Guardians of the Public Sphere? Political Scandal and the Press, 1979-97

Abstract

The political scandals that beset the Conservative Party during the 1980s and 1990s constitute a valuable lens for examining two interrelated areas of study: the changing power relationship between government and press, and the changing interface between public and private in contemporary discourse. Close discursive analysis of the press coverage of these scandals--and of the libel actions that resulted from them--highlights the extent to which the Thatcher administration and the tabloid press propagated a shared moral discourse, founded on the repudiation of 'permissiveness', and a return to the ideal of the patriarchal nuclear family. This alliance transformed the way in which the Conservative message was communicated, disseminated, and indeed constituted, yet ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword. By catalysing the disintegration of the boundary between public and private in political life, and investing the press with the power to mould and configure public expectations of sexual morality, Thatcher laid the groundwork for the eventual fall of the Major administration, in the wake of a long series of financial and sexual scandals. As such, this article offers insights into a hitherto unexamined aspect of Thatcher's legacy, and the unprecedented influence of the press in late twentieth-century politics.