From rapping to samba drumming, singing parodies of pop and folk songs, to making passionate speeches, activists have been amplifying their voices to Make Noise for PR.
Read our blog about the summer day of action which took place at various locations across the UK on Saturday 31st July. Not just the UK though, we even had people in Brussels join the PR fiesta.
And what a joy it was to get together again after the easing of lockdown restrictions. And why were we doing it? To highlight the single biggest improvement our democracy so desparately needs; a fair voting system.
Our current voting system means seven out of 10 of us are muted at the ballot box, effectively with no voice, without a vote that matters. Make Votes Matter’s campaign for equal votes has always been about making our voices heard. And that’s why people across the UK and in Brussels were motivated to ‘unmute ourselves’ and stand up for what we believe in.
Planning for the event took place over several months. We held calls with MVM groups and campaigners and individual groups met to discuss how to get creative in their own towns and cities. MVM put together resources for alerting the media to the action day, and tips for spreading the word on social media. Opinion pieces by some of our prominent allies were written for national publications and lots of people got into the spirit of recording songs to perform on the day.
A video was made to show that where PR is used by our devolved nations and the London Assembly, people are represented - so it’s about time Westminster caught up!
On the day we had samba drummers in Bath and banner drops in York and Cambridge. And in East London, campaigners against plans to use the First Past the Post (FPTP) system to elect the Tower Hamlets mayor came out on to the streets to protest against this move.
It was fantastic to see so many supporters out in force in so many different locations, breaking the silence on our broken voting system. Thanks to the wonderful efforts by so many supporters, media coverage and social media posts about the event have flooded in.
We even had a rap, below.
A suggestion coming out of the planning call for a chant that everyone could sing was to switch the lyrics of John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance, to Give PR a Chance. And here it is!
Here’s a snapshot of some of the headlines received about the summer day of action below. Visit our newsroom for many more news stories about Make Noise for PR.
And our grassroots movement was given a helping hand by some high profile figures including musician and producer Brian Eno who made this track to support the day. And ally and political activist Femi Oluwole made this little ditty which he released on the day, clocking up more than 220,000 views already, and counting. He also wrote a piece for The Independent.
Other allies of the campaign including Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, Wera Hobhouse and Green Party spokesperson on democracy, Zack Polanski, helped drum up support in advance of the action day. Wera made the case for PR in the Liberal Democrat Voice publication. And London Assembly member Zack penned this piece in Left Foot Forward.
We encouraged people holding street stalls to ask passers-by to sign our petition 'Less First Past the Post, not more’. So far we’ve notched up nearly 30,000 signatories, which sends a clear message to the Government that we don’t want FPTP imposed for mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections. If you haven’t already signed, please do it today and share the petition with five more people. Make Noise for PR may be over but we still need our voices to be heard and stop these attacks on our democracy!