On Thursday 3rd April, we will be hosting a Changemakers Forum – but what’s it all about?
Together with the Ella Baker School of Organising, we will be introducing a new book Changemakers, radical strategies for social justice organising.
The authors, Jane Holgate and John Page, each have over 40 years’ experience of being involved in different social movements, from animal rights campaigns to anti-racism; from local community initiatives around planning, to holding positions in the trade union movement. They bring their experiences to bear on the big question for campaigners: what is it that will actually work?
Activist journey
While there are lots of differences within movements for social justice there’s a common theme––people become involved in social movement because they want to make the world a better place.
Initially, we are often moved by our emotions, whether that be as a result of finding out that animals are suffering in research laboratories or in factory farms, or when a colleague is treated unfairly by a bullying manager. We may feel angry, and that emotion initially motivates us to want to do something to stop the injustice happening. But we may not have any idea about how to effect the change we want. That’s normal and it’s certainly the authors’ own personal history. They jumped into campaigns feet first, willing and enthusiastic, but also in retrospect, somewhat naive.
There was a sense that dedication and enthusiasm was all that we needed, but experience has shown that this is just one piece of the puzzle. Changemakers need to understand: strategy, their opponents, power (and how to build and use it strategically), concepts of leadership development that go beyond traditional ‘leaders and followers’, and group dynamics. They also need to understand the state and how it intervenes when it sees social movements becoming effective.
What worked, and what didn’t?
The book’s chapters explore different aspects of social movement theory through the lens of different campaigns that the authors have been involved in over the years.
It looks at what worked; and crucially what didn’t and why that was. All of this is designed to provoke the reader to explore their own experiences of campaigning. The authors do not pretend to be gurus with all the answers, but are experienced organisers, who have learned to ask some challenging questions. At the start of the book, they look at different approaches to organising – that from above and that from below, because how we organise is important.
They assert that a healthy democracy requires active citizenship, and by that they mean it’s important to place the community at the centre of resolving its own problems. An organising from below approach would start by asking: ‘what are the shared interests of this community?’ ‘What stories bind them?’ and ‘where can they find their agency?’
An organiser’s primary task is to make people believe in themselves. If people feel that nothing can change, and no one will ever listen, then it makes no sense to invest time, emotional energy, and at times risks to your livelihood, to challenge injustice.
Connecting with the community
An example they draw upon is from a hunt saboteur campaign. While out in the field one day they learnt from a local woman that she didn’t like the hunt, and that many of her neighbours in the area felt the same. She was, in short, ‘one of us’––in opposition to the bloodsports. If they could organise the anti-hunt supporters in the countryside, then maybe, they could change the power balance in the campaign against bloodsports.
They decided to test this theory by leafleting every door in the village of about 500 homes asking people to join a protest on the pub forecourt when the hunt planned to meet there.
Given previous experience they were expecting a violent reaction from the hunt supporters when they arrived. Instead there was already a large crowd of local people who were upset about the hunt’s presence in their village. There was no-sign of the hunt: the day’s hunting was cancelled. This was the ultimate prize, no hunting meant no wildlife killed, and the hunt being weakened as an institution.
Building our power
Another example explored in the book was an equal pay campaign in a trade union. The union had to figure out a way to force the employer to say, ‘yes’ when they wanted to say ‘no’. Recognising that it was cheaper for the employer to break equal pay legislation rather than take action to comply with it, the union decided it had to change that dynamic.
After months of planning and un-productive negotiations, the union informed the employer that unless it had an immediate commitment to addressing gender pay inequality (and the wider arbitrary nature of the pay structure–) it would be harvesting and submitting a minimum of 30 equal pay claims per month as part of a rolling programme. The union believed that once it began to affect the company’s finances then the power dynamic would shift, and it was likely that the employer would want to negotiate.
It took three months and over 100 employment tribunal claims lodged before the employer collapsed and agreed to renegotiate the pay structure in exchange for the union halting the harvesting of legal claims.
Equality and leadership
Equality is a key organising principle; our opponents constantly seek to divide us and the most radical response is to unite. Equally, we all bring our lived experience to any challenge we face, whether collective or individual. A diversity of experiences increases the knowledge and experience resource available
The book explores different approaches to leaders and leadership development. Leadership is about building relationship that enable groups to grow and increase their influence, while drawing upon the diverse lived experiences of supporters to find appropriate strategies to win.
Join the discussion
To conclude. What this book tries to do is not to provide a set of rules or step-by-step guide, but rather to review real life campaign experiences (messy and confused as they often are) to illustrate the complexities and contradictions that are part of the journey of a successful campaign.
There aren’t fixed rules when it comes to organising, but we can reflect and learn from many and varied approaches––allowing us to consider what ‘fits’ best in the specific circumstances of a particular campaign.
This book is a great place to start a discussion about how we get to win, and our Changemakers Forum Thursday 3rd April at the Priory Rooms is an opportunity to join that discussion.