Alastair Campbell

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Alastair John Campbell (born May 25, 1957) was the Director of Communications and Strategy for 10 Downing Street. He has been a controversial figure in British politics in recent years, and is often seen as one of the "architects" of New Labour, although not ever actually being voted into the position by the nation.

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[edit] Early life

Alastair Campbell is the son of veterinarian Donald Campbell and his wife Elizabeth, a couple of Scottish origin who moved to Keighley, West Yorkshire when the elder Campbell became a partner in a veterinary practice there. Alastair has two elder brothers, Donald and Graham, and a younger sister, Elizabeth.

Alastair attended City of Leicester School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied modern languages (French and German, for which Campbell received a 2:1, or Upper Second) and claimed that he wrote essays based solely on criticism and did not always read the works themselves (a kind of proto-spin doctoring). Campbell spent a year in the South of France as part of his degree.

Campbell also became interested in journalism. His first published work was "Inter-City Ditties", his winning entry to a readers' competition run by pornographic magazine Forum. This led to a lengthy stint working for Forum, writing articles such as "The Riviera Gigolo" and "Busking with Bagpipes" which Campbell purported to be based on autobiographical events.[1]

He was appointed as a sports reporter on the Tavistock Times where he took over the back page and gave himself a personal column. He was promoted to the news pages where his first major story was the loss of the Penlee lifeboat with all its crew. It was as a trainee on the Daily Mirror in Plymouth that he met his partner Fiona Millar.

[edit] National newspapers

Campbell later moved to the London office of the Mirror where he became a political correspondent. However, his rapid rise and stressful job led to alcoholism and a nervous breakdown in 1986. Campbell recovered and has become teetotal[2]. He rebuilt his career and became Political Editor of the Daily Mirror; as the largest circulation left-wing paper, he was a close advisor of Neil Kinnock and worked closely with Robert Maxwell.

After leaving the Mirror, Campbell became Political Editor of Today, a full colour tabloid newspaper launched in the 1980s that was then trying to turn leftward. Campbell was working there when John Smith died in 1994. He was a well-known face and helped to interview the three candidates for the new Labour Party leader; it was later revealed that he had already formed links with Tony Blair.

[edit] Work for Tony Blair

Shortly after Blair won and became leader of the opposition, Campbell left the newspaper to become his spokesman. He played an important role in the run-up to the 1997 general election, working with Peter Mandelson to co-ordinate Labour's campaign. Campbell intervened personally to complain whenever media outlets ran stories he felt were unhelpful to the campaign, and was not afraid to attack journalists personally when they displeased him. When Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, Campbell became his Director of Communications and in charge of the government's press machine.

As the New Labour government found its feet, Blair relied for his political advice on a close circle of his own staff. Campbell was seen as particularly influential, and was sometimes referred to as the "real Deputy Prime Minister". His influence was certainly greater than his job title suggested: he was given the authority to direct Civil Servants, who previously had taken instructions only from ministers. Campbell's control of the traditional Lobby System under which a select group of accredited journalists were given privileged access to the Prime Minister's spokesman (and the journalistic kudos that this access could bring) meant that he wielded a good deal of power over the media, as previous Press Secretaries had found. Unlike his predecessors, he had been a political appointment and had not come through the Civil Service.

[edit] After 2001

When Blair won a second term on June 7, 2001 Campbell took a step back from the job of briefing journalists and was appointed as the "Prime Minister's Director of Communications and Strategy". This gave him a strategic role in overseeing government communications. He was sometimes regarded with suspicion (if not outright hostility) by elements of the Labour Party and Blair's political opponents who felt he minimised the role of members of the government and members of Parliament. However, those who worked closely with him describe an aggressive but funny and loyal colleague, who inspired loyalty in others. Even his most severe critics regarded him as adept in the techniques of news management. He was memorably sponsored by the US President George W. Bush to complete a marathon in aid of a cancer charity, which he had supported since a journalist colleague died early of the disease.

[edit] Iraq War

In February 2003 he was a central figure in the "dodgy dossier" controversy. A dossier on Iraqi concealment of Weapons of mass destruction and human rights abuses under Saddam Hussein was published on February 3. The dossier purported to be based on intelligence but a large section had been taken (unacknowledged) from a PhD thesis available on the internet.

A few months later he became embroiled in further controversy after the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan broadcast claims that the government had included evidence it knew to be false (famously described as "sexed up" by another BBC journalist) an earlier dossier (about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction). In a later newspaper article Gilligan said that his source had specifically identified Campbell himself as responsible for the alleged exaggerations. Campbell demanded a retraction and apology from the BBC, but none was forthcoming.

The BBC's source David Kelly identified himself to his employers at the Ministry of Defence. The government released this news and under questioning from newspapers desperate to identify the source gave sufficient hints for his identity to become public. Kelly committed suicide shortly afterward and the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances of his death pushed Campbell further into the limelight. The Inquiry showed that Campbell had been working closely with the Intelligence Services, and made suggestions about the wording of the dossier. He had also been keen that Kelly's identity be made public writing in his diary "It would fuck Gilligan if that were his source". However, Lord Hutton cleared Campbell of acting improperly, as the Joint Intelligence Committee had taken all editorial decisions. Hutton also found that Kelly's name would have had to be made public to avoid allegations of a cover-up. The Hutton report was widely criticised in the media, however, and Campbell's "Presidential"-style press conference afterwards was perceived by some to be misjudged, with Campbell attacked for appearing to gloat over the BBC's misfortune.

[edit] Resignation

Campbell's unhappiness and wish to resign had already been common knowledge but the fallout from the Hutton Inquiry meant he had to stand down earlier than intended. On 29 August 2003 he announced his resignation from 10 Downing Street. Throughout his time in Downing Street, he kept a diary which eventually totalled two million words. Selected extracts will be published by the Random House Group in a volume titled The Blair Years, which Campbell says will not be released until after Tony Blair leaves office[3]. Campbell now spends most of his time giving occasional public talks and supporting his favourite football team, Burnley F.C.

[edit] 2005

Campbell worked once again for the Labour Party in the run up to the May 2005 General Election [1]. Although never given any official title he was effectively the party's director of communications for the campaign, directing the party's media work and closely advising Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Alan Milburn and John Reid - who were the most prominent politicians in Labour's team.

Sir Clive Woodward recruited Campbell to manage relations with the press for the British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand in 2005. The appointment proved to be controversial with Campbell being roundly criticised by many in the media for his predilection for spin and for his lack of rugby knowledge and experience. They also resented the fact that Campbell wrote an exclusive column for The Times during the tour which they saw as a conflict of interest. However on the Lions return to the British Isles after their unsuccessful tour Woodward praised Campbell for having done a "fantastic job".

In typical Campbell style the Lions adopted a highly aggressive approach to their opponents in the media, with a particular focus on the All Blacks tackling which removed Lions captain Brian O'Driscoll from the tour.

[edit] Email scandal

He was involved in a scandal over an email he sent from his BlackBerry, intended for party chief Adrian McMenamin, that was actually sent to Newsnight journalist Andrew McFadyen (who has the same initials) by mistake. It read, in part:

"Just spoke to trev. think tbwa shd give statement to newsnight saying party and agency work together well and nobody here has spoken to standard. Posters done by tbwa according to political brief. Now fuck off and cover something important you twats!"

Again, his colourful language caused scandal.

[edit] Character and attitudes

Campbell is generally regarded as believing in a more traditional form of Labour politics than Tony Blair. His partner Fiona Millar has openly opposed Labour policy on education. Since his retirement from Downing Street, Campbell has been highly critical of political reporting in general and the Daily Mail group of newspapers in particular. Like Tony Blair, Campbell attempted (without complete success) to shield his children from the press attention which their father's job attracted. When briefing the press, he was known for a no-nonsense approach, but did on occasion alleviate it with humour: after a series of notably poor predictions about a Government reshuffle he distributed CDs by the band Garbage to those reporters who had made the most errors. "Garbagic" was the polite, made-up word Campbell used to describe a story he did not like.

[edit] Screen portrayals

In 2005, Campbell was played by Jonathan Cake in the Channel 4 television film The Government Inspector, based on the David Kelly Case. The following year, he was portrayed by Mark Bazeley in the Stephen Frears film The Queen.

Peter Capaldi's character, Malcolm Tucker (an aggressive, foul-mouthed Scottish Director of Communications), in the critically acclaimed 2005 BBC television satire The Thick of It is modelled on Campbell.

[edit] Trivia

Campbell wrote the public statement Tony Blair made about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in which he describes Diana as 'the People's Princess'. The phrase caught on immediately.

Campbell is an accomplished bagpipe player, in some demand at Burns Suppers every January.

Campbell and Fiona Millar appeared on a celebrity episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which first aired August 19, 2006.

In March 2007, Campbell appeared as a celebrity contestant on Comic Relief Does The Apprentice in order to raise money for Comic Relief.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Oborne, Peter and Simon Walters (2004). Alastair Campbell. Aurum. ISBN 1-84513-001-4. pp. 25-32.
  2. ^ "Blair's spin doctor talks of breakdown", BBC, 2002-01-07. Retrieved on 2007-03-26.
  3. ^ "Secret diary of Alastair Campbell to hit shelves soon after Blair quits", Times Online, 2007-03-09. Retrieved on 2007-03-26.

[edit] Publications

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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