50:55,211
In 1939 Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew created a vision
736
00:50:55,415 --> 00:50:58,340
of a future world in which the consumer was king.
737
00:51:01,014 --> 00:51:05,784
It was at the World's Fair in New York, and Bernays called it Democracity.
738
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:09,393
It was one of the earliest and most dramatic portrayals
739
00:51:09,609 --> 00:51:11,277
of a consumerist democracy.
740
00:51:12,188 --> 00:51:14,907
A society in which the needs and desires of individuals
741
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:18,143
were read and fulfilled by business in the free market.
742
00:51:20,527 --> 00:51:23,135
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations -
The World's Fair created a spectacle
743
00:51:23,653 --> 00:51:26,293
in which all of these concerns were met and
744
00:51:26,546 --> 00:51:31,686
they met by Westinghouse and General Motors and the American Cash Register Company
745
00:51:32,014 --> 00:51:36,469
and company after company presented itself as the sort of centerpiece
746
00:51:36,716 --> 00:51:40,861
of a society in which human desire and human want and human anxiety
747
00:51:41,108 --> 00:51:45,013
would all be responded to and it would all be met purely through
748
00:51:45,251 --> 00:51:47,480
the free enterprise system.
749
00:51:48,053 --> 00:51:50,984
There was this sort of notion that the free market was something
750
00:51:51,546 --> 00:51:55,154
not guided by ideologies or by political power,
751
00:51:55,465 --> 00:51:58,684
it was something that was simply guided by the people's will.
752
00:52:00,424 --> 00:52:04,769
This was the model of democracy that both new labor and the American democrats
753
00:52:05,027 --> 00:52:07,715
had bought into in order to regain power.
754
00:52:09,173 --> 00:52:12,779
They had used techniques developed by business to read the desires of consumers
755
00:52:13,426 --> 00:52:18,130
and they had accepted Bernays' claim that this was a better form of democracy.
756
00:52:21,266 --> 00:52:25,947
But in reality the World's Fair had been an elaborate piece of propaganda
757
00:52:26,337 --> 00:52:30,681
designed by Bernays for his clients, the giant American corporations.
758
00:52:32,953 --> 00:52:37,007
Privately, Bernays did not believe that true democracy could ever work.
759
00:52:38,345 --> 00:52:42,790
He had been profoundly influenced in this by his uncle's theories of human nature.
760
00:52:44,158 --> 00:52:47,470
Freud believed that individuals were not driven by rational thought
761
00:52:47,786 --> 00:52:50,315
but by primitive unconscious desires and feelings.
762
00:52:51,704 --> 00:52:54,678
And Bernays believed that this meant it was too dangerous
763
00:52:55,050 --> 00:52:58,056
to let the masses ever have control over their own lives
764
00:52:59,053 --> 00:53:03,112
and consumerism was a way of giving people the illusion of control
765
00:53:03,830 --> 00:53:07,816
while allowing a responsible elite to continue managing society.
766
00:53:12,947 --> 00:53:15,835
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations -
It's not that the people are in charge
767
00:53:15,835 --> 00:53:18,221
but that the people's desires are in charge.
768
00:53:18,867 --> 00:53:23,083
The people are not in charge the people exercise no decision-making power
769
00:53:23,304 --> 00:53:24,725
within this environment.
770
00:53:24,941 --> 00:53:31,240
So democracy is reduced from something which assumes an active citizenry
771
00:53:31,899 --> 00:53:37,367
to something which now increasingly is predicated on the idea of the public
772
00:53:37,575 --> 00:53:39,053
as passive consumers,
773
00:53:39,413 --> 00:53:42,349
the public as people who essentially what you are delivering them
774
00:53:42,773 --> 00:53:44,305
is doggy treats.
775
00:53:45,773 --> 00:53:49,446
The problem for new labor was that it believed the propaganda.
776
00:53:50,850 --> 00:53:53,745
They took at face value the idea promoted by business
777
00:53:54,276 --> 00:53:58,192
that the systems used to read the consumers mind could form the basis
778
00:53:58,416 --> 00:53:59,756
for a new type of democracy.
779
00:54:01,421 --> 00:54:04,680
Once in power new labor tried to govern through a new system
780
00:54:04,899 --> 00:54:07,497
that Philip Gould called 'continuous democracy'.
781
00:54:08,787 --> 00:54:11,116
But what worked for business in designing products
782
00:54:11,558 --> 00:54:14,450
led the labor government into a bewildering maze of
783
00:54:14,688 --> 00:54:16,843
contradictory whims and desires.
784
00:54:18,478 --> 00:54:20,807
For much of labor's first term the focus groups
785
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:24,324
said the railways were not a high priority and labors policies
786
00:54:24,524 --> 00:54:26,550
faithfully reflected this.
787
00:54:26,876 --> 00:54:30,463
But now those same groups are now blaming the government
788
00:54:30,671 --> 00:54:33,433
for not having invested more money sooner in the railways.
789
00:54:35,206 --> 00:54:38,298
Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 -
The point about focus group politics is that
790
00:54:38,513 --> 00:54:41,398
there isn't one because people are contradictory and irrational
791
00:54:41,775 --> 00:54:45,801
and so you have a problem in terms of deciding what you are going to do
792
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:49,377
if all you do is listen to a mass of individual opinions
793
00:54:49,644 --> 00:54:52,451
that are forever fluctuating and don't really have any coherence
794
00:54:52,688 --> 00:54:54,684
and crucially are not set in context.
795
00:54:54,909 --> 00:54:57,964
So that's why people can say you know I want lower taxes
796
00:54:58,220 --> 00:54:59,909
and better public services.
797
00:55:00,168 --> 00:55:01,595
Well of course they do.
798
00:55:02,997 --> 00:55:06,589
You know you say do you want to pay more taxes to get better public services
799
00:55:06,907 --> 00:55:08,065
and people are less sure.
800
00:55:08,312 --> 00:55:11,482
They then don't believe that if they pay more taxes they will be spent
801
00:55:11,482 --> 00:55:13,254
on better public services.
802
00:55:13,464 --> 00:55:16,406
So you end up in this quagmire and the truth is the politicians have to say
803
00:55:16,406 --> 00:55:19,610
look this is what I believe, I believe you should pay slightly more taxes
804
00:55:19,986 --> 00:55:23,547
to make better public services and I pledge that I am competent enough
805
00:55:23,547 --> 00:55:27,393
to use that money wisely do you want now to vote for me yes or no.
806
00:55:27,911 --> 00:55:30,030
And that's what Blair has failed to do.
807
00:55:30,265 --> 00:55:32,875
Tony Blair turned around and tries to feed back to them what
808
00:55:32,875 --> 00:55:35,985
they already believe and give them what they believe is sort of
809
00:55:35,985 --> 00:55:41,467
an individual incoherent contradictory nonsense and that's all he has to offer.
810
00:55:42,100 --> 00:55:44,492
And then he wonders why people don't get him.
811
00:55:44,878 --> 00:55:47,054
It isn't that they don't get him it's that they're looking for someone
812
00:55:47,054 --> 00:55:49,627
to do something that they can't do themselves which is actually come up
813
00:55:49,860 --> 00:55:52,454
with a coherent political opinion that they might have faith in.
814
00:55:53,332 --> 00:55:55,297
New labor are faced with a dilemma.
815
00:55:56,079 --> 00:55:58,647
The system of consumer democracy they have embraced
816
00:55:58,975 --> 00:56:02,989
has trapped them into a series of short term and often contradictory policies.
817
00:56:04,519 --> 00:56:07,267
There are now growing demands that they fulfill a grander vision.
818
00:56:08,082 --> 00:56:10,852
That they use the power of government, to deal with the problems
819
00:56:11,074 --> 00:56:14,588
of growing inequality and the decaying social fabric of the country.
820
00:56:16,274 --> 00:56:19,440
But to do this they will have to appeal to the electorate
821
00:56:19,660 --> 00:56:22,058
to think outside their own self-interest.
822
00:56:22,854 --> 00:56:26,245
And this would mean challenging the now dominant Freudian view of human beings
823
00:56:26,817 --> 00:56:29,111
as selfish instinct driven individuals
824
00:56:30,237 --> 00:56:33,672
which is a concept of human beings that has been fostered and encouraged
825
00:56:34,013 --> 00:56:37,258
by business because it produces ideal consumers.
826
00:56:40,547 --> 00:56:44,777
Although we feel we are free, in reality we, like the politicians
827
00:56:45,046 --> 00:56:47,668
have become the slaves of our own desires.
828
00:56:50,188 --> 00:56:52,588
We have forgotten that we can be more than that,
829
00:56:53,434 --> 00:56:55,662
that there are other sides to human nature.
830
00:56:57,833 --> 00:57:03,750
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Fundamentally here, we have two different views of human nature and of democracy.
831
00:57:04,034 --> 00:57:08,671
You have the view that people are irrational
832
00:57:09,248 --> 00:57:14,752
that they are bundles of unconscious emotion, that comes directly out of Freud.
833
00:57:15,437 --> 00:57:19,901
And businesses are very able to respond to that, that's what they have honed
834
00:57:20,123 --> 00:57:22,975
their skills to and that's what marketing really is all about -
835
00:57:23,238 --> 00:57:25,958
what are the symbols the images the music, the words
836
00:57:26,191 --> 00:57:29,768
that will appeal to these unconscious feelings.
837
00:57:30,545 --> 00:57:33,706
Politics must be more than that.
838
00:57:34,486 --> 00:57:42,388
Politics and leadership are about engaging the public in a rational discussion
839
00:57:42,644 --> 00:57:44,800
and deliberation about what is best
840
00:57:45,999 --> 00:57:50,898
and treating people with respect in terms of their rational abilities
841
00:57:51,162 --> 00:57:53,002
to debate what is best.
842
00:57:53,406 --> 00:57:57,725
If it's not that, if it is Freudian if it is basically
843
00:57:58,271 --> 00:58:03,110
a matter of appealing to the same basic unconscious feelings that business
844
00:58:03,407 --> 00:58:05,406
appeals to then why not let business do it?
845
00:58:05,616 --> 00:58:07,754
Business can do it better, business knows how to do it.
846
00:58:08,096 --> 00:58:12,334
Business after all is in the business of responding to those feelings.