Stations

In the run up to the "Let us be heard/Together for the Final Say" march on 19 October 2019 we need to leaflet the commuter stations in London and the surrounding commuter belt. Here is a quick guide from David Keys, Secretary of Harrow and Hillingdon European Movement, along with a map showing stations in London and their annual footfall figures, prepared by Tim Lund, Chair of Lewisham West and Penge in Europe.

Station leafleting in Greater London and commutable areas.

Summary:

The approach

Door to door leafleting is considered far less effective than station leafleting. Groups need to identify the dozen or more tube/rail/overground/DLR stations within their territory and break them down into relevant targets for their constituency groups or teams. This can be done with the help of the OS election map, or the London pro-European network web-pages (https://sites.google.com/view/london-pro-european-network/home) and the footfall information provided by Transport for London etc (http://content.tfl.gov.uk/station-footfall-figures-2017.pdf).

Evening leafleting outside stations is recommended. The initial task is to work out which are the peak flow times (usually 6 to 7:30 in outer London, 5:30 to 7 in inner London, and 5 to 6:30 in West End, City, Canary Wharf).

Suggested method

At the borough level, leafleting coordinators should be identified. Coordinators should be provided with a list of the volunteers (and their contact details) in their area. Where possible, these volunteers should be telephoned – not emailed. If you don’t have telephone numbers for them, you should look them up in your local phone directory or through online directory enquiries. Failing that you should email them and ask for their telephone numbers. Telephoning is crucial – because it will yield much much better responses than just emailing people.

Coordinators should then put together a leafleting rota by systematically telephoning all the volunteers. Before starting the ring-round, they will need to draw up a rota chart with all the weekday dates between now and 19 October on it. During the ring round, they should ask volunteers which half dozen (or, if possible, more) stations they would be prepared to leaflet at. They should then be asked to consider doing at least one or two early evening leafleting sessions per week between now and 19 October – and to indicate to the coordinator, there and then on the telephone, which specific dates they would like to commit to. After a few hours of telephoning, the coordinator will begin to know how many leafleters he or she has for each evening session.

The leafleting coordinator can only then decide more effectively which stations should be leafleted on which evenings (different stations require different numbers of leafleters) – and how many leafleters should therefore be allocated to each station. Most stations will only require two (or ideally three) leafleters - but larger stations (with multiple entrances – or annual footfalls in excess of 5 million) may require 4-6 leafleters. Often it will be possible, with different leafleting teams, to cover several stations per evening – and it may even be possible to leaflet major stations twice before 20 October.

The coordinator should then ring the leafleters back to let them know which stations they should be doing on which dates. The telephone call can be followed up by an email, if possible giving the mobile telephone numbers of the volunteers he or she will be working with in those particular sessions. Coordinators must of course have already asked volunteers for their permission to share those mobile numbers with relevant other leafleters.

If you cannot get through to people by telephone/mobile, then of course you will have to rely solely on email for those individuals - but it is essential to ask them to confirm that they have received the email, or even better to also ask them to telephone you. The reality is that when people commit themselves to doing things in person or on a personal telephone conversation, they are much more likely to keep to it than if it is solely by email.

All leafleters should be briefed over the telephone (or indeed in person) so that they can interactively ask their coordinator questions. That cannot be done solely by email.

The entire leafleting operation has two key objectives:

Firstly, to tell people about the 20 October demonstration.

Secondly, to recruit additional leafleters/activists. Experience has shown that leafleting outside stations is the most effective way of recruiting new anti-Brexit volunteers. That is because the commuter demographic (for age and other reasons) tends to be particularly remain-oriented. So, any member of the public who shows support should be immediately asked whether they would like to help with the campaign. If they say yes, please make sure that they give their contact details (always in block capitals) on our official GDPR-compliant signup forms.

We would recommend that, if possible, the leafleting coordinator has the task of leafleting coordination etc as their sole/main responsibility. Because of the way tube and railway lines go in and out of parliamentary constituencies, the coordination of station leafleting operations should not normally be carried out on a constituency basis – but on a single or double borough basis (depending mainly on the geography of the local tube/rail network). Where volunteers live near to a tube/rail station (or where they commute on a particular line), they should normally be allocated to the half-dozen or dozen stations on that line. However if they live near or travel on two lines, then their choice of stations will be larger.

Tips for volunteers

• Never leaflet inside a station. Sometimes the land immediately outside the station may belong to the London Underground etc – so if you are asked to move, you should just apologise and move off their land.
• Make sure you are not blocking station entrances. It’s probably best to position yourselves 5-15 meters away from the entrance.
• Smile and greet, make eye contact.
• Say something like “say no to Brexit” - to make it unambiguously clear who you are and where you’re coming from. It is also a good idea to wear an anti-Brexit or pro-People’s-Vote lapel sticker or T-shirt. In this particular leafleting operation (promoting the 20 October demonstration), we are predominantly aiming our leaflets at remainers – because, to be honest, very very few leavers are going to want to participate in this particular event. The People’s Vote is supposed to be of equal interest to leavers and remainers, but in reality the march will be mainly attractive to and attended by remainers.
• Always have a couple of Biros with you – together with your volunteer sign-up sheets. If you’re leafleting colleague gets involved in recruiting somebody, help leaflet his/her ‘flow’ of commuters. That is why it is better to have three rather than just two leafleters outside an average station.

A fuller and more recent description of David Key's approach is here, along with a suggested email to volunteers.