Let us all be grateful that Chrissie's night school existed. This woman turned out to be, quite simply, a communications genius.

In Tony Gibson's wonderful book, The Power in Our Hands: Neighbourhood based world shaking, we get a sense of what she accomplished. While she raised her own young family, she fought like a tiger through the Bugle, a community newspaper she organized with neighbours and family. She fought the garbage and blocked drains and dangerous playgrounds that plague public housing projects. She fought for a better redevelopment plan for the neighbourhood, and against the insular distrust of ethnic minorities.

She challenged the authorities to a dialogue on the stupid way they were trying to communicate with ordinary people. Her community opened "The Benefits Shop" where people could get advice on government forms, what they meant, and how to fill them in. Chrissie also became a loud, obstreperous voice in the National Consumer Council.

During the 1970s, Chrissie teamed up with a very brilliant, very young journalist with a lot of hair, by the name of Martin Cutts. Martin is another great hero of mine in the history of the plain language movement. [Martin, are you here yet? Please stand up and say hello!]

Chrissie, Martin and friends pulled off all kinds of media stunts -- they gleefully shredded documents in Parliament Square. They established things like the "Golden Bull Award" to thoroughly embarrass the powerful people who were enacting legislation and policy in unforgivable language.

They dressed up in silly costumes. They mailed packages of real tripe to verbose bureaucrats and officials. But always, they were popular educators. They showed us how easy and logical it would be, with some training and sensitivity, to translate things like landlord's letters, insurance, and product instructions into contemporary English. They created "before and afters" that were screamingly funny and completely persuasive. All this they did with so much élan and skill that they became the darlings of the BBC. Their message and their training materials went around the world.

The United Kingdom - clarity
In 1983, a solicitor named John Walton was head of a local authority's legal department. He read a letter from a surveyor published in the Law Society's England and Wales Gazette, in which the surveyor complained about how hard his job was when the leases were so difficult for people to understand.

Walton replied in print, suggesting that anyone interested in forming a movement to promote plain English in the law write to him and send 5 quid. More than 200 lawyers did, from as far away as Australia.⁽⁸⁾