The Campaign in Retrospect

Abstract

To many politicians as well as to newspaper men the 1966 campaign was a great bore. It was a bore because there was so little doubt about the outcome; it was a bore because there had been an election only seventeen months before and electioneering of a sort had hardly stopped for four years; it was a bore because campaign techniques that were new in 1959 had become, on the third time out, established rituals. It is worth reflecting on how far things had changed since 1955: then there were no institutionalised press conferences setting the tone for reporters; then there was no coverage whatever on radio or television; then the party leaders went round the country on whistle-stop tours, and their speeches as reported in the press constituted the national campaign, apart from the few official party broadcasts.