I noticed something I liked a lot today. A bunch of CWU members, the dodgyclaimers, made a pop video parody to promote the union’s dispute with Royal Mail, and stuck it on YouTube. To say it’s not very polished would be a bit of an understatement, but it more than gets the point across – real people telling their story in immediately human terms. It’s set to the tune of the Proclaimers’ 500 miles:

“And we all walk 500 miles,
but Royal Mail want 500 more.
We’re going to be the men that walk 1,000 miles,
then fall down at your door.”

A couple of hours (and most likely a couple of beers) of an evening, with a cheap digital camera, free editing software (Yes Mac fiends, you get it on Windows too…), free hosting on YouTube, and 16,032 people have seen it. That’s 16,032! Loads of favourites and a string of comments that show it managed to motivate strikers all over the country.

So they did another, “The Posties” – sung to the Monkees, and another, a skit on “Brick in the wall” with the genius chorus “We don’t need no Alan Leighton”.

And the remixers are at it too. This isn’t new on social media – For every OK Go routine, there are a squillion kids who’ll make tributes (I even saw the treadmill dance acted out with Lego), and this phenomenon has already happened to dodgyclaimers’ Floyd cover. It is new for unions though 😉

I’ve seen a few activist video skits from the US, but these are the first examples I’ve seen from the UK. Some unions are doing well investing in swishy video reporting (Amicus) or quality campaign ads (PCS) but this kind of grassw00ts activism has every bit as much power to get the message out fast and wide – the scattergun approach means it only takes on to be funny. Unions might find it scary to deal with loose cannon communications during sensitive disputes, but there’s a lot to be gained from going with the flow of this creative individual activism. I’m hoping this is only the tip of a very big, and very funny, iceberg.