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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 its 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're 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 possibly set her own hair...
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-Yes!...Surely 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 prefer?...
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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 opinion. 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 coffee 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 rationally, but to act out and reveal
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the inner emotional relationship to products.
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-...which firmly and unmistakably 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 unequal...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 unequal,
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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 which 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 Guinness
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here you see a rich, very female aspect of Guinness,
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so if you were describing a woman, who somehow to you, had that character...
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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 remarkable, 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 wanted 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 patrician 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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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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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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the assumptions that in terms of our rational minds we are little corks
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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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00:17:50,921 --> 00:17:54,782
the role of somebody selling something, including a politician
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00:17:55,292 --> 00:18:00,872
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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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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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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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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00:19:52,471 --> 00:19:56,225
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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was to make the denial of compassion respectable.
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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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00:20:12,488 --> 00:20:16,138
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
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that disguised its 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..
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I don't see how we couldn't work together afterwards to clean up the mess
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00:20:34,762 --> 00:20:37,771
and help build a better world in which these things can't possibly happen..
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The qualities we've learned from comradeship and common suffering,
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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
00:20:49,188 --> 00:20:53,172
That same idea - marshalling the collective force of the masses
292
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to challenge the entrenched power of wealth and business
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had also led the labor party to power in Britain after the war.
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00:21:01,394 --> 00:21:06,266
But in the 80s, labor like the democrats in America lost election after election
295
00:21:06,505 --> 00:21:10,224
as millions who had once voted for them switched their allegiance
296
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to the conservatives.
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00:21:14,431 --> 00:21:18,300
There it is, going blue just about everywhere, sweeping the country...
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For they are the party of yesterday...and tomorrow is ours...
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00:21:26,748 --> 00:21:29,679
In the face of this, a growing number in the labor party
300
00:21:29,911 --> 00:21:32,600
became convinced that if they were ever going to regain power
301
00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:35,756
labor would have to come to terms with the new individualism.
302
00:21:37,213 --> 00:21:40,317
One of them was an advertising executive called Phillip Gould
303
00:21:40,853 --> 00:21:42,712
who had been a life long labor supporter.
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00:21:44,177 --> 00:21:47,239
Gould believed that labor's leadership had become corrupted
305
00:21:47,239 --> 00:21:51,464
by the same patrician arrogance that dominated all of Britain's institutions.
306
00:21:52,083 --> 00:21:56,353
They denigrated and disapproved of the new aspirations of working class voters.
307
00:21:57,620 --> 00:22:00,916
Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day - Labor stopped listening to these people.
308
00:22:00,916 --> 00:22:05,509
And I remember the best example of this was after the election of 1983
309
00:22:05,509 --> 00:22:08,056
which was the election above all
310
00:22:08,277 --> 00:22:11,164
where the people's voices were just not heard.
311
00:22:11,604 --> 00:22:16,232
And I had dinner with a leading labor party figure
312
00:22:16,554 --> 00:22:20,715
who had been heavily involved in the defeat and his wife said
313
00:22:20,977 --> 00:22:26,321
'God these working class people we give them an education
314
00:22:26,321 --> 00:22:28,700
and give them chances in life and what do they do they read The Sun
315
00:22:28,948 --> 00:22:30,546
and they just don't vote for us.'
316
00:22:30,752 --> 00:22:36,103
And there was such a gap between these people just trying to make better lives
317
00:22:36,344 --> 00:22:41,497
for themselves and the kind of elitism of the labor party
318
00:22:41,497 --> 00:22:45,684
there was just this chasm that had to be filled.
319
00:22:46,699 --> 00:22:51,876
Gould became part of a small group of modernizers centered around Peter Mandelson.
320
00:22:51,876 --> 00:22:55,056
Their aim was to reconnect labor with the lost voters.
321
00:22:56,854 --> 00:23:00,637
To do this, Gould turned to the technique that he knew well from his work
322
00:23:00,637 --> 00:23:03,111
in advertising - the focus group.
323
00:23:04,219 --> 00:23:07,453
Gould commissioned focus groups in suburban areas across the country
324
00:23:07,765 --> 00:23:10,578
with small groups of voters who had switched to Mrs. Thatcher.
325
00:23:12,516 --> 00:23:15,427
People were encouraged not to talk rationally about policies
326
00:23:15,845 --> 00:23:18,169
but to express their underlying feelings.
327
00:23:19,563 --> 00:23:23,280
And what Gould discovered was a fundamental shift in people's relationship
328
00:23:23,280 --> 00:23:24,693
to politics.
329
00:23:24,975 --> 00:23:28,238
They no longer saw themselves as part of any group but
330
00:23:28,958 --> 00:23:33,924
as individuals who could demand things from politicians in return for paying taxes.
331
00:23:35,148 --> 00:23:38,340
Just as business had taught them to do, as consumers.
332
00:23:40,672 --> 00:23:44,957
Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day - And I found that people had become consumers,
333
00:23:45,174 --> 00:23:48,535
you know people wanted to have politics and life on their own terms.
334
00:23:48,535 --> 00:23:51,585
I mean not just in politics but in all aspects of life too.
335
00:23:51,846 --> 00:23:57,034
People see themselves as they are, as autonomous powerful individuals
336
00:23:57,353 --> 00:24:01,180
who are entitled to be respected, who are entitled to have the best
337
00:24:01,441 --> 00:24:08,627
not just in Tescoes and whatever, but the best in terms of health and education too.
338
00:24:09,724 --> 00:24:12,602
All this was about getting the labor party to understand
339
00:24:13,771 --> 00:24:16,383
that people really really really had changed
340
00:24:16,699 --> 00:24:19,948
and unless the labor party changed it would not win.
341
00:24:20,650 --> 00:24:23,646
Philip Gould now set out to try and persuade the labor party
342
00:24:23,963 --> 00:24:28,463
they would have to make concessions to what he called the new aspirational classes.
343
00:24:29,249 --> 00:24:31,413
He was going to face implacable opposition.
344
00:24:32,849 --> 00:24:36,959
In the run up to the 1992 election, Gould argued that the only way to win
345
00:24:37,341 --> 00:24:40,503
was for labor not to put up (raise) taxes.
346
00:24:40,898 --> 00:24:43,791
But the Shadow Chancellor John Smith angrily refused.
347
00:24:44,274 --> 00:24:46,466
Labor would stick to its fundamental policies.
348
00:24:46,944 --> 00:24:49,602
They would fight the election with the promise of tax increases
349
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:51,822
to create a fairer society.
350
00:24:54,340 --> 00:24:57,509
And as the campaign began it seemed as if Philip Gould was wrong.
351
00:24:58,842 --> 00:25:01,776
The traditional polls consistently showed labor ahead
352
00:25:02,023 --> 00:25:05,121
despite the conservative campaign message that labor government
353
00:25:05,367 --> 00:25:06,687
would put up (raise) taxes.
354
00:25:11,307 --> 00:25:14,812
Even the conservatives' oldest allies in the press became convinced
355
00:25:15,079 --> 00:25:18,774
that by harping on about tax, the conservatives were cutting their own throats.
356
00:25:19,761 --> 00:25:23,328
The way of the Tories must be that they're not at the moment conveying
357
00:25:23,547 --> 00:25:25,886
a sense of grip in being at control
358
00:25:26,152 --> 00:25:29,374
and unless they can do better than that, I think they're going to lose...
359
00:25:29,374 --> 00:25:33,368
The other thing is that they still say they are going to go on and on
360
00:25:33,622 --> 00:25:39,107
with this one message of tax and I think, in part, the difficulty this morning
361
00:25:39,326 --> 00:25:43,464
was that you had a whole lot of people who'd been going to the same press conferences
362
00:25:43,705 --> 00:25:48,608
for 7 days, had virtually the same message, and they're getting bored
363
00:25:48,889 --> 00:25:50,967
and hitting back on him.
364
00:25:51,220 --> 00:25:55,698
I think the media sensed the big story coming, in the Tories being defeated...
365
00:25:57,027 --> 00:26:01,421
And the labor party too, was convinced it would win and finally return to power.
366
00:26:01,982 --> 00:26:08,326
It's now time to meet the men and women who will form the next government
367
00:26:14,146 --> 00:26:21,000
And now , it's time, time for the new prime-minister, Neil Kennet
368
00:26:21,830 --> 00:26:25,318
Those running labor's campaign believed that by modern presentation
369
00:26:25,716 --> 00:26:30,427
they would attract back the voters yet keep the old policies.
370
00:26:31,919 --> 00:26:35,220
But Philip Gould was convinced that labor were going to lose.
371
00:26:36,107 --> 00:26:38,663
Through his focus groups, he knew that the very people
372
00:26:38,891 --> 00:26:41,813
that were telling the traditional pollsters they would vote labor
373
00:26:42,141 --> 00:26:45,690
were in reality preparing to vote conservative out of self-interest
374
00:26:46,954 --> 00:26:48,628
but they were too embarrassed to admit it.
375
00:26:51,624 --> 00:26:53,451
And John Major also knew this
376
00:26:54,086 --> 00:26:57,128
because his focus groups were telling him the same thing.
377
00:27:00,858 --> 00:27:04,083
-Why aren't you making a poll which puts Labour 5 points ahead?
378
00:27:04,094 --> 00:27:07,056
I shouldn't worry about that. It's the feel good on the streets that matters..
379
00:27:07,538 --> 00:27:10,604
-Is it feeling good on the streets? -It is feeling good on the streets...yes..
380
00:27:10,881 --> 00:27:13,666
It has been felling surprisingly good on the streets for some time...
381
00:27:14,317 --> 00:27:18,018
Quite surprisingly...quite out of line...with opinion polls..
382
00:27:18,681 --> 00:27:22,175
don't ask me to expect it, because it feels right...
383
00:27:22,590 --> 00:27:25,417
Now, let's sit down, we're ready to go!...
384
00:27:27,382 --> 00:27:31,239
John Major's victory in 1992, was a disaster for the labor party.
385
00:27:33,384 --> 00:27:36,834
The small group of reformers centered around Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould
386
00:27:37,164 --> 00:27:39,855
were convinced that the only way for the party to survive
387
00:27:40,069 --> 00:27:42,255
was to change its basic policies.
388
00:27:43,059 --> 00:27:46,864
But their ideas were rejected by John Smith who had now become leader.
389
00:27:48,387 --> 00:27:51,602
Philip Gould left Britain to go to work for the campaign to elect
390
00:27:51,819 --> 00:27:53,913
Bill Clinton President in America.
391
00:27:54,926 --> 00:27:57,943
Philip Gould - Strategy Advisor to the Labor Party 1985-present day - The 1992 election, during and afterward
392
00:27:58,153 --> 00:28:02,593
people felt under great strain and really did feel demoralized and dejected
393
00:28:02,810 --> 00:28:06,534
and to from this to the Clinton campaign was an extraordinary experience
394
00:28:06,739 --> 00:28:12,489
because here suddenly I found articulated many of the ideas I had
395
00:28:12,696 --> 00:28:17,304
but not fully myself been able to encapsulate or to articulate.
396
00:28:17,812 --> 00:28:20,981
Do you want a president who will restore the middle class,
397
00:28:21,387 --> 00:28:25,155
reclaim the future for the middle class and restore the American dream?
398
00:28:25,629 --> 00:28:28,857
Vote for Bill Clinton and you have surely sent the signal to the country
399
00:28:29,078 --> 00:28:31,560
that we are coming, together!...
400
00:28:32,072 --> 00:28:35,327
What Gould discovered was that like the labor party, the democrats
401
00:28:35,327 --> 00:28:37,907
had also been doing focus groups with swing voters.
402
00:28:38,532 --> 00:28:42,097
The difference was that Bill Clinton had decided to tailor his policies
403
00:28:42,358 --> 00:28:44,437
to fit with these voters desires.
404
00:28:45,201 --> 00:28:48,926
Above all, with their ferocious belief that they should only pay tax
405
00:28:48,926 --> 00:28:52,894
for things that benefitted them, not for the welfare of others.
406
00:28:54,468 --> 00:28:57,988
I have no idea what percentage of my tax-dollars go to welfare, but,
407
00:28:58,251 --> 00:29:03,481
even if it's a minuscule percentage, even if it's a core percent,
408
00:29:03,802 --> 00:29:08,077
it's still too much...for people that are receiving these benefits
409
00:29:08,077 --> 00:29:10,516
that are basically non-productive...
410
00:29:11,206 --> 00:29:14,735
The Clinton team decided that to win they had to promise tax cuts
411
00:29:14,956 --> 00:29:17,253
for these suburban voters.
412
00:29:17,491 --> 00:29:20,534
And they also used the focus groups throughout the campaign
413
00:29:20,534 --> 00:29:23,521
to check every appearance, speech and policy
414
00:29:23,521 --> 00:29:25,672
with them for their approval.
415
00:29:26,317 --> 00:29:30,127
What Clinton called the forgotten middle class became central figures
416
00:29:30,382 --> 00:29:32,456
in a new type of reactive politics.
417
00:29:35,103 --> 00:29:37,608
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Candidates for the presidency of the United States
418
00:29:37,608 --> 00:29:41,878
has been pre-packaged and designed for many many years.
419
00:29:42,111 --> 00:29:49,378
What was new, was an attempt to use very sophisticated or pseudo-sophisticated
420
00:29:49,588 --> 00:29:52,974
techniques to plum the public psychology to find out precisely
421
00:29:53,251 --> 00:29:57,850
what the desires of the individuals were and then to come up with
422
00:29:58,141 --> 00:30:04,298
a candidate and a platform and images and words that exactly responded
423
00:30:04,522 --> 00:30:05,598
to those deep desires.
424
00:30:06,035 --> 00:30:08,688
This was packaging at a new level.
425
00:30:08,988 --> 00:30:11,896
This was polling at an extreme.
426
00:30:12,698 --> 00:30:14,580
I'm not gonna raise taxes on the middle class!
427
00:30:14,856 --> 00:30:16,427
...and the middle class needs a break...
428
00:30:16,725 --> 00:30:19,382
Government is in the way...
429
00:30:19,646 --> 00:30:23,308
It's taking more of your money and giving you less in return...
430
00:30:24,554 --> 00:30:29,441
In the name of the hard-working Americans who make up our forgotten middle class
431
00:30:30,116 --> 00:30:34,873
I proudly accept your nomination for president of the United States...
432
00:30:35,175 --> 00:30:38,630
Stay focused! Talk about things that matter to people!...You know?
433
00:30:39,495 --> 00:30:42,210
It's the economy, stupid!.. OK?...
434
00:30:43,289 --> 00:30:46,888
But Clinton's campaign team led by James Carville and George Stephanopoulos
435
00:30:47,151 --> 00:30:49,942
did not believe that they were capitulating to the selfish desires
436
00:30:49,942 --> 00:30:51,726
of the middle classes.
437
00:30:52,097 --> 00:30:55,212
Tax cuts were the price they had to pay to regain power.
438
00:30:56,201 --> 00:30:59,944
But once in power they would still fulfill traditional democratic policies
439
00:31:00,695 --> 00:31:03,713
and help the poor who had been neglected under Reagan,
440
00:31:04,086 --> 00:31:06,387
above all with the reform of health care.
441
00:31:07,697 --> 00:31:10,929
They would pay for the tax cuts by cutting defense spending
442
00:31:11,155 --> 00:31:13,438
and increasing taxes on the very rich.
443
00:31:14,126 --> 00:31:16,859
In this way, they believed they were forging a coalition
444
00:31:17,118 --> 00:31:20,918
of the new and the old voters both of whom, could be satisfied.
445
00:31:21,636 --> 00:31:25,732
Probably for the first time in a generation, tomorrow, we're gonna win...
446
00:31:25,732 --> 00:31:28,993
And that means that more people are going to have better jobs,
447
00:31:29,231 --> 00:31:32,371
people are going to pay a little less for healthcare, get better care,
448
00:31:32,633 --> 00:31:35,711
and more kids are going to go to better schools...
449
00:31:36,216 --> 00:31:38,108
Umm,...So,... thanks...
450
00:31:42,842 --> 00:31:45,573
But the Democrats' optimism was to be short-lived.
451
00:31:47,142 --> 00:31:50,972
In November 1992, Clinton was triumphantly elected President.
452
00:31:51,838 --> 00:31:55,080
But within weeks, his administration discovered that the budgets deficit
453
00:31:55,357 --> 00:31:57,697
was far greater than they had anticipated.
454
00:31:59,202 --> 00:32:01,948
At a meeting in the White House, in January 1993
455
00:32:02,323 --> 00:32:05,169
the head of the Federal Reserve told them that the deficit
456
00:32:05,169 --> 00:32:07,530
was nearly 300 Billion dollars.
457
00:32:08,269 --> 00:32:11,438
There was no way they could borrow more without panicking the markets
458
00:32:11,642 --> 00:32:13,217
and causing a crisis.
459
00:32:13,875 --> 00:32:17,591
The only way to pay for the proposed tax cuts, would be to cut
460
00:32:17,910 --> 00:32:21,155
government spending not just in defense but on welfare.
461
00:32:24,359 --> 00:32:28,248
Clinton was faced with a choice between the old politics and the new
462
00:32:28,624 --> 00:32:30,611
and he chose the old.
463
00:32:31,191 --> 00:32:34,320
The tax cuts were dropped and he tried to inspire the country
464
00:32:34,612 --> 00:32:37,501
with the old democratic ideal of government spending
465
00:32:37,796 --> 00:32:40,158
to help the poor and disadvantaged.
466
00:32:41,470 --> 00:32:44,268
Tonight I want to talk with you about what government can do,
467
00:32:44,504 --> 00:32:48,382
because i believe the government must do more to put people to work now
468
00:32:48,627 --> 00:32:52,759
to create a half a million jobs, jobs to rebuild our highways and airports
469
00:32:53,003 --> 00:32:56,781
to renovate housing, to bring new life to rural communities and spread hope
470
00:32:57,007 --> 00:32:59,399
and opportunity among our nation's youth.
471
00:32:59,924 --> 00:33:05,198
-Healthcare reform sounds like a great idea to me! -Well, I know, but some of these details sure scare the heck out of me!
472
00:33:05,457 --> 00:33:07,421
-Like what? -Like...
473
00:33:07,629 --> 00:33:11,095
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - At the start of the Clinton administration
474
00:33:11,095 --> 00:33:14,440
many of us, including I believe President Clinton himself
475
00:33:14,702 --> 00:33:16,345
reverted back to an older tradition,
476
00:33:16,586 --> 00:33:23,160
tried to lift the public to talk about genuine ideals beyond the individual.
477
00:33:23,428 --> 00:33:27,316
And that reformed agenda being, not only universal health care, and child care,
478
00:33:27,705 --> 00:33:32,802
and dealing with the widening inequalities in our society, and homelessness,
479
00:33:33,164 --> 00:33:37,903
many things that many citizens - particularly middle income citizens
480
00:33:38,130 --> 00:33:40,110
just didn't want to deal with.
481
00:33:40,821 --> 00:33:43,282
But the suburban voters who had been promised tax cuts
482
00:33:43,662 --> 00:33:45,666
were not inspired by Bill Clinton's vision.
483
00:33:46,348 --> 00:33:48,957
They felt betrayed and wanted revenge.
484
00:33:52,447 --> 00:33:56,615
Their opportunity came in 1994, with the congressional elections.
485
00:33:57,271 --> 00:34:00,608
The Republicans led by Newt Gingrich promised huge tax cuts
486
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:03,400
and to dismantle the welfare system.
487
00:34:04,232 --> 00:34:07,366
The voters who had defected to Clinton switched sides yet again
488
00:34:08,021 --> 00:34:11,434
and the Republicans won both houses of Congress in a landslide.
489
00:34:12,475 --> 00:34:15,836
Well, i think it's a tremendous vote in favor of a smaller government and
490
00:34:16,059 --> 00:34:19,684
lower taxes in a sense of a renewal of a Thatcher-Reagan tradition
491
00:34:20,155 --> 00:34:21,950
and that interest is pretty decisive...
492
00:34:22,474 --> 00:34:25,022
It means that the welfare state is going to be less hospitable
493
00:34:25,525 --> 00:34:28,826
for people who are not willing to take responsibility for their own situation
494
00:34:29,483 --> 00:34:30,319
no question about it...
495
00:34:30,678 --> 00:34:34,040
I think today is the beginning of the end of the welfare state...
496
00:34:35,522 --> 00:34:37,716
For Clinton it was a disaster.
497
00:34:38,282 --> 00:34:42,220
Faced with a hostile congress there was no way for him to get his reforms through.
498
00:34:42,797 --> 00:34:45,979
His personal popularity plummeted and it seemed certain
499
00:34:46,199 --> 00:34:48,431
he would not be re-elected in two years time.
500
00:34:50,279 --> 00:34:52,466
In desperation and without telling his cabinet
501
00:34:52,729 --> 00:34:55,256
Clinton turned for help to one of America's most ruthless
502
00:34:55,256 --> 00:34:58,076
political strategists, Dick Morris.
503
00:34:59,139 --> 00:35:01,809
-What did he want you to do? -Save his butt...
504
00:35:03,264 --> 00:35:08,459
Dick Morris - Strategy Advisor to President Clinton 1994-1996 - Clinton was in serious trouble, he had lost the 94 election,
505
00:35:08,710 --> 00:35:12,464
he had lost control of Congress, and he hired me to come back help and save him.
506
00:35:12,753 --> 00:35:16,256
So he was basically asking me to perform roughly the same role as
507
00:35:16,498 --> 00:35:18,977
a life preserver would if you are drowning.
508
00:35:19,853 --> 00:35:22,404
What Morris told Clinton was that to win re-election
509
00:35:22,882 --> 00:35:26,070
he would have to transform the very nature of politics.
510
00:35:27,498 --> 00:35:31,637
The crucial swing voters in the suburbs now thought and behaved like consumers.
511
00:35:32,532 --> 00:35:35,979
The only way to win them back was to forget all ideology
512
00:35:36,228 --> 00:35:39,586
and instead turn politics into a form of consumer business.
513
00:35:40,977 --> 00:35:44,997
Clinton must try to identify their personal desires and whims
514
00:35:45,340 --> 00:35:46,990
and then promise to fulfill them.
515
00:35:47,741 --> 00:35:51,063
If he followed those consumer rules they would follow him.
516
00:35:52,825 --> 00:35:55,765
Dick Morris - Strategy Advisor to President Clinton 1994-1996 - I said that I felt the most important thing for him to do
517
00:35:56,345 --> 00:36:00,950
was to bring to the political system the same consumer rules philosophy
518
00:36:01,213 --> 00:36:03,716
that the business community has.
519
00:36:04,232 --> 00:36:09,152
Because I think politics needs to be as responsive to the whims and desires
520
00:36:09,375 --> 00:36:11,625
of the marketplace as business is.
521
00:36:12,029 --> 00:36:16,386
And it needs to be sensitive to the bottom line - profits or votes
522
00:36:16,776 --> 00:36:17,890
- as a business is.
523
00:36:18,338 --> 00:36:23,591
I think all of this involves really, a changed view of the voters
524
00:36:23,956 --> 00:36:27,545
so that instead of treating them as targets you treat them as owners.
525
00:36:27,941 --> 00:36:31,205
Instead of treating them as something that you can manipulate
526
00:36:31,528 --> 00:36:33,777
you treat them as something you need to learn from.
527
00:36:34,108 --> 00:36:37,003
And instead of feeling that you can stay in one place
528
00:36:37,342 --> 00:36:41,092
and you can manipulate the voters you need to learn what they want
529
00:36:41,501 --> 00:36:43,938
and move yourself to accommodate them.
530
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:47,515
To get inside the minds of the swing voters,
531
00:36:47,830 --> 00:36:51,199
Morris brought lifestyle marketing into politics for the first time.
532
00:36:52,581 --> 00:36:55,504
He went to one of America's most prominent market research firms
533
00:36:55,729 --> 00:37:00,670
called Penn and Schoen and commissioned what they called a neuro-personality poll.
534
00:37:02,935 --> 00:37:05,565
It was a massive survey of hundreds of thousands of voters
535
00:37:06,419 --> 00:37:09,863
but the only political questions it asked were to find out if someone
536
00:37:10,109 --> 00:37:12,235
was a swing voter or not.
537
00:37:13,563 --> 00:37:16,424
All the other questions were intimate psychological ones
538
00:37:16,691 --> 00:37:21,579
designed to see whether swing voters fell into identifiable psychological types.
539
00:37:22,767 --> 00:37:25,765
Mark Penn - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 - Well we were asking people questions like
540
00:37:25,765 --> 00:37:27,928
do you think you're the life of the party?
541
00:37:27,928 --> 00:37:33,302
Do you think when you see things you like to have a list and organize them?
542
00:37:33,954 --> 00:37:40,535
Do you typically, like to plan things ahead or be more spontaneous?
543
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:44,997
Where do you like to go? What sports do you like to play?
544
00:37:45,423 --> 00:37:48,505
What would you do with your spouse on a romantic weekend?
545
00:37:49,163 --> 00:37:52,629
So we were asking people some very personal questions about their own lives
546
00:37:53,110 --> 00:37:56,369
to see were the kinds of people that were likely to change their vote
547
00:37:56,788 --> 00:38:04,864
also possessing a certain kind of personality traits and in fact they were.
548
00:38:06,725 --> 00:38:11,205
The neuro-personality poll allowed the Clinton team to segment swing voters
549
00:38:11,205 --> 00:38:13,193
into different lifestyle types.
550
00:38:13,471 --> 00:38:17,939
They were given names like Pools and Patios, or Caps and Gowns
551
00:38:17,939 --> 00:38:20,634
who were urban intellectuals living in university towns.
552
00:38:22,223 --> 00:38:25,630
From this, the team could identify ways in which they could make individuals
553
00:38:25,887 --> 00:38:28,528
feel more secure in their chosen lifestyles.
554
00:38:29,504 --> 00:38:31,711
Just as business had learned to do with products.
555
00:38:33,257 --> 00:38:35,397
Dick Morris called it small-bore politics.
556
00:38:36,092 --> 00:38:38,949
Tiny details of peoples personal lives and personal anxieties
557
00:38:39,208 --> 00:38:42,396
which politics never even thought about or noticed before
558
00:38:43,412 --> 00:38:46,201
but which now had become the key to winning power.
559
00:38:48,101 --> 00:38:54,746
Doug Schoen - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 - It was an America that focused on day to day practical concerns
560
00:38:54,746 --> 00:39:01,431
- should I wear seatbelts, should I stop smoking, should I wear a school uniform,
561
00:39:01,681 --> 00:39:03,789
is my neighborhood being protected...
562
00:39:04,185 --> 00:39:09,405
It was not so much a new individualism as the social order
563
00:39:09,671 --> 00:39:12,934
as we had known it had broken down so we got into people's heads,
564
00:39:13,169 --> 00:39:16,870
understood their psychology about lifestyle, about values,
565
00:39:17,156 --> 00:39:20,965
what they thought was important, what issues they wanted politicians
566
00:39:21,226 --> 00:39:22,952
and particularly the president to address.
567
00:39:23,181 --> 00:39:25,257
And these issues proved to be very very different
568
00:39:25,485 --> 00:39:27,390
from what the conventional wisdom had suggested.
569
00:39:28,559 --> 00:39:31,982
As the election campaign began, Clinton revealed Morris's new approach
570
00:39:32,182 --> 00:39:33,996
to a shocked White House.
571
00:39:34,797 --> 00:39:36,930
All traditional policies were to be dropped.
572
00:39:37,232 --> 00:39:40,917
Instead he would concentrate exclusively on policies that targeted
573
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:42,946
the worries of swing voters.
574
00:39:43,416 --> 00:39:46,369
V-Chips would be fitted into televisions to prevent children
575
00:39:46,578 --> 00:39:51,248
from watching pornography and mobile phones would be fitted into school buses
576
00:39:51,496 --> 00:39:53,793
to make parents feel more secure.
577
00:39:54,905 --> 00:39:58,049
Dick Morris also persuaded the president to spend his leisure time
578
00:39:58,279 --> 00:40:00,796
in the same way as particular swing voters.
579
00:40:02,019 --> 00:40:06,081
He sent Clinton on a hunting holiday, dressed in exactly the Gore-Tex outfits
580
00:40:06,308 --> 00:40:08,871
the group called Big Sky Families liked.
581
00:40:09,734 --> 00:40:12,810
The aim was to reflect swing voters lifestyles back to them.
582
00:40:13,843 --> 00:40:16,762
The liberals in Clinton's cabinet hated this approach.
583
00:40:17,500 --> 00:40:22,215
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
00:40:22,421 --> 00:40:27,279
is offer up all these little bite-sized miniature initiatives
585
00:40:27,533 --> 00:40:32,310
that appealed to people desires like consumers buying soap.
586
00:40:32,617 --> 00:40:36,421
V-Chips that you could put in your televisions so you'd make sure
587
00:40:36,642 --> 00:40:41,165
that your children could not have pornography and ... school uniforms.
588
00:40:41,481 --> 00:40:45,661
Why talk about them, they're so mundane and they're so tiny,
589
00:40:45,661 --> 00:40:49,599
and he would say if we don't do this we may not get re-elected.
590
00:40:50,564 --> 00:40:53,424
And I would say what's the point of getting re-elected if you have no mandate
591
00:40:53,733 --> 00:40:55,564
to do anything when you're re-elected
592
00:40:55,781 --> 00:40:59,005
and he'd say what's the point of having a mandate if you can't get re-elected?
593
00:41:00,081 --> 00:41:02,031
Isn't the ultimate goal getting re-elected?
594
00:41:04,633 --> 00:41:07,690
But Morris's new politics were an extraordinary success.
595
00:41:08,209 --> 00:41:10,866
Clinton's ratings among the swing voters began to soar
596
00:41:11,631 --> 00:41:16,018
and Dick Morris along with the marketeer Mark Penn, took effective charge
597
00:41:16,237 --> 00:41:17,849
of making White House policy.
598
00:41:18,128 --> 00:41:22,693
Mark Penn set up a huge call center in an office block in Denver
599
00:41:23,740 --> 00:41:26,663
and every night, hundreds of telephone operators called swing voters
600
00:41:27,460 --> 00:41:32,528
in suburbs across the country, to check with them every detail of policies
601
00:41:32,942 --> 00:41:35,038
Clinton was proposing.
602
00:41:35,903 --> 00:41:40,335
James Bennet - Washington correspondent, New York Times - The policy was made by a group of people manning telephones
603
00:41:40,584 --> 00:41:43,851
in Denver Colorado placing calls to voters in places like
604
00:41:44,057 --> 00:41:49,739
Westchester and Pasadena and asking them what they wanted from their government,
605
00:41:50,223 --> 00:41:53,701
and asking them very specifically about specific policies that
606
00:41:53,944 --> 00:41:55,462
Bill Clinton was considering.
607
00:41:55,691 --> 00:41:58,402
Would you be more likely to support him if he offered this particular
608
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:01,364
government service or if he offered that one.
609
00:42:01,665 --> 00:42:04,633
Those people told them what they thought, Mark Penn transmitted that
610
00:42:04,852 --> 00:42:07,258
to Bill Clinton and it came out of his mouth.
611
00:42:07,543 --> 00:42:11,744
So essentially it was suburbanite voters, suburban voters in the 90s
612
00:42:12,105 --> 00:42:17,572
were creating American domestic policy and some of its foreign policy as well.
613
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:21,929
-Really? -Yeah, Mark Penn was polling on questions like
614
00:42:22,148 --> 00:42:25,068
whether we should bomb in Bosnia, things like that.
615
00:42:25,820 --> 00:42:29,792
Morris also insisted that Clinton make a symbolic sacrifice of the old politics
616
00:42:30,290 --> 00:42:32,524
to convince the swing voters to trust him.
617
00:42:33,334 --> 00:42:38,057
In August 1996, Clinton signed a bill which ended the system of guaranteed help
618
00:42:38,335 --> 00:42:39,946
to poor and unemployed.
619
00:42:40,866 --> 00:42:45,163
Welfare would be cut back after two years in order to force people into work.
620
00:42:46,272 --> 00:42:49,644
The new system was called "Welfare to Work" and would he said
621
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:52,586
be a hand up not a hand out.
622
00:42:55,267 --> 00:42:58,083
It was the effective end of the guaranteed welfare system
623
00:42:58,321 --> 00:43:00,926
created by President Roosevelt 60 years before.
624
00:43:02,565 --> 00:43:05,948
For many in Clinton's cabinet it was also the end of the
625
00:43:05,948 --> 00:43:09,598
progressive political ideal that Roosevelt had represented.
626
00:43:10,586 --> 00:43:12,794
The belief that one used a position of leadership
627
00:43:13,037 --> 00:43:16,668
to persuade the voters to think and behave as social beings,
628
00:43:17,170 --> 00:43:19,490
not as self-interested individuals.
629
00:43:21,241 --> 00:43:24,518
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Dick Morris and the pollsters had won.
630
00:43:24,518 --> 00:43:30,025
And by that I mean the people who ultimately got to the president
631
00:43:30,250 --> 00:43:35,511
shaped the president's mind, were those who viewed the voters
632
00:43:35,770 --> 00:43:39,725
as just a collection of individual desires that had to be catered to
633
00:43:39,725 --> 00:43:40,841
and pandered to.
634
00:43:41,540 --> 00:43:44,168
It suggests that democracy is nothing more and should be nothing more
635
00:43:44,789 --> 00:43:52,856
than pandering to these un-thought about very primitive desires.
636
00:43:53,290 --> 00:43:56,666
Primitive in the sense that they are not even necessarily conscious,
637
00:43:57,260 --> 00:44:01,220
just what people want in terms of satisfying themselves.
638
00:44:05,041 --> 00:44:08,638
And the same triumph of the politics of the self was about
639
00:44:08,856 --> 00:44:10,371
to happen in Britain too.
640
00:44:12,358 --> 00:44:15,686
In 1994 Tony Blair had become the leader of the labor party
641
00:44:16,339 --> 00:44:19,949
and the reforming group centered around Peter Mandelson became all powerful.
642
00:44:22,763 --> 00:44:27,149
Almost every night Philip Gould ran focus groups with swing voters in the suburbs,
643
00:44:27,925 --> 00:44:30,125
but this time he was listened to.
644
00:44:30,388 --> 00:44:32,858
The desires and fears of the new aspirational classes
645
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,512
became the force shaping labor party policies.
646
00:44:37,889 --> 00:44:42,838
Philip Gould - New Labor Strategy Advisor Election Campaign 1997 - In that period I was talking to people who used to vote conservative
647
00:44:42,838 --> 00:44:45,901
and were considering voting labor and they want it understood
648
00:44:46,141 --> 00:44:50,061
that they are financially pressed and there are limits to the extent to which
649
00:44:50,263 --> 00:44:53,800
taxation can be improved, and they think crime is an issue that matters to them,
650
00:44:54,031 --> 00:44:59,820
and should be respected, they want welfare to go to people who deserve welfare
651
00:45:00,232 --> 00:45:02,216
not to people who do not.
652
00:45:02,669 --> 00:45:05,525
This was seen by many in the labor party as selfish.
653
00:45:05,854 --> 00:45:10,999
I never saw that it was selfish, I believed that Dad or Mom doing the best
654
00:45:11,216 --> 00:45:13,969
for their families was not selfish they're just doing the best for their families,
655
00:45:14,188 --> 00:45:15,291
that's what people do.
656
00:45:15,006 --> 00:45:18,193
I crack down on those who make life hell in their local neighborhoods
657
00:45:18,193 --> 00:45:19,803
through noise or disturbance
658
00:45:19,803 --> 00:45:22,617
Law and order is a Labour issue today!
659
00:45:25,019 --> 00:45:30,912
Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 - The philosophy of the campaign is let's concentrate on swing voters
660
00:45:31,114 --> 00:45:34,253
let's focus group them to find out what they want and what will appeal to them
661
00:45:34,465 --> 00:45:37,221
and let's just relentlessly push those things in the election.
662
00:45:39,331 --> 00:45:43,195
Something is happening to you!...
663
00:45:43,634 --> 00:45:46,213
After promising to put money in your pocket,
664
00:45:47,432 --> 00:45:51,271
the conservatives are quietly taking it away...
665
00:45:52,229 --> 00:45:57,605
Philip Gould was crucial, because he gave the 'raw material' if you like
666
00:45:58,114 --> 00:46:02,509
for these politicians to do this kind of politics,
667
00:46:03,197 --> 00:46:05,934
in that when he came up with stuff they'd follow it,
668
00:46:06,339 --> 00:46:08,241
pretty much without exception.
669
00:46:08,839 --> 00:46:12,747
Blair himself would pour over these sort of twelve page memos
670
00:46:13,389 --> 00:46:15,089
and say well this is what we must do.
671
00:46:16,134 --> 00:46:20,327
We want people to earn more, to consume the good things of life,
672
00:46:20,652 --> 00:46:22,195
we want people to pay lower taxes...
673
00:46:23,805 --> 00:46:27,774
Gordon Brown says a Labour government would hold the main tax-rates unchanged...
674
00:46:28,103 --> 00:46:31,307
The Labour government will not increase the tax..
675
00:46:32,814 --> 00:46:35,969
I want to make it clear that I will not increase the basic rate of tax..
676
00:46:36,510 --> 00:46:38,836
In fact, the Labour party does stand for Middle England...
677
00:46:39,118 --> 00:46:43,023
Those who'd asipre to do better, to get on in life and be ambitious
678
00:46:43,273 --> 00:46:45,511
for themselves and their families, will do better with Labour...
679
00:46:45,935 --> 00:46:49,294
Groups of eight people you know dinking wine and eating Cheerios,
680
00:46:49,574 --> 00:46:56,120
what they thought, determined effectively everything that the labor party did.
681
00:46:57,857 --> 00:47:00,890
And although those running the campaign would like to portray the new approach
682
00:47:00,890 --> 00:47:04,728
as their invention it was in fact copied from the Americans
683
00:47:05,577 --> 00:47:08,535
even down to the phrases that the American marketeers had tested
684
00:47:08,535 --> 00:47:10,355
on their swing voters.
685
00:47:10,690 --> 00:47:14,847
Doug Schoen - Market Researcher for President Clinton - 1995-2000 - Peter Mandelson and their team were in the United States watching what we did
686
00:47:15,095 --> 00:47:19,922
and copied almost verbatim our approach in their 1997 campaign.
687
00:47:20,135 --> 00:47:27,073
The benefit system should be about giving people a hand up, not just a hand out..
688
00:47:28,041 --> 00:47:30,465
Mandelson is not a fool and if he's anything ...
689
00:47:30,693 --> 00:47:33,264
he saw something that worked and said why not do it.
690
00:47:33,549 --> 00:47:36,531
And I can remember reading their manifesto and say to myself:
691
00:47:37,203 --> 00:47:39,420
they just took it lock stock and barrel.
692
00:47:40,924 --> 00:47:43,629
You know on the one hand you're proud and on the other hand you're saying:
693
00:47:43,629 --> 00:47:44,780
son of a beach!
694
00:47:45,297 --> 00:47:49,486
And as in America, labor was forced to drop policies that would not
695
00:47:49,486 --> 00:47:51,108
directly benefit the swing voters,
696
00:47:51,466 --> 00:47:53,968
even if it meant sacrificing it's fundamental principles.
697
00:47:55,078 --> 00:47:56,942
The commitment to public control of industry
698
00:47:57,437 --> 00:48:02,145
which was enshrined as Clause Four of the party constitution was dropped.
699
00:48:03,087 --> 00:48:06,906
The aim of Clause Four had been to use the collective power of the people
700
00:48:07,188 --> 00:48:09,580
to challenge the unfettered greed of business.
701
00:48:10,312 --> 00:48:12,899
But now, Tony Blair was faced with crucial voters
702
00:48:13,201 --> 00:48:16,608
who no longer saw themselves as exploited by the free market.
703
00:48:17,625 --> 00:48:21,141
They saw themselves as individual consumers who were fulfilled
704
00:48:21,141 --> 00:48:24,251
and given identity by what business delivered them.
705
00:48:25,205 --> 00:48:27,894
The new Clause Four, promised not to control the free market
706
00:48:28,237 --> 00:48:29,676
but to let it flourish.
707
00:48:30,158 --> 00:48:35,301
Business is more powerful than government, it is quicker, it is more creative..
708
00:48:35,641 --> 00:48:39,051
Business is the lifeblood of the country..
709
00:48:39,380 --> 00:48:44,615
From this, come all the benefits that society needs...employment, investment...
710
00:48:44,845 --> 00:48:47,793
I think frankly there is only one party getting business right
711
00:48:47,793 --> 00:48:49,268
and that's new Labour
712
00:48:50,722 --> 00:48:54,448
Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 - What new labor did was suit people who exert power in society
713
00:48:54,448 --> 00:49:01,851
not through the political system or not through the democratic political system,
714
00:49:02,087 --> 00:49:06,847
so it's big business, and it suits interest, interest suits in the status quo
715
00:49:07,555 --> 00:49:12,864
those three things are what the labor party is supposed to be
716
00:49:13,576 --> 00:49:15,271
a counter-force to.
717
00:49:15,664 --> 00:49:20,182
What that means is big business get to carry on exerting their power
718
00:49:20,685 --> 00:49:23,325
behind the scenes getting their way
719
00:49:23,540 --> 00:49:25,285
because their no count of adding pressure
720
00:49:25,495 --> 00:49:28,154
because you know count of adding pressure is not going to come from
721
00:49:28,154 --> 00:49:29,914
eight people sipping wine in Kettering.
722
00:49:42,337 --> 00:49:45,162
But those who masterminded labor's victory in 1997
723
00:49:45,603 --> 00:49:49,483
saw it as a triumphant vindication of a new form of democracy.
724
00:49:50,545 --> 00:49:53,982
By understanding and fulfilling people's inner desires through the focus group
725
00:49:54,332 --> 00:49:58,944
they were giving power to individuals, not treating them as faceless groups
726
00:49:59,213 --> 00:50:02,152
who were told by politicians what was good for them.
727
00:50:04,775 --> 00:50:10,000
Philip Gould - New Labor Strategy Advisor Election Campaign 1997 - I don't see the focus group as some marketing tool
728
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:14,527
I see the focus group as a way of hearing what the people have to say.
729
00:50:14,948 --> 00:50:19,274
And I see the focus group as a way to a new form of politics.
730
00:50:20,845 --> 00:50:25,278
What the people give, the people can take away..
731
00:50:25,619 --> 00:50:29,168
We are the servants, they are the masters now
732
00:50:30,832 --> 00:50:35,853
1997 was I think fundamentally important in that I think it is the end
733
00:50:36,151 --> 00:50:42,295
of elitist politics that has dominated Britain for so much
734
00:50:42,518 --> 00:50:44,777
of the last hundred years.
735
00:50:51,956 --> 00:50:57,011
In 1939 Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew created a vision
736
00:50:57,215 --> 00:51:00,140
of a future world in which the consumer was king.
737
00:51:02,814 --> 00:51:07,584
It was at the World's Fair in New York, and Bernays called it Democracity.
738
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:11,193
It was one of the earliest and most dramatic portrayals
739
00:51:11,409 --> 00:51:13,077
of a consumerist democracy.
740
00:51:13,988 --> 00:51:16,707
A society in which the needs and desires of individuals
741
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:19,943
were read and fulfilled by business in the free market.
742
00:51:22,327 --> 00:51:24,935
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations - The World's Fair created a spectacle
743
00:51:25,453 --> 00:51:28,093
in which all of these concerns were met and
744
00:51:28,346 --> 00:51:33,486
they met by Westinghouse and General Motors and the American Cash Register Company
745
00:51:33,814 --> 00:51:38,269
and company after company presented itself as the sort of centerpiece
746
00:51:38,516 --> 00:51:42,661
of a society in which human desire and human want and human anxiety
747
00:51:42,908 --> 00:51:46,813
would all be responded to and it would all be met purely through
748
00:51:47,051 --> 00:51:49,280
the free enterprise system.
749
00:51:49,853 --> 00:51:52,784
There was this sort of notion that the free market was something
750
00:51:53,346 --> 00:51:56,954
not guided by ideologies or by political power,
751
00:51:57,265 --> 00:52:00,484
it was something that was simply guided by the people's will.
752
00:52:02,224 --> 00:52:06,569
This was the model of democracy that both new labor and the American democrats
753
00:52:06,827 --> 00:52:09,515
had bought into in order to regain power.
754
00:52:10,973 --> 00:52:14,579
They had used techniques developed by business to read the desires of consumers
755
00:52:15,226 --> 00:52:19,930
and they had accepted Bernays' claim that this was a better form of democracy.
756
00:52:23,066 --> 00:52:27,747
But in reality the World's Fair had been an elaborate piece of propaganda
757
00:52:28,137 --> 00:52:32,481
designed by Bernays for his clients, the giant American corporations.
758
00:52:34,753 --> 00:52:38,807
Privately, Bernays did not believe that true democracy could ever work.
759
00:52:40,145 --> 00:52:44,590
He had been profoundly influenced in this by his uncle's theories of human nature.
760
00:52:45,958 --> 00:52:49,270
Freud believed that individuals were not driven by rational thought
761
00:52:49,586 --> 00:52:52,115
but by primitive unconscious desires and feelings.
762
00:52:53,504 --> 00:52:56,478
And Bernays believed that this meant it was too dangerous
763
00:52:56,850 --> 00:52:59,856
to let the masses ever have control over their own lives
764
00:53:00,853 --> 00:53:04,912
and consumerism was a way of giving people the illusion of control
765
00:53:05,630 --> 00:53:09,616
while allowing a responsible elite to continue managing society.
766
00:53:14,747 --> 00:53:17,635
Stewart Ewen - Historian of Public Relations - It's not that the people are in charge
767
00:53:17,635 --> 00:53:20,021
but that the people's desires are in charge.
768
00:53:20,667 --> 00:53:24,883
The people are not in charge the people exercise no decision-making power
769
00:53:25,104 --> 00:53:26,525
within this environment.
770
00:53:26,741 --> 00:53:33,040
So democracy is reduced from something which assumes an active citizenry
771
00:53:33,699 --> 00:53:39,167
to something which now increasingly is predicated on the idea of the public
772
00:53:39,375 --> 00:53:40,853
as passive consumers,
773
00:53:41,213 --> 00:53:44,149
the public as people who essentially what you are delivering them
774
00:53:44,573 --> 00:53:46,105
is doggy treats.
775
00:53:47,573 --> 00:53:51,246
The problem for new labor was that it believed the propaganda.
776
00:53:52,650 --> 00:53:55,545
They took at face value the idea promoted by business
777
00:53:56,076 --> 00:53:59,992
that the systems used to read the consumers mind could form the basis
778
00:54:00,216 --> 00:54:01,556
for a new type of democracy.
779
00:54:03,221 --> 00:54:06,480
Once in power new labor tried to govern through a new system
780
00:54:06,699 --> 00:54:09,297
that Philip Gould called 'continuous democracy'.
781
00:54:10,587 --> 00:54:12,916
But what worked for business in designing products
782
00:54:13,358 --> 00:54:16,250
led the labor government into a bewildering maze of
783
00:54:16,488 --> 00:54:18,643
contradictory whims and desires.
784
00:54:20,278 --> 00:54:22,607
For much of labor's first term the focus groups
785
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:26,124
said the railways were not a high priority and labors policies
786
00:54:26,324 --> 00:54:28,350
faithfully reflected this.
787
00:54:28,676 --> 00:54:32,263
But now those same groups are now blaming the government
788
00:54:32,471 --> 00:54:35,233
for not having invested more money sooner in the railways.
789
00:54:37,006 --> 00:54:40,098
Derek Draper - Assistant to Peter Mandelson 1992-1995 - The point about focus group politics is that
790
00:54:40,313 --> 00:54:43,198
there isn't one because people are contradictory and irrational
791
00:54:43,575 --> 00:54:47,601
and so you have a problem in terms of deciding what you are going to do
792
00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:51,177
if all you do is listen to a mass of individual opinions
793
00:54:51,444 --> 00:54:54,251
that are forever fluctuating and don't really have any coherence
794
00:54:54,488 --> 00:54:56,484
and crucially are not set in context.
795
00:54:56,709 --> 00:54:59,764
So that's why people can say you know I want lower taxes
796
00:55:00,020 --> 00:55:01,709
and better public services.
797
00:55:01,968 --> 00:55:03,395
Well of course they do.
798
00:55:04,797 --> 00:55:08,389
You know you say do you want to pay more taxes to get better public services
799
00:55:08,707 --> 00:55:09,865
and people are less sure.
800
00:55:10,112 --> 00:55:13,282
They then don't believe that if they pay more taxes they will be spent
801
00:55:13,282 --> 00:55:15,054
on better public services.
802
00:55:15,264 --> 00:55:18,206
So you end up in this quagmire and the truth is the politicians have to say
803
00:55:18,206 --> 00:55:21,410
look this is what I believe, I believe you should pay slightly more taxes
804
00:55:21,786 --> 00:55:25,347
to make better public services and I pledge that I am competent enough
805
00:55:25,347 --> 00:55:29,193
to use that money wisely do you want now to vote for me yes or no.
806
00:55:29,711 --> 00:55:31,830
And that's what Blair has failed to do.
807
00:55:32,065 --> 00:55:34,675
Tony Blair turned around and tries to feed back to them what
808
00:55:34,675 --> 00:55:37,785
they already believe and give them what they believe is sort of
809
00:55:37,785 --> 00:55:43,267
an individual incoherent contradictory nonsense and that's all he has to offer.
810
00:55:43,900 --> 00:55:46,292
And then he wonders why people don't get him.
811
00:55:46,678 --> 00:55:48,854
It isn't that they don't get him it's that they're looking for someone
812
00:55:48,854 --> 00:55:51,427
to do something that they can't do themselves which is actually come up
813
00:55:51,660 --> 00:55:54,254
with a coherent political opinion that they might have faith in.
814
00:55:55,132 --> 00:55:57,097
New labor are faced with a dilemma.
815
00:55:57,879 --> 00:56:00,447
The system of consumer democracy they have embraced
816
00:56:00,775 --> 00:56:04,789
has trapped them into a series of short term and often contradictory policies.
817
00:56:06,319 --> 00:56:09,067
There are now growing demands that they fulfill a grander vision.
818
00:56:09,882 --> 00:56:12,652
That they use the power of government, to deal with the problems
819
00:56:12,874 --> 00:56:16,388
of growing inequality and the decaying social fabric of the country.
820
00:56:18,074 --> 00:56:21,240
But to do this they will have to appeal to the electorate
821
00:56:21,460 --> 00:56:23,858
to think outside their own self-interest.
822
00:56:24,654 --> 00:56:28,045
And this would mean challenging the now dominant Freudian view of human beings
823
00:56:28,617 --> 00:56:30,911
as selfish instinct driven individuals
824
00:56:32,037 --> 00:56:35,472
which is a concept of human beings that has been fostered and encouraged
825
00:56:35,813 --> 00:56:39,058
by business because it produces ideal consumers.
826
00:56:42,347 --> 00:56:46,577
Although we feel we are free, in reality we, like the politicians
827
00:56:46,846 --> 00:56:49,468
have become the slaves of our own desires.
828
00:56:51,988 --> 00:56:54,388
We have forgotten that we can be more than that,
829
00:56:55,234 --> 00:56:57,462
that there are other sides to human nature.
830
00:56:59,633 --> 00:57:05,550
Robert Reich - Member of Clinton Cabinet 1993-1997 - Fundamentally here, we have two different views of human nature and of democracy.
831
00:57:05,834 --> 00:57:10,471
You have the view that people are irrational
832
00:57:11,048 --> 00:57:16,552
that they are bundles of unconscious emotion, that comes directly out of Freud.
833
00:57:17,237 --> 00:57:21,701
And businesses are very able to respond to that, that's what they have honed
834
00:57:21,923 --> 00:57:24,775
their skills to and that's what marketing really is all about -
835
00:57:25,038 --> 00:57:27,758
what are the symbols the images the music, the words
836
00:57:27,991 --> 00:57:31,568
that will appeal to these unconscious feelings.
837
00:57:32,345 --> 00:57:35,506
Politics must be more than that.
838
00:57:36,286 --> 00:57:44,188
Politics and leadership are about engaging the public in a rational discussion
839
00:57:44,444 --> 00:57:46,600
and deliberation about what is best
840
00:57:47,799 --> 00:57:52,698
and treating people with respect in terms of their rational abilities
841
00:57:52,962 --> 00:57:54,802
to debate what is best.
842
00:57:55,206 --> 00:57:59,525
If it's not that, if it is Freudian if it is basically
843
00:58:00,071 --> 00:58:04,910
a matter of appealing to the same basic unconscious feelings that business
844
00:58:05,207 --> 00:58:07,206
appeals to then why not let business do it?
845
00:58:07,416 --> 00:58:09,554
Business can do it better, business knows how to do it.
846
00:58:09,896 --> 00:58:14,134
Business after all is in the business of responding to those feelings.
847
00:58:40,000 --> 00:58:50,000
Time synch (+1.8s), spellcheck, and (some) edits by coyote 26December2011
848
00:58:51,000 --> 00:59:01,000
from version uploaded to Subscene.com 18October2010 by subsred
86699
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