A life-long friend met and made at Jesus College, Oxford

The Daily Telegraph
22/11/2001

THE LORD LOVELL-DAVIS, who has died aged 76, was raised to the peerage and made a junior minister by Harold Wilson in 1974 after giving invaluable assistance in the propaganda war that had helped Labour to achieve three general election victories.

From 1962 to 1974, as Peter Davis, he led a voluntary committee of media specialists to advise the Labour Party on publicity. The other committee members were an advertising executive, David Kingsley, and a public relations consultant, David Lyons.

Codenamed "The Three Wise Men" to protect their identities, they chose a then little-known market researcher, Bob Worcester, of Mori, to carry out regular public opinion surveys for them. Between them, they thought up the Let's Go With Labour campaign slogan for 1964, and You Know Labour Government Works two years later.

Both slogans captured the national mood: disillusionment with the Macmillan and Home administrations, and the excitement generated by Harold Wilson's call to harness the "white heat of technology" to government. But in 1970, the focus on the Conservatives as Yesterday's Men. . .They Failed Before flopped badly. It had been planned as a knocking prelude to a positive pro-Labour campaign for an autumn election that was to feature Labour's Winning Team
. . .Make Britain Great Again. But the plan was undone when Harold Wilson unexpectedly decided on a June election, ignoring the group's advice that he would lose then but could recover by the autumn. However, their February 1974 campaign proved a winner.

Peter Lovell Davis, the son of an accountant, was born on July 8 1924. (Later, on receiving a peerage, his choice of title would oblige him to hyphenate his name). He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Stratford-upon-Avon, and at Coventry Technical College, where he joined the Air Training Corps.

In 1943 he joined an RAF officer training course which included a year at a university; he went to Jesus College, Oxford. He qualified as a Spitfire pilot, was promoted to flight lieutenant, and was sent out to the Middle East. He was destined for the Far East when Japan surrendered.
In 1947 he returned to Oxford and completed a degree course in English; perhaps more valuable was the experience he gained writing for the undergraduate magazine Isis, and as its films editor. This led to a foothold in Fleet Street with Central Press, an old-established and badly run-down features agency. It was taken over by the Bristol Evening Post, with Davis as managing director, briefed to restore its fortunes.

Apart from a small Fleet Street office, its meagre tangible assets included a lobby correspondent's pass to the House of Commons, held by a retired Glasgow Herald political journalist, Robbie Robertson. Davis recruited a trainee journalist from the Acton Gazette, Ian Waller (later to become The Sunday Telegraph's political correspondent) to provide full-scale political news coverage.

Within a year several leading provincial papers, including the Glasgow Evening Times and the Bolton Evening News took the service, and Waller's weekly political commentary was syndicated all over the world. Central Press flourished and Davis remained there until 1970, when he became chairman of Features Syndicate and of Davis and Harrison Visual Productions.
His long association with Harold Wilson, which was to cost him his ministerial office as soon as James Callaghan became Prime Minister, had begun with a chance encounter soon after the general election of 1959.

He tried unsuccessfully to persuade Wilson, then a leading member of the Labour Party's National Executive, of the importance of using modern advertising and market research, and of the power of television in electioneering. Wilson's mind was still rooted in the age of public meetings and doorstep canvassing; but Davis persevered and eventually convinced the party's National Executive Publicity Committee to give his group a chance.

Wilson was eventually converted, and Labour's 1964 and 1966 campaigns were the most sophisticated and effective of any party. One key to the group's success was Davis's insistence on keeping clear of policy-making arguments and sticking to the role of sympathetic professionals, providing advice and expertise on implementing policy.

He forged close links with Wilson and with his secretary Marcia Williams (now Lady Falkender), though he never belonged to the so-called "Kitchen Cabinet" of Wilson's closest advisers. Much to Davis's surprise, he was offered a peerage and appointment as a Lord-in-Waiting in 1974. Still young and energetic by their Lordships' standards, he brought a breath of fresh air to the Upper House.

Good-looking and personable, Peter Lovell-Davis was well-equipped to carry out the duties attached to the post, acting, for instance, as the Queen's representative in attending foreign dignitaries on their arrival in Britain.

From 1975 to 1976 he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Energy and launched an energy conservation campaign with the "Save It - Switch Off" message, aimed at housewives. From 1976 to 1984 he was on the Board of the Commonwealth Development Corporation. Lord Lovell-Davis's particular interest was child welfare, and he was chairman of the steering group of the Caring for Children in the NHS Committee.

He was chairman of Lee Cooper Licensing Services from 1983 to 1990, and of Pettifor, Morrow and Associates from 1986 to 1999. He was a trustee of the Academic Centre of the Whittington Hospital, Highgate, from 1980, and of the Museum of the Port of London and Docklands from 1985 to 1998.

He married, in 1950, Jean Graham; they had a son and daughter.