A Century of Spin , livre ebook

A Century of Spin
Also available from Pluto Press
Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller
‘Corporate Spin is one of the great toxins of democracy and a free society. Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy is a foundational book to educate us about this sleazy realm and equip us to do battle with it.’
— Robert W. McChesney, author, Communication Revolution: Critical Junctures and the Future of Media
‘Essential reading for anyone concerned with the rise of corporate power and with seeing the world as it really is.’
— Mark Curtis, journalist and author of Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses

First published 2008 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © David Miller and William Dinan 2008
The right of David Miller and William Dinan to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN-13   978 0 7453 2689 4 ISBN-10   0 7453 2689 7
Paperback ISBN-13   978 0 7453 2688 7 ISBN-10   0 7453 2688 9
ISBN-13   978 1 7837 1073 7 ePub
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
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Contents
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
1. The Cutting Edge of Corporate Power
2. Public Relations: The Zelig Complex
3. The Hidden History of Corporate Propaganda, 1911–30
4. The Second Wave of Corporate Propaganda, 1936–50
5. The Case for Capitalism – the Third Wave, to the 1980s
6. The Real Rulers of the World
7. The Global PR Industry
8. Pulling Labour’s Teeth
9. Blair and the Business Lobby
10. Cameron and the Neo-cons
11. Corporate Propaganda and Power: The Manufacture of Compliance?
Appendix: Labour MPs’ Business Interests, 2007
Notes
Index
List of Abbreviations
AEI  
American Enterprise Institute
AFL  
American Federation of Labor
Aims  
Aims of Industry
AISI  
American Iron and Steel Institute
APPC  
Association of Professional Political Consultants
ASI  
Adam Smith Institute
BAP  
British American Project
BCSD  
Business Council for Sustainable Development
BCU  
British Commonwealth Union
BEU  
British Empire Union
BF  
British Fascists
B-M  
Burson-Marsteller
BRT  
Business Roundtable
BYC  
British Youth Council
CBI  
Confederation of British Industry
CEO  
chief executive officer
CER  
Centre for European Reform
CFR  
Council on Foreign Relations
CIA  
Central Intelligence Agency
CIO  
Congress of Industrial Organizations
CIPR  
Chartered Institute of Public Relations
CND  
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
CPS  
Centre for Policy Studies
CSR  
corporate social responsibility
EEF  
Engineering Employers Federation
ERT  
European Round Table of Industrialists
FBI  
Federation of British Industries
GATS  
General Agreement on Trade in Services
GATT  
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP  
gross domestic product
GE  
General Electric
H&K  
Hill & Knowlton
HMC  
Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications
ICC  
International Chamber of Commerce
ICFTU  
International Congress of Free Trade Unions
IEA  
Institute of Economic Affairs
IMF  
International Monetary Fund
IPPR  
Institute for Public Policy Research
IRA  
Irish Republican Army
IRD  
Information Research Department
ISC  
Institute for the Study of Conflict
LFIG  
Labour Finance and Industry Group
LSE  
London School of Economics
MoD  
Ministry of Defence
MPS  
Mont Pelerin Society
NAFF  
National Association for Freedom (later known as the Freedom Association)
NAFTA  
North American Free Trade Agreement
NAM  
National Association of Manufacturers
NATO  
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NGOs  
non-governmental organisations
NICB  
National Industrial Conference Board
NUM  
National Union of Miners
OPA  
Office of Price Administration
ORC  
Opinion Research Corporation
PR  
public relations
PRCA  
Public Relations Consultants Association
PTA  
Popular Television Association
RIIA  
Royal Institute of International Affairs
RV  
Rancheros Vistadores
SDA  
Social Democratic Alliance
SDP  
Social Democratic Party
SMC  
Science Media Centre
SMEs  
small and medium enterprises
TABD  
TransAtlantic Business Dialogue
TNCs  
transnational corporations
TUCETU  
Trade Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding
WBCSD  
World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WEF  
World Economic Forum
Acknowledgements
This book emerged as we began to write a small historical chapter for a monograph on corporate public relations in the contemporary period. We felt the need to contextualise modern day PR and found ourselves chasing up obscure leads and biographical details on figures largely forgotten in the historical record. The result was that the historical chapter soon became a section of the planned book, and on the advice of the editorial term at Pluto, a book in its own right. The research underpinning this book stretches back over a decade and we acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for this endeavour (‘Corporate Public Relations in British and Multinational Companies’, ESRC grant R000238993) which opened up the area of corporate PR for us and aroused our curiosity about the history outlined in this book.
This book has had a long gestation and is part of a wider collaboration between a number of people and organisations. We are grateful for the encouragement of our co-directors at Spinwatch, Andy Rowell and Eveline Lubbers, and the various contributors to the Spinwatch initiative, including Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Billy Clark, Suzanne Garnham, Michael Greenwell, Claire Harkins, Tor Justad, Tommy Kane, Jonathan Matthews, Peter McQuade, Mat Pringle, Paul De Rooij and Bill Stevens. Special thanks are due to Julie-Ann Davis, Lynn Hill, Oliver Howard and Tracey Day for help with different parts of the manuscript.
There are many individuals who have helped, advised and inspired us in producing this book, including: Matthias Beck, Sharon Beder, Mark Brown, Bob Burton, Bill Carroll, John Casey, Colin Clark, David Collison, Paul deClerk, Aeron Davis, David Deacon, John Eldridge, Stuart Ewen, Bob Franklin, Des Freedman, Tim Gopsill, Ed Herman, Olivier Hoedeman, Mark Hollingsworth, Oyvind Ihlen, Nick Jones, Justin Kenrick, Alastair Macintosh, Stephanie and Steve Marriott, Robert McChesney, Niall Meehan, Uli Mueller, Brian Murphy, Greg Philo, John Pilger, Dieter Plewhe, Sheldon Rampton, Patrick Ring, Danny Schechter, Ken Silverstein, Jean Shaoul, Eric Shaw, Leslie Sklair, Tore Slatta, John Stauber, Gerry Sussman, Mark Thomas, Hilary Wainwright, Andrew Watterson, Kay Weaver, Erik Wesselius, Barry White, Dave Whyte, Granville Williams, and Kevin Williams.
We would also like to thank our colleagues and postgraduate students at the Department of Geography and Sociology at the University of Strathclyde for their support, and former colleagues at the Glasgow Media Group and Stirling Media Research Institute. We also want to say thanks to the good folks at Pluto for publishing this book and their continued support. The enthusiasm and assistance of Anne Beech, Melanie Patrick, Robert Webb and Mary Myers was crucial to this project. Thanks are also due to Rob Lilly, Helen Costello, Patsy and Bert Huegenin for their hospitality during our research trips to London and to Marina and James Lindsay for hosting our lengthy writing sessions within sight of Loch Achray. On a personal note we sincerely thank Emma Miller and Catie and Lewis Miller, Carol Clydesdale and Ciara and Niamh Dinan for their support and for tolerating the absences as we tried to break the back of this book and get it to the finishing line.
DM and WD Glasgow, September 2007
1
The Cutting Edge of Corporate Power
I have no patience with those who try and attribute insidious and mysterious powers to public relations. Such ideas are wholly fanciful and without basis in fact.
John Hill, founder of PR firm Hill & Knowlton 1
This book is about the power of public relations. It is about how corporations invented public relations and used its skills and techniques to impose business interests on public policy and limit the responsiveness of the political system to the preferences and opinions of the masses. The powers of public relations are mysterious in the sense that they are not well known. They are shrouded in secrecy and deception, which often enables PR operatives and PR firms to pursue their objectives undetected. The efficacy of corporate PR has, in fact, been largely suppressed from the historical record. This book is an attempt to reassess some of the history of popular democracy in the twentieth century by looking at how corporations have used public relations – propaganda – to secure their interests.
We argue that PR has played a very significant role in the course of popular democracy over the last century. The powers of PR are not mysterious in the sense that they are magical or superhuman. They are all too human, the products of diligence, hard work, planning and conscious ideological warfare. They result in the institutional political corruption so obvious in neo-liberal societies, where governments