Public relations and the Northern Ireland peace process: Dissemination,reconciliation and the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ referendum campaign

Introduction and context

The island of Ireland formed a constituent part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after the Act of Union in 1801. However, the late 19th century and early 20th century saw a concerted campaign for Irish Home Rule. While legislation enabling this was eventually passed in the UK parliament, vigorous and armed opposition from Irish unionists, particularly in Ulster, opposed it. By 1918 moderate home rule nationalism had been eclipsed by militant republican separatism and in the 1919 general election in Ireland Sinn Féin, advocating independence from Britain, won by a landslide. Ulster unionism, however, remained implacably opposed to the implementation of a constitutional break with Great Britain. The British government sought a way out of the problem by dividing the island and in 1921 Ireland was partitioned with the six north-eastern counties from the province of Ulster – subsequently Northern Ireland – remaining part of the UK. The newly created northern state had an in-built unionist majority, approximately two-thirds Protestant/unionist and one-third Catholic/nationalist. Although sovereignty and reserved matters such as defence and foreign policy were retained in Westminster, successive British governments were content to leave responsibility for Northern Ireland in the hands of the Protestant-dominated Stormont administration. Indeed, the devolved legislative assembly at Stormont was to become in the words of its first Prime Minister, James Craig: ‘A Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.’ An echo, no doubt, of his southern counterpart Eamonn de Valera’s declaration that the Irish Free State was a ‘Catholic state for a Catholic people’.

The Protestant/unionist-dominated state endured for two generations but by the 1960s, an alienated Catholic minority suffering electoral malpractice and ethnic bias in housing allocation and employment was inspired to form a civil rights movement by the campaigns of figures such as Martin Luther King in the USA. The newly educated Catholic minority who had benefited from post-war British welfare and educational provisions had now graduated to a position whereby they could challenge the discriminatory nature of the Northern Ireland state apparatus, which in the eyes of this community (and some Protestants who supported civil rights) had never commanded full political legitimacy. Northern Ireland had in effect been a one-party state in respect to political administration for almost 50 years and the ruling Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) generally reacted with coercive force against the growing demonstrations for equality and social justice. A particularly vicious crackdown by state security forces in Derry/Londonderry on 5 October 1968, which was captured by the media and relayed worldwide, caused a backlash against the Protestant-dominated police and led to widespread sectarian violence that slipped quickly into an armed insurrection and insurgency by elements within the republican/nationalist community. The political violence was to last for almost 30 years, a period that came to be known as ‘the Troubles’. The three decades of violence was characterized by the armed campaigns of Irish republican and Ulster loyalist paramilitary groups. This included the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign of 1969–97, intended to end British rule in Northern Ireland and create a new ‘all-Ireland’ Irish Republic; and of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), formed in 1966 in response to the perceived erosion of both the British character and unionist domination of Northern Ireland. The state security forces – the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) – were also involved in the violence.

There were several failed attempts to bring about a peaceful settlement in Northern Ireland, most notably the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, but it was the election of a landslide Labour government under Tony Blair at the UK General Election in May 1997 that ultimately led to a successful Northern Ireland peace agreement. Although successive British governments had attempted to instigate negotiations between Northern Ireland’s political parties during the state’s troubled past, on this occasion, despite the absence of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the negotiations were more inclusive than in previous years with parties that had between them won 85 percent of the vote in the 1997 General Election – including the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the UUP and Sinn Féin – all present. More importantly, the negotiations between the political parties, and the British and Irish governments continued until agreement was reached on 10 April, that is Good Friday, 1998. The Good Friday Agreement was of huge historical significance because it represented the first significant opportunity to construct an inclusive power-sharing government since the partition of Ireland in 1921. The Agreement was a negotiated settlement between nationalists (mainly Catholic) who aspire to the reunification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland and unionists (mainly Protestant) who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. It offered a devolved power-sharing government and held out the hope of a peaceful accommodation between two deeply divided communities. Most important of all it was to signal an end to 30 years of conflict ‘during which more than 3,700 people died (the pro rata equivalent of some 600,000 mortalities in the United States). [and] … over 30,000 people suffered serious injury, with the result that most people in Northern Ireland know someone who was killed or seriously injured in the Troubles’ (Hargie et al., 2010: 7).

One of the Agreement’s stipulations was that its very legitimacy would have to be strengthened by or founded upon a positive endorsement by the people of Northern Ireland. This led to a six-week-long referendum campaign that became the biggest public relations exercise ever to be carried out in Northern Ireland. It should be made clear that while we recognize that a case might be made for a conceptual distinction between public relations and political communication we tend to agree with McNair (1996) who notes in practice there is a considerable overlap. He states ‘The public relations function is a necessary dimension of the modern political process’ (McNair, 1996: 53). In this study we (like our interviewees) characterize much of the referendum campaign activity as political public relations and analyse it as such. As noted above, once the Good Friday Agreement was concluded it still had to be voted on by the Northern Irish electorate and also, because it involved changes to the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland, by the population south of the border as well. For the parties advocating or rejecting the Agreement it was, of course, a political issue but it was also a communication management and a public relations issue. When confronted with situations of difference and conflict much public relations and communication management literature advocates a dialogic process that emphasizes communication exchange, reciprocity and mutual understanding (e.g. Cutlip et al., 2002; Grunig, 2001). Thus a key question for this study was how relevant the dialogic approach was in respect to the communicative activity and to the public relations practice investigated in our study. However, before we go on to examine our data – from elite interviews and party campaign materials – we discuss in the next two sections those theoretical perspectives that have reproduced and challenged the view that it is dialogic communication that produces ethical and effective public relations and offers the best solution to resolving societal and organizational conflict. The remainder of this article is therefore structured as follows: the next section discusses the centrality of the concept of dialogue to scholarly debates about public relations. This is followed by a discussion of the challenges and alternatives to dialogic approaches in communication and public relations literature. Our data gathering methods and our research questions are then outlined followed by a presentation and discussion of our data. The final section presents some analysis and conclusions.

The tyranny of dialogue?

‘In certain quarters dialogue has attained something of a holy status. It is held up as the summit of human encounter, the essence of liberal education, and the medium of participatory democracy’ (Peters, 1999: 33). Arguably this is nowhere more apparent than in much of the theorizing about public relations. Pieczka points out: ‘Dialogue has been at the centre of public relations theory for about thirty years’ (2011: 108), and Kent and Taylor have noted the ‘increasing ubiquity of dialogue as a concept in public relations’ although they also point out that public relations scholars ‘have referred to dialogue as a “dialectic,” a “discourse,” and a “process” with little consistency in its usage’ (2002: 21). They note that diverse conceptions of dialogue appear in scholarly public relations literature: sometimes it appears to refer to ‘relationship building’ (Grunig and White, 1992), sometimes it is equated with a form of rhetorical ‘ethical debate’ (Heath, 2000), for others such as Pearson (1989), it seems to refer to the management of ‘interpersonal dialectic’ (Kent and Taylor, 2002: 22–3). One cannot read much of the scholarly work on the subject written over the past three decades without encountering the approach to theorizing public relations proposed by James Grunig and his collaborators. Several authors have noted the ‘paradigmatic’ significance of Grunig’s symmetrical model (Pieczka, 1996; Sallot et al., 2003; Porter, 2010). Porter suggests that ‘while not technically dominant’ the raw bibliometrics reveal the 1984 conception of the symmetrical model as the most cited source and Grunig as the field’s most published researcher (2010: 128). This has led to a situation, according to Porter, where although ‘some scholars have incorporated the addition of the mixed motive model, most of the current research in public relations continues to use Grunig and Hunt’s previous conceptualization of the symmetrical model of public relations’ (2010: 128).

In public relations literature dialogue is viewed as a ‘good thing’ and therefore all sorts of public relations practice is described as ‘dialogic’ even when to do so arguably twists and stretches the concept beyond coherence. For example, Pieczka (2011) points to Heath’s use of the term ‘rhetorical dialogue’ to describe a process, that of public policy formation, which actually might be more usefully described as not dialogue but ‘deliberation’. In many ways Heath’s approach typifies the reluctance to step outside the ‘dialogic paradigm’ and ultimately Heath makes an interesting but rather unconvincing attempt to reconcile advocacy with the symmetrical tradition when he suggests: ‘The sort of advocacy that would be comfortable with symmetry presumes that participants engage in dialogue in which they can learn by recognizing the merits of others’ statements as well as understanding where and how challenges may refine ideas at play in the public sphere. This paradigm assumes that ideas grow in quality through dialogue as a win–win outcome’ (Heath, 2009: 43). It is not entirely clear why advocacy has to be ‘comfortable with’ symmetry and more importantly it is difficult to envisage actors with fundamental disagreements seeing ‘merit’ in their opponents’ statements (or indeed their entire position). Moreover if they believe the perspective of the ‘other’ to be unethical, irrational, unconvincing or illogical it is hard to see why they should try to pursue a win–win outcome by compromising or ‘meeting them half-way’.

Within public relations literature significant claims are sometimes made for the dialogic model of communication although much of this work seems to demonstrate Pieczka’s point that ‘despite assertive statements about the importance of dialogue to public relations theory and professional practice, the field has a very poor understanding of the concept’ (2011: 109). For instance, Botan suggests ‘dialogue elevates publics to the status of communication equal with the organisation’ (1997: 192). Pieczka punctures this claim for an elevated status for dialogue by rightly pointing out that ‘Dialogic theory (and symmetrical communication) is based on the interaction of individuals, or groups of individuals, and face-to-face communication … it seems problematic to assume that encounters between individuals and organizations can be treated in exactly the same way as encounters between individuals’ (2011: 117). Kent and Taylor make a similar point when they note that ‘it is the presence of an interpersonal relationship (although not necessarily face-to-face) between participants that facilitates dialogue’ (2002: 28). Some scholars have highlighted the dangers of fake dialogue or contrived dialogic engagement (Grunson and Collins, 1997) and Motion (2005: 511) has argued that ‘Participative public relations, in which stakeholders are discursively engaged with pre-determined solutions and conflict suppressed or ignored, may, in fact, simply be a means of masking power relations rather than genuine engagement.’ Even the risks of genuine dialogue have been noted, for example, Leitch and Neilson suggest that ‘genuine dialogue is a problematic concept for systems public relations because it has the potential to produce unpredictable and dangerous outcomes’ (2001: 135). Kent and Taylor also acknowledge that there are key problems with the practicalities of engineering dialogue: ‘Not everyone agrees, however, whether dialogic public relations is even possible or practical. Research from public forums such as town meetings and community workshops shows that the process and product of well-intended, theoretically grounded, and highly structured dialogic communication efforts often fall short of participants’ aspirations’ (2002: 33). Despite pointing to the lack of conceptual clarity and the problems of the practical application of dialogue both Pieczka and Kent and Taylor ultimately argue for the importance of retaining the concept as central to public relations theory and practice. Pieczka, for example, suggests that what might be called the ‘dialogue industry’ is a developing area and it is important for public relations to colonize this territory. In what is in the end a pragmatic argument she states:

The constitution of public relations professional jurisdiction needs to be broad and extensive in terms of communication theories, applications, and practice in order to sustain the profession in times of change. … the fashion for dialogue and engagement in public policy has not attracted much attention in public relations. Yet … these policy initiatives have opened up a big area for communication specialists (2011: 119–20).

While this is undoubtedly true up to a point, some of the downsides of this enthusiasm for dialogue in the kind of public communications to which Pieczka refers must also be acknowledged. Jeffreys (2001) has assessed the problems, revolving around power and patriarchy, which have bedevilled recent initiatives in ‘interfaith dialogue’– initiatives that have been backed with substantial government funding in states such as the UK and Australia. Jeffreys suggests that one key problem, amongst many, is that ‘interfaith activity presents particular difficulties of exclusion for women … The promotion of interfaith dialogue is a problem for sexuality because it is likely to exclude those who are unrecognised by male community leaders, including women and lesbians and gays who may not feel safe to speak’ (2011: 372). In respect to public relations and, we would argue, much political public relations practice, the problem in trying to position dialogue as a central concept is that it bears little relation to the activity as it is actually practised. As McNair notes: ‘As the producer and disseminator of symbols which can contribute to the building of unity and consent … the public relations worker is, of course, a propagandist’ (McNair, 1996: 43). Any public relations perspective or model that attempts to hide or refuse to acknowledge this fact will always remain at best a partial explanation of public relations practice.

In their conceptual surveys Pieczka (2011) and Kent and Taylor (2002) do a good job of shedding light on the key sources, ideas and theorists that have had direct and indirect influences on public relations theorizing in respect to dialogue. They usefully trace the concept of dialogue and the terminology describing the idea through the disciplines of philosophy, theology and psychology in particular. These scholars demonstrate an awareness that ‘dialogue’, despite a degree of terminological overlap, has developed different meanings in, for example, the psychological theories of Carl Rogers (e.g. Rogers, 1976, 1994), the political philosophy of Jurgen Habermas (e.g. Habermas, 1984, 1989) and the educational theories of Paolo Friere (e.g. Friere, 1970). However, this awareness appears less evident in much public relations scholarship, which displays little understanding of the philosophical origins or practical issues/problems with the concept and consequently tends to lack conceptual clarity. At the end of their survey of dialogue in public relations Kent and Taylor suggest that ‘Dialogue is not synonymous with “debate” – which is about the clash of ideas – but rather, dialogue is more akin to a conversation between lovers where each has his or her own desires but seeks the other’s good’ (2002: 27). This is a very significant comment because it returns us to the origins of ‘dialogue’ as a communicative ideal and more explicitly to the viewpoint of the ‘Socrates’ of Plato’s Phaedrus who articulated a theory of dialogue that has had an important influence on Western thought ever since. It also highlights why some commentators have viewed the dialogic conception of communication, with its arguably impossibly high demands, as a double-edged sword. In the next section we focus in more detail on some of the problems of dialogic communications and discuss alternatives, particularly for the kinds of public relations activity that is concomitant with public opinion formation in the political sphere.

Dialogue and symmetry versus dissemination and reconciliation

In a fascinating but largely ignored article, Stoker and Tusinski (2006) discussed the importance of the work of philosopher of communication John Durham Peters for public relations theory. In this discussion we also intend to draw on some of Peters’s (1999) ideas, particularly those surrounding a ‘dissemination’ model of communication, in order to highlight alternatives to the concepts of dialogue and symmetry. For Peters:

[D]ialogue can be tyrannical and dissemination can be just … The strenuous standard of dialogue, especially if it means reciprocal speech acts between live communicators who are present to each other in some way, can stigmatize a great deal of the things we do with words. … Dialogue is a bad model for the variety of shrugs, grunts, and moans that people emit (among other signs and gestures) in face-to-face settings. It is an even worse normative model for the extended, even distended, kinds of talk and discourse necessary in large-scale democracy. (1999: 34)

Although Peters argues for a dissemination model of human communication he does make clear that: ‘The rehabilitation of dissemination is not intended as an apology for the commissars and bureaucrats who issue edicts without deliberation or consultation; it is to go beyond the often uncritical celebration of dialogue to inquire more closely into what kinds of communicative forms are most apt for a democratic polity and ethical life’ (1999: 35). To explore this difference between communication as dialogue and communication as dissemination Peters traces the archetypal originators in western culture of these rival models of communication – Plato’s ‘Socrates’ and the ‘Jesus’ of the synoptic Gospels. He attributes the pre-eminent position of dialogue in the western tradition to the influence of Socrates’s view in Plato’s Phaedrus – of communication as intimate love – which Peters argues has dominated thinking about communication and dialogue ever since (and as we noted above is still actually referred to explicitly in public relations literature, e.g. Kent and Taylor, 2002). However according to Peters ‘The synoptic Gospels evaluate dissemination in a way quite opposite from the Phaedrus’ (1999: 51) and as evidence of this he points to the centrality of the parable as a mode of communication:

The parable of the sower celebrates broadcasting as an equitable mode of communication that leaves the harvest of meaning to the will and capacity of the recipient. … Those who have ears to hear, let them hear! … The synoptic Gospels repeatedly undercut reciprocal and hermetic relations in favour of relations that are asymmetric and public. Though the dream of mutuality has an intense hold on the ways we imagine communication from Plato on, several elements in the Christian tradition offer dissemination as a mode of communicative conduct equal or superior in excellence to dialogue’ (Peters, 1999: 53).

Dissemination is rooted in the idea that the communicator presents their view to the hearer/audience but is under no obligation to attempt to engage in a dialogue with them.

Peters does recognize the pre-eminence of the concept of dialogue in much Western thinking on communication but makes a robust defence of dissemination because he regards ‘true’ dialogue – if such a thing can actually exist in practice – as largely irrelevant and unnecessary for the ethical and socially useful communicative activity required in contemporary liberal democratic societies. Peters would thus disagree with the argument that for an activity such as public relations to be ethical it must be founded upon two-way symmetrical communication (Grunig, 2004). He states:

There is, in sum, no indignity or paradox in one-way communication. The marriage of true minds via dialogue is not the only option; in fact, lofty expectations about communication may blind us to the more subtle splendours of dissemination or suspended dialogue. Dialogue still reigns supreme in the imagination of many as to what good communication might be, but dissemination presents a saner choice… Dissemination is far friendlier to the weirdly diverse practices we signifying animals engage in and to our bumbling attempts to meet others with some fairness and kindness’ (1999: 60).

Peters did not write about public relations per se but he was very much interested in the practice of communication in political, economic and cultural arenas – all areas where today public relations has inserted itself as a key communication activity. As noted above Peters did not argue that dialogue is necessarily bad, or that it can never be ethical, but rather that there is a danger that the pursuit of an impractical ideal distracts us from the practical business of communicating with each other. It should be noted that Peters’s argument therefore is not the same as those critiques of ‘two-way symmetrical’ public relations that suggest this model may in practice be a politically and/or economically self-serving, even sinister, exercise. A good example of this view is Roper’s suggestion that the question that must be asked of those supposedly engaged in two-way symmetrical communications is ‘whether the objective of their relationship management is to maintain an environment that enables organizations (business and government) to meet their own policy objectives or whether it entails a collaborative negotiation of the policy objectives themselves’ (2005: 76). Drawing on Gramsci’s notion of hegemony Roper argues that powerful elites in democratic countries use communication rather than coercion to maintain their position and much corporate communication demonstrates ‘the business strategy of making concessions in order to maintain hegemony’ (2005: 82). She points out that Grunig acknowledged that ‘the symmetrical model actually serves the self-interest of the organization better than an asymmetrical model because organizations get more of what they want when they give up some of what they want’ (Grunig, 2001: 13). Roper notes that Gramsci also pointed out that ‘if hegemony is to be maintained, those concessions cannot fundamentally alter core power relationships’ (2005: 83). For Roper the two-way symmetrical approach to public relations can be viewed ultimately as a process of granting concessions in order to maintain hegemony.

It should be acknowledged that proponents of two-way symmetrical/dialogic public relations have attempted to defend the model robustly, if not, in our view, particularly successfully. Grunig, for example, strongly attacked those who question his placing of two-way symmetrical public relations on the highest ethical plane, above two-way asymmetrical and one-way communication. He states:

Many scholars have reacted negatively to our suggestion that the symmetrical model is normatively superior to the others because they believe that one or more of the other models represent acceptable public relations practice or because they believe that public relations is always asymmetrical. Most of them have been trained in the humanistic tradition of rhetoric, or in the applied social science of marketing communication. These theorists see no problem with a public relations practitioner who represents only the interests of his or her employer or client without concern for the interest of publics. (Grunig et al. 2002: 311)

Grunig here attacks those theorists who express the view that public relations should have no concern with the interests of ‘publics’ and therefore presumably the public good. It should be said that it is difficult to find any theorists writing about public relations who hold such a view. Indeed, arguably, any theorists who were ‘trained in the humanistic tradition of rhetoric’ would presumably – like Aristotle and Cicero – view the overall welfare of society as a key consideration in any communicative activity. These same rhetoricians may indeed point out that Grunig here is guilty of committing at least two fallacies in his argument. First, Grunig clearly commits the straw man fallacy, which, as Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992: 126) note involves imputing a fictitious standpoint to the other party or distorting their standpoint (if there are public relations scholars who advocate that practitioners should have no concern for the public good then Grunig should name them). Second, Grunig also here resorts to an argumentum ad hominum, which is a fallacious argument that attempts to undermine the character, credibility and sincerity of the opponent, a ‘strategic manoeuvre’ deployed by the arguer to disqualify his or her opponents as legitimate interlocutors and thus avoid their concerns (Walton, 2004: 364). Porter rightly points out:

No ethical applied social scientist or rhetorician would suggest ignoring your audience or scientifically manipulating them. While Grunig and other researchers working in the symmetrical perspective certainly had the highest ethical intentions in attempting to establish symmetry as a normative model for public relations, the systems-based symmetrical model lacks any true ethics … the symmetrical model focuses solely on the process of public relations. Grunig relied on systems theory to examine the direction and flow – not the ethics of communication. (2010: 129).

Porter (2010: 127) suggests that ‘to establish a post-symmetrical theory of public relations, researchers need to regain a focus on the effects of public relations which requires a reorientation toward audiences rather than organizations’. Porter notes that for Aristotle rhetoric, ethics and politics were not easily separated and indeed goes on to make a plea for an Aristotelian rhetorical approach. He argues: ‘While some public relations scholars have chosen to de-emphasize persuasion, persuasive rhetoric through public relations serves an important purpose in society today. … Public relations scholarship would do well to follow his [Aristotle’s] lead and examine rhetoric as a strategic direction and as an ethical rationale for the practice’ (2010: 133).

Porter and Roper both point to the ethical problems caused by focusing exclusively on the means of communication and paying too little attention to the ends. Peters, while not adopting an explicit neo-Marxist or Aristotelian position, would concur with their concerns and indeed he proposes dissemination as an alternative to the dialogic approach. According to Stoker and Tusinski Peters’s work exposes the moral cracks and logical contradictions of dialogue but more positively it has ‘the potential of liberating public relations from an unhealthy infatuation with dialogue and its antecedents, such as symmetrical and reciprocal communication’ (2006: 158). They also echo Peters’s concerns about reciprocity becoming an obligation rather than a willing gift:

[P]ublic relations infatuation with dialogue may create unrealistic expectations for organizational and individual communication. Indeed, adherence to dialogic approaches, such as the two-way symmetrical model, though well intended, may actually cause public relations to slip into simple quid pro quo relationships. Dissemination can be just and dialogue unjust. More important than the mode of communication is the morality of communicators and their willingness to recognise and reconcile differences … the goals of symmetrical communication or dialogic communication are commendable but unreasonable. The common ground sought by competing parties is not as important as the common principle of truth, freedom, liberty, and human rights that both espouse. (Stoker and Tusinski, 2006: 174)

Although it may seem heretical to much contemporary public relations scholarship they maintain that it is dissemination, not dialogue, that ‘can enhance freedom, responsibility, diversity, and reconciliation’ (Stoker and Tusinski, 2006: 158). Moreover, they suggest a dissemination approach to public relations that embraces reconciliation to the reality of diversity is an ethical and practical alternative to a dialogic model. They note that ‘reconciliation recognises and values individuality and differences, and integrity is no longer sacrificed at the altar of agreement’ (Stoker and Tusinski, 2006: 156). They argue that if one accepts this perspective then:

[T]he goal of public relations changes from finding agreement to discovering differences. As differences become transparent … they can be reconciled in a way that places a high value on our common humanity. Using this framework, we engage people or publics in communication … because as human beings, we value our relationships with other human beings. The outcome of this type of relationship is a different kind of change, one not of adaptation or adjustment in response to outside pressures, but constitutional change in who we are and how we perceive ourselves – which then leads to changes in the way we interact and communicate … This new approach emphasises reconciliation through dissemination and engagement. (Stoker and Tusinski, 2006: 171)

Using Peters’s insight, Stoker and Tusinski (2006) propose an approach to public relations that asserts the positive features of dissemination and that liberates public relations from the virtually impossible demands of dialogue. From this perspective the goal of public relations is not necessarily to reach consensus but rather to engage with the ‘other’ while acknowledging diversity.

Method

This research study adopted an interpretative approach that, as Daymon and Holloway (2011) suggest, involves prioritizing ‘understanding’ and ‘meaning’ over ‘scientific’ explanation based on statistical measurement. Interpretivism is concerned with human behaviour and social action that cannot be fully represented by a positivist, quantitative approach to gathering data (Haralambos and Holborn, 2000). As Daymon and Holloway (2011) note, this kind of research utilizes qualitative research methods and does not claim that the findings are complete but rather are ‘provisional’. They also point out that the interpretative researcher starts from the perspective that it is virtually impossible to gain an understanding of any social phenomenon if it is taken out of its context. The researcher must always be aware of the external factors the data emerges from – in the case of our study much of the ‘meaning’ interpreted requires contextual knowledge of Northern Ireland/Ireland’s political history and its current landscape in respect to political parties and governmental/constitutional structures.

The primary data gathering method used in this study was the elite interview, conducted with high-profile politicians, campaign directors, press officers and political strategists from the main political parties in Northern Ireland. The interviews were conducted between 3 June 1999 and 20 March 2003 and on average lasted 45 minutes; they were semi-structured in format and the interviewees answered all the questions that were put to them. In these elite interviews participants reflected on the public relations strategies and tactics deployed, and articulated their understanding of political communication and political public relations. The interviewees cited in this study are: John Hume MP MEP ¹ (SDLP leader), Mark Durkan (SDLP Referendum Campaign Director), Conall McDevitt (SDLP Director of Communications), Mitchel McLaughlin (Sinn Féin Chairman), Alex Benjamin (UUP Press Officer) and St Clair McAllister (DUP Director of Communications). Participants are listed with their professional roles and political titles held at the time of the Good Friday Agreement. The interview method, and in particular the elite/expert interview has both strengths and limitations as a research technique. Bogner et al., note that ‘Conducting expert interviews can serve to shorten time-consuming data gathering processes, particularly if the experts are seen as ‘crystallization points’ for practical insider knowledge and are interviewed as surrogates for a wider circle of players … expert interviews offer researchers an effective means of quickly obtaining results and, indeed, of quickly obtaining good results’ (2009: 2). There are, however, several issues to bear in mind when conducting elite interviews in a conflict/post-conflict society. McEvoy, writing specifically about employing the interview method in Northern Ireland, warns ‘the nature of antagonistic politics in a divided society can mean that seemingly straightforward questions can provoke adversarial, sectarian responses’ (2006: 185). The participants were also skilled communicators and thus it is important to be aware, as L’Etang points out, that there is always a risk in conducting interviews with participants who are ‘masters and mistresses of impression management’ (2008: 323).

In order to triangulate the interview data a qualitative content analysis of campaign materials deployed by the parties was also conducted. Qualitative content analysis analyses the communication message of a document by focusing on intended or received messages (Pole and Lampard, 2002). Harwood and Garry (2003) suggest that qualitative content analysis can be used to identify and expose a range of issues such as the stylistic features of communications, the characteristics of communications, differences in communications, the focus of attention of the communications and cultural patterns in communications. Daymon and Holloway (2011) argue that numerical data emerging from the findings can also be used to support the qualitative analysis and, as will be seen below, where it seemed relevant we identified frequencies of particular words and phrases within the different party materials surrounding the referendum campaign on the Good Friday Agreement. However, there is no attempt to offer a quantitative content analysis in our study. The data set is too small to be meaningful in statistical terms and, more importantly, as Daymon and Holloway (2011) note, quantitative content analysis arguably isolates the data from its natural context. This would have been detrimental to our study, which has the aim of deconstructing the communicative messages within the political landscape of Northern Ireland during the campaign. Based on our literature review and our specific interests the following research questions were formulated:

In the following two sections below we present and discuss our findings. First, we analyse the communication strategies and tactics of the pro-Agreement parties and following that we examine the approach of the anti-Agreement parties. While other groups (e.g. civil society/activist) were involved the majority of public campaigning was carried out by the mainstream political parties and it is these organizations that we focus on in our discussion below.

Public relations strategies and tactics of the pro-Agreement parties

John Hume, Nobel peace prize winner and leader of the SDLP (1979–2001), summed up his party’s analysis of the conflict, and strategy for developing a peace process, as follows:

[O]ur proposal was … that there shouldn’t be any victory for either side, therefore that our institutions would respect our differences in power-sharing …When you have a deeply divided society, divided for centuries by prejudice and distrust, in order to erode that distrust and prejudice, the best way of doing it is to work together in your common interests. … A new society, a new North and a new Ireland will evolve in a generation or two based on agreement and respect for differences.

The approach articulated here by Hume emphasizes the acknowledgment of difference and involves reconciling oneself to the idea that productive communication can be based on assenting to general principles while valuing diversity and pluralism. It is about recognizing and acknowledging that certain fundamental disagreements, particularly in the political realm, may not be possible to resolve through dialogue or persuasion but that the two sides in such a situation can agree to disagree but also work together to improve the lives of those they represent. For Hume and the SDLP the essence of the Good Friday Agreement was that it provided a framework for possible reconciliation between two traditions and one in which the two communities could move forward together. However, the language of reconciliation during the referendum campaign battled at times to be heard above the claims of victories and defeats, as Conall McDevitt (at the time SDLP Director of Communications and later Managing Director of Weber Shandwick Northern Ireland) recalls:

Most of the parties spent most of their time trying to articulate the Agreement as a defeat or a victory for one side or the other. … Our strategy was to concentrate on the Agreement, not on the tired rhetoric of victories and defeats. The Agreement was a victory for no one, it was a defeat for no one, that’s the whole point … and from day one we were very anxious to find messages and images that would uphold that strategy.

Their attempts to appeal to all sections of the community were also apparent in the SDLP’s referendum literature. They used the symbol of a golden key on their ‘Yes’ campaign leaflet, which contained a message from Hume, stating that the Good Friday Agreement represented: ‘Your opportunity to leave the past behind and unlock the door to a better future. There is much in this Agreement for everyone.’ An analysis of their campaign materials reveals some important recurrent messages and themes. The terms ‘equality’, ‘shared’ and ‘reconciliation’ occur frequently on posters and leaflets as do references to ‘the people’ (as opposed to the politicians) being central in decision making. The main campaign leaflet uses one of its pages to state in large letters: ‘On Good Friday agreement was reached by the political parties and both governments. People could feel that history was in the making. Now it is up to the people to make history, make it the People’s Agreement by voting Yes in the referendum on May 22nd.’ The repeated use of the term ‘equal rights’ is clearly designed to reassure Catholic nationalist voters that the new Northern Ireland will not be like the old Protestant ascendency where Catholics were second-class citizens. At the same time the use of terms such as ‘Reconciliation’ and ‘New politics of partnership’ in bullet points in leaflets was designed to reassure voters from across the political spectrum that if they voted for the new political deal no single group would dominate the other. The term ‘equality’ was repeated across the campaign materials of both nationalist parties as we shall see below when we analyse Sinn Feín’s approach. Indeed, the issue was a touchstone for nationalists and republicans of all shades of opinion, who wished to make clear there would be no going back to the days when their community did not have equal rights or equal treatment and when the laws were passed at Stormont to reinforce this inequality. The use of photographic images in the SDLP’s campaign leaflets, letters and posters is also noteworthy. Key recurrent images include photographs of John Hume talking and laughing with US President Bill Clinton and photographs of Hume with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern. These images emphasized Hume’s stature as an international statesman and also reinforced the message that the US government were strong advocates of the peace settlement in Northern Ireland. Other photographs showed happy families and smiling children symbolizing the promise of a better and more ‘normal’ future for all. Finally there were many images of Hume with his fellow SDLP MPs, Seamus Mallon and Eddie McGrady, and other senior party members, which emphasized that the whole party were united in the campaign. The SDLP’s overall communication strategy was to focus on emphasizing the societal benefits of the Agreement that they were happy to confess offered different things to different groups in Northern Ireland. In order to reconcile differences, the Agreement’s benefits had to be made clear to all sides, and it needed to be transparently clear what each side was giving up and what each side was gaining. Interestingly Mark Durkan (SDLP Referendum Campaign Director) explicitly used the concept of dissemination to explain his party’s communication strategy for a Yes vote when, in an echo of Peters’s (1999) idea, he argued that the SDLP’s communication approach could be compared with the Jesus and disciples of the synoptic Gospels disseminating the ‘good news’. He states: ‘it was important to go out and spread the word in a sense about the Agreement, because an awful lot of the media stuff had all been about the release of the prisoners, policing and the North–South Ministerial Council. We were out to try and make sure people got a fuller sense of all that was in the Agreement.’ Overall, the SDLP developed a non-triumphalist Yes campaign and arguably they were the only political party whose public relations activities and key messages were designed to appeal to ‘all’ the people of Northern Ireland irrespective of which tradition they belonged to. A key tactic in the SDLP’s public relations campaign included the use of third-party endorsement, whereby they brought high-profile figures to Northern Ireland from business, the arts, and British and Irish politics to endorse a Yes vote. Indeed, as we shall see below, the most important third-party endorsement of their campaign was a peace concert organized in the closing days of the campaign in conjunction with Irish global superstars Bono and U2.

For David Trimble MP (UUP leader) and his campaign team there were some important decisions to be made at the beginning of the referendum campaign in respect to their communications strategy. For the UUP leader the first issue to be dealt with was the defection of some of his party members, including several key political strategists, to the No camp. Faced with a divided party and therefore a potentially disastrous start to the campaign Trimble decided to hire an external media campaign director for the month-long campaign. His choice was Ray Haydn who at the time was running a successful public relations and media-training agency in Belfast. One of the first things Haydn changed about the Ulster Unionists’ campaign was the leader himself. He was concerned about the visual aspects of Trimble’s public image and was worried that, for example, Trimble’s hair appeared greasy and unkempt on television. Haydn recalled: ‘No one else would touch the subject in Glengall Street [UUP Headquarters], so I said it. I told him, “David, you’ve a problem with your hair. You are going to have to wash it every day.” He actually took my advice and for the first three days of the campaign he washed his hair every morning’ (cited in McDonald, 2000: 222). In fact a full image makeover was prescribed and, although Trimble was at first indignant, Haydn eventually persuaded him to also invest in a ‘new wardrobe’. Cosmetic changes aside, there were more fundamental difficulties for Trimble at this juncture. As noted above, at the beginning of the campaign a large element in his party appeared not to be fully behind him. Haydn made up for this lack of full active support with a well-planned public relations strategy. He developed a communications strategy based on prioritizing media relations and a hierarchy was established with local Northern Irish newspapers and broadcasters at its apex, then the Southern Irish newspapers and broadcasters, then the UK national papers, and at its base the foreign media. McDonald noted that Haydn helped to make it the most professional UUP media relations campaign in its history and never before had the party been given such national and international media attention (2000: 223). Another key area where Haydn’s professional influence was felt was during the live televised debates that had been arranged for the party leaders to put forward their arguments on the Good Friday Agreement. For his first live television debate with DUP leader Ian Paisley Haydn armed Trimble with a secret weapon to produce during the course of the debate – a series of photographs of Paisley and DUP colleagues wearing the red berets of the shadowy paramilitary styled Ulster Resistance organization in 1986. When Paisley accused Trimble of supping with the IRA/Sinn Féin paramilitary devil by signing the Agreement, Trimble produced the pictures. ‘What about these, Ian?’ he repeatedly shouted at the DUP leader (McDonald, 2000: 239). Paisley had been expected to dominate the debate easily but Trimble kept his notorious temper under control and won the debate by listening to Haydn’s advice and effectively using the photographs to shield against Paisley’s line of attack.

The UUP’s campaign tended to be sober and factual with little attempt made to sway voters by emotional appeals. UUP press officer during the referendum campaign, Alex Benjamin, noted:

The key message was one of reassurance and backing up our point with ‘what we’re doing is the right thing’. We sold it on a number of issues, namely the fact that our reading of the Agreement was that it secured Northern Ireland within the Union, gave power back to the people of Northern Ireland and enabled everyone to get involved and participate in politics and have a say in how Northern Ireland was run.

The campaign materials reflect Benjamin’s point with a recurrent theme being the new constitutional arrangements, whereby the Republic of Ireland would amend Articles 2 and 3 of its Constitution to remove the territorial claim to the six counties of Northern Ireland. The repeated references to constitutional issues, territorial claims and legal issues perhaps reveals the preoccupations of the UUP leader Trimble, a former Law professor. However, there is also little doubt that focusing on the internationally recognized peace agreement was important to the key argument of the UUP, which was that the Good Friday Agreement secured the place of Northern Ireland within the UK as long as a majority of the population wished this to be the case. A campaign letter distributed to voters reinforced this point on several occasions with phrases such as ‘Ulster’s place within the Union’, ‘Northern Ireland’s place within the Union’ ‘the retention of the Act of Union’ and ‘Northern Ireland’s future has been secured’ all highlighting the constitutional law issue. Of course, other messages were deployed and indeed the main campaign leaflet repeatedly called on the public to vote Yes to a ‘stable’ (political and economic) future. This leaflet ended with a direct address from Trimble who stated that through this Agreement ‘We can lay a foundation on which to build a fair and stable future for all the people of Ulster. Our young people must be given the opportunity to grow up in a peaceful and stable society so that they do not endure the hardships and suffering of the last 30 years. We must have confidence in ourselves, and that is why I urge you to vote “Yes” on May 22nd.’ The photographs used in the UUP’s campaign materials contrast in interesting ways with the images used by the other pro-Agreement parties – for one thing there are very few of them with most of their campaign leaflets and letters consisting only of text. However, aside from the ubiquitous pictures of the party leader there is one telling image on the main campaign poster, which consists of a photograph of Trimble with a senior party colleague, John Taylor MP MEP. This image is interesting because Trimble could not include a group picture of all of the UUP’s MPs for the simple reason that several of them refused to support the Yes campaign. However, the inclusion of Taylor, a key unionist politician who had survived being shot five times in the head in an IRA assassination bid was highly significant. The message was clear, if Taylor was prepared to embrace an inclusive Agreement that included those republicans who had attempted to murder him in the past, so should all unionists.

The photographic images in the campaign materials of Sinn Feín were similar in many ways to those deployed by the SDLP. There was frequent use of photographs of the party leader Gerry Adams MP shaking hands with US President Bill Clinton and meeting the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to reinforce Sinn Feín’s international legitimacy and Adams’s role as a statesman. There were also images of Adams with Martin McGuinness and senior party colleagues to emphasize the unity of the party in respect to the Agreement and there were pictures of Adams meeting happy smiling children, the next generation, on the streets of Belfast. The term ‘Change’ was utilized frequently as the tagline on posters (‘Make Change Make Peace’) and campaign leaflets (one of which was entitled ‘For Real Change’), all of which emphasized that the Agreement represented the best hope for a break with the troubled past, and this message was reinforced in the text of campaign leaflets with the phrase ‘a new beginning’ being repeated on many occasions. The claim that the Agreement guaranteed ‘equality’, which had recurred in the SDLP’s campaign materials, also appeared frequently in the Sinn Feín campaign leaflets. One leaflet was entitled ‘A Future As Equals’ and contained phrases such as ‘a new future based on equality and justice’, ‘an end to inequality and discrimination’ to emphasize this message.

It should be noted that within the Yes camp there were tensions between the Sinn Féin and UUP over some of the publicity tactics of the former. One cause of serious friction was the triumphant welcome-home party arranged for the Balcombe Street Four gang (imprisoned in England for terrorist offences) who appeared in the middle of the referendum campaign at Sinn Féin’s specially convened Ard Fheis (party conference) on 10 May. The rapturous reception of the IRA prisoners, released and flown over from England in time for the conference, went down badly amongst the pro-Agreement unionist community. De Breadun (2001) noted the unhappiness this caused amongst unionist Yes campaigners, with one prominent pro-Agreement unionist commenting ‘It was like Christmas for the No lobby’ (cited in De Breadun, 2001: 158). The Balcombe Street gang had received early release after negotiations between Sinn Féin and the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, and it was meant to demonstrate a sign of things to come as prisoner releases had been guaranteed under the Good Friday Agreement. The media publicity surrounding the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis and particularly the reception received by the Balcombe Street Four, was dubbed a ‘PR disaster’ by other parties advocating a Yes vote. However, Sinn Féin’s Chairman, Mitchel McLaughlin was more circumspect:

If it was a PR disaster, you have to ask yourself who it was a PR disaster for? And would it have been a bigger PR disaster if the Sinn Féin organization had rejected the Good Friday Agreement? We delivered big time, we went through the pain and we took the brick bats and we took the criticisms, internally and externally. We brought most of our party who voted it through with 93 percent support, but we also lost people. There was 7 percent of our organization that didn’t agree with us and thought that the Good Friday Agreement was not a good deal.

The fact that there seemed to be divisions within the different parties in the Yes camp as the referendum campaign reached its final stages manifested itself in misgivings in unionist public opinion. An Irish Times opinion poll one week before the vote suggested 55 per cent of unionists were against the Agreement (Breadun, 1998).

It was at this crucial point in the campaign that the SDLP’s strategy of focusing on promotional activity that emphasized inclusivity and reconciliation became highly significant. World famous Irish musician and activist Bono had been in contact with various members of the SDLP throughout the campaign but going into the final stages he became more publicly involved. The SDLP-organized peace concert was the first campaign initiative the UUP felt they could fully join in as partners alongside the nationalist party. Up until this point the UUP had been reluctant to get involved in any joint campaigning or publicity events with the other pro-Agreement parties. When Trimble was told about the proposed concert his first reaction was: ‘Who’s Bono?’ Ray Haydn recalled ‘About sixty million people around the world knew who Bono was – except David Trimble. I suppose if it had been Pavarotti or Domingo he would have known. But I jumped at the idea … I was trying to drag the party into the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first, and this was the perfect opportunity to do that’ (cited in McDonald, 2000: 233). Ultimately, the most important aspect of the event was not the concert itself but rather the highly visible symbolic bringing together of the two figureheads of unionism and nationalism in a joint public event. The SDLP’s Conall McDevitt highlighted how pivotal the U2-led peace concert in Belfast was at this particular juncture in the referendum campaign, particularly as some images of division were starting to appear in media coverage, such as the Balcome Street gang’s Dublin appearance and a rally in Belfast featuring loyalist terrorist Michael Stone. He recollects:

We felt it was a very necessary thing at that time because the whole campaign had become dominated by two very negative, very old images – one of the Balcombe Street gang at the RDS [Royal Dublin Society] in Dublin and the other one, Michael Stone here in Belfast … So when the opportunity arose to create another image, an image which was forward-looking, which was youthful, which was dynamic, not regressive, old-fashioned and staid, we jumped at it … and the rest is history. But that was a very important part of fulfilling our strategy. It was a tactical decision taken at the last minute, it wasn’t written down in any plan but it was one that was fully consistent with the overall strategic objective of the campaign.

At the end of the concert Bono invited John Hume and David Trimble, the leaders of the biggest unionist and nationalist parties, onstage and the two leaders publicly shook hands for the first time. The coming together of Trimble and Hume on Tuesday 19 May at the peace concert symbolized the possibility of a new beginning between unionism and nationalism and it provided a positive image of reconciliation with the vote on the Agreement only three days away. McDevitt suggests that: ‘The people wanted Hume and Trimble to stand shoulder to shoulder and say “we want you to vote yes”. Until they got that image they were doubtful, and it was only after that image that things really began to consolidate themselves. In the final week you got a 15 percent swing-back within unionism, which was very critical.’ The Hume/Trimble handshake became a key image of the referendum campaign and its importance cannot be overstated, as it was the only major public demonstration of unity between constitutional Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism during the referendum campaign. In the final phase of the campaign it provided the Yes camp, which at times had seemed divided and disunited, with an important symbol of unity and reconciliation.

Public relations strategy and tactics of the anti-Agreement groups

The anti-Agreement alliance developed a number of key messages and slogans, two of which were pivotal during the referendum campaign. St Clair McAllister, Director of Communications for the DUP, provides an illuminating insight into the thinking behind the creation of their first core message or key slogan of their campaign ‘It’s Right to Say No’:

The slogan came up as a combined effort. I remember we were sitting talking about this and we were saying that we had to tell people that there was nothing wrong with saying No. One thing I put forward was most of us sitting around that table were parents … You actually have more often to tell your child No for its own good, more often than you say Yes. No to drugs, No to drink, and people think No is a very non-constructive word. I put forward the case that it was probably a more constructive word than saying Yes.

McAllister also explained how the second and subsidiary message or theme was arrived at:

‘When you cut away all the economics etc. what is it that really drives people on? What is it that holds people together? …Well it’s their heart … by sitting down and analysing the situation it was very obvious that the heart symbol has been used for a long, long time for various things. It’s a symbol of love, a symbol of broken hearts etc. It was also a very acceptable type of symbolism and the obvious thing then was to have a heart-shaped Union Jack with the attendant message ‘Have a heart for Ulster’.

During the referendum campaign, heart-shaped lapel pins were sold to raise finance for the No campaign. The No camp’s key messages were widely regarded by political friends and foes alike as being the best slogans of the referendum campaign. The SDLP’s Director of Communications Conall McDevitt recalls: ‘The “Have a heart for Ulster” was the most effective campaign image I have seen in a very long time. It was a very tasteful image in terms of you found it very difficult to be offended even though you didn’t agree with it, and it was a very upfront and honest image as well … whoever thought that up did a very good job and their campaign consolidated very well around it.’ However, although the No camp utilized the appealing message ‘Have a heart for Ulster’, this message was combined, throughout the campaign, with a strategy of raising unionist fears by employing emotive and sometimes apocalyptic language throughout their campaign. St Clair McAllister saw no problems in using such tactics: ‘I think it’s important to use emotive language. It’s there, it’s part of our being and I have no problem using it. If you’re talking about telling lies and using emotive language then that’s a different subject … I don’t believe in telling lies, but I have no problem in having the right position and using emotive language.’

The campaign materials of the two anti-Agreement parties, the DUP and United Kingdom Unionist Party (UKUP), were very similar in appearance and in content and demonstrate a degree of co-ordination between the parties in respect to the messages they presented to the general public. Both parties used the phrase ‘It’s Right To Say “No” When There’s a Better Way to Go’ on all of their campaign materials. The DUP sometimes employed variations on the phrase, for instance ‘It’s Right To Say “No” To Dublin Rule’ appeared on some leaflets. There was the repeated recurrence of the phrase ‘united Ireland’ in all of the DUP campaign leaflets usually appearing in bigger, bolder lettering than the surrounding text. Typical phrases included ‘The Agreement is a staging post to a united Ireland’ or ‘The Agreement will lead to a United Ireland’. Another key theme in campaign materials was that a ‘Yes’ vote was a victory for the IRA. One leaflet stated that a ‘Yes’ vote was an ‘abject surrender to IRA/Sinn Feín’ whereas a ‘No’ vote will demonstrate that ‘Ulster people’ will not be ‘bombed into Dublin Rule by terrorist gangsters’. Much of the phrasing of the messages was apocalyptic and designed to sway the emotions through fear. For example, DUP leader Ian Paisley MP concluded his ‘Dear Friend and Voter’ message on the party’s main campaign leaflet with the following appeal: ‘Stand up for Ulster! Stand up for your children and your heritage! Stand up for your children and your children’s children! Let the world know that the Ulster people will not be bullied, bribed or butchered into accepting fascist rule. It is suicidal to do otherwise.’ The DUP’s campaign materials used very few photographs aside from those of the party leader although there was one leaflet that included a picture of Paisley in the British Parliament. This photograph was appropriate in that the leaflet explicitly focused on constitutional issues and highlighted three key claims (stated in capital letters) about the political implications of a Yes vote, namely that a ‘Yes’ vote would be a vote for ‘An Embryonic United Ireland Government’, that it would lead to ‘IRA/Sinn Feín in Power’ and that ‘Nationalists Would Be Handed a Veto’.

If anything the UKUP used even more emotive and apocalyptic language than the DUP. They entitled their main campaign leaflet ‘It’s Right to Say No’ and like the DUP their campaign materials frequently used the phrase ‘It’s right to say “No” when there is a better way to go’. The Agreement was repeatedly presented as a victory for terrorists and there was an interesting use of rhetorical devices such as alliteration (in their main campaign leaflet), which reflected UKUP leader Robert McCartney’s speaking style: ‘The Agreement is a surrender to terrorist violence. Those who have survived bomb and bullet must not yield to bribery and brainwashing.’ There was also a frequent focus on the threat to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland despite the fact that the Irish constitution was being changed to drop its historical territorial claim. One leaflet asserted: ‘The Agreement erodes British Sovereignty, places terrorists in government, demoralizes the security forces and provides a platform for Irish Unity’. One particularly innovative campaign leaflet mimicked (in style, tone, language and layout) revolutionary declarations such as the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and indeed the 1916 Declaration of the Irish Republic. The ‘Declaration and Pledge of the United Unionists’ began with the opening lines ‘We, the United Pro-Union people of Northern Ireland declare our resolute and determined opposition to the Belfast Agreement’. The photographic images of UKUP leader Robert McCartney MP were conventional headshots and they tended to dominate the party’s campaign literature, which was unsurprising given that the UKUP were effectively a vehicle for McCartney’s political ideas and he was the only member that had any public recognition.

Both anti-Agreement parties largely used what can only be at times described as fairly crude propaganda techniques designed primarily to persuade public opinion through a mixture of fear and patriotism to vote against the Agreement. Almost every message accentuated unionist fears of being taken over by the Southern Irish Catholic state, with the clear implication that this would destroy their British Protestant identity. The elements of the Good Friday Agreement that proposed new all-Ireland structures were emphasized repeatedly. The fact that the Agreement guaranteed Northern Ireland’s constitutional future in the UK with the Republic of Ireland dropping its historic constitutional claim was downplayed, as was the fact that the Irish state was actually signing up to a new body, the ‘Council of the Isles’, which was designed to develop cooperation between Great Britain and Ireland. There were also frequent appeals to the Protestant public to remain loyal to their Protestant Ulster heritage and culture, which, it was claimed, was British in character. Not holding steadfast to this historic identity was portrayed as a ‘surrender’ or ‘handing victory’ to Sinn Feín/ IRA. Throughout the referendum campaign, the No camp was bolstered by a number of what might be termed propaganda coups in the form of ‘own goals’ by the Yes camp, most notably surrounding the release from prison of convicted terrorists the Balcombe Street Four and Michael Stone. High-profile UUP members, such as Jeffrey Donaldson MP and former party leader Lord Molyneaux, also gave impetus to the anti-Agreement campaign after they confirmed they would be abandoning their party and voting No in the forthcoming referendum. However, in the final days of campaigning, just as the pro-Agreement Yes campaign gained a boost from the peace concert, which swung support away from the No camp, the anti-Agreement campaign also suffered a public relations disaster when the media captured UKUP leader Robert McCartney MP publicly haranguing British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a crowd of women onlookers in the street. This event was widely broadcast and presented an image of the anti-Agreement parties as irrational and out of control. When the voting figures in the referendum were counted on 23 May the Yes vote was 71.12 percent, thereby confirming legitimacy clearly and unequivocally upon the Good Friday Agreement.

Conclusions

It is clear from our findings that public relations played an important role in the campaigns for (and against) the Good Friday Agreement. However a dialogic model of communication, as a strategy for bridging division and reaching a common view, was notable by its absence. The SDLP’s communications focused on disseminating the message that the Good Friday Agreement had benefits for all. They did not try to claim it was a victory for their party or that it was the solution to all of the problems of division and conflict in Northern Ireland. Nor did they engage in what could be identified as ‘dialogue’ at any point in the campaign, either with their opponents or the general public, although they did, of course, communicate with their partners in the Yes campaign on key issues. The UUP bought in professional public relations expertise in the form of Ray Haydn, a public relations and media training consultant. He introduced effective, if traditional, communication and media relations strategies – albeit for the UUP they were in many ways radical. As McNair (2011) notes, the employment of an ‘image consultant’ is increasingly the norm in modern politics and Haydn ensured that the party leader David Trimble was given a ‘makeover’ to improve his on-camera appearance. He also reorganized the party’s media relations with clear priorities and primed Trimble for his television battles with the leader of the No campaign, Ian Paisley. The UUP’s strategy for most of the campaign was to pursue an advocacy campaign to combat the DUP/UKUP’s argument that the Good Friday Agreement was a defeat for unionists by arguing that it was, in fact, a victory that ensured Northern Ireland’s future as part of the UK. Sinn Feín’s primary focus was to communicate to its own membership, with its main efforts directed toward internal communications or securing media coverage which would reassure its supporters. These findings concur with other research that has examined the media strategies of Sinn Feín (Spencer, 2006; Somerville and Purcell, 2011). Much to the chagrin at times of the other pro-Agreement parties Sinn Féin organized publicity events designed to confirm – to their membership – that the Good Friday Agreement had concrete benefits to offer them, such as the prisoner releases. Thus, whereas the SDLP embraced the reconciliatory principles of the Agreement and designed their campaign to avoid excluding either community, the UUP and Sinn Féin focused on ‘selling’ the Agreement within their own constituencies. The fractured nature of the Yes campaign was set against a singularly strong and emotionally appealing ‘No’ campaign. However, in the end it was reconciliatory public relations activity – most importantly the peace concert with its display of unity within diversity – that contributed to an all-important swing of 15 percent in support for the Agreement within unionist voters in the final week of campaigning. This swing in unionist public opinion was vitally important because the only real hope for the DUP/UKUP was to convince enough unionists to vote against the Good Friday Agreement to be able to claim that the Protestant community had rejected it and it was unworkable on that basis. This would, of course, have been a rejection of the democratic will of the overall majority in Northern Ireland but nevertheless it would have still represented a key victory for the anti-Agreement camp. However, even this was taken away from the No camp with two referendum exit polls variously estimating that 55 per cent and 51 per cent of unionist electors had voted in favour of the Agreement. ² Although they initially refused to engage in the power-sharing consociational government stipulated by the Good Friday Agreement, eventually the DUP were forced to acknowledge the will of the people and the need to reconcile differences. Indeed, they are now the largest party in the current coalition government of Northern Ireland.

A key question for our study was whether or not ‘dialogue’ had a role to play in the communicative activities surrounding the referendum campaign. As noted above, we find little evidence that it did, but this is not to suggest that dialogue didn’t play a role within the Northern Ireland peace process. Arguably it was important at several stages, most obviously during the Hume/Adams talks of the late 1980s, which helped bring Sinn Feín into the political mainstream. Dialogue was also engaged in when the Good Friday Agreement was negotiated between the SDLP, UUP, Sinn Feín and the British and Irish governments in 1997/98 (albeit at times there was a ‘strained dialogue’ during the bilateral and multilateral talks). The important point though is that this was face-to-face dialogue between elected representatives which involved discussion, persuasion and argument as well as negotiation, relationship building and compromise. However, when public consent was required to legitimize the Agreement those for and against it presented their case to the general public and our study demonstrates that they favoured the more appropriate (and equally ethical) one-way communication models of dissemination, persuasion and argumentation. In the end it was clear that the people of Northern Ireland were more impressed by a message of hope and unity in diversity rather than one of fear and division.

This study has presented empirical research on an important historical moment in Northern Ireland’s history and indeed the history of both Britain and Ireland. Our analysis of political public relations, and its role in influencing public opinion, invites wider reflection upon public relations/communication models. In our study of a key aspect of the Northern Irish peace process there is evidence of a heavy investment in public relations but little evidence of any attempt to embrace the dialogic model of public relations that is held up in much contemporary theorizing on public relations practice as the most ethical and most effective model. Moreover, we would argue, in the context of winning support for the Good Friday Agreement, that the SDLP’s strategy of open dissemination and reconciliation was the most effective and ethical public relations/communication approach. Arguably, it was the adoption of this approach that allowed the Agreement a chance to live, and with this life, create from strong foundations the subsequent conditions whereby the people of Northern Ireland could conceive of a realistic vision of peace. This is a significant finding and leads us to consider the usefulness of the concept of dialogue in public relations practice, particularly political public relations where influencing public opinion is a key aim. Actors who have fundamental ideological disagreements will often find it unrealistic to engage in dialogue. Indeed, a fake dialogue arguably produces a fake consensus and ultimately fake agreement (Roper, 2005). We would also suggest that the SDLP displayed the most democratic conception of ‘public opinion’ of the different campaigning actors in the referendum campaign. The SDLP’s campaign was disseminated to the whole population and did not seek to segment the Northern Irish public into nationalist and unionist, Protestant and Catholic, British and Irish in the way that the other political parties, whether pro- or anti-Agreement, did. In doing so they displayed a more genuine democratic impulse in the sense Rakow (1989) advocates in her analysis of the relationship between public relations and public opinion. The SDLP did much more than treat Northern Irish public opinion as a ‘source of power’, rather they treated the whole population as the ‘site of power’, the location of legitimate ‘decision-making authority’ (Rakow, 1989: 174,178). While undoubtedly a case can be made for dialogue as a communication approach in some circumstances and settings (in psychology, in organizational communication, in formal peace negotiations and in education) the idea that dialogue is practical or even appropriate in the public relations arena is highly questionable. Our findings in this study lead us to concur with Peters’s (1999) conclusion that, compared with dissemination, dialogue is a poor model for the kinds of public communication required in liberal democratic societies.