Back to Basics (campaign)


Back to Basics was a political campaign announced by British Prime Minister John Major at the Conservative Party conference of 1993 in Blackpool.
The campaign was intended as a nostalgic appeal to traditional values such as "neighbourliness, decency, courtesy". It was often interpreted as a campaign for socially conservative causes such as promoting the traditional family, though Major denied this. The campaign became the subject of ridicule when a succession of Conservative politicians were caught up in scandals.

Context

The previous year of Major's premiership had been beset by infighting within the Conservative party on the issue of Europe, including rebellions in several Parliamentary votes on the Maastricht Treaty. He was also dealing with the fallout from the Black Wednesday economic debacle of September 1992.

John Major's speech

Major's speech, delivered on 8 October 1993, began by noting the disagreements over Europe:
Major then changed the subject to "a world that sometimes seems to be changing too fast for comfort". He attacked many of the changes in Britain since the Second World War, singling out developments in housing, education, and criminal justice. He then continued:
He mentioned the phrase once again near the conclusion of his speech:

Media reaction

During 1993, Britain was going through what has been characterised as a moral panic on the issue of single mothers. Government ministers regularly made speeches on the issue, such as John Redwood's condemnation of "young women have babies with no apparent intention of even trying marriage or a stable relationship with the father of the child" from July 1993, and Peter Lilley's characterisation of single mothers as "benefit-driven" and "undeserving" from the same year. The murder of James Bulger earlier in 1993, by two young boys from single-parent families, served to intensify the media frenzy.
Apart from some generic platitudes about families and self-reliance, Major's speech said nothing specific about sexual behaviour or single motherhood. On 6 January 1994, Major explicitly stated that the campaign was not "a crusade about personal morality". Despite this, the "Back to Basics" campaign was widely interpreted by the media as including a "family values" component.
According to Debbie Epstein and Richard Johnson:
Writing in his diary shortly after and in reference to the Michael Brown story, Piers Morgan, who exposed many of the sexual scandals as editor of the News of the World, opined:

Scandals

The following scandals were linked to the "Back To Basics" campaign in the media:

1992

John Major lost the 1997 general election, subsequently resigning as Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader. Several years later, it was revealed that he had conducted a four-year-long extra-marital affair with fellow Conservative MP Edwina Currie in the 1980s. The liaison occurred when both were backbenchers, and had ended well before Major became Prime Minister. Currie disclosed the romance in her diaries, published in 2002, adding that she considered the "Back to Basics" campaign to have been "absolute humbug".
In 2017, Major said the slogan was an example of how sound bites can mislead the public, saying "t was taken up to pervert a thoroughly worthwhile social policy and persuaded people it was about something quite different."

In popular culture

The phrase has since become used by UK political commentators to describe any failed attempt by a political party leader to relaunch themselves following a scandal or controversy. The phrase was satirised in the Viz strip Baxter Basics.