Getting the support of MPs from all parties will be an important part of the campaign for a Community Day.
We hope that individuals and groups who support the campaign will write to their MP and ask him or her to back the call.
If you don’t know who your MP is, you can find out from www.theyworkforyou.com.
If you represent a group or organisation that covers more than one constituency then you can write to all the MPs you cover, although it’s a good idea to explain this in your letter, as MP’s offices will take more notice of letters from their own constituency. (You might like to encourage members or officers of your group that live in the different constituencies you cover to write as well to ensure that an individual constituent writes to each MP.)
What to say
The most effective letters are those that are clearly personally written and are based in the life and community of the MP’s constituency. Round robin identical letters are nothing like as effective. And of course there are as many reasons for backing Community Day as there are communities.
But it is also useful to ensure that the letters that MPs receive make a broadly similar case so that they are left in no doubt that there is broad support for a new public holiday in October that:
- celebrates the contribution that voluntary and community activity makes;
- provides an opportunity for existing groups to publicise their activities; and
- gives people an opportunity to organise one-off events designed to improve their local community.
Letters should also ask MPs who support the campaign to follow up by signing the House of Commons Early Day Motion, writing to the Prime Minister and signing up at the Community Day website and saying what they would do on Community Day.
(Early Day Motions (EDMs) are a parliamentary device that allows MPs to publicly show their support for an issue. Any MP can table an EDM and any other MP can then add their signature. These are all made public in parliamentary documents and on the web at http://edmi.parliament.uk/edmi/. By convention government ministers and some opposition politicians do not sign EDMs – they are mainly seen as a vehicle for backbench MPs. But thjere is no harm in asking – and all MPs including ministers can express support for the campaign in a letter to the PM.)
You can write to MPs online at http://www.writetothem.com/ but many MPs will take more notice of letters posted to them. All MPs can be written to at House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.
Here are some points that you therefore might like to include in a letter:
- Briefly explain what your group does and remind the MP of any contact that you have had in the past.
- Say that you are writing to ask for their support for a new Community Day Bank Holiday that will celebrate the contribution that community and voluntary groups and activity make to the life of the country, allow groups to publicise their work and recruit new supporters and give people the opportunity to organise one-off events.
- That you think it would be a good idea to have the day as a Monday in late October as:
- this is in the middle of the longest gap between bank holidays,
- unlike some other proposals for bank holidays tied to particular dates, it would be less disruptive for business as it would always be a long weekend
- that it could coincide with school half-terms
- That we currently only have eight public holidays, three days less than the European average.
- And probably the most important section of all is giving some example of what you would use Community Day for, and how it would benefit your local community.
- Other arguments that have been used by supporters that you may want to include are:
- that community activity does not just benefit wider society but also those who join in.
- that community activity is a force for social cohesion.
- that Community Day would be a focus for what binds us together as a nation.
- Finish by asking the MP to express their support for the campaign:
- by signing EDM 1859, which has cross- party support. (the text of this is below)
- by writing to the Prime Minister to express their support
- and joining the ‘What you do on Community Day?’ campaign by signing up at www.communityday.org.uk and saying what they would do to make their communities better on a new bank holiday.
EDM 1859 COMMUNITY DAY BANK HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN
That this House welcomes the call by the Trades Union Congress, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Community Service Volunteers, Volunteering England and the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action for a new Community Day bank holiday to celebrate and encourage community action and involvement; agrees that community activity is good for the participants, wider society and the economy; notes that even with an extra bank holiday there would still be two fewer public holidays in the United Kingdom than the European Union average; and believes that the day would recognise the importance of the often unsung efforts of volunteers and community groups and the role they play in promoting the diversity and variety which is an important part of the values that bind the United Kingdom together.
