When it comes to campaigning, I’m the office dinosaur. I’ve come late in life to the possibilities of social media and instant messaging and my colleagues are having an uphill struggle to re-educate me.
Email now, yes, I pretty much get that. Where in the past I used to enjoy composing a stiff letter, now I can do the same but cut down on postage costs and expect a speedier reply. Respect.
Over the past few years I’ve been amazed at the engagement of OneKind supporters with email campaigns. When the Scottish Government consulted on proposals for a Marine Bill, our supporters sent over 3,800 responses asking for full protection for Scotland’s seals.
Actually, some of those were postcards but it was still an incredible effort. Messages to MSPs about wildlife legislation and snaring were entirely online, and there were 8500 of them. Numbers like that cannot be ignored and give us confidence to carry on with this issue until snares are finally banned.
But not everyone is a fan of e-activism. According to the March newsletter of the charity research organisation nfpSynergy, some Westminster MPs consider the onslaught of charity and community body emails to be a form of tyranny.
Last July, say nfpSynergy, MP Charles Walker described much charity campaigning as ‘blunt and backhanded’ arguing that charities ‘assume their concerns must be our concerns. That’s almost bullying, to be honest’.
Another Conservative MP had his publicly-funded email address removed from the House of Commons listings, because ‘hundreds’ of campaign groups are ‘flooding MPs inboxes with pro-forma emails, [which] creates an undue administrative burden’.
Last year an MP told me he hoped that OneKind would not generate a general election mailing as he would not have time to deal with it. Ever-conciliatory, I assured him that our messages would come only from constituents and not from the other side of the world, and that we were simply assisting the public in communicating what they believed.
Later on I told a colleague from a well-respected, campaign-savvy conservation charity about the exchange. She looked at me kindly and said: “All you had to say was: Tough. It’s democracy.” Now why didn’t I think of that?
Given that I receive hundreds of emails in my capacity as a member of the Romanian chamber of deputies, I can understand a little irritation. No, you’re right, I’ve never stood for election, here or anywhere else, but my name is on somebody’s mailing list somewhere. The messages are misdirected. But they concern a serious problem, the treatment of stray dogs in Romania, and if I suffer a little inconvenience in the quest for reform, you know what? That’s tough. It’s democracy.
We aim not to be vexatious – for example, OneKind always asks civil servants for the best address to send mailings for Ministers. But in this intelligent age, politicians must expect to receive campaign mailings, adjust their mail handling accordingly, and take on board the sheer numbers of people who have views on the issue in question. Some MSPs say they actually like to get campaign mailings, which help them to gather information from them about constituents, and to learn about their current concerns.
Which brings me, finally, to my point. Today we launch our Scottish election manifesto and we have a campaign action to go along with it. You can see our campaign priorities on the Scottish election pages, and we hope you will support them. If you do, please get clicking and send a message to your local candidates. If we want better protection for animals, this is the time to ask for it. I’m sure they’ll understand.