Make Poverty History: Political Communication in Action

Nicolas Sireau’s study of the Make Poverty History campaign follows the campaign through its creation and then year of existence in 2005.

Sireau analyses a number of tensions in the campaign, in particular between those from a marketing and branding background versus those sceptical of such corporate processes and between those who took an insider or moderate approach to the campaign – seeking to win over political decision makers – and those who took a more radical or outsider line – more focused on wanting to change the system than to persuade those within it.

As a result, the book acts as a useful case study of many of the dilemmas faced by other campaigns, whether broad coalitions or driven by single organisations.

The book pre-dates the more recent controversies over the value of online petitions and email list building, where the balance between building up your data files and having a direct impact on the outside world is often controversial. (Getting people to sign an online petition can be a very effective way to gather email addresses, for example, but often the petition is a very weak tool for making decision makers change their mind.) Though the book therefore does not directly address this issue, it is not hard to extrapolate from the discussions in the book to their implications for this major current campaigning question.

The writing is a literary version of the Pompidou Centre, with all the structure and workings on public display. There are numerous sections detailing what he’s about to tell the reader, with other sections summarising what he’s just told the reader. It is an approach that is a little clunky and repetitive at times, but this is more than made up for by the consistent use of plain English. The book touches on many topics which after often discussed laced in obscure and unnecessary jargon and manages to do so without ever falling into that trap itself.

As the book is more of an academic tome than a popular publication, it comes with a price tag to match. The compensation is that it is contains many useful lessons in how to campaign successfully and lessons which can be fruitfully applied to Liberal Democrat campaigning – in particular the discussion about how to give people a belief that their actions really can help a campaign succeed.

You can buy Make Poverty History by Nicolas Sireau here.