I took our MASSIVE petition to No 10 Downing Street on Tuesday 5th November. It was a huge moment in my life. I was very nervous, there were press photographers there and journalists. It was a bit insane.
After lots of photos were taken, I knocked (loudly) on the door and gave in a petition box with over 1 million and 80 thousand signatures on a tiny thumb drive. (Isn’t technology brilliant?)
Then more photos and lots of interviews. It’s hard to speak on camera about something you are so passionate about, all the different ideas are running around in your head and sometimes nothing sensible is coming out of your mouth! I only hope I did the petition credit.
I want to say, we at The Firework Campaign are so grateful to everyone who signed and shared this and all our other petitions (6 over 100k!) I must also say how grateful I am to the 5 wonderful charities that supported me that day – Assistance Dogs, BHS, Dogs Trust, Redwings and RSPCA and to Alex Mayer MP for taking time out of her parliamentary day.
We have had an incredible response to our petition, and because of the massive publicity, TV, radio and press, we have reached people who had never heard of The Firework Campaign. This petition went up by over 12,000 signatures that day alone! It is still rising 1,093,205 at last count, over 24,000 signatures in 3 days!
These 12,000 signatures on that day alone goes to prove our biggest problem. HOW do we reach everyone who would want to sign the petition? How do we reach those who don’t use social media at all, because we aren’t lucky enough to be in the news every week? Any ideas gratefully received.
As I have found out, in the world of campaigning, nothing stands still and you can’t rest on your laurels. Although all the publicity will stay on the internet for you to search out, the rest will, as they say, soon be ‘chip paper’.
So 3 days later ……. We are onto the next instalment of this brilliant campaign which has been going since 2013. We are a determined bunch.
We have two strands to this, one is a Government petition. For this to be debated we need 100,000 signatures in 6 months, very difficult to do so please help out where you can.
The second strand is to bring together the many charities, non-profits, businesses, community groups and individuals that are wanting and hoping for a change in firework legislation and to stop the onslaught that happens every year. We have started The Association for Firework Legislation Reform (AFLR). We wanted to give everyone a voice, smaller charities in particular – it will be a sort of permanent petition. A gathering of everyone who wants a change in firework legislation of whatever kind. We will support the work of The Fireworks Working Group, some of the biggest charities in the country who are actively lobbying government for exactly what we all want:
FIREWORK REFORM
We know that people have different issues with the overuse of fireworks. We know that there are many different changes that could be made. The Firework Campaign hope for MORE CONTROL OF FIREWORK USE BY THE PUBLIC. We believe that even though you may not like or appreciate displays at least you know they are coming. If all displays are licenced, conditions could be attached to a) keep them away from animals, farms, sanctuaries, stables etc and b) have them well advertised and insured.
We will let the Government know how many people want change and suggest they DO something but the detail of any change is completely up to them.
Please keep supporting us, sign and share the petitions and join us at AFLR.
I can feel the wind of change ……………… TOGETHER WE ARE STRONGER
Thank you
Julie Doorne
The Firework Campaign / AFLR
The new petition is an extremely sad story. Something that never should have happened and should never happen again.
The Firework Campaign UK 