It’s been another busy few weeks in the ASU, and for active supporter networks across the southeast, so I apologise for the delay in this post. Loads of people have been visiting there MPs to ask them to support the Greenpeace Airplot campaign, and to help them do so we ran a one day MP lobbying workshop here at Greenpeace.
MPs are invariably very pleasant people to deal with, in fact they’re professionally pleasant, but sometimes it’s hard to get them to commit to doing something. I’ve always assumed it’s a difficult job being an MP; it’s very easy to do the wrong thing, and it’s probably safer not to do anything at all.
As a Network Developer my job is then to teach active supporters the best way to get their MP to make a commitment. Equally I imagine somewhere in the party apparatus, someone is running workshops and skillshares for new MPs to teach them how to avoid committing to doing anything.
We write a briefing inviting active supporters to ask MPs to take action, the relevant party then writes a briefing to MPs about how they should answer those questions, we then write a briefing about how active supporters could response to those answers and so it continues….
I don’t know how effective lobbying politicians is as an agent for change. At Greenpeace we often argue that ‘actions speak louder’ while groups such as Climate Rush have rekindled the banner ‘Deeds not Words’.
But I do know that meeting an MP is an easy thing to do. I’d encourage everyone to give it a go, make their own mind up about how useful it is and participate in the political process whenever the opportunity arises…
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