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Radio in the British Elections

Advantages of the Microphone.

"‘TNAWRE were many remarkable features in the election which is now over, apart from the confusion of issues and of parties. The most remarkable, I think, was the change it indicated in the mechanism of elections. It-was a pretty general experience that public meetings figured much less prominently than usual in the struggle," writes Mr. A. G. Gardiner, in the "Star" (London). "Tt was not. merely that they were fewer in number. That was notoriously the case," Mr. Gardiner goes on to say, "and may be explained in some measure by the circumstances of the election and the bewildering crosscurrents that afflicted the party machines. 7 "But more significant than the infrequency of the meetings, especially. in the country constituencies, was’ the small attention that the platform attracted in the campaign and the striking decline in the personal intercourse between the candidate and the elec. torate. In many constituencies canvassing was hardly attempted, and T remember no occasion when there was such marked economy in the distribu43inn of alection literature.

"Those features, no doubt, are partly explainable by the vast increase in the electorates, which makes personal contact with the voter difficult, if not. impossible. But they are mainly due to another fact. Broadcasting has, in this election, established itself as the chief instrument of electoral contro-yversy-more powerful than the platform or the Press, more penetrating than the canvasser, more personal than the direct contact of candidate and voter. -"If meetings have been fewer and less important, it is because they have largely lost their function. The voter no longer needs to leave his fireside and go out into the night to have his share in the great controversy. "He can have his evening meal i: peace, whet his appetite for the fray with a little preparatory music from the B.B.C. orchestra. and then, with his feet on the fender, and with his pipe in his mouth, and surrounded by the family circle, he can have the argnment presented to him in his own sitting-room, not by the stumbling ora; tory of the local candidate. interrupted by the irrelevance and disorder of a public meeting, but by the Hectors anc Achilles of the fight, speaking to him quietly and personally, without inter ruption and without the mob emotio1

of a crowd to distract the mind and cloud the issue. "This is a momentous change. It is a. change which has come to stay and which must increasingly influence the temper of controversy. I think it will influence it for the better. It is an ‘appeal to the individual reason rather -than to the crowd emotion. It substitutes argument for rhetoric, and authoritative statement for the irre sponsible assertion of the platform. "The Honourable Mr. Slumkey or ‘Mr. Pott may commit himself to any nonsense on the platform of the village schoolroom at Walloper Well with perfeet security. He will not be reported and is in no danger of contradiction. ‘If you are making a statement in print." said a famous mob orator to 2

young candidate for Parliament when they were leaving a meeting together. ‘you must be careful of your facts; but on the platform, my boy, you must Jet. the millions fly" That represents much of the political controversy of the past. "But if Mr. MacDonald or Mr. Baldwin or Mr, Henderson commits himself to a declaration on the wireless there is no escape from it. It is not merely that he has a responsibility which the local candidate has not; it is that he is heard by millions of the instructed as well as the uninstructed. uot in the heated atmosphere of a meeting but in the cool and judicial atmosphere of the parlour. "In coming thus into direct relation with the individual voter, the nolitical leader not onlv subordinates

the candidate but incurs a new and heavy responsibility. He may quite conceivably turn the scales of an election for or against a given issue by © good speech or a bad, I do not think it can he doubted that the course of the recent election has been more influenced by the broadcast addresses than by any other fact. This means that henceforth the politician who wishes to influence elections must study a technique of oratory entirely different from that of the past. "The wireless is a great leveller. It knows no distinction of persons, and is the most ruthless enemy of the

spell-binder. It strips him of all the stock-in-trade ‘of his. craft-the mob emotion of a great meeting, the sense of the hero advancing into the arena, the arts of gesture, the gifts of personal appearance and dramatic -bearing, the clapping and the singing; the feeling of battle. He is a voice-no-thing but, a, yoice. "A lonely voice without fanfarronades to announce it or impress you with its importance and celebrity. If you like it you listen; if you don’t like it -you flick a gadget and reduce

it to silence. It does not address your emotions. It addresses your mind. If it fails to do that its failure is absolute. Rhetoric and declamation ure equally fatal, They fall stillborn from the impersonal mouth of the ioudspeaker. "All the affectations and insincerities of matter and manner, the portentous drop of the voice, the dramatic pause, the thrilling query, the awesome whisper-all drop stone dead before that little party in the parlour. Nothing ‘gets across’ except the qualities of clear statement and plain, unadorned sincerity of utterance. Humour must be sparingly used, and, even so, must be of the true vintage. Mere anecdotage is a bore and facetiousness an offence. : "The merest shade of condescension is aggravated, and vulgarity is thrice vulgar. During the past election we have had an extraordinary experience of what constitutes. effective and ineffective speech on the wireless. J shall not say who in my judgment passed the ordeal best, though I am quite clear on that point. But it was the man who was at once most direct. unaffected and obviously sincere. I is no: bad..omen for politics that the

chief instrument of. political contro versy in the future ‘has so acute an _ ear for the truth or falsity of those a who employ it." -*

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.I whakaputaina aunoatia ēnei kuputuhi tuhinga, e kitea ai pea ētahi hapa i roto. Tirohia te whārangi katoa kia kitea te āhuatanga taketake o te tuhinga.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/RADREC19320108.2.6

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 26, 8 January 1932, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,043

Radio in the British Elections Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 26, 8 January 1932, Page 2

Radio in the British Elections Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 26, 8 January 1932, Page 2

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