Although thought very futuristic when published featuring mind control and set in a police state, elements of his ideas can be seen in the dark world of PR surrounding some of our controlling bodies today.
Northumberland Tories who run the County Council have shown over the last decade how with a few activists an organisation can ‘change the minds’ of the many through their use of social media by putting a little effort into ‘matters sites’ and since May 2017 press control of the spin and history of achievement using Orwell’s techniques of newspeak and doublethink. When these processes are mixed with the pre-Orwellian, Stalin and Hitler’s methodology of changing history through writing people out of stories and removing pictures of them from archives to let people believe that the truth was something else, processes then grow and breed to become ever more secretive and dangerous.
Our lay group find it strange that the archives of a number of Northumberland’s weekly newspapers are now not available to view and can only wonder of the strange goings on surrounding the well criticised removal of the Councils ‘core strategy’ from inspection by Government and the fabric of deceit run out about the Councils company ARCH when the databases of information are now hidden from view. It’s a good job that Northumbria Police were able to find no criminality in that company before the public information to prove the innocence of people was dumped.
Luckily the law courts up to this moment in time still allow access to information and the Orwellian use of ‘room 101’ tactics in the bullying cases that have cost the ratepayers of Northumberland millions of pounds to either defend, compensate or indemnify councillors and their staff for are available to view.
Through this small group of Tories and their ‘murky’ social media sites Orwell’s well used ‘two minute hate’ schemes became a norm and getting supporters to keep an eye on each other and report them to the powers that be who run matters sites is well described in the novel 1984 and well practiced in Northumberland and was used to great effect in East Germany but in this local, a helmet with a door in to let a hungry rat eat your face has been replaced with the mental torture of running fake news through official meetings to verify its ‘truth’ allowing the public to scarify the reputations of those named. Centred around a managed plan containing connotations of military strategy that was hatched by Northumberland Tories well before the May 2017 elections.
Other big brother activities currently taking place is the phasing of things which reduce the benefit for the 46% of people who live in Northumberland’s most deprived areas under the cover of austerity and unafordability then attempting in all cases to blame other politicians and/or Government for the need for what in most cases is detrimental change.
In George Orwells book the heroine was Julia and the hero, Winston Smith who fought their way through the Trump like fake news to wake up the nation to what’s happening on the dark side to them and their families. With so many of their leading members decried and damaged through the processes used by Northumberland Tories in recent years including false accusations against MP’s, the local Labour Party need to find a Julia and a Winston as quickly as possible but we as lay people are not seeing Labour managing to grasp the social media strength on an ever ongoing basis to fight back this now well embedded Tory spin machine and without the promotion of an ‘air marshal’ and a team of cross county assistant marshals to undertake this work and challenge the Tories they will be unfortunately driven back further as the local Tories ‘murky spindoctors’ bring in even more Trump like methods already well practiced on their doorstep by the owners of Newcastle United.
We, the lay-group, are concerned that since the change of leadership within Northumberland Labour that their press site has closed down and their social media links have become non-political photo opportunity shoots for the egotistic leader and deputy who seem to be promoting tourism rather than politics.
Labour need to get a grip of this failing situation as quickly as they can or the opposition to a massively well heeled publicity machine will also be resigned to history and Big Brothers fabrications and lies will cost the ratepayers even more than they do know as support for the practice of ‘mateism’ in dishing out the privatisation of services program will be as acceptable in Northumberland as is it is in many sub Saharan countries.
With some planning and a change of the Labour mindset locally to embrace modern politics instead of relying completely on the outdated brush salesmen’s door stepping, Labour need to develop a marketing strategy that includes a strong message delivery through social media which doesn’t always rely on ‘positive messaging’. The only time Labour embraced a non-1930’s election theory program, Tony Blair engaged Sachi and Sachi to manage their news stories and as history shows they and Mandelson managed the pro Tory Fleet Street very well indeed.
But recent by election history in Northumberland has shown that well planned messages can destroy all of the hard work that door steppers have undertaken, in the North of the County Labour embraced the new methodology and won a by election but in two elections in Bedlington the message most repeated via the ‘Matters’ sites was “Labour thugs have just been bashing on my door”, and as society moves towards being ever insular and reliant on social media for social inclusion this type of message will resonate with the public.
We all know that the local Labour Party cant have access to Sachi and Sachi but they can and should learn from what the Tories did to them and at least expose them by telling the truths surrounding their spin machine to the public regularly and often by creating messages that are marketed towards the public using demographic and psychographic information that they have readily to hand and tell the people what the Tories are really doing in their County.
PS just a thought that you may wish to think on, in Orwell’s novel everyone was known by numbers and if you phone Northumberland County Council for any query they ask you your date of birth to supposedly ensure you are who you say you are. As the author of this hopefully thought provoking tale for our lay group and living on the edge of Northumberland and not in it you may be surprised to know that my date of birth and therefore my number is 21011950 the day Orwell died.
