Participation is a key function of pressure groups as it gives citizens an avenue of participation between elections in a structured and moderated manner to get an issue or issues across to MPs. Given the behaviour of pressure groups such as the EDL it is unlikely that politicians will have sympathy for their concerns. For example on 8 September 2013, 160 EDL members were arrested following a protest in Tower Hamlets after a clash between counter-demonstrators. However, the majority of pressure groups stay true to the function of participation and in many cases bring about change in the government. By participating more peacefully whilst still being effective, MPs are more likely to consider supporting the views of the pressure group in parliament. In 2010, following a series of Greenpeace campaigns such as climbing onto a plane at Heathrow airport, the coalition government scrapped plans to build a third runway which shows how pressure groups can be effective and true to the function of participation.

A function of pressure groups is agenda setting which is where they have the ability to influence the importance of topics on the public agenda so as a news item is covered more frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important. A successful example of this is where in 2000, the People’s Fuel Lobby successfully managed to shut down the country by protesting on the entrances to fuel depots and blockaded roads over the issue of fuel prices. Of course, the protests gained headline media coverage and more and more fuel tanker drivers participated. This shows how the PFL as a pressure group were successful in fulfilling the function of agenda setting as they managed to bring an issue to headline news. However pressure groups’ agendas can simply be ignored by the government. In 2011 the Taxpayers’ Alliance said that the government is spending too much on things such as renewable energy and that there needs to be serious cuts for finances to remain stable. However the government ignored this which shows that pressure groups can be unsuccessful in their function of agenda setting.

Education is an important function of pressure groups as they can educate the government and general public on certain issues and therefore raise awareness and support for their cause. Charities such as the NSPCC play a crucial part in educating the public on issues. Big advertising campaigns such as the full stop adverts on national television raises awareness to the public of child abuse and so MPs are more likely to raise the issue of child abuse in parliament. In the summer of 2013, Cameron announced a number of policies to make internet usage safer for children following a number of adverts by the NSPCC showing trueness to the function of education. However some groups are not true to this function by teaching extremist views such as groups like Islam4UK which were banned in 2010 for preaching Sharia Law and Islamic extremism. In no way can these kind of groups aid the government when weighing up the merits and demerits of proposed policies and the teaching of extremism increases social tensions in society. Therefore these groups are not true to their function of educating and they are not effective in fulfilling the function of education.

Another function of pressure groups is regulation. This is where they can hold the government to account to ensure that they do not abuse their power by raising awareness through the media, courts and ministers. The Gurkha Justice Campaign aimed to secure residency rights for retired Gurkha veterans who were at risk of being deported back to Nepal. Led by Joanna Lumley, she managed to raise the public awareness of the issue through the media and a number of court cases. This eventually forced the Home Office to allow Gurkhas to settle in the UK after retirement proving to be a huge success. Just like agenda setting, the government can just ignore the work of pressure groups. For example the RMT Union is calling for the nationalisation of the National Rail Network because of ever increasing rail fares. However this is very unlikely to happen with the current government showing that pressure groups can fail at the function of regulation.

Finally, the function of representation is where pressure groups represent their members or a group of people by raising particular issues that they face. Pressure groups like the Association of Chief Police Officers brings together the top ranking police officers in Britain where they can put forward their concerns to the government as a strong, united organisation and therefore has a big influence on government decisions on policing. They worked with Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Justice to scrap plans for cautions on serious offences which shows how effective representation can be. However some pressure groups do not stay true to their function of representation. An increase in the number of multi-national pressure groups such as Greenpeace could be seen as a move away from the function of representation. Greenpeace for example has a very undemocratic internal structure where the international governing board has huge power on the direction of the group. Regular members do not sign up for a particular issue but instead sign up for everything including international issues so specific interests or concerns are not dealt with. This sometimes prevents issues that are of concern to British Greenpeace members from being put forward to parliament and so you could easily say that the larger, more established pressure groups do not fulfil their function of representation.