Open mouth; insert foot II

Socialist Worker has a none-too-original explanation for the battering its front organisation, the Respect Coalition, received in last week's elections. The reason was, of course, that Respect was denied the chance to convey its message by the capitalist media:

Respect offered people a message of hope. Yet it was starved of publicity - and what little media attention it attracted was hostile. If George Galloway had [had] a fraction of the coverage lavished on UKIP's Robert Kilroy-Silk, Respect would have been in a very different situation.

Unfortunately someone forgot to communicate the new-line-created-in-adversity to its beaten European candidate Paddy O'Keefe, who announces proudly in the newsletter of the Brighton and Hove branch of Respect:

Our battle bus carried our message to the Brighton and Hove seafront and town centre Sunday crowds. On polling day we megaphoned our way through Brighton and Hove town centres, taking in many residential estates and shopping areas en route, as well as visiting and leafleting bus stations and rail stations.

No one can have been in any doubt about our presence and message!

Quite. That's why the number of successful Respect candidates cannot be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Comments

[Effra]

Kamm spends hours every week trawling for stuff about Respect and the Lib Dems, so he can keep on and on and on and on telling us how unimportant they are.

Beats working, I suppose.

[Squander Two]

Yeah, journalists who do no research and have no point to make are so much more interesting, aren't they?

[oliver]

"Beats working?" Well, I'd call it 'work' - and I'd go further. Kamm's doing the work that newsprint should be doing but isn't. So good for him.

[Clem Snide]

Then cancel your Guardian subscription, Effra, and send them the bill. I'm sure that, being good socialists, <sarcasm>they'll be just as generous with their own money as they are with other people's.</sarcasm>

[Martin Adamson]

The good news for Respect and George Galloway is that they will be getting an avalanche of free publicity round about November, when Galloway's libel trial against the Telegraph comes up. Whether it will be good publicity or bad I leave as an exercise to the reader.

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

Considering how few votes these nitwits got they got a huge amount of publicity. It is rather rich they harp on about K-S as well. Would RESPECT have gotten any coverage at all if it weren't for having Galloway leading their rabble?

[jim]

I've no time at all for Galloway. The phrase "lunatic fringe" seems tailor-made for the man (his love of the Lennon song, "Imagine" notwithstanding).

All the same Oliver, i'm mystified as to what point you're trying to make with this blog entry. Are you claiming that UKIP and Respect got anything like equal exposure in the run up to the elections?

Are you claiming that a bus with loudspeakers driving through a couple of south coast provincial towns is in the same league as RK-S's near constant presence on Sky News?

My own view is that Respect is just a vain attempt to lash out at mainstream politics and its only real success was to take votes away from the Greens (whatever people may think of the Green Party, it clearly isn't Galloway's prime target, yet it was the only thing he scored a hit upon).

All the same, the statement by Socialist Worker that Respect "was starved of publicity - and what little media attention it attracted was hostile" is surely a truism*, despite claims to the contrary by the Brighton and Hove battlebus-driver.

Had Respect received a large amount of positive representation in the media prior to the elections (that they didn't deserve it is surely a moot point... the same could be argued of many political parties), then they would surely have made a better showing.

Or Oliver, are you claiming that positive media exposure has no influence whatsoever upon voting patterns?

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* Truism: An undoubted or self-evident truth; a statement which is pliantly true; a proposition needing no proof or argument; -- opposed to falsism.