Campaigning Tips

Often when we talk about campaigning the vision that comes to mind is door knocking as we approach an election. Maybe we’ll think about phone canvassing. This to some extent did become the main campaigning method of the last 50 years. Society has changed vastly over those years. A job for life is pretty much a thing of the past. People staying in one community for their adult life has very much changed, with people commuting vast distances to work or in many cases moving home to be nearer their place of work. This has meant that politics through involvement in the workplace and community has declined.

The growth of the Labour movement at the turn of the 20th Century was very much based on workers joining together to demand rights. To demand healthcare, paid holidays, reasonable working hours and a wage that ensured a reasonable standard of living. With the change in working patterns and the fragility of the job market, much of these traditional ways of campaigning and organising have broken down. It is much more difficult for people to envisage the benefits of a union if they are on a zero hours contract (although there is major advantages).

This page lays out some of the methods that can be applied in our communities to effectively campaign. The Labour party has changed and modernised. It is moving towards a democratic and engaged model, where new ways of working to meet modern global demands are built. Campaigning is not only about door knocking or phone canvassing. It is about using all the tools at our disposal to engage with a wider audience. It is not about reeling off a set of beliefs in an environment where the media has made many hostile to the socialist message.

Don’t preach Labour as a starting point
The quickest way to ensure that somebody who is not a Labour voter switches off to what you are saying is to start your conversation with the glories of the Labour party. We have a hostile media that expends great effort to create the picture that the Labour voter is some kind of communist, ne’er do well, that wants to live in a Nirvana where nothing costs anything and we will spend ourselves into vast debt. Any serious analysis shows this to be a disingenuous position by the media, but if you start throwing statistics at somebody, you will have lost their interest almost immediately.

An effective way to discuss politics is not to discuss party politics. Let people join the dots. Often in discussion we want to take people from A-Z and that discourages them from moving to B.

Talk about the NHS for example and what a shame it is that something that the world looked on with envy is being destroyed. If you are talking to the older generation, talk how proud they must have been to see such a great institution created and how sad it is that it won’t be there for future generations. Whichever generation you are talking to and whether it be about education, health, social care; talk about what we had and the sadness of losing it. It is always good to talk about how you had always thought we would improve these things, not destroy them.

Some Tories are Tories
There are Tories you’ll never convert to voting Labour. They have spent too many years opposed to everything they imagine that Labour stands for. The only way they will ever possibly vote Labour is having seen our progressive policies in action, they recognise the benefits. Even then, there are some that will still not change their mind. In this case the target is to stop them voting Conservative. 13.5 million people voted Tory at GE17. Considering the absolute mess the Tories are making and the ineptitude of the Tory GE campaign, we have to be honest with ourselves and admit that there are a large number of people out there who will vote anything but Labour. We need them to switch their vote to Lib Dem if need be. After all we can clearly see from the coalition that you couldn’t slip a fag paper between the Tories and the Lid Dems. Recently I heard of a number of lifelong Tory voters who have said that they will not vote at the next election, as they won’t vote Labour, but neither can they bring themselves to vote Tory.

It is these voters that you can impact by discussing the issues that impact them, whether that be the impossibility of younger generations to get on the housing ladder or the state of the pensions in the UK.

Encourage new voters
There is a large swathe of potential voters out there who disenfranchised. Often working in low paid employment and struggling to keep their head above water, they no longer feel that politics offers a solution. To them all politicians are the same and appear at election time with grand promises, only to renege on those promises once they are elected. To be fair, they are not wrong in their conclusions. Campaigning just at election time cements this view. That sudden interest in those that have been ignored since the last election is unlikely to win friends. But Labour is different now. It is committed to grass roots democracy.

Encourage non-voters to look at the Labour party manifesto, but also point them at the National Policy Forum and Labour campaigning activities.

Do what you can
Many Labour members cannot get involved in Campaigning due to infirmity, disabilities or even Shyness. Do what you can. Maybe get involved doing a couple of hours at a food bank. Seek out things that you can do. Speak to you CLP. In fact encourage your CLP to become active in the community all year round.

Check the Labour Campaign tools
Labour has a set of campaign tools on their website aimed to help members campaign. Take advantage of the tools to help you.

Join the Labour Party
If you are not a member of the Labour party then why not join. It doesn’t commit you to spending hours each week promoting the party. It does help fund the party, undermines the message put out by the media and gives you an opportunity to engage in the democratic process.