I am part and parcel of the whole and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity.
Mohandas Gandhi
Writing letters to the papers is an important part of our campaigning, but it can be challenging! Perhaps we think that a letter to the local paper will be only a drop in the ocean, or that they won’t publish anything on the subject of nuclear disarmament because it’s too much of a hot potato.
It is well worth making use of the opportunities offered by local papers that are read by many people in our area. (Did you know that the Eastern Daily Press, for example, is meant to have the biggest daily readership of any regional paper in the country?) Every letter, however short, contributes to building up a climate of opinion in which nuclear disarmament is seen to be a vital subject of debate. We might think it’s not worth sending a letter unless it deals with all the points that are being raised in a campaign . True, it isn’t easy to compress complicated arguments into a letter of the length that newspapers will publish. They won’t usually put in anything more than two or three short paragraphs, and they reserve the right to edit letters that are sent in, so if yours is too long, you might finish by losing some of the points you think are important – don’t leave it to them to decide what is left out!. You can always say that you would like to write more but don’t have space, and then make sure if possible that someone else is writing to the same paper with some of the points you didn’t have room for. It’s often a good idea to plan a series of letters from different people, so that the argument builds up over several issues of the paper. In any case, it can be very effective to send a letter that concentrates on making one point and makes it forcefully.
It’s always best to write in language that is natural for you to express yourself and as a general rule, to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. Sometimes a oneliner can make a point, and news papers tend to like something with a humorous edge to it. Here’s a personal example: just before the attack on Iraq, I happened to pass a lorry on the A11 belonging to ‘George Bush and Sons’, Wholesale Butchers,* so I wrote a very brief letter to the Guardian, who (rather to my surprise) published it! So, do make use of the opportunities offered by the letter pages in the newspapers. Writing letters is an activity that small groups and even individuals can take on - it doesn’t demand a huge outlay of time and effort and it pays dividends in terms of building a campaign.
*yes, they really exist in North Walsham!
Jean Davis. Norwich CND.