Everyone is talking about change right now. But even if you’re Andy Burnham, change has to be fought for, campaigned for, it has to be thought through, planned and supported. Sara Bryson, lead organiser for Tyne & Wear Citizens, works for change every day of her life. And she’s succeeding by training and empowering others to win battles for their groups and communities.
She does it because, “I was a kid who grew up on a council estate in Cowgate and I experienced poverty; and that passion for wanting to eradicate poverty comes from the fact that my family still suffers from its impact. It’s in my self-interest to do something about it.”
And “self-interest” is one of her key rules for a campaign for change to work. It has to be in the self-interest of campaigners. Another is power. In order to win a protest, Sara tells the Hexham Debates, you have to be in a position of power.
As an example, she highlights the case of cleaners paid the minimum wage in London dockland’s finance district. Many had to hold three or four jobs in order to feed and look after their families. What they wanted was a real living wage.
The need for power
So, helped by Citizens UK, (for which Sara Bryson is also Assistant Director), they bought one-pound shares in one of their employers – HSBC Bank. It gave them the right to attend the annual shareholders’ meeting, attended by all the company’s senior executives.
They elected a spokesperson from their community – a vicar. He stood up in the shareholders meeting and addressed the stage. He wasn’t ejected or closed down. His dog-collar afforded him attention and respect.
The vicar raised the issue of the real living wage and said he wanted to introduce and hand-over the microphone to one of the cleaners. This man addressed the HSBC chairman and told him they walked the same corridors and worked in the same office each day, but led completely different lives. He described his own struggles.
“Do I do a good job?” he asked the chairman. The chairman agreed that he did. “Then why can’t I have a decent living wage to look after my family? Why do I have to carry out three jobs depriving me of time with my family?”
HSBC agreed to talks and eventually it became one of the first banks to support the real living wage.
In that hall, in that audience, in that moment, the cleaner had power. Much more power than a demonstration with banners and chants in central London or anywhere else would have gained.
The importance of listening
Sara also talks about the importance of listening when setting up a campaign. “You have to meet people face to face, talk with people and do an awful lot of it,” she says.
“Not only do you bring people together and discover who might be right to lead the campaign, you uncover the real issues. There’s an old African proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”
One session of listening brought another example: She recalls the time she spoke to groups of pupils receiving free school meals in Tyne & Wear. One girl asked why pupils couldn’t “keep their change.” By that she meant if a child missed a meal, they didn’t ever receive the money allocated for that day. The girl asked where this money went.
It’s known absenteeism is highest for a variety of reasons amongst free-school meal children, often to do with health or family situations. They miss a lot of payments. If this tax-payers money was added to their accounts they would be better fed and have less reliance on often demeaning, if vital, food banks.
Eventually, the campaign discovered exactly where this “change money” went. It was taken as profit by free school meal providers. And across the country it amounted to £65 million.
One group of schools was persuaded to do something about this scandal. The diocese of Hexham & Newcastle looked into the matter on behalf of all the Catholic schools under its jurisdiction.
One head teacher invested in some softwear costing £200 which tracked the days when school-meal payments weren’t claimed. And in that school alone an additional £11,000 a year was clawed back to be spent on food for free school meal children.
Use your imagination
Imagination is also important for this more professional approach to citizen campaigning. Another example quoted by Sara: Campaigners again wanted the real living wage to be introduced at Sunderland University.
Instead of another ordinary protest they chose the university’s Christmas board meeting. Protestors dressed in suitable festive clothing, music played, mince-pies were handed out and the press were invited to attend.
Board members couldn’t ignore or walk through the seasonal greetings without engaging in conversations. Eventually meetings were set up and Sunderland University became a signatory to the real living wage.
Sara Bryson believes her work – and all the campaigns she helps – are so important because “politics isn’t working.”
“People are angry and they are losing their faith and trust in our institutions,” she says. “There’s growing division, hatred and polarization.
“And that kind of hatred is able to get hold because people’s living standards are declining and they no longer believe that voting in elections is going to solve their problems. We believe that democracy itself is currently at risk.
“We need to say, we know you’re angry, but what you’re angry about is not immigration, it’s really about the lack of decent housing; it’s about the lack of access to decent wages.
“I think it’s more important than ever that people feel they can do something and they can change something.”
Let’s hope Andy Burnham feels that way too.
You can find Sara Bryson’s presentation to the Hexham Debate here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lk-CEdJN1w&authuser=0
And more about The Hexham Debates here: https://hexhamdebates.co.uk/
Plus Citizens UK here: https://www.citizensuk.org/
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