I was captured gently last week. It happened when a hand-written letter arrived in the post. This is a curiously vintage phenomenon in itself, like fishing for coins in a telephone box.

The letter is from a young woman called Sarah Corbett whom I’d met at the Wigtown Book Festival the other week. It was one of those encounters that, while pleasant, gradually made you feel slightly uneasy as it proceeded.

This is when it became obvious that everyone else in the company knew who she was and assumed that I must have known too. Later, it becomes clear why. Ms Corbett is founder of the Craftivism Movement which champions something called “the art of gentle protest”.  

It’s become an international phenomenon, but quietly. Its values and the cultural changes it has wrought in the threshing-rooms of global capitalism have propelled her into Forbes’ list of 100 UK Leading Environmentalists. She has chivvied corporate U-turns from flinty executives by melting their resistance with hand-written letters and bespoke, hand-crafted keepsakes. Each one will be based on a known personal interest or cultural passion of its recipient.

I’d not previously known of Sarah Corbett’s existence because I’ve tended to stand well back from the contrived world of environmentalism and kindness. In my experience this usually means being gas-lit by cultural, middle-class frauds who, reinforced by a trust-fund, want to kick your head in while brandishing pictures of doves.

There’s nothing fraudulent about Ms Corbett, though. Ten minutes into our interview it becomes clear I’m in the presence of someone who gives environmentalism a good name. Worse: I’m feeling the urge to confess some sins. I’ve told her that lately I’ve come to regret some of the words I’ve chosen to criticise politicians. They’re human too and they have families who love them. One of them, a senior office-holder, had admonished me about this. Couldn’t I have made the point without sticking the boot in?

Ms Corbett challenges me to make a firm purpose of amendment in the form of notes to those whom I’ve disparaged. Like me, Ms Corbett’s political values are rooted in post-war Christian Socialism bequeathed to us by our fathers. Mine, a trade union activist; hers, a Vicar working in Liverpool’s working-class West Everton district.

Her letter to me comes with a gift of ethically made notepaper and two lilac envelopes. There’s doves. These, she urges me, should be sent to people who’ve been on the serrated end of my invective. I’m going to need a lot more than two, though. And I’ve never knowingly possessed anything lilac in my life. I’m experiencing what 14 members of the M&S Board of Directors did in 2015.

That was when ShareAction, a campaigning group trying to persuade the retail giant to pay its employees the Living Wage, solicited Ms Corbett’s help. ShareAction had read her book Craftivist Collective Handbook and asked her to deliver a campaign before the M&S AGM in five weeks’ time with the purpose of securing a face-to-face meeting with their CEO, who had stubbornly resisted such an audience.

(Image: Handout)

“Previously, I’d sent handkerchiefs with personally embroidered messages to my MP and this had helped us form a healthy and respectful relationship, and so I decided to build on that concept with M&S.

“We set ourselves the task of discovering everything we could about each individual board member: their CVs and what was publicly known about them. We wanted to tell them that it didn’t make business sense in terms of getting quality staff and retaining them. We told them they could be leaders in their sector and backed this up with statistics.

“At the same time though, we didn’t want to be saying they were bad people, only that morally and economically it made good sense. We wanted the CEO to know why paying the Real Living Wage to all their lovely, hard-working staff was a winner.”

She really needed to know though, what made this CEO tick and spoke to someone who knew him personally and who knew she was doing this for the right reasons. Thus, she discovered that the CEO had risen through the ranks from the shop floor and that this wasn’t an elite thing.

“We hand-delivered their handkerchiefs. One of the directors was a trustee of a classical music charity and so we stitched music notes into his hankie to make it as intimate as possible. Another director posted a picture of their handkerchief on the internal company archive. The Board Chair sought me out to tell me that this was the most powerful campaign they’d ever encountered because it was so respectful. It was a clear argument and it was realistic and achievable.”

A year later, M&S decided to pay thousands of its employees above the official Real Living Wage, though persuading them to become a fully accredited Living Wage employer has taken a little longer.

My own idea of activism has been inspired by the maxim of Vernon Johns, the great black civil rights leader: “If you see a good fight, get in it.” Being a Glaswegian, I’ve modified this slightly: pick a side and then get tore right in. Often, the state of some of your opponents acts as an accelerant.

Right now in Scotland there are quite a few of these battles: the fight to protect women and children from self-ID; the Middle East conflict; opposing anti-Christian hatred; highlighting extreme health and education inequality. It can drive you round the twist.

Ms Corbett though, suggests being a little gentler. “Gentle protest means being gentle with yourself and not adopting a Messiah complex or thinking you can save the world,” she says. “Be a piece of the solution; not the whole solution and be gentle to the decision-makers, by putting yourself in their shoes. Presume the best of them and work backwards from there. Why are they doing this? What are the barriers stopping them doing the right thing? Is it making money; saving money, legacy, reputation?”

As a child she had boycotted oranges in support of anti-apartheid in South Africa. She still has a picture from then published in the Liverpool Echo with a banner trying to save an old church from demolition with two bishops of Liverpool. She’s also quick to dismiss the accusation that gentle protest doesn’t preclude going on marches and making your voices heard. 

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“Campaigns can be lost because of in-fighting and egos,” she says. “Are we in this for the right reasons or is it about ego? All of my work is based on neuroscience. It’s why we give little gifts to the decision-makers. This always releases good natural chemicals. You’re not helping your activism by screaming and shouting at people; you’re just creating more polarisation. I understand the concerns of Just Stop Oil, but I worry about some of their tactics.

“Big change takes time. The Suffragettes were about 5% of the movement. The rest of them were suffragists approaching politicians. Previously, I hadn’t known about shareholder activism. We need to be much more nuanced and egoless by serving the cause and not merely fishing for likes on social media. We live in such a divided world where we feel we need to choose silos based on class, economic circumstances or cultural tribalism. Yet, there are so many issues where you could be standing with both someone who earns ten times more than you and another who’s on the breadline.

“People are more nervous about challenging their colleagues on something, especially in a world where we’re increasingly valued on the basis of social media responses and fame. The so-called woke debate seems to deter reasonableness and kindness, yet I think more people than we know want to be activists, but not in a spiteful way.”

And so, I resolve once more to adopt Vernon Johns’ old axiom, but maybe just dial down the aggravation. I can’t promise gentleness, but at least I’m talking about it.