Saturday 8 May 2010

(Report from Peter Facey, Director of Unlock Democracy)

I've just got back into the office having been at the Take Back Parliament demonstration in central London this afternoon.  What an awe-inspiring event!  We were expecting a few thousand people; in the end we had 5,000.  We marched through Whitehall, past Parliament itself and protested outside where the Liberal Democrats were holding their coalition talks in Smith Square. Nick Clegg came out  to talk to the crowd.  We made it crystal clear to him that he had better not drop his commitment to fair votes when talking to Gordon Brown and David Cameron this weekend.

We're getting reports of hundreds of people attending each of the parallel demos in Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Middlesbrough, Oxford and elsewhere.  Other protests are being held around the country over the next couple of week.  30,000 people have signed our petition and it is growing by the minute.

Sign the petition and spread the word!

The momentum for this campaign is building at an incredible pace.  We’ve been all over the broadcast media today and expect to be in the Sunday papers.  The simple message is: we want fair votes, we want them now, and the politicians meeting this weekend had better deliver them.

What can you do to help make this even bigger?  If you haven't done so already, sign the Take Back Power petition.  Spread the word around to everyone you know.  Forward this email to your friends, Tweet it, put it on Facebook, write about it on your blog.

I'll write again soon as things develop.  In the meantime, thanks so much for your support - and keep it up!

This is only the beginning…