Patti Whaley, Council member of the Food Ethics Council, shares her personal reflections on the ethics of pressure tactics.
In November of 2024, I led an online discussion about the ethics of “pressure tactics” as a means to achieving a political end. This came up because of me questioning my own different reactions to the differing sentences handed out in 2024 to protestors in different parts of the political spectrum, and whether my reactions were purely dictated by whether I agreed with their aims, or could also be a reflection on their methods. What I wanted to ask was: can we create an ethical critique of pressure tactics in (formal or informal) campaigns? That is, aside from the question of whether my aims and purposes are ethical, or my methods are effective, is it possible to say that certain methods of pressuring people are ethical and fair or not ethical and fair — can I critique the methods separately from the message? Or is pressure just a neutral tool whose ethical nature relies entirely on the ends to which it is put?
Is it possible to say that certain methods of pressuring people are ethical & fair? This doesn’t seem to be a question that is asked very often
This doesn’t seem to be a question that is asked very often. People usually ask: do I agree with the aim? And: is the technique effective? There is a body of writing in the field of civil disobedience, and a few papers from the business ethics community, but very little that I could find elsewhere on the ethics of pressure itself.
Let’s first map out what we’re talking about.
Who applies pressure techniques? There are two main groups: Direct stakeholders or constituency groups, and indirect stakeholders – usually civil society groups. Constituency groups represent their members – e.g. unions, tenancy associations, etc. They represent their own interests, although they may be responsive to the interests of other stakeholders. They usually have close/contractual links to the parties they are trying to influence, but they may also try to influence public opinion.
Civil society groups promote general causes based on a set of shared beliefs or principles such as human rights, environmental protection, or prevention of cruelty to animals. They may defend the interests of civil society generally, local communities, specific groups or even the unborn. They might pressure governments or companies to live up to professed standards, pay attention to longer term impacts, listen to those with less power. They need to build broader social support, research and publicise their issue to win support, raise money, etc. There are many subgroups here: charities, religious groups, and informal social movements. They may be large, highly organised groups, or ad hoc responses to an event or a crisis, and one may morph into another. Online groups can be very amorphous. The people they are trying to influence can be governments, other policy makers, corporations, or employers, but “public opinion” is usually at least an indirect or secondary target. They may have hopes of imminent change, but they may simply be trying to influence the “Overton Window”, i.e. the range of solutions that it is publicly acceptable to discuss.
And what do I mean by “pressure techniques”? Pressure is what you use when the simple force of argument doesn’t win the day, and the established paths of effecting change are not working. If you’re marshalling evidence and reason to demonstrate that your position is correct — publishing research, writing to your MP, or generally engaging in the “marketplace of ideas”, I don’t consider this on its own to be pressure. Taking people to court to compel them to comply with existing law would not be considered pressure unless legal threats are used in a bullying or silencing way. Voting is also an attempt to work within the existing avenues of power, whether that is voting in a national election, or buying stock in a company in order to pass shareholder resolutions at an AGM. Humor can be used in effective ways to illustrate a point without necessarily pressuring people; for example, when campaigners advocating for better paternity leave publicised their cause by putting baby dolls in baby slings on public statues of prominent men. These are all, in my view, working within established “fair” mechanisms to bring about fair outcomes. But the strength of argument rarely suffices on its own, so then we resort to pressure of different kinds:
Force of numbers: petitions, mass letter-writing campaigns, opinion polls, and other ways of demonstrating how many people agree with me. Of course, the fact that lots of people agree with me is no proof that I am right; it might prove that you’d be wise to listen, if you’re a politician, but it’s not an argument per se. Mass demonstrations are another use of the force of numbers. Demonstrations can be nonviolent; they can be peaceful but obstructive; they can be peaceful but refuse to disperse, e.g. sit-ins; or they can become violent, but we’ll address violence later.
Publicity/shame: exposing a target’s failure to live up to their professed standards, their illegal or exploitative behaviour, their lack of transparency or conflicts of interest; or basically, publicising any information that the target don’t want shared or publicised – filming factory farms, for example.
Ridicule and harassment is similar; for example, projecting “I crashed the economy” behind Liz Truss while she is giving a talk.
Moral pressure through public stances or public self-sacrifice – including anything from “taking the knee” to hunger strikes and self-immolation. Closely related is refusal to obey: civil disobedience, conscientious objection, refusal to pay your taxes or your water bills.
Economic harm: damaging your target via product boycotts, strikes, divestment, sanctions, or other property damage.
Fear, shock, and distress: Influencing people by warning of dire consequences if they don’t vote your way. Or seeking to provoke a very emotional response, for example through photos of bloody aborted fetuses, without taking into account that other forms of surgery are equally bloody without being morally suspect.
Inconvenience & obstruction: campaigners may “force” people to take notice of them by blocking access to a building site, stopping traffic, refusing to let people speak, or otherwise interfering with peoples’ lives.
Violence: finally, protestors may resort to physically damaging property, rioting, taking hostages, or even physically harming other people.
For all of these methods, I emphasize, the pressure technique itself can be separated from the rightness of its cause; any of these can be used for ends that I do, or do not, approve of.
I’d like to propose a five-point framework for assessing the ethics of any of the above techniques:
Let’s look at each of these in detail:
Is your aim legitimate?
At first I wanted to separate purposes from tactics, but it’s important to establish some ground rules for what a “legitimate purpose” should look like (which is separate from whether I agree with the purpose or not). A legitimate purpose is:
Soundly and honestly argued, with good reasons and relevant data: no distorted or inaccurate information, no information taken out of context, no sly insinuations (no Trumpian “well I’m just repeating what some people say…”), no skewed analysis of statistics or events.
Clear and transparent: No hidden agendas! The stated aim must be the real aim. If you have a personal interest, you must disclose it.
Aware of the wider picture: a lot of campaigns are led by special interest groups who give the impression that they don’t care what happens to anyone else as long as they get what they want. One thinks here of NIMBYs who accept that something should be done, but not in their neighbourhood; or other campaigns that ignore the wider picture or the common good. This is a tricky area, as sometimes it is necessary to advance a particular point of view to ensure that it gets a hearing and influences the final solution; for example, following the Rwanda genocide, Amnesty International campaigned for everyone accused of participation in the genocide to receive a fair trial that met international standards. When I objected that this was clearly impractical, the Secretary General said “Yes, of course. But if we don’t advocate it, the people who advocate no process at all will be unopposed.” So, while you may advocate for a particular solution, you must at least be aware of how your position fits into the wider picture.
No double standards, no special pleading: Double standards are the root of all evil! Don’t advocate principles for yourself that you wouldn’t want to apply to other groups.
Double standards are the root of all evil
Have you picked a legitimate target?
An ethical action should apply pressure to the people who are responsible for the perceived harm, or have some power to change it. In some cases, the target is straightforward: relevant legislators, for changing a law; your employer, if you want better working conditions. You may target someone directly, or you may legitimately seek to raise awareness in the general public, in the hopes that they will also apply pressure to the responsible parties. Sometimes campaigning groups select one target out of a wider community, such as selecting one company that exemplifies a problem across a wider sector; this must be thought through with some care. Attacking one company for an industry-wide problem may look like victimisation, particularly if you’ve chosen that company because they are vulnerable, or because it’s likely to generate more publicity, rather than because they are the most powerful or the most guilty. Because supply chains are so complex these days, it can be very difficult to assign responsibility for wrongdoing, and campaigners often aim at the company with the biggest profile. For example, it is often oil companies who are blamed for oil spills, when it may actually be the shipper who is at fault.
It should go without saying that you must avoid conflicts of interest when choosing targets; it’s wrong to campaign against one company, while sparing another because they donate to your cause.
Are your tactics fair?
This is the heart of the matter: are your tactics necessary, proportional, and effective?
Is it necessary? That is, have you tried non-pressure routes – evidence, persuasion, negotiation, dialogue, reasoning, action through political channels – before resorting to pressure? This is a complex question, because whether political channels are “reasonably available” may depend on your position in society; to take an extreme example, one cannot blame suffragists for bypassing the political system when that system had shut them out. Whether persuasive channels are available to you may depend on your class, your race, your educational level, your financial resources, and many other factors.
Even if those channels are reasonably available, you may feel that you have already tried them all, to no avail. Certainly environmental protestors feel that they have been raising the issue of global warming for some decades now, and it has made little difference; one can hardly blame them for feeling that they must shout louder if they want people to listen. As one listener in our online session said, “these days, we would have alienated all feel disenfranchised; no one in Whitehall listens to us.”
Is it proportional? The pressure applied needs to be proportional to the harm you are trying to correct; so, for example, striking or withholding services is usually seen as a proportional response to low pay, but looting stores or damaging company property is not.
Environmental protestors feel that they have been raising the issue of global warming for some decades now, and it has made little difference; one can hardly blame them for feeling that they must shout louder if they want people to listen.
Is it effective? Is it counterproductive? I said above that I’d like to assess whether an action is ethical, separately from whether it is likely to be effective, but I can only separate these to some extent. An ethical action should be part of a reasonable strategy or theory of change, not just a prank or an expression of outrage or a publicity gimmick, although such actions may make the protestors themselves feel better. These days there is a lot of discussion about the usefulness of pressure tactics that severely inconvenience or alienate the target audience, and whether such alienation is counterproductive (for example, actions by Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion). There’s a lot to think about here. If I look at the reactions of white southerners to the nonviolent actions taken during the USA civil rights movement, for example, I am inclined to think that anything other than submission to the prevailing racist regime some white people, so alienation was a risk that had to be borne. Most protest is, by its very nature, inclined to disturb people. There is also research suggesting that while extreme actions do alienate people, they also help the cause; they make the moderates for that cause more acceptable. The suffragette Emily Davison, who carried out years of provocative and unlawful actions before dying in the 1913 Derby, was at one point sacked and disavowed by the Women’s Social and Political Union; but she did sway public opinion in the end.
What about the role of surprise? Is it ethical to spring something on a target, and not give them the opportunity to defend themselves? Ethical reporters will often contact a target before they publish a story, and give them the right of reply; is this always necessary? Sometimes campaigners will notify the media of an impending action, but not notify the target; is this fair? Perhaps whether it is fair depends on whether the element of surprise is really necessary for the success of an action, or whether it is just a technique to ensure that only one side of the story is presented.
Does legality matter? People have differing attitudes towards illegality. Civil disobedience, defined as “a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies” is generally not considered unethical. The public is surprisingly supportive (50 – 67%) of campaigning organisations who break laws as long as no violence or destruction is involved.
The acceptability of lawbreaking increases when people feel that the laws themselves are unfair
The acceptability of lawbreaking increases when people feel that the laws themselves are unfair; the UK is currently taking a very punitive stance towards environmental protests and pro-Palestine protests, to the extent that people are now often arrested for protesting about their right to protest. Or, as a recent Palestine Action protestor said, “when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
It would be foolish, though, to think that legality no longer matters. In the USA, it is often only the courts who are willing and able to stop Trump’s illegal executive orders; Trump is himself attacking the rule of law, and he must not be allowed to succeed in that. If the rule of law matters when we judge Trump, then it should matter when we judge ourselves. That doesn’t mean we should never break the law; it means we must rigorously examine why we are doing so, and be confident that we can justify it in any particular set of circumstances.
But avoid violence if at all possible, especially physical violence against people. Violence against property is unfortunate but can serve a legitimate purpose. Try to avoid violence against property that doesn’t target the people directly or indirectly responsible for the issue; burning and looting is often simply an expression of rage and frustration taken out on whatever property is near to hand.
Some people suggest that campaigners should avoid “harm”; but harm is a very loose term, which can encompass anything from delays in health care, to financial losses caused by strikes and boycotts, or disruption to traffic by environmental protestors, to simply offending the sensibilities of the “privileged”. To rule out anything that could be construed as “harm” would be to make pressure tactics almost impossible.
Use of emotion and distress: Is it legitimate to use emotion and distress to override reason? Consider for example the cases of parents who want a medical treatment for their child, against the advice of the medical team about the child’s best interests, and who use public sympathy to pressure medical staff. It might be understandable, but is it ethical? Consider also how some anti-abortion campaigners show bloody pictures of aborted fetuses in an attempt to equate physical horror with moral horror. This is flawed and manipulative; many types of surgery are gruesome and bloody but that doesn’t make them wrong.
And, again, no double standards, no special pleading. Don’t use tactics that go against your own values or that you would find unacceptable if they were used by your opponents. Your means should be compatible with your ends, or as a Quaker friend said, “the means are the ends in the making.” For example, heckling or “cancelling” people in the name of “free speech” is self-contradictory. There were gay campaigners in the past who chose to “out” closeted gay people as a means of advancing the cause of gay rights; this seemed cruel, and demonstrated a disregard for the dignity and rights of other gay people that seemed contrary to the cause.
Have you considered the direct or indirect consequences of the tactic?
Make sure that you have considered who will be harmed by your action – will your primary victims be the people that you are actually campaigning against, or other stakeholders, or innocent bystanders? Unions going on strike, for example, may have little regard for the interests of customers (or patients) or may take extensive steps to ensure that harm is minimised. Campaigns can also have indirect consequences. A campaign to outlaw child labour needs to consider the impact on the family if children cannot bring in income. A campaign to boycott or sanction a country needs to consider how it will harm the most vulnerable people in that country.
And…who are you?
Why are you here? Do you have or represent a legitimate interest? As the legal gurus would say, do you have standing, or do you have other reasons for causing trouble? We hear a lot about “external rabblerousers” coming in to stir up discontent, and often that is regarded as illegitimate. On the other hand, many activists in the American civil rights movement were accused of being “Yankees come down here to cause trouble”, but we now think of some of them as heroes. There is a strong shift in the nonprofit sector towards ensuring that oppressed people are enabled to speak for themselves rather than having campaigners speak “for” them. Think through why you are showing up, and whether you should be taking a front seat or a supporting role.
Do not give up
Is your own house in order? Make sure there are no inconsistencies between your cause and your own behaviour; walk the talk. If you are challenging prejudice or discrimination, make sure you are tackling it internally as well. Examine any potential conflicts of interest with care.
Own your stuff. Take responsibility for what you say and what you do. Do your research and check your facts. Avoid anonymity unless it’s absolutely necessary for the success of the action or for your own safety. If you break a law, taking your punishment is part of the deal.
Finally: always, always, always assess context and power. The points above need to be thought through when deciding whether a pressure tactic is ethically justifiable, but there are no hard and fast rules. You must always take into account the context, the options available, and the relative power of the parties involved. I cannot emphasize enough that the points above are not go-or-no-go options; they are simply a framework of things that you should think through in order to satisfy yourself that you are acting with as much integrity as you can muster in the circumstances.
In the year since our original online discussion, the atmosphere for protest has become much darker. In the UK, the standoff about Palestine Action now seems to be less about the genocide itself, and more about protestors insisting on their right to object to that genocide, and their refusal to accept that protest against genocide equals support of terrorism. In the USA, ICE is itself behaving like a terrorist organisation, and the government seems determined to punish any individual or organisation that stands in its way. Meanwhile, the planet continues its march towards environmental catastrophe. It may seem, in these circumstances, that any form of resistance is justifiable. In response, I can only say, yes, I understand…but think carefully. Do not become the enemy. Do your best. And do not give up.
Patti Whaley is a member of the Food Ethics Council. The article above originally appeared in Sofia Magazine, issue 158, and is reproduced in full with kind permission of Sofia Magazine. The original is available here.