With a surprise election just two months earlier, a Labour government had replaced 14 years of Conservative party rule. Now Labour was implementing its agenda and in just one month, they were gathering at their first annual party conference since forming the government.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) wanted to make sure the new Labour MPs remembered their commitment to a "New Deal for Working People". Yet they knew MPs would be overloaded with emails, phone calls, meeting requests even before their office had been setup.
The TUC thought about how to the attention of Labour party MP's and have conversations with them at the party conference about ensuring a New Deal for Working People. They thought being constituent voices directly to Labour MPs would encourage one-to-one conversations which could not only tell people's personal stories relating to why a new deal mattered, it would reinforce the importance of putting the new deal into law.
The TUC realised hand delivered postcards would put them in front of Labour MPs and furthermore that inviting the MPs collect their constituent postcard at the Labour party conference meant for many MPs that they would come prepared to talk.
The TUC first launched the PostBug action to members and invited them to share their story via a postcard and gave an example of what that might look like. All submissions were reviewed via the PostBug moderation tool, and the best stories were flagged for printing. One story was selected for each MP to receive. These were printed and bulk delivered to the TUC just days before the conference.
Some MPs didn't come and collect their postcard and some didn't have a suitable quality of message to be printed and sent. So the TUC continued with its campaign after the conference. It then selected a further 100 messages from constituents to 100 MPs who hadn't yet received a postcard and has those sent to MPs just two weeks after the party conference.
Read the TUC's update to members following the action.
However the value of this process was not just in the conversations with MPs and advocating for a new deal for working people, but also in understanding their members. For those who write great personal stories, the TUC is getting in touch and asking if they are willing to be local organisers or media contacts to keep telling local stores on why a new deal is needed.
Two-hundred and fifty Labour MPs had personality, compelling stories delivered to them. The fact that it was only one postcard per MP and they were screened for quality and alignment with the campaign call for a new deal probably meant that got more "mind share" than thousands of pre-written emails.
The full impact is still too early to tall as the action was just in late September 2024. Yet the first sign of impact is that an MP read out one of the postcards in parliament. As each MP received only one postcard, it got more attention then thousands of emails.
The Labour government introduced the new workers' rights laws a few weeks after the conference. The New Deal as currently being debated is the biggest upgrade to UK workers' rights in a generation.
However read the TUC's preliminary update to members on the action and what comes next.
UK Labour MPs receive their 'New Deal for Working People' postcards at the 2024 Labour Conference
