Type ‘campaign’ into Google, and you’re flooded with a bewildering array of hits covering just about every aspect of human life. What is it, though, that makes some campaigns fizz and others fizzle? I don’t mean the projects that have incredible creativity at their heart – making one soap powder sell more than another – I’m talking about the type of campaign that builds into a firestorm of media, lobbying, communicating and legal action which changes something that really matters to someone: a law is passed or rescinded, or an attitude challenged and changed. These are the sorts of manoeuvres that crash into the everyday world of politics and defy predictions by achieving the remarkable against the odds. And is fusing the component parts of campaigning into a winning fireball an art or a science? That’s something I’m still thinking about, based on my own experience, but I have some views about what’s likely to work and likely to fail.

 Our Gurkha victory was viewed by many as one of the most successful public affairs projects of modern times. Here are a few things about it that aren’t widely known, but which give insight into the ‘art v science’ of campaigning.

Firstly, there was never a ‘formal’ meeting of the campaign. Then, there were no formally assigned roles, and we neither had a formal committee meeting nor was a minute taken or a strategy written. One of the most humorous meetings that Joanna Lumley – a very public face for our campaign – and I ever attended was with a very senior MoD official days before we achieved victory. We were ushered into an office the size of Camp Bastion and approached the huge mahogany desk at the far end. Over thin, rimmed spectacles, a pair of piercing eyes asked us in best mandarin speak, “Before we start, may I ask what your formal remit, structure and mandate is?” It was one of the few occasions during that long campaign upon which Joanna and I were lost for words. How could we tell him none of those existed, that the campaign that had out-manoeuvred and was now overwhelming them was made up essentially of me, Joanna and the fiery lawyers of Howe & Co?

There is a serious point to this. I’ve since experienced projects that have had a panoply of impressive strategic documents and complex committee and reporting structures, imposed by the client in response to the need to adhere to various policies. To be frank, they were the least-successful campaigns. Bureaucracy is the antithesis of effective campaigning. It saps the energy, reduces reaction speeds and often leads to prolonged consultations and compromises that blur messages.

That said, many organisations require a degree of control if the campaign is being carried out wholly in their name and within their brand, but there are alternative ways forward.

Our FairFuelUK campaign is widely credited with being the main reason the government has postponed or cancelled over 13p per litre’s worth of fuel duty. It’s funded by six major groups, all of which have slightly different priorities and are required to be exceptionally careful how they protect and manage their brands.  But FairFuelUK is light on bureaucracy and very fast-moving, particularly in the run-up to budgets and autumn statements. So how has this been achieved? Essentially, the flexibility and reactive nature of the project has been preserved by its having been set up as a separate entity. That way, there’s some distance between the brands and the main campaigning work that is done under the central FairFuelUK banner, a distance that allows it a much higher degree of autonomy than would be the case if it were under their direct control.

While I’m no fan of bureaucracy in project management, several components are required to make public affairs campaigns spark, and getting these things right is worth a thought. The main features of a campaign anatomy are the message – what are we trying to achieve, and why? – a means of engaging with the public, a media component, a political facet and, where appropriate, a legal element.

The message is vital. When I’m considering how to define the message, my colleagues and I try and put ourselves in the mind of someone who cares about the issue but doesn’t understand the full detail and context of it, because we know most of the people we need to motivate to get behind us are thinking that way. At the height of the Gurkha campaign, thousands of people across the country were angry and they reacted to our simple message that “if people are prepared to fight and die for us, they should have the right to live with us”. They were never involved in the complexities of the 1947 tripartite agreement between India, Nepal and Britain. If the message doesn’t resonate with a London cabbie or the person you’ve just passed on the street, the campaign will struggle.

We had a problem in this area with our campaign to help save the last 3,200 wild tigers on Earth. We launched with a message that this was a perilously low number, and that the tigers would only be saved if ‘like-minded’ people all across the world signed up to our call. The reaction was muted, and sign-ups were very slow. The campaign was like a smoldering bonfire that wouldn’t quite light, so we re-worked the message. So many campaigns represent highly emotive issues but seem not to gather momentum, and if you’re stuck with 5,000 signed-up supporters and a couple of thousand Twitter followers on an issue that makes people’s blood boil, there’s something wrong. Once we highlighted the suffering inflicted on wild tigers by China, and turned our request into “sign a petition to stop China killing wild tigers”, the sign-ups rocketed.

Many campaigns have a few hundred followers on Twitter, a reasonable Facebook presence and a couple of thousand people signed up for email updates. All these things are great starting points, but to be effective in a national campaign you need big numbers. I’ve made extensive use of specialist ‘mass engagement’ software on the FairFuelUK campaign, and it allows us to email thousands of supporters within minutes and helps our supporters compose emails and identify their MP. We can also, if required, vary the rate at which MPs receive emails. The systematic and strategic use of the internet is vital, but isn’t enough on its own. A campaign needs personality and to have a ‘feel’. This can be helped by the selective use of celebrity, as in the case of Joanna and the Gurkhas, and Quentin Willson and fuel duty. Joanna was only involved in nine of the 72 months of the Gurkha campaign, but her involvement electrified media interest. On one occasion, I issued a press release that might one day win an award for brevity – “Joanna Lumley will be on College Green at 4pm today talking about the Gurkha issue, and she is very angry”. That’s all it took to get the national media out in force – and some international journalists too.

But there’s ‘media’ and there’s ‘media’. Take, for example, the fuel duty issue.  Many haulage groups and motoring organisations had been fighting fuel duty rises and had considerable success in getting exposure in the various trade press, but for a national public affairs campaign, ‘media’ means the likes of The Sun, the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror. The issue has to be mainstream. I take the view that trade press is great as a form of “talking amongst ourselves”, but national media is where we generate pressure on the MPs.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given on how to communicate with our MPs came from one of their researchers. She told me about the volume of correspondence that they receive on a daily basis and how so much was never read. Her advice? Keep it short – and small. One side of A5 is likely to have more impact than 50 pages of art-worked gloss.

My other point is tone. I hope I’ve only ever got the tone of an email to MPs wrong once, born of frustration. We’d written three letters to them about fuel duty, and each had been laboriously mail-merged, printed and stuffed into envelopes. In the early days of this campaign, funding was eye-wateringly tight and to save money we’d arranged for the letters to be hand-delivered to Parliament. The response rate was very low. We then emailed every MP, expressing our “sadness and disappointment”, and this got a reaction. Some were furious at the implication that we were saying they’d failed in their duty to respond to an issue of obvious concern to their constituents. It transpired that some of the letters might not have been delivered due to a change in internal procedures that prohibited the handing-in of letters to every MP. The potential ill-feeling that was building up between the MPs and the campaign could have diverted attention away from the central issue, so what to do? Simply, we acknowledged at a meeting with the MPs this potential misunderstanding, and moved on.

Your campaign is more likely to succeed if you have more MPs with you than against you.

Any closer to deciding if campaigning is an art or a science?

Peter Carroll runs Peter Carroll Associates, specialising in issue-based campaigning for a wide variety of organisations

While most attention focuses on the players in Parliament, I’ll shed light on the life of those facing the daunting and, frankly, lonely task of a two year slog until May 2015.

***

First time sharing a platform with my sworn enemy, local Tory MP Chloe Smith (of the Paxman drubbing fame). She’s wriggled out of debating with me before, but this one’s for International Women’s Day with the local WI, therefore un-sisterly of her to cancel.

I say enemy, but I have respect for Smith. As a fellow young woman in politics, I feel a need to defend our right to exist. She gets plenty of people, not least the walruses in her own party, saying she’s unqualified. I don’t notice young male MPs dismissed like her.

Smith’s first answer on the controversial bedroom tax – “it’s a subsidy not a tax” – draws soft boos from the audience. Sisterly respect only extends so far.

***

Once in a while you learn something totally new. I was invited by a local resident to a screening  of a documentary called They Go To Die, at the University of East Anglia. Beautifully produced, the film is the work of a Yale epidemiologist intent on exposing the unnecessary suffering and death rates from TB among gold miners in South Africa. When they get sick, they’re sent home with none of the after-care they need – hence, they go to die.

I get home and in between ‘get keys cut for Party HQ’ and ‘leaflets for Starling Rd’ on my to-do list, I write, ‘SA miners campaign?’

***

One of the real joys of being a candidate is speaking at schools, so I was dead keen to accept Fakenham College’s Question Time invitation. Government plans to move from modular to all-out examinations are a source of huge worry to students at the moment. “No fear”, says Mr UKIP, “they did me no harm!” “But that was at least 60 years ago”, quips a cheeky lad from the front, which made the rest fall apart. Mr UKIP on gay marriage – “I don’t have a problem with it, but the gay gene means if they don’t marry women, their kind will die out in any case”. I’ve never seen someone on a panel drowned out by a whole room laughing as one.

***

‘Will anyone turn up?’, is one of the questions most asked by candidates. So it was with great relief when I saw an overflowing car park outside the venue for our youth unemployment local consultation. Disappointment lurked inside. Apparently the church next door had a wedding on.

Next stop was the bedroom tax protest outside the office of local Lib Dem MP Simon Wright. Why do people always shout ‘is it working?’ into the loud speaker? And insist on reading a ten-page speech? I don’t have much time for Bob Crow, but at least he knows how to rev up a crowd with icicles on their noses.

***

Weekends bring knocking on doors. Given the arctic conditions we’ve been campaigning in for the last few months, I’ve even developed respect for door-to-door salesmen. I pray for sun like a losing cricket team prays for rain to stop play, so it’s nice to be invited into someone’s home. I wait as the kind lady disappears into another room. “I’ll swap you,” she says, thrusting a Jehovah’s Witness leaflet at me. Outside I read it – “God is our Government”. As it starts to sleet, I reckon I’ll have better luck changing the coalition’s minds than the Lord’s.

On the 50th anniversary of the Beeching Report, I join union folk outside Norwich train station at 7am. After a couple of freezing hours talking to commuters about staff cuts, I board the train. Two gents opposite me ask what I’m writing, and I tell them. One of them opines: “Why can’t we be more like China or India where people who work hard and get to the top are respected? Put that in your diary!” Unless you are a woman of course, I say. The conversation trails off there.

Jessica Asato is the Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Norwich North

Judging by their emails and social media presence, it seems our political parties are struggling to work out just what they should be doing with digital.

 There are masses of evidence that digital, when done well, can have real electoral impact. In 2012, digital made a material difference between winning and losing in two big presidential elections: France and the US.

In the US, Obama supporters recruited online created 350,000 community events, made millions of phone calls, and raised $690m. Their sharing of videos, infographics and other digital content defined Romney as successfully as the campaign’s TV buys or earned media.

In France, on a scale more akin to our UK general elections, François Hollande employed more than 30 digital staff, and the grassroots network they built made over five million contacts in the final months of the campaign. When you consider that the winning margin was around 1.2m votes, you begin to see how important this online work is.

Though not every tactic of these campaigns is replicable in the UK, the underlying principles should be adopted by any savvy party. Here, as in the US, digital can be used to grow a community of people, inspiring them to volunteer, spread the message and donate. Anyone who says, ‘There is no small donor culture in the UK’ should never apply for a job at Oxfam or the Red Cross.

Tactics must be different. Some of the more enthusiastically toned social media would not resonate, and some of the more negative campaign videos would backfire. Our political parties must hire smart people and give them creative space to find what works in a UK context.

Digital campaigning here seems to have gone backwards since the 2010 general election: it’s underfunded and often run by the people who fix computers, not experienced campaigners. There are a few hardy souls in all the parties trying to push their campaigns to a decent standard, and among the smaller UK parties, the Democrat Unionist Party (DUP) and the Green Party stand out as the best. Their sites are pretty clean, modern enough and easy to navigate – all on presumably small budgets.

The Eastleigh by-election also brought out some good digital campaigning among the big three parties, including a great video from Labour that combined humour with some strong political messages. Of course, it helped to have an articulate, engaging broadcaster in front of a camera.

In the Westminster bubble, the Liberal Democrats got a bit of stick towards the start of the campaign when they sent a fundraising email from Paddy Ashdown, but it was the best email from them for a while, and likely raised some much-needed funds

The Conservatives released a number of banner ads on local press – so far so 2006 – but then tied the data they gleaned from the survey in each ad to their voter database, gaining useful voter ID and ideas of the issues the voter cared about.

Leadership, however, must come from the top, and a successful digital programme requires investment in two key ways:

First, people: the Obama digital staff of 150 is an outlier, but Hollande had 30 people full time for the last six months of his campaign. Parties won’t raise money or recruit people without seriously increasing the digital presence in their HQs.

Second, more influence: digital wasn’t just large in the Obama and Hollande campaigns; their teams and leadership were also listened to. The digital directors reported directly to the campaign managers and attended senior staff daily meetings. In all planning, digital was in from the first meeting, at the top table. No one was allowed to delay approval of content, because going slow cost money.

It took the Democrats ten years to get to OFA (Organising for Action) 2012 – continual investment and improvement underpinned their success last year. This electoral return takes political and financial investment over the long term in order to pay dividends at the polls, so plans need to be put in place now for 2015.

The focus of any digital programme must be on making sure supporters have a meaningful experience, and the three areas that make the difference are communication, organisation and fundraising. Parties should aim to build an online community of interested supporters, cultivate their interest into engagement using compelling online content, and provide layers of on- and offline campaign activity to guide them towards activism. This content should inform people and motivate them to get to work.

While a website will provide informative content for the general public, a party’s primary goal this far from a general election should be to build an army of activists who will take campaign and self-organised actions on your behalf into all our communities.

The heart of a successful new media strategy is the people you can engage – and the clock is always ticking on finding as many as possible and getting them working towards your cause.

Gregor Poynton is a political director at Blue State Digital

Ten years ago, with the party in government and taking decisions many disliked, party members were leaving in growing numbers. Many of the party faithful felt disillusioned, distant from policymaking and undervalued as volunteers.

Of course, in nearly every constituency, there remained a loyal core of members plugging away to make sure Labour put forward candidates in the unlikeliest of rural districts and the wealthiest of suburbs. As an aside, you could never imagine CLP (Constituency Labour Party) secretaries acting as Conservative constituency chairmen do, occasionally giving organised, destructive public voice to grievances against their leader. But the traditional model of engagement through formal structures does not appeal to all. Indeed, it can seem outdated.

The past decade has offered many new routes into political activism. Most campaigns now seek supporters, although no one expects that their £5 per month to Oxfam or Barnardo’s will give them a say in that organisation’s priorities. Adding your name to a petition and displaying a bumper sticker or avatar are how we show our values. Even 38 Degrees, novel in its multi-issue progressive platform, gives members a pick ‘n’ mix of actions to take and issues to care about.

Nowadays, the act of joining a party, where core values are shared but priorities may differ, is unfashionable, yet modern politics is moving from broadcast to engagement as a way to win elections. So Labour needs members who can build relationships within communities and hold conversations with voters, and do so within continually constrained budgets. But at the same time, membership brings with it expectations that those who pay their subs can have a say over party priorities.

So, Labour success depends, among other things, on whether Labour can inspire and motivate members as volunteers – and donors – and also engage them in a meaningful way in the direction of the party, while building a coherent programme for government. This dilemma exists for all social democratic parties in Europe, though it is of course different in the US, where no recipient of Obama emails or GOTV (get-out-the-vote) volunteer could have an expectation of policy influence, and where coalitions are rebuilt for each candidate and each election.

Labour has dallied with ‘supportership’ – and of course having a supporter offer themselves as a first rung of engagement remains important – but now, with the number of members higher than it has been for some years, it’s time to revitalise membership as something that goes beyond support.

Firstly, and most importantly, spreading and enabling volunteer activism and leadership are crucial to bouncing back from election defeat. The role of members at elections has been quietly growing, building on the 2010 volunteer leadership and activism that delivered mass voter contacts and stunning election holds in places like Oxford East, Hammersmith, and Barking and Edgbaston.

Secondly, membership needs to be meaningful in terms of policies and priorities too. With Your Britain, there may be some signs of a long-overdue return of member involvement to policy-making. And social media means that our MPs, councillors and Lords, as well as the NEC, are now far more accessible to members. The ease of communicating has encouraged a flourishing of ‘Friends’ groups and socialist societies – now increasingly consulted by shadow ministers. Yet it remains to be seen whether the voices of trade unionists and ordinary members will be heard in Labour’s programme for government.

Thirdly, relationships within the party are key to building lasting commitment – and member-to-member contact leads to friendship and increased activism. The first #tweekender, at the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, saw more than a thousand members helping over a weekend, with a social organised for Twitter friends to meet in person – and this is now a fixture at by-elections. And, for local parties seeking to reconnect with their electorate’s priorities, the advent of community organising methods in Labour politics has been re-energising.

For Labour, the ground war will win the next election. And effective mobilisation requires motivated members who know how they can contribute to the campaign, and feel ownership of the change Labour promises. Perhaps, therefore, for the first time in a long time, one might tentatively hope that the Labour membership is still relevant.

Antonia Bance is a Labour councillor in Oxford, and is also head of campaigns for a national charity

Even in the early days of coalition partnership, the spirit of cooperation never percolated down as far as the council chamber. At the grassroots, the yellow team and the blue team oppose each other as bitterly as ever and will compete ruthlessly for seats at the local elections.

In England, 27 county councils, eight unitary authorities and one unitary council in Wales will be up for grabs. All but one of the unitaries are Conservative-led, and it’s unlikely they’ll hang on to all of them.

Therefore, as the campaigns heat up ahead of polling day, the most interesting dividing lines won’t be drawn between parties, but between the national leaderships and local campaigners.

Halfway through this Parliament, activists and councillors of the coalition who pin their rosettes on every week and work hard on behalf of their parties feel let down by their MPs in Westminster.

Lots of them feel like they’ve been put in the electoral firing line by their own side, that the government is using them as a human shield to take the flak from brutal austerity budget cuts. There’s suspicion that the ‘localism agenda’ is being used for cover; as central government devolves responsibility for expensive local service provision to county halls, it’s slashing local authority funding, capping council tax rises but simultaneously making demands about money-saving measures.

Tensions between local politicians and government ministers have been clearly exposed over the issue. Many councils in England, several of them Conservative-led, have made the decision to reject government incentives to freeze council tax for another year and will raise it by just below the level that would trigger a local referendum. Communities secretary Eric Pickles has reacted with rage, branding these councils “democracy dodgers”. His name-calling must have stung colleagues who are doing their best in a tough economic climate.

On planning matters too, coalition councillors have made it clear that national policy is often not in line with local need, and that they will not allow local concerns to be trampled by party impetus. From the rebellions over HS2, to Richmond’s rejection of loosened planning rules for housing extensions, local Lib Dem and Conservative politicians are marching to their own policy tune.

But aside from the prosaic matters of finance and planning, there are more fundamental issues of party identity at stake. The row inside the Conservative party over gay marriage has shaken the faith of the activist base. Cameron’s determination to push through the policy has given the impression of a willingness to ignore the wishes of the party’s membership, at the expense of their support. On the doorsteps, traditional Conservative voters are alienated by the leadership’s stance on gay marriage and the party’s equivocation on another key issue: Europe.

Lib Dem activists, also, are struggling to define themselves positively. Out on the campaign trail they are still confronted with accusations of betrayal over tuition fees, and their acquiescence over benefit cuts has undoubtedly damaged their reputation with supporters on the left. While knocking on doors, campaigners often find themselves defending the party’s national record before getting the chance to put their own case. While canvassing in the recent Eastleigh by-election, I was frequently faced with the conflation of the Conservative/Lib Dems into one unpalatable entity.

So, with the local elections on 2 May just around the corner, how should local candidates manage their party’s national record to fight credible, coherent and persuasive local campaigns?

Should Cameron and Clegg be airbrushed from campaign literature and national policies sidelined? Should that Tory oak tree be pruned or the yellow bird of freedom have its wings clipped on Lib Dem leaflets?

Tom Morrison, a Lib Dem campaigner from Liverpool, says it wouldn’t be the first time local associations have tried to gloss over their relationship with the party of government. He recalls his Labour opposition dropping much of the party branding before the 2010 election. The campaign leaflet The Labour Rose became simply The Rose and Gordon Brown’s image was surreptitiously omitted from material.

Still, Morrison rejects any idea of removing Clegg or references to the national party from campaign literature. He acknowledges that the party’s cooperation with the Tories has been difficult, particularly in a Labour-facing area, and he confesses that 2011 was tough for campaigners. Nevertheless, he says, “Things have changed, and out on the doorsteps the Lib Dems have a strong economic message that’s hitting home with voters. That’s what’s important.”

Even though the Lib Dems have been taking criticism for their broken promises on tuition fees, he says they regularly use photos of Clegg visiting young people at college; the party is proud of raising the number of young people on apprenticeships to half a million a year, and knows it’s an issue that plays well with the electorate. The local party also pushes the line on raising the income tax threshold and implementing the pupil premium.

For the Lib Dems, owning these national wins is key. They can’t be shy about claiming credit for the implementation of some of their top manifesto pledges. Doing so will bolster their claim of fairness and demonstrate their coalition rationale. So far, they’re doing a good job of highlighting ownership of the income tax policy, but they’ll need to keep at it to ensure it continues to resonate with voters among the noise of an election campaign.

Conservatives should likewise work hard to promote their national successes. Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s efforts to tackle the benefits bill polls well with voters and should be embraced. Likewise, Michael Gove’s war on school standards should be celebrated and the extension of the academies programme promoted. 

Marie Jenkins, a Lib Dem councillor from Devon, acknowledges that some activists from both coalition parties try to draw a subtle, or not-so-subtle, distinction between the national and local party but she is certain that that’s not a successful tactic: “We live or die as a party by accepting the coalition and selling it the best we can. Ignoring it makes us weak and disingenuous.”

She makes an important point about honesty. There are things the coalition has done that many activists would prefer it hadn’t, but there’s no avoiding the fact that the parties are in partnership nationally and decisions emanating from Westminster can’t be deliberately disowned without anticipating accusations of hypocrisy.

Jenkins thinks that voters should be given the credit for understanding that there’s no Lib Dem/Conservative coalition at council level.

And this, of course, is the crux of the matter: All politics is local. Ultimately, voters in May are going to be choosing their council. Regardless of national concerns, candidates and campaigners should focus on what’s going on in their community and place an emphasis on promoting a personal record of action.

The really important issues are those that are touching people’s lives on a day-to-day basis and the problems that can be addressed by good, hardworking councillors. Social care, green spaces, roads, bin collections, parking; they really matter.

Voters like positive campaigns, they’re bored of Westminster bickering and want to know what candidates will do for them. In May, there will be no substitute for a well-thought-out local manifesto, intensive street-by-street campaigning and conscientious casework. 

Council candidates shouldn’t be obsessed by the dramas of Westminster and what Clegg and Cameron are up to in the run-up to May; they should remember why they’re doing what they’re doing, and sell their solutions to constituents’ problems.

Anna Brown is a former Lib Dem campaigner and is now a trainee journalist in Cornwall

Clichéed as it is to begin an article about political campaigning with a quote from The Prince, I could not find a better example to illustrate the main feature of a successful campaign.

Political strategies that draw on public and political support, and need both to succeed, are, in my opinion, the most trying and equally the ones that rely the most on a solid foundation.

When I was first involved in such a project – Hacked Off – we had very little time to establish ourselves before being forced to make crucial decisions. There was a huge and sudden weight of public opinion behind the matter we set out to defend, an inquiry into the culture and practices of the press, prompted by media coverage, namely the Milly Dowler revelations.

We quite rightly seized the opportunity to put political pressure on the leadership of the three main parties, and guarantee an independent, judge-led press ethics inquiry.

With hindsight, I make three observations: firstly, public outrage stirred by the media alone would have possibly prompted the announcement of an inquiry, but not necessarily the Leveson Inquiry as it happened – independent, with power to summon witnesses, led by a judge.

Secondly, we should have aimed for more detailed terms of reference in order to avoid losing focus, in spite of the scope we achieved in the end being exactly right.

Thirdly, politicians are sometimes expected to react swiftly to issues, handing the advantage to campaigners who have extraordinary public support for their cause. If campaigners play their cards right, politicians are left with no option but to accept they need to take action, and even seek steering from the very people who are pressurising them. That was how the Leveson Inquiry came to fruition.

How do you lay the foundations of an offensive that, for many, should have become extinct the minute the Leveson Inquiry was announced?

Good political strategy always takes the ever-changing nature of political will into consideration. The announcement of the Leveson Inquiry was by no means the end of Hacked Off. It signaled the start of a second phase, and one that absolutely needed solid ground as a starting point.

Foresight was key for us – would the inquiry run smoothly, have the publicity it deserved, and the impact and influence we all expected?

That would depend on our efforts as far as we were concerned. We gradually started laying our groundwork – we built public support by engaging in covering the Inquiry, keeping social media lively, writing commentary, debating and seeking publicity with the help of famous victims of phone hacking and press intrusion. We also continually extended our pool of stakeholders, and increased our presence in Parliament.

There was a balance to be struck between public and Parliamentary support. There was much debate as to whether this was or would ever become a doorstep issue, one that would immediately prompt a number of MPs to take action or commit to the cause.

The clear answer was that it would not, mainly because the inquiry was due to end in September 2012 and report by the end of the year, many miles away from a general election.

Our obvious task was to persuade as many MPs from different parties as we could – but crucially the Conservative party – to take a stand. There was no question which way the public opinion was likely to continue to go once Lord Justice Leveson published his report, and our job was to communicate that to as many members of Parliament as possible.

In practical terms, every campaign needs a clear message. While I was still helping steer Hacked Off, our message was obvious: to strike a balance between the rights of individuals to privacy, not to be the objects of deliberately false, misleading or defamatory stories, and the rights of and need for journalists. Especially the right of those who exercise their duties of speaking truth to power with the highest ethical standards to pursue stories and obtain and publish information that should be made public.

By then, we could only hope that the findings of the Leveson Inquiry would agree with our message and objectives, something that seriously hindered our ability to secure commitment from politicians. It is obvious one cannot commit to hypothetical scenarios, and unfortunately that was all we had to offer at the time.

However, the hard work we put into taking the issue to party conferences in 2011 and 2012, repeatedly holding events in Parliament, monitoring the inquiry and maintaining contact with party leaders’ offices and several MPs was vital to eventually securing the support of many of them once Leveson’s report was published.

Campaigners should never underestimate the value of maintaining contact and fostering good relationships, even if the results are not immediate. That is as true of relationships with parliamentarians as with the media. During my time at Hacked Off, I have always strived to keep an open channel of communication with journalists from all newspapers and broadcasters. I never had it in mind that ours was an anti-press campaign, not least because I am a journalist myself, but also because that would be an extremely foolish approach to the issue. While I was at Hacked Off, it was in the interests of a handful of journalists opposing the campaign to portray it like that, but their claims were by no means true.

In October last year, I decided to leave Hacked Off to focus on a new operation, Justice Across Borders. This is campaigning to stop the UK government from opting out of crucial EU police and judicial co-operation measures, including the European Arrest Warrant. My thinking, and that of those involved, is you can always raise issues with politicians, the media and even the public, but those issues will always be better understood if they have a human side to them.

Without giving away too much of our strategy for the coming months, I can say that we are definitely laying solid foundations to support our efforts in this new venture. We will be campaigning on behalf of British citizens who were victims of crime abroad, with their input and active participation, to ensure the safety of British citizens in the UK and other EU member states. This is to ensure that the much-needed reform is achieved for the protection of British and all European citizens.

One thing campaigners should bear in mind is that there is always a balance to be struck between what you are trying to achieve and what you are up against.

In politics as in life, it is only by mastering the art of the possible that you can succeed. Know when to push and when to ease off, when to shout and when to whisper, whose hand you should shake and whose arm you should twist.

Good campaigns fight as hard as they can to win on behalf of those they represent. To do so they need three qualities: strong convictions, a clear message and the pragmatism to make it possible.

Thais Portilho-Shrimpton is director of Justice Across Borders and a former Hacked Off campaigner

Can you afford your home? If you want to buy your own home, can you afford the average deposit of £50,000? Are you confident about where your children will live or where your parents will settle as they get older?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to all these questions, you’re very lucky. For millions of people, the answer is a deeply troubling ‘no’. And it’s getting worse. There are 62 million people in the UK and that number continues to rise. Around 232,000 new households were created last year, but we only built 117,000 new homes. 

This creates havoc. The short supply of houses increases demand, pushing up the cost to buy and rent them. The impact of this mismatch is that it is desperately difficult for people trying to make ends meet and support their children. It undermines confidence and diminishes personal aspiration. When people can’t afford the homes they need, it stops them from moving for work, it prevents young couples starting families, and ambition is halted in its tracks.

It’s economically disastrous for the country, too. One of the biggest constraints on growth is when businesses can’t expand because there are no homes for the people they want to employ. Failure to build new homes puts construction workers on the dole and means that far fewer people are spending money on paint and wallpaper, carpets and curtains, on creating homes for themselves.

To make a bad situation worse, people are saying no to the much-needed new homes in their community. A small handful of people, who have the time and energy to participate in the planning system, object to the new homes that are a lifeline to many communities. 

The prime minster has acknowledged the impact that saying no to new homes has on the economy. He recently wrote in the Daily Mail that when it comes to building new homes: “A familiar cry goes up, ‘Yes, we want more housing; but no to every development – and not in my back yard’. The nations we’re competing against don’t stand for this kind of paralysis and neither must we.”

This vocal opposition is organised and when they are the only people putting pressure on local politicians, their views are heard loud and clear.  

All too often, people in desperate need of new places to live are missing from local debates about more homes. That’s why the National Housing Federation has launched the ‘Yes to Homes’ campaign, to include the voices of people who do support more housing in the debate.

We have a massive housing shortage after decades of not building enough homes to keep up with our growing and changing population. The solution is simply that we need to build more homes. We need more of the right homes, in the right places, at the right prices. 

There are a number of barriers to creating new homes in local areas. We want to help people find out about these barriers and to put pressure on local decision-makers, mainly councillors, to remove them. 

Across England there is a variety of different housing markets, each with its own problems. We want local people to understand that it is the role of local decision-makers to remove the barriers to building more homes. 

We want local politicians to come out in favour of new homes by becoming champions for ‘Yes to Homes’. In some parts of the country there is no political space for politicians to champion new residences. Some would say that visibly championing new homes will lose them votes. 

But we want a voice for all the people who feel they will never own their own home, who are struggling with the day-to-day costs of rising rents, of costs of living increasing faster than income, whose commutes are too expensive and long, who have no safety net and can’t save money, who are grown up and still living with their parents, who feel that their lives are on hold, or those affected by welfare reform. These are the voices which are not being heard in the housing debate. 

We need to change the debate on housing in communities. We need to be better at explaining the impact that new homes have. In many villages a handful of new affordable homes would enable young couples to be able to have a home in the place where they grew up. A poll commissioned by the Federation showed that seven in 10 people living in rural England say they would support more affordable homes for local people in their own village or market town, with only 21 per cent opposed. Almost half (44 per cent) say they would strongly support new affordable homes.

The government’s planning minister Nick Boles recently tried to set the record straight on house building: “We’re going to protect the greenbelt, but if people want to have housing for their kids, they have to accept we need to build more on some open land. In the UK and England at the moment we’ve got about nine per cent of land developed. All we need to do is build on another two to three per cent of land and we’ll have solved a housing problem.” Boles also stated that having a house with a garden was a “basic moral right, like healthcare and education”. The minister argued that “there’s a right to a home with a little bit of ground around it to bring your family up in”. 

There is now an opportunity for local communities to have their voices heard on new homes. The localism agenda has given power back to communities. These communities have the freedom to get together and develop more specific neighbourhood plans for their areas. They also have powers to trigger a community right to build. And the ‘Yes to Homes’ campaign will continue to make the case for more housing.

John Pierce is a campaigns officer at the National Housing Federation, which represents 1,200 housing associations in England

Membership of a political party is not exactly fashionable these days. In the 1950s, the three main parties are estimated to have had over four million card carrying members between them. By the time of the last general election, this figure had fallen to just over 400,000.

When I was a constituency agent 30 years ago, I was always told that a high and active membership was an essential ingredient for political success. I devoted much time to cajoling people previously identified as supporters into becoming active helpers and members.

With a general election approaching – in a seat deemed unwinnable by the national party – it was helpers that I needed most. Mailshots, door knocking and telephoning, all rarely used in those days, increased the number of active helpers from fewer than a hundred to over six hundred within a year.

The number of helpers enabled the campaign to achieve the biggest swing in England – 14 per cent against the Conservatives at the height of Mrs Thatcher’s post-Falklands popularity, and from third place. This convinced me that the kind of community-based campaign techniques I was promoting for the Liberal Party required very high levels of volunteer commitment.

Recruiting members was not easy. People feared that membership would entail boring committee meetings and responsibilities that they did not want. I was happy enough if they would deliver a regular round of leaflets, or, better still, knock on doors.

The problem for the parties, however, was that the fundraising assumptions were always based on having a lot of members to target for financial appeals. Even before the SDP led the way with a fully computerised national membership database, parties sought to turn members into donors and those making modest contributions into those who make larger ones.  

The pressure to deliver more leaflets often meant that voter identification through doorstep canvassing went into significant decline – and with it the follow-up doorstep approaches that I had used in the past to recruit members and helpers.  

The Conservative Party, with a much older membership, appeared to abandon doorstep canvassing altogether in many areas. I heard after-dinner speakers suggest that a cold winter would reduce their membership even more considerably.  

Mailshots, the telephone and the internet were supposed to be the new methods for recruiting and sustaining membership, but new technologies have not bucked the long-term trends in declining membership of political parties.  

Labour managed to increase its membership levels significantly in the run-up to 1997, but in common with all governing parties, its membership levels plummeted in government. It seems people join parties as a protest against a sitting government, but often see their membership as a one-off contribution to defeating that government, rather than a long-term commitment to supporting that particular party in government.

When I speak to young people, I can talk about political heroes like Steve Biko who was murdered at the age of 27 because of his campaigning through the Black Consciousness Movement to end apartheid. Or I can point out that Martin Luther King was only 25 when he led the march on Washington and spoke of his dream.

But it is easy to see how newspaper condemnation of politicians and politicians’ condemnation of each other has created a climate in which young people are not as attracted to join the major political parties as they once were. It is not that they are less political, but organisations such as the environmental campaign groups offer a much easier way of feeling that you are trying to change things, even if, in reality, you change far less than a well-motivated political party can.

I always tell student groups that the best way they can make a difference and achieve some of what they want for the world may be through a political party. Party membership levels have also declined in recent decades in most European countries, but as a proportion of the electorate, it is only lower in Poland and Latvia than it is in Great Britain. Perhaps we British politicians – as well as elements of our media – have only ourselves to blame for the decline in the numbers of people willing to be fully paid-up members of a political party while membership of many other non-party political organisations thrive.

Chris Rennard worked for the Liberal Party and Lib Dems for 27 years, was director of campaigns and elections 1989–2003 and chief executive 2003–2009

We all know people think politicians are out of touch with the public. Nothing has exemplified this more than the expenses scandal in 2009, which has recently reared its head once again. We have seen all manner of claims on the public purse, from moats around large country homes to porn movies and soundproofed bedrooms being put on the tab. Who said MPs don’t know how to have fun?

The fact of the matter is, had these MPs been fully engaged with their local communities, they’d have realised their residents would not have seen it as a moral way to behave, despite it being for the most part legal. Left-wing politicians often use this exact argument on issues such as tax avoidance, but those of us who use a moral argument will only have legitimacy if we engage with the public and bring them with us.

There’s been a growing level of disengagement with politics since the de-industrialisation of the workplace and the breakdown of traditional community units, including churches and political parties themselves. The Labour Party’s new-found enthusiasm for community organising is nothing new – after all, it was created through community organising by trade unions and socialist societies. We simply need to rediscover and modernise that.

Across the constituency I hope one day to represent, Norwich North, there are entire communities which used to be intrinsically linked to industrialised workplaces. Houses were specifically built for people to work in the shoe-making industry, which at its peak was producing eight million pairs of shoes per year. Now we have just one shoe factory, while the majority of people work in service-based industries. Previously the sense of community was not simply geographic; it was also linked to work.

Gone are the days of 2,000-strong workforces. Now many people work in businesses with fewer than 20 members of staff. This has left a gap in our political campaigning memory, as many Labour MPs came from a trade union background with a strong history of workplace and community organisation.

Political parties must now find inventive ways to engage with people on issues they care about. As a parliamentary candidate, I have only limited traction when I talk about national issues. I’m untried and untested in the eyes of the public, which tends to look towards senior party figures and the media for direction.

Where candidates can make a difference, however, is when we work with communities on issues they encounter every day at a local level. From the pothole down their road puncturing their tyre, to the streetlights which have been turned off at night – we need to forget Westminster and embrace local politics.

Take the woman I heard from last week: she said she’d been subjected to a campaign of people hurling eggs at her house. I expect she wouldn’t care whether Chloe Smith was hung out to dry on Newsnight by George Osborne and the posh boys in Westminster. She likely has little interest in the political intrigue and gossip from Downing Street. She simply wanted the people who egged her home to be brought to justice.

The modern concept of local mobilisation came to prominence with the election of Barack Obama, who in turn was influenced by the ideas of Saul Alinsky, a community activist in Chicago. Alinsky had no elected authority, but drew his authority and position to bargain with organisations from the faith and support the community had invested in him.

During his time, he encouraged tenants of slum landlords to picket their landlord’s house while carrying out a rent strike. When rubbish collection services were failing people in Chicago he dumped the uncollected waste on the doorstep of a local councillor who was defending the service. To protest against unfair foreclosures of homes, he organised groups of people to attend shareholder meetings to raise their concerns and effectively closed down banks with queues of investors exchanging 10,000 pennies for $100 notes and vice versa.

Now, I’m not saying that political activists should engage in all of the methods he used, particularly those which are illegal, but there are organisations today, such as Citizens UK, which use similar tactics. They have spent years building relations with church groups, trade unions and local community organisations. This has enabled them to gain real community support for a range of campaigns. The most notable is the Living Wage campaign, which marshalled low-paid workers to make their case directly to their employers through their own structures. For example, in 2003, night cleaner Abdul Durrant confronted HSBC’s chairman Sir John Bond at the bank’s annual meeting and asked whether the bank would be willing to pay a living wage. HSBC eventually caved in, as did many other companies in the glittering towers of Canary Wharf. By employing Alinsky’s tactic of purchasing one share in a company and using the AGM as a platform to disrupt the meeting with a personal story, Citizens UK has convinced more than 100 businesses, including KPMG and Aviva, to register as Living Wage employers.

This model is being championed by Ed Miliband and his US adviser Arnie Graf, who was also a mentor to Obama. Parliamentary candidates like myself are being asked to set aside our previous focus on simply identifying voters and to reconnect with them instead with inspiring grassroots campaigns. 

In Norwich North, many are still very disappointed by the treatment of their former Labour MP Ian Gibson, who resigned in protest, sparking a by-election in 2009. The only way to re-engage with people is to open a dialogue and prove to them that I can get things done in the here and now.

In Norwich, we’re championing a number of ways to engage with the community and build these links. The first stage has been to hold public meetings with local councillors and police officers. As ever, you find a wide range of personalities at events like these, and the key is to identify those who are already active in their community and work with them to deliver real change.

In these meetings, many issues are raised, from drug dealing in the parks to parking shortages on our Victorian terraced streets. But more bizarre issues also come up. During one meeting, an elderly gentleman complained about a neighbour who often had vocal sex sessions. I am just relieved that this particular issue was picked up by one of our Labour councillors rather than myself.

In the main, public meetings are a great way to determine issues that the majority of people care about. Once held, we can use the information we gather as a springboard to apply pressure on local authorities and organisations to achieve the change we wish to see. 

For example, in a recent public meeting, residents identified the danger, particularly to disabled people, of cyclists illegally riding on pavements. Local councillors and activists decided to campaign for several months with local residents and shop owners, asking people not to ride their bikes on the pavement. We combined it with press opportunities and asked the police to agree to attend and issue fines to people still cycling on the pavement. We’re now monitoring whether this has had an impact and meanwhile are campaigning for a two-way cycle contra-flow so that cyclists can cycle legally and safely. 

It may seem a small issue, but constituents felt very strongly about it, and we are able to show that we’ve taken action. Politics is about listening to people, demonstrating real change and keeping your promises. It’s also, as Miliband has said, about under-promising and over-delivering.

Another campaign which has been effective in Norwich South has been the introduction of a community discount card for local shops. Labour activists identified from their conversations on the doorstep that many residents were proud of their local independent shops, but worried that the big supermarkets were continuing to take over their shopping districts. By speaking with shop owners, Labour was able to convince them to offer a discount on the production of a Labour community discount card. After distributing thousands to local residents, shop owners have anecdotally said they have seen an increase in custom. Not only does this remind residents that they have to use local shops or they might lose them, it has also had a beneficial impact on the local economy in these difficult times for independent traders. 

I believe the only way to win the support of disillusioned voters is to show you’re willing to engage with them on issues they’re concerned about. Clearly we also need to work to win the levers of power if we are to be able to put our values into practice across the country. While candidates like me are in opposition, it’s important to remember that we can achieve the change we wish to see by inspiring the community and helping to build that better society today.

Jess Asato is Labour’s candidate for Norwich North and vice chair of the Fabian Society

Every political campaigner knows the most important rule of leaflet delivery – push the leaflet all the way through the letterbox. Never leave it hanging out, at risk of being stolen by rivals. This can be a dangerous business; fingers poking through a letterbox can be snapped at by waiting dogs. The Lib Dems were even selling special contraptions at their conference to help activists deliver leaflets with their digits safely intact. 

Swiping campaign leaflets is part and parcel of the typical ground war, but campaign rivalries can become more serious. During the last general election, Zac Goldsmith MP claimed that his team uncovered an attempt by a local Lib Dem to infiltrate his campaign. The activist had apparently volunteered, under a false name, to join Goldsmith’s team, but when local Conservative councillors recognised him he was exposed. Goldsmith slammed these “grubby and underhand tricks” and argued that campaigns should “be fought on the issues that matter”. He won by 4,000 votes. 

Such sabotage and spying doesn’t appear to be widespread, though. Alex Davies, a Lib Dem campaigner in Streatham, says that at the last election, “We didn’t have the time or resources to consider elaborate spying operations on our opponents.” He does, however, admit to keeping a close on eye on his rivals: “Walking along local streets, political campaigners naturally view anyone they notice delivering leaflets or holding a clipboard with a degree of suspicion. Most of the time those we saw turned out to be distributing junk mail for pizza delivery firms, or trying to persuade voters of all political persuasions to switch energy companies.”  

Once a campaign kicks off, the key lines of attack between the parties tend to be clear. And many activists will be living in the area, so will be receiving their opponents’ literature anyway. “We kept an eye on the volume of their stuff coming through the door, but the content of their leaflets wasn’t that interesting or surprising”, says Davies. 

The dividing lines between the parties are never a big secret, but the resources and energy directed towards particular campaigns are more revealing. A rival party can learn more about its opponents from looking at which seats the party leaders visit rather than trying to spy on the local campaign team. If a leader is visiting a held seat several times, the party is worried. When new territory is on the leader’s schedule, the party is hopeful of breaking new ground.   

Political campaigns, particularly during a general election, tend to be tightly controlled from the centre, so local campaigners will often be unaware of the details of the campaign strategy. Campaigners walking into an opponent’s constituency office are unlikely to find much of interest; no matter the colour of the door, campaign offices are remarkably similar inside – bundles of leaflets everywhere, junk food boxes overflowing from the bins and joke leaflets – mocked up with the messages they would like to say about their opponents but can’t – on the walls. All that they have of value is canvassing data.  

Years of footwork will have been put into collecting the voting intentions of the local electorate, and campaign teams need to be aware of who has access to it. But as campaign teams grow, the idea of vetting individual activists isn’t realistic. “In terms of staff, we are always careful, but in the run-up to the election itself, when we relied on vast numbers of volunteers, that becomes more difficult and trust plays a bigger role”, says Goldsmith. In any case, activists attempting to infiltrate another campaign are more likely to be handed a bunch of leaflets and told to get delivering than be given any top-secret information.   

Target seats are also more reliant on the central phone banks or mass emails run by headquarters. At the last election, Labour enjoyed the support of Unite’s “virtual phone back” – 1,000 activists were apparently using it regularly. This sort of activity is under the radar and difficult for other parties to detect, but even then, parties should be more concerned about their own campaigns than what their rivals might be doing.

Disciplined, confident and focused campaigns succeed. Campaigners who spend too much time watching their opponents would benefit more from knocking on doors and talking to voters. And if any attempts to sabotage or infiltrate campaigns become public, the guilty party could find itself dying another day...

Sam Cannicott is a former press and policy adviser to the Liberal Democrats