USE OF RADIO

Hokitika Guardian, 6 January 1932, Page 8

USE OF RADIO

IN BRITISH ELECTIONS. "There 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 indicattd in the mechanism of elections. It was a pretiy general experience that public meetings figured much less prominently than usual in the struggle,’’ writes Mr A. G. Gardiner, in the "Star” (London). “It 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 ejection and the bewildering cross-currents that afflicted the party machines. "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 electorate. In many constituencies canvassing was hardly attempted, and I remember no occasion winii there was such marked economy ill the distribution of election literature

“Those features, no doubt, au- j"'’ 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 tins election, established itself as the chief instrument of electoral controversy—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 alb] less important, it is because they have largely lost their function. The voter no longer needs to leave his fireside l and go out into the night to have his share in the great controversy. “He can have his evening meal in peace, whet his appetite for the fray with a little preparatory music from the 8.13. C. orchstra, and then, with lii.s feet on the fender, and with his pipe in his mouth, and surrounded by the family circle, he can have the argument presented to him in his own sittingroom, not by 'the stumbling oratory of the local candidate, interrupted by the irrelevance and disorder of a public meet'ng, but by the Hectors and Achilles of tilt? light, speak.ng to him quietly and personally, without interruption and

'■ithout th(> mob emotion'of a crowd to distract the mind and cloud the issue. “This is a momentous change. It is a. change which lias come to stay and which must increasingly influence the temper of controversy. I think it will influence it lor 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 irresponsible assertion of the platiorm. “The Honourable Mr 'SI urn key or -Mr Pott may commit hansel! to ally nonsens" oiti the platform of tin? village schoolroom at Wallopei Well with peifpct security. He will not he reported and is in no danger ol contradiction. ‘lf you are making a statement in print said a famous mob orator to a young candidate for Parliament when they were leaving a meeting together, 'you (Oust be* careful of your facts; but on

the platform, my boy, you must let the millions fly 1 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 wirei’esg 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, not in the heated atmosphere of a meeting but .n ithe cool and judical atmosphere of the parlour.

“In coming thus into direct relation with the individual voter, the political leader not only subordinates the candid te, but incur s a new and heavy responsibility. He may quite conceivably turn ’the scales of an election for or against a given issue by a good speech or a bad; I do not think it can be 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 elect ions 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 ot the spellbinder. It strips him of all the stock-in-trade of his craft —the mob emotion of a great meeting, the sense oi the hero advancing into the arena, the arts of gesture, the gifts of personal appearance and dramatic bearing, the ulapping .and the singing, the feeling of bat tie. He is a voice—nothing but a to announce it or impress you with i s voice “A lonely voice without fanfarrunadr.s importance and celebrity. 11 you 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. It it tails ro do that its failure is absolute. Rhetorh and declamation are equally fatal. Th ) fall still-born from the impersonal mouti> of the loud speaker. ••All the affectations and insincerities of matter and manner, tile portentous drop of the voice, the dramatic pans % the thrilling query, tile awesome whispei all drop stone dead before that little party >in the parlour. Nothing ‘get-. across’ except 'the qualities of clem 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 tin tec vuigar. During the past election * have had an extraordinary experience of what constitutes effective and ineffective speech on the wireless. 1 shall not say who in my judgment passed the ordeal’best, though I am quite clear on that point. But it was the man "ho was at once most direct, unaffected, ai-d obviously sincere. If is no bad omen for politics that the chief instrument of political controversy in the lutuie h s iso acute an ear for the truth or falsity of those who’ employ it.”