“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they canīt live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing better the next time.” Noam Chomsky
Aberystwyth University P&P lobby their MP on the Climate Bill
Lobbying is about trying to influence people who have power so that they will support your ideas and plans.
Where to start?
Lobbying can be a really effective campaigning method to create change and can be used on many different targets with different tactics. Making sure these are right are key to your lobbying success. Good lobbying requires both good preparation and good performance.
Preparation
There are a number of steps you need to go through before you start lobbying:
1.Who are you going to lobby?
Your lobbying targets could include your MP or MEP, specific ministers, university figures like your Vice Chancellor or corporate targets such as CEOs.
- Who has the power to help you achieve your campaign aims?
- Who do you have access to who has power over the people who have power?!
e.g. If you want your university to employ an environmental manager: who in the university has control over the Accommodation and Campus Services department?
2. What can that person do?
Find out more about what you can ask MPs and MEPs to do in the what they can do section.
3.What is their stance on the issue?
- What are they realistically going to do?
- What barriers are there? Can other individuals/ groups offer support?
You can find out lots of information about your MP on the website www.theyworkforyou.com
4. What are you going to ask them to do?
Simply expressing your opinion won’t change anything - ASK for something specific based on what you know they can do and what you want to change.
How to lobby?
There are lots of different methods you could use to lobby whoever you have chosen as your target.
- The natural first step in any lobbying exercise is to write to the person with the power to resolve the situation.
- You could arrange a face-to-face meeting to have a bigger impact. MPs, for example, hold regular ‘surgeries’.
- If you donīt think your voice is being listened to - spread the word to get more support and raise awareness! This could be through petitioning, open meetings, photo opportunities or more direct actions.
Be persistent, and follow up.
Don’t just accept ‘no’ for an answer - engage in more correspondence, meetings or actions, always bringing more people on board. Think of creative ways to raise the stakes and increase pressure. Lobbying is a cumulative process: your individual action may not seem so grand, but alongside similar actions across the country it forms an important political influence.