I came across this while I was researching an article about Greenpeace earlier this week.

The Greenpeace website hosts a form and a programmed script to let any visitor to their site to mass-email all British Members of the European Parliament who disagree with the Greenpeace policy on a blanket-wide ban on incandescent lightbulbs.

To me this looks like a typical, rather crude, Greenpeace campaign - use chopsticks when you actually need tweezers. Have they thought about all the nuanced results of such a simple policy? What do you think?

Greenpeace Email all MEPs Campaign form

Greenpeace is hosting a form to send these mass emails here (local copy). The thumbnails down the right hand side link to screenshots of the different stages in the process. The process has several steps:

1. Fill in your name, email address and country.
2. Check text of email.
3. Click on link to confirm that you are who you say you are.
4. Send email.

Two hundred and thirty six thousand emails at the click of 3820 buttons

These are the MEPs who will each have received 3820 emails as a result of this form:

Mr. Philip Bushill-Matthews, Rebecca Sumner, Eoin Dubsky, Mr. Philip Charles Bradbourn, Mr. Graham H. Booth, Mr. Godfrey William Bloom, Mr. Christopher J.P. Beazley, Mr. Gerard Joseph Batten, Sir Robert Atkins, Mr. Richard James Ashworth, Mr James Allister, Mr. John Whittaker, Mr. Graham R. Watson, Mr. Geoffrey Van Orden, Mr. Gary Titley, Mr. Jeffrey William Titford, Mr. Charles Tannock, Mr. David Sumberg, Mr. Robert William Sturdy, Mrs Catherine Stihler, Mr. Struan Stevenson, Mr. Alyn Edward Smith, Mr. Peter William Skinner, Mr. John Purvis, Mr. Neil Parish, Mr. James Nicholson, Baroness Emma Nicholson, Mr. Bill Newton Dunn, Mr. Michael Nattrass, Mr. Ashley Mote, Mrs Eluned Morgan, Mr. Edward H.C. Mcmillan-Scott, Mrs Arlene Mccarthy, Mrs Linda Mcavan, Baroness Sarah Ludford, Mr. Roger Maurice Knapman, Mr. Timothy Kirkhope, Mrs Glenys Kinnock, Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk, Mr. Sajjad Haider Karim, Mr. Syed Salah Kamall, Mrs Caroline F. Jackson, Mr. Richard Howitt, Mrs Mary Honeyball, Mr. Roger Helmer, Mr. Christopher Heaton-Harris, Mr. Malcolm Harbour, Mr. Daniel J. Hannan, Mrs Neena Gill, Mr. Nigel Paul Farage, Mr. Jonathan Evans, Mr. James E.M. Elles, Mr. Andrew Nicholas Duff, Mr. Den Dover, Mr. Nirj Deva, Mr. Richard Corbett, Mr. Derek Roland Clark, Mr. Giles Bryan Chichester, Mr. Michael Cashman, Mr. Martin Callanan, Glenis Willmott, Mr. Brian Simpson

By my reckoning that is 62.

According to the Greenpeace web page, 3820 people have used the form so far:

Goal: 3820 people have sent the message below to UK MEPs. Help us get to 5000.

So that’ll be 236,840 useless email messages sent to the European Parliament so far, then. No wonder they need such a huge budget for equipment and expenses.

Bizarrely, Greenpeace go so far as to warn their emailers that their confirmation message could be regarded as SPAM:

We have sent you an email at mattwardman@gmail.com with a link you can click to confirm your email address.

Tip: If you have not received this email within the next few hours, please make sure to check your spam or unsolicited email folder.

I have no idea what the law actually says about sending mass emails to MPs or MEPs, but this is clearly well beyond the pale for ethical or responsible campaigning.

Also, I wonder what the Members of the European Parliament think about these techniques and the organisations that are using them.

Responsible Emailing to Elected Representatives

Having looked at Greenpeace’s tactics, let’s see what a more responsible organisation for encouraging feedback to Elected Representatives says. This is the policy of Write to Them. The basic process is to allow you to contact your own representative. Even if you wish to contact many representatives, you must do it one at a time. These are taken from the Frequently Asked Questions page. Sorry, this is longer than ideal, but I need to make the point.

How do I send a message?

To send your free message, just go to the home page of the site, type in your postcode and press the “Go” button. Up will pop details of all your elected representatives. Select the one you want, and you will be taken straight to a simple form in which you can start writing your message straight away. Don’t forget to fill in your name, address and email — we can’t send your message without these.

When you have finished writing your message, press the “Preview your message” button at the bottom of this page. Take a look to see if you have expressed yourself as well as you want to. If not, you can click on “edit this Message” to go back to the original form, and change your letter. Otherwise, click on the “Continue” button to start the process of sending your letter.

Before WriteToThem.com sends your message to your chosen representative, there has to be a simple fourth step. We send you an email, as a way of confirming that you are a real person. The message contains a link (a website address) which you must visit before we can send your message. If the email cannot be sent for whatever reason, your message will not be sent. If the email goes unanswered, your message will not be sent. For these reasons, make sure you type in your email address correctly on the form. The email we send you also contains a copy of your own letter for your future reference.

Why can’t I write to any representative I like?

Elected representatives have a duty to listen and respond to those who live in their areas of responsibility — but they can’t possibly cope with regular communication from the entire UK population. We try to strike a balance between getting people listened to, and filling their inboxes with problems which it is not their job to solve.

Why shouldn’t I copy and paste “form” letters?

We know your issue is important to you, but we’ve spoken to representatives — and if you are not a constituent, or you send a “copied and pasted” form letter, your message will go straight into the bin.

Still not convinced?

Here’s a quote from a Parliamentary researcher, whose job is to make the MP he/she works for as accessible as possible (such people are the hidden gems of our democracy):

“MPs rather naturally take a sudden influx of identical or similar messages with a large pinch of salt, since they know that what they are seeing is stuff from a minority of constituents who are either impassioned/neurotic about the topic concerned or who are easily gulled into agreeing with some plausible story and sending the message, since it takes minimum effort to do so.

“Given a daily mailbag of (say) 50 individual messages from individual constituents, on a wide range of topics, when the mailbag suddenly rises to 100 a day, 50 of which are much the same as each other, the representative has no way at all of knowing whether the message concerned is representative of opinion in the constituency.

“All he or she knows is that 50 constituents have been persuaded to mail them about ‘topic X’. Much more notice is taken of trends within the regular flow of messages from clearly identified constituents. If in a month 50 people write in different ways and through different routes with similar views on a subject, this is much more likely to raise the profile of the topic with the MP.”

Wrapping-Up

Perhaps someone at Greenpeace needs to do some Continuing Professional Development.

I just happened to come across this. I wonder what else are they doing?