... and Mrs Thatcher’s image maker moves on

Press, 22 October 1980, Page 22

... and Mrs Thatcher’s image maker moves on

By

SIMON HOGGART

in the “Guardian,” London

Mrs Thatcher’s image maker since 1974, Mr Gordon Reece, a man credited with. much of last year’s election success, leaves the Conservative Central Office next month for a new and vastly lucrative job. He leaves as one of the great hate figures of Labour demonology, the man who introduced Saatchi and Saatchi to the Tory Party and who, perhaps more than any other individual, brought American media manipulation into British politics. Mr Reece is a charming and witty man which undoubtedly helped blunt some of the criticism which tends to grumble around the more old fashioned recesses of Central Office. Short and dapper, given to wearing silken ties the size of tablecloths, he is usually smoking a cigar as long and as thick as his arm. He drinks champagne -nd nothing else.

He is by trade a TV producer, and worked with people like Eamonn Andrews, Bruce Forsyth and Dave Allen. He also made several party political broadcasts and in 1974 formed the view that Mrs Thatcher was the person who ought to lead the Conservative Party. He joined her as adviser for the 1975 leadership campaign.

It was Mr Reece who approved her participation in a famous Granada programme which preceded the first ballot. There were shots of her washing up at home, and the Thatcher team were delighted weeks later to see embarrassing pictures of her only real rival, Mr Willie Whitelaw, standing in a pinafore washing dishes in his house. But Mr Reece vetoed her appearance on Panorama before the next ballot Mr Reece had been taken on for six months but

stayed for two years. His next job was to soften the harsh Thatcher image. Her hair was re-styled to look more natural, she was encouraged to wear smart but conservative . clothes with particularly clean lines above the waist, where TV cameras concentrate. She went to voice lessons designed to broaden her range, particularly in the lower registers. He took the harsh edge off her radio voice by making her speak much closer to the microphone, which made her sound more husky and even intimate. One Cabinet Minister was so startled by the change he offended her by asking if she had got a bad cold, but the job had been done and the voice had lost at least some of its strident and grating quality. Reece left briefly then returned in early • 1978 as Director of Publicity for the whole party. He signed up Saatchi and Saatchi to a massive campaign aimed at

the expected autumn 1978 election, a campaign which included the notorious “Labour isn’t working” poster with its artificial dole queue. Now things are so much worse the poster haunts the

Tories, but Mr Reece claims — and enough of his colleagues agree — that the campaign was a crucial factor in winning the 1979 election.

Mr Reece believes that Mr Callaghan was panicked by its success, and by Labour’s private opinion polls into postponing the vote and so almost guaranteeing the large Tory majority. Throughout this period he believed that the real fight would be won before the election and not in the campaign itself. The country, he thought, was in the mood for a Tory Government and Labour were hoping that some enormous gaffe by the Tory leader would hand them the election. Mr Reece saw that for this reason everything had to be as low key as possible. He spent an entire day persuading her not to accept Mr Callaghan’s challenge to a TV debate, a challenge she was eager to take up. Nevertheless, TV was the central element in the cam-

paign. Visits were precisely timed to meet news bulletins.

Every day a new, highly filmable pseudo-event was provided for the voracious cameras - a visit to a chocolate factory in Birmingham, picking up a new-born calf in Ipswich. hi politics success means everything and Mr Reece’s reputation is now worldwide. He helped the Strauss campaign in Germany, though Strauss refused to do any of the intimate TV Mr Reece specialises in, and he has given some advice to the Reagan staff in the United States.

He will be replaced by a man in an entirely different Conservative tradition, Sir Harry Boyne, a distinguished political writer for the' "Daily Telegraph,” a man of virtually no experience in the elctronic media but a powerful sense of Tory history and tradition. It is a strange jump for the Tories to-take and the results may prove intriguing.