The inspiration for this book has slowly matured during my past four years coordinating campaigns and working alongside campaigning organisations, both during and after my time at University. Many believe that activism and campaigning are the soul preserve of the young and the militant, that to be an activist you have to hold far-fetched notions or buy into political dogma. Nothing could be further from the truth. During the past four years I have worked with a wide variety of campaigners, with a wide variety of aims. From student groups fighting against increasing fees, or for fair trade status to wider groups calling for an end to war, to defend human rights, to protect the environment or to safeguard the weak. All of these people share something, it isn’t their aim, nor is it their political persuasion. It isn’t their lifestyle or their fashion sense, it’s not a desire to be different or to stand apart from society, but rather it is their desire for change, real, positive change. It is the fact that they could identify something wrong in their world and they took the conscious decision to do something about it. Young and old, student and lecturer, college pupil and senior citizen all understand that something can be done and all stand together to achieve that aim.
Many people believe that campaigning is not suitable for everyone and that it is simply something that comes naturally to some activists and that some campaign as a chosen way of life or even as a hobby. Once more nothing could be further from the truth, each campaigner has their own unique story of how they became involved in campaigning and the journey this has taken them on. I myself had little intention of ever getting involved in activism or campaigning. Indeed it was a miserable, cold night outside the Students’ Union building where I first met Ryan Cloke a student who had recently helped establish a student campaigning society, Portsmouth Socialist Students. It was by sheer chance that I took a leaflet from Ryan and then attended his first meeting. It was at this moment I that started my journey into the world of campaigning. Over the next three years we coordinated a broad range of campaigns for change both on a local and regional level, but with a national and international focus. These actions started small, first we attended local debates and won before we then started to build our own campaigns, first with a small group of supporters and later forming coalitions with other small student and non-student groups. We organised boycotts of unethical products from our campus, worked to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, and organised a grass roots student led campaign against increasing tuition fees. We, along with an entire new generation of campaigners, also found ourselves involved in national campaigns such as marching though London calling for an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or in cities such as Barking campaigning against the rise of fascism. These years not only taught us valuable lessons in campaigning skills but also
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provided us with an opportunity to research and understand some of the political, ethical and social justice organisations. We ended our years as students and our journey as student campaigners by finding ourselves in the occupied territories of Palestine attempting to discover what life is truly like for people on both sides of the conflict so we in turn could better understand and therefore better communicate their plight to people back home. After University I have worked at that very same Students’ Union where I have written and delivered campaign training to student campaigners as well as coordinated local and regional campaigns on issues such as Free Education. I certainly did not know on that cold, dark, miserable night outside the Union that I would dedicate the next few years of my life to campaigns and would eventually write a book on the subject but that just perfectly demonstrates the journey you can take if only you’re prepared to seize your opportunities. The fact is that once you realise that you can effect change, and once you realise that change is needed you are in no position to stop campaigning.
As campaigners there is one question that we shall always be asked, either by the media or the apathetic bystander, why bother? Are two or twenty, or two hundred or even two thousand people marching, demonstrating or signing petitions on a drizzly Saturday afternoon really going to stop a war, will they be able to bring troops home? For that matter what about the thousands who marched through London to petition the government to address climate change, do they have a chance? If not what about smaller groups, those concentrating on local issues such as closing hospitals, or proposed motorways, what chance do they have? I must answer that question with a thought of my own. What if we didn’t speak out? What would happen if we all fell silent, if we all decided to look away and busy ourselves with our own lives? Whilst this book is written with a clear aim of guiding you to a campaign victory it is not simply the success of a campaign, but the very act of standing up and speaking out which must be judged.
The most vivid example of this can be found in the work of journalist Robert Fisk. In 2002 Fisk interviewed Amira Hass, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Hass wrote that in 1944 her mother found herself on a train heading for the Polish concentration camps, one more victim of the Nazi persecution. However, it was not the camps, nor was it the Nazis that her mother remembered most vividly. As Hass states, “When the train pulled into a station my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking.” 1It was the sight of these civilian women and how they silently watched the train go that her mother found the most disturbing. The reason for this is as the Holocaust museum in Washington DC states: “Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander”. If the German people, living in a Nazi state with its secret police and its state controlled propaganda can be accused of guilt for staying silent during one of the worst atrocities in history then what does that say about us if we can stay silent about an injustice in our free society? Of course to claim that the actions of any current government are comparable to the crimes of the Holocaust would be a distortion of historical fact. Yet the point remains, if
1 Robert Fisk, “The Great War For Civilisation” , HarperPerennial, (2 Oct 2006)
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we can choose to become bystanders, if we choose to watch and choose to stay silent then we must also take responsibility for whatever our inaction may bring. If we do this we become the guilty and then we are no better then those who stood on the rail side watching the doomed depart for the gas chambers.
In modern Britain we have the freedom of speech, the freedom to stand up without being shot down, the freedom to shout out without being locked up, yet many people choose to say nothing. They stay silent because they do not know what they can do, because they do not know that the power to be positive agents for change lies in their own hands. This book aims to empower those people, to show them that now is not the time to sit silently, but to stand up for your beliefs, to tackle your injustice, and that this is the time to be counted as someone who refuses to stay silent.
We are of course not short of causes in today’s world. Many seasoned or veteran campaigners may like to recall the golden days of activism and campaigns; they recall the peace marches of the 1960’s and 1970’s, or the anti-poll tax campaigns of the 1980’s. Indeed this country has a proud campaigning history and it is because of our history of holding the powerful to account that we have national institutions and achievements such as the National Health Service. However, just because our history is strong does not mean we are any weaker in comparison. In 2003 between two and three million people ranging from war veterans to school children marched together on the streets of London, they stood together for the sake of their conscience and so that history would know that they stood against a war. Similarly during the G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2007 thousands of people flocked to Scotland to campaign against global injustices, to call for human rights, for world leaders to defend the weak and aid the suffering. The world is clearly not a perfect place, but there are people who are prepared to stand up and call for change.
The challenge faced by many thousands of potential campaigners who stand against these injustices is that they do not know what they are campaigning for. They may know what they are trying to protect, or defend and they can be clear about what they are campaigning against but the idea of an alternative can often allude them and this can clearly be seen by the messages they carry and the way they campaign. The media isn’t short of images of people who are “anti-war”, “anti-capitalist” or “anti-fascist”, but it is only the minority of people who know what they are actually for. This is an important consideration for any campaign group, indeed the need for positive campaigning, the need to show that real alternatives do exist and the importance of showing what you are for as well as what you are against is an important topic that I will be discussing in-depth in later chapters of this book.
The single most important lesson that I have gleaned both from my experiences and through the people I have worked with is the need to think globally but act locally. Campaigning is not only about the global issues; it is about the local concerns. It is about injustices that affect an entire community as well as people’s everyday lives. At the time of writing there are several such campaigns in my hometown of Portsmouth. Local elderly residents have
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formed campaign groups to lobby their MP’s and to whip up local support in order to save a local fire station and a hospital, both of which are vital to the community. Before these closures were proposed none of these people had any campaign experience, they did not see themselves as the sort of people who would brandish placards, write to MP’s or argue their cause on national television, and yet they have done all of those things and much more because they knew it was the right thing to do.
As campaigners and as agents for change it is our responsibility to question, to ask why and to work for real, positive, change. It is my sincerest hope that this book can act as your guide, from the moment you identify an injustice or something you want to change, to the moment you establish and coordinate your campaign, right up until you achieve your goal. This will be achieved by guiding you though six key steps of campaigning theory. This theory has been built up over the past few years both through my work and affiliation to many organisations. I have analysed their ethos and values and noted their best practises in order to bring you a comprehensive yet straightforward and engaging guide to coordinating your campaign, regardless of how big or small your goal may be.
Throughout this book you will hear from experienced campaigners who herald from a board range of organisations and who have a vast array of views and just as varied goals. From the environmentalists who succeeded in achieving fair trade status for their local institution to the student group who brought their local politicians to account. From the man who used his life experiences to establish and lead a network for humanitarian justice to the woman who waged a one person war against plastic bags in her town, and won. Their inspirational testimonies will demonstrate that the theory, draw together from their experiences as well as my own, do not only sound feasible on paper but actually work to achieve real, positive change.
It would be wrong for me to suggest that campaigning is an easy activity. Reaching your campaign goal may require a lot of time, effort and patience, indeed one of the reasons I am now in a position to write this book is due to the lessons I have learnt from my mistakes as well as my successes. However, if you seriously plan your campaign, if you set your mind upon a specific goal and are prepared to work towards it, if you are prepared to refuse to fall to disillusionment and are prepared to motivate and inspire people even when your own confidence is shaking then you will achieve your campaign goal and this book will guide you through it all. As citizens we have great power, we have the power to think, to reason, to understand and to judge. Therefore at times we must also be the conscience of the nation, and the conscience of our community. We must be the people who are prepared to lead others and change our world. Ignorance and silence may go hand in hand, but to know and to be silent is an unacceptable crime. So stand up, be prepared to be counted for what you believe to be right, be prepared to shout out against injustices at the top of your voice, and be prepared to make a real difference. (taken from Ben Norman book)