Taking the Campaign for Cash to Labour Conference

We had a really interesting time over three days at the Labour conference, talking to everyone we could about our Campaign for Cash. We met people from all walks of life, and heard a variety of opinions and stories. We set up some meetings, gave out our new leaflets and spread the word.

We learnt a few things along the way:

• If you’re going to get a delivery of say 10,000 leaflets to your hotel room, perhaps 10 boxes of a thousand each, like Andy did, be aware that they might have quite a strong printy smell. In order to sleep, you might need to hoof all the boxes into your bathroom. (You might also try leaving some of them in the corridor, and get told this is unacceptable behaviour for a guest).
• If you’re going to be outside, for goodness sakes check the weather! Otherwise you might get just a touch wet. (Carla wasn’t prepared for a day-long downpour and had wet feet (and clothes) for 12 hours on day 1).

• Leaflets are heavy, you need many bags! And if it’s raining, you might need to ask a kindly cafe to look after some for you (a big thank you to Katey and the team at pocket cafe!)
• When you’re giving out leaflets, some people will ignore you and walk past, especially in the rain, and you’ll want to shout “don’t you know who I am?! Come back and take a leaflet!” But just when you think you’ve had enough of being refused and ignored, you’ll have a bunch of brilliant conversations, including one with a woman in a purple home-knitted jumper created by her best friend, and you’ll think “I could do this every day!”

Why did we go?

The aim of the trip was to meet with Labour politicians and members, to talk about the importance of businesses and services taking cash in the UK. Currently, many countries in Europe are passing legislation to protect cash acceptance, and we think we need legislation here too.

This is a very current issue- more and more businesses are announcing that they’re no longer accepting cash, leaving those who rely on it out in the cold. Tesco recently stopped taking cash in 40 of their local cafes, much to the horror and confusion of many customers.

Asda now has over 260 cashless petrol stations, and there are stories of businesses going cashless all around the country, from Gail’s bakeries to Sandwich Sandwich in all their branches, and even to fish and chip shops on the coast.

We also wanted to talk about the endless high street bank closures. Shockingly, over 6,000 bank branches have shut since 2015, which is over 50 a month on average. In June, Labour pledged to open 350 banking hubs in the next 5 years if it won the general election, so we wanted to impress upon people the importance of this happening. Now Labour are in government, they have real power, so we were keen to do some shmoozing!

“Are you giving me a twenty?”

Our brand new leaflets were created by the brilliant design studio Imagist. They’d come up with the idea of making them look like £20 notes, and used AI to create a design similar to that on our pound notes, which wouldn’t get us into trouble with copyright. They pulled out like a concertina, and had a strong message on the back, cash = freedom. We were really delighted with how they came out.

They were a great talking point – we joked we were offering people free money, and some asked if they’d be accepted as tender in the local pub. Carrying them around, we did get some funny looks though, as it did appear we were carting around bags of cash. We got into a taxi with about 6 bags between us, and the cab driver said “have you guys just robbed a bank?!” Ha! Andy was reminded of his days in the Royal Navy as he carted a huge heavy rucksack full of them, and we realised we wanted to give them out, almost as much to have a lighter load, as to get our message across.

People told us all sorts of different thoughts on cash. Some admitted to not using it hardly at all these days, but said they were going to try it again to see how it felt. Others said it drove them mad when their cash wasn’t taken. Some people said things like “cash is just used by tax dodgers!” But once we explained some of the arguments, the penny seemed to drop (excuse the pun). Between us we spoke to hundreds of people, and one argument that particularly resonated was the idea of a monopoly- that if cash is no longer an option, debit and credit card companies could charge us what they like to use cards. That really got people thinking.

Often people think it’s young people who don’t use cash, but we heard lots of stories from Gen Z who love using cash. One woman told us that she had a French au pair visit this summer who was in her early 20s. She said she came with euros to change and planned to only use cash on her trip, and was shocked that cash wasn’t accepted everywhere in the UK, as it is in France.

Yard sales, TikTok, cash deserts, and meeting politicians

We met a really interesting Labour youth officer in his early twenties called Aeden Rooney, who lives in Broxbourne. He told us us he lives in a “cash desert”, where it’s hard to get cash out. He explained that practically all of the bank branches have closed, and he can only get cash from a post office, which is open just two days a week. He is now working to set up a cash hub.

We also met a TikTok influencer called Yasmine Camilla. Yasmine has made videos as part of the viral trend #cashstuffing, where people put cash in envelopes for different spends to help budgeting. Her videos have clearly resonated with people, as they have often got 2-3 million views. Yasmine told us that she had got into debt in the past, and that budgeting with cash helped her get out of it. She also said she advises people to use cash even just for a while, to get used to thinking more about how much they’re spending, which can help reset their thinking.

We also met people who enjoy running yard sales where everyone pays cash, and there was a lot of discussions around the importance of children and teens using it, for independence, and practising their arithmetic too.

We were glad to engage with political figures including Newport West MP Ruth Jones, former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and even Ed Miliband, who took a leaflet and gave us a grin when we bumped into him in a tapas restaurant!

Carla was very excited to bump into Alistair Strathern, Labour MP for Hitchin. “Are you?” “I might be!” and GQ-famous style icon Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, who was standing for Labour in Clacton against Nigel Farage. (There wasn’t much time to talk about Cash, but it was fun to meet them and say hello).

Back to the topic at hand, a local taxi driver, Darren, enjoyed hearing about what we were up to, and told us that he much prefers it when his customers pay in cash. He said his card machine often doesn’t connect to the internet, and he’s had to drive round the block several times to get it to spring in to life. He also said that sometimes people would tap a card to pay at the end of a journey, but wouldn’t have enough money in their account, and he’d have to forgo the fair. He told us that with cash, you knew where you stood.

It was fantastic to get a chance to meet so many people, both who had travelled to conference, and who lived locally. A big thank you to Katey and everyone in Pocket cafe for storing our extra leaflets over the three days, and for always having delicious lunches on the menu! It was a home from home for us and we hope to come back!

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