If you are stopping shopping in, say, John Lewis because of their policies, or have decided Tesco isn’t for you because of their subscription to Stonewall, or maybe you felt that LNER didn’t need to apologise for saying “ladies and gentlemen”, write to their Chief Executive and tell them why.
Finding their contact details
You can start with social media. You are not likely to get a very positive response – social media teams are usually very much pro-trans rights – but you might elicit some comments that are useful for your letter. For example, the early responses of The Royal Academy were instrumental in making it clear that the team were acting in breach of the decision in Forstater in “cancelling” Jess De Wahls. This helped to get a positive outcome in the end. Newspapers are also likely to pick up the reactions on social media.
When you write, you can search companies here: Searching the Companies House register – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). That means you can write to all directors.
You can also generally find the names of the chief executives of most big companies on their websites. See, for instance, John Lewis Partnership – Meet our Team.
What are we trying to achieve?
Hopefully, you will help them to see that what they think of as “progressive” is actually eroding women’s rights and placing them at legal risk (e.g. claims from employees over discrimination) or commercial risk, either because people like you won’t spend with them or because they will look ridiculous in the press.
What to include:
Your name and address – unless you have solid reasons not to disclose it.
If possible, keep it short, one side of A4. Then, offer to follow up with more.
Set out clearly why you are writing. Include links to evidence. Useful things to include – look at “Why does it matter” in this guide and our guide to The Equality Act.
Explain why this is an important issue to you and what difference their response will make.
Explain clearly at the end of the letter what you want them to do.
There are some sample letters here.
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