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UK Democracy Bulletin, 3rd November

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Fortnightly news, jobs, grants and gossip from the democracy sector, brought to you by James Moulding and Molly Hudson of The Centre for Democracy. Read by 280+ democracy organisations. We read everyone’s newsletters & research so you don’t have to. If you want us to cover yours, let us know: hello@centrefordemocracy.org.uk

Highlights

  • COP26 democracy orgs head to Glasgow for Global Day of Action
  • Political Literacy Day Join Shout Out UK on 4 November
  • Votes for Schools 48,000 children vote across UK on climate
  • Unite UK’s largest trade union backs fair votes
  • Tactical Voting campaigners call for collaboration

Elections Bill

Keep up to date with the work of the Election Bill Coalition
The Democracy Defence Coalition’s calendar can be found here.

Elections Bill coalition open letter to the new Elections Minister
Unlock Democracy, ERS, Open Britain, Best for Britain and Hands Off Our Vote have penned an open letter to the new Elections Minister Kemi Badenoch. Add your organisation’s name in support of the letter here.

Elections Bill update
Michela Palese, Research and Policy Officer at the Electoral Reform Society, reports committee stage finished last week. The Democracy Defence Coalition now awaits the report stage which is due to be announced, whilst ERS and other groups prep for reports and the Lords stages of the bill.

New CSPL blog on the Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement
The Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) have published a new blog by Dr Alistair Clark, a Reader in Politics at Newcastle University. The blog is an indepth review of the UK Government’s new strategy and policy statement on the Electoral Commission. Worth a read.

63% of London-based CSOs reject voter ID
Almost two thirds of London civil society organisations surveyed by the London Voices Project oppose the move, with the figure rising to 74% among groups representing BAME Londoners. The survey was funded by the Trust for London, on behalf of the Citizenship and Integration Initiative, and the UK Democracy Fund, a Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust initiative.

COP26

Going to COP26? Join the Democratise to Decarbonise bloc
Join Democratise to Decarbonise for the Global Day of Action for Climate on 6th November in Glasgow and London. James Robertson and the crew need some help with flyering and talking to people at the march about the new campaign, but fear not — those helping out in Glasgow also get free entry to the Day of Action Afterparty at Civic House in Glasgow.

The details of the day are as follows:

Talking to people at the demonstration and handing out flyers:

Glasgow: 11.15–12.45pm Meet Kelvin at Pocket Cafe (72 S Woodside Road, Glasgow)

London: 11.15 Meet at 1 Victoria Street, London EC4N 4XY

Votes for Schools and UNICEF UK aid 48,000 children in vote on climate change
The question “Will climate change affect children’s rights?” was discussed in hundreds of classrooms across the UK. Detailed in a new report for COP26, the vote found 95% are concerned about climate change, 89% think not enough is being done and 81% feel young people aren’t listened to.

mySociety pushing Climate Action Plans Explorer ahead of COP26
According to Myf Nixon, Comms Manager at mySociety, the team will be running around handing out stickers at COP26 pointing to their Climate Action Plan Explorer. Besides that, there’s been a lot of updates from mySociety in recent weeks, including changes to party comparisons on TheyWorkForYou, research on TheyWorkForYou’s alerts, MS’s submission to PACAC clearing house inquiry. In other news, Myf also spent every day of the last month drawing a notable protest placard, check them out here. Pop Myf a DM for the high-res versions (they’re REALLY good).

Democracy Sector

Coming up this week: Political Literacy Day, 4th November
Danielle Vaughan, Campaign Coordinator at Shout Out UK (SOUK), reports that SOUK have organised Political Literacy Day as part of Parliament Week. During the course of the day, SOUK, Unlock Democracy, I Have A Voice and others have organised a series of panels for which you can find the details here. The day will close with SOUK’s fourth APPG meeting on Political Literacy — which will focus on the news that they are launching the largest report on teachers and parents attitudes to political literacy since 2000.

Watch Make Votes Matter’s new film promoting fair votes\
Alex Toal, Klina Jordan and the team at Make Votes Matter have been hard at work on this one, a new film featuring dozens of leading voices from across the UK (and Greece!) calling for votes that matter. Watch the film here.

UK Democracy Fund Conference
Shocking, I know — but the UK Democracy Fund plan on holding a real life, physical conference on the 23 November. The conference will cover recent research on the age divide in UK politics, electoral participation of BAME communities and migrants, reports from Votes at 16 in Wales and more. RSVP here.

Jessie Joe Jacobs inviting orgs to form initial steering group for new network
The new steering group and council of reference will assist and advise with the creation of the new Democracy Network. Jessie is also organising new Christmas democracy drinks, can’t wait! Get in touch with Jessie here to find out more about the new Democracy Network.

Early bird catches the tactical vote
Josh Russell, Forward Democracy, and Jon Morter, Progressive alliance, are starting early tactical voting advice data collaboration between the different websites that operated in GE 2019. The plan is to have an evergreen resource that works to build consensus from different analysis, polls, and local intel. Previously, with just a few weeks in a snap election cycle it’s been a rush to put together, and as a result conflicting advice was published. They hope to build consistency between the different operations and therefore credibility when a general election inevitably hits. Contact Josh or Jon to join the new effort.

Notwestminster is back!
Notwestminster is a community of people who really care about building a more constructive, more compassionate local democracy. Like most communities and conferences, Notwestminster put everything on pause whilst the plague ravaged. Diane Sims and the team are now looking to February 2022 for their next physical annual event in Huddersfield.

I Have A Voice is growing
Rebecca Deegan and the team are happy to announce they’ve been able to hire three of their own youth ambassadors to their team to develop the programme further — amazing news!

Joe Powell on Britain’s democratic leadership
Writing for the Foreign Policy Centre, Powell, Deputy Chief Executive of the Open Government Partnership, summarises the democratic backsliding of the last 15 years across the world, including in the UK and the US. As the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office chooses to prioritise open societies and human rights as part of its new agenda, this new strategy can only be successful, Powell argues, if Britain turns the page on the recent democratic turmoil — draconian new police powers, voter ID, new changes to the Official Secrets Act, political polarisation and other aspects.

Democratic Reform

Unite backs new voting system for UK general elections
Unite passes motion at its policy conference that commits the Labour-affiliated trade union to opposing FPTP and supporting moves to “explore, select and introduce a new voting system for the UK”. Unite’s new General Secretary Sharon Graham backed the move, saying “Our political class has failed working people and our system is broken. It is time to change our democracy.” The vote signals a major shift across the British labour movement with regards to electoral reform. September’s Labour Party conference vote to back PR only failed through a lack of union support, despite 80% of local parties backing the move.

Young Europeans Network launch open letter on Residence-Based Voting Rights
Lara Parizotto and the team at the Young Europeans Network are calling for improvements to voting rights, in particular the normalisation of residence-based voting rights across the UK that have already been secured across Scotland and Wales. Sign and share the open letter here.

UK Constitutional Reform Tracker launched
Constitutional reform at the current time is not being approached in a unified manner, through a single Bill, but rather in a haphazard way through many different bills at different times through different departments. This makes it difficult to track what is going on. The Constitutional Reform Tracker is an attempt at trying to help, providing a searchable list of key constitutional events under the current Government. View the Public Law Project’s Tracker here.

New Constitution Society report — Northern Ireland and Brexit: An Explanation
The new Constitution Society paper argues that Northern Ireland’s present situation and role in Brexit can only be fully understood in reference to its contested constitutional history and unique contemporary constitutional structure.

British Social Attitudes Survey finds trust in the Government at highest levels since 2007
The survey found 23% now trust the Government to put the needs of the nation above the interest of their own party. 32% feel the system of government in the UK couldn’t be improved, or only marginally. However, these levels of trust are largely confined to those who voted for Brexit in 2016.

New Demos research shows people prefer more agency than more money when ‘levelling up’
The research finds 77% of the general public and 79% of the former Red Wall think that local people should be involved in decisions around how government money is used in their area. This preference is so strong that both surveyed sets prioritise this democratic control over increases in funding.

Integrity & Transparency

Institute for Government to hold conference on standards, 4th November
As the news of MP and former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson hits the headlines, the IfG’s one day conference looks at how the UK standards system can be strengthened. The sessions are looking at whether UK ethics watchdogs are effective, what the UK can learn from others and how the appointments process be improved — with a keynote from Lord Evans, Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Commons vote on Wednesday on whether to suspend Owen Paterson
The Committee on Standards in Public Life found that he broke rules on lobbying. A suspension is serious because it triggers a recall petition, if just 10% of his constituents sign it, he will be removed as an MP.

Police attempt to recruit BLM activist as informant
After the recent deaths of two men in police custody and Black Lives Matter’s campaigns over them, Lowri Davies was approached by officers and asked to spy on her fellow activists. This is not the first time, Paul Stephens, an ex-police officer turned Extinction Rebellion activist was approached by Met Police in 2019 and asked to become a covert human intelligence source. The Public Inquiry into Undercover Policing is now in its sixth year and only 1/6th the way through their work.

Democracy & Media

Public Interest News selecting grantees to boost hyperlocal journalism
In a bid to understand about whether funding to hyperlocal journalism boosts democratic engagement, PINF are currently selecting grantees for the investment. Joe Mitchell and the team held a small retreat last week with orgs that support the independent news space, the retreat focused on next steps to building better networking infrastructure.

Media & Information Literacy Alliance (MILA) launches new website
Media and Information Literacy Alliance is a new project set up in the summer of 2021 by the library and information association, CILIP. MILA aims to grow into an effective membership organisation supporting media and information literacy.

Hacked Off’s IPSO campaign garners over 5,000 signatures
The campaign has released a new video about the campaign, watch it here. Find out more about Hacked Off’s campaign highlighting the failure and inaction of IPSO.

Good Information Inc
A new billionaire-backed venture will fund local news and disinformation-fighting newsrooms. Wealthy investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman are behind the public interest company.

Since 2011 278 journalists have been murdered for their work worldwide
New data from the Committee to Protect Journalists shows that 226 of those cases, or 81%, recorded complete impunity, ie, no one has ever been connected with the crimes.

And Finally…

Citizens’ Network publish map of voting systems around the world
The new map produced by Adam Sundle is a quick and easy way to see where the fairest voting systems are being used.

The Centre for Democracy maintains a full database of events from across the democracy sector.

View the database here — Have we missed something? Add it here!

Active Job Listings across the Democracy Sector

View the full database of upcoming job listings here — have we missed any? Add them via this form.

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We’ve been experimenting with the format of this email and the accompanying meetup, if you have any feedback we’d be glad to hear it.

If you can’t make our weekly meetup, you can always drop in to the meetup document of the current fortnight and add to it by going to democracymeetup.org.uk.

Thanks to everyone who joined us this week for Democracy Check-Ins. This week we were joined by Jessie Joe Jacobs — UK Democracy Network, Rebecca Deegan — I Have A Voice, Josh Russell — Forward Democracy, Joe Mitchel — Public Interest News Foundation, Lizzy Lewis — Votes for Schools, Myf Nixon — mySociety, Michela Palese — Electoral Reform Society, Alex Toal — Make Votes Matter, Danielle Vaughan — Shout Out UK, Diane Sims — Notwestminster and Jon Morter — Progressive Alliance.

See you next time, add to your calendar

James, Molly, and The Centre for Democracy team