Citizens have been petitioning Downing Street for well over a century. In this blog, Henry Miller explains why delivering petitions to Number 10 has been a popular campaign tactic - even though the prime minister rarely responds - and why, despite the rise of e-petitions and digital democracy, petitioners still knock on the famous black door.
Traditionally, British historians associate mass petitioning with Victorian Britain and the famous causes of the age, like Chartists' campaign for adult male suffrage. In the early twentieth century, British people turned away from petitioning Parliament to a much broader range of local, national, and international authorities. As these were not formally recorded, and as mass voting in elections became the norm, the continued popularity of petitioning as a political act has been overlooked.
This blog focuses on petitions to Number 10 Downing Street and suggests that they are important for revealing popular understandings of where power lies in the British political system, and more generally, as a useful tool for campaigners, particularly in terms of attracting media coverage and publicity.
The petitions sent to Number 10 Downing Street by Edwardian suffragettes registered the growing power of the prime minister (and executive). During the First World War, the number of petitions to Parliament collapsed after 1918. However, an increasing number of campaigners targeted the prime minister. The Automobile Association (AA) organised a massive petition from motorists complaining of the cost of petrol in 1920, prompting the Illustrated London News to observe that 'it may not result in immediate action, but it is good propaganda'. The National Unemployed Workers' Movement petitioned prime minister Stanley Baldwin in February 1929 and unsuccessfully attempted to gain an audience with him the next day. Two years later a petition containing 1.4 million signatures and measuring ten miles in length was presented to Ramsay MacDonald from religious campaigners opposed to allowing cinemas to open on Sundays.
In procedural terms, petitioners notified the local police station of the time they intended to present their petition, and a small delegation was then allowed access to Downing Street where the petition would be received by officials. No record was kept of the petitions received and no action was triggered, although Margaret Thatcher’s papers at Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, reveal that she often wrote formal letters to petitioners acknowledging receipt and sometimes discussing and defending government policy.
Despite the lack of response, petitioners appealed to Number 10 because their key audience was not the prime minister or officials, but the media, and through them, the wider public. This can be seen in newsreels: the key moment is when petitioners turn to face the press photographers and watching media on the steps of Number 10, not when they hand in the petition at the door. Campaigners used Downing Street as a stage to craft photo opportunities for the mass media, including the popular press, newsreels, and later, television in the post-war era. Set piece presentations were increasingly integrated into sophisticated media strategies. In 1973, Mary Whitehouse held a press conference before presenting the petition from the National Viewers and Listeners’ Association regarding public decency on TV to Ted Heath. Fifteen years later, the Child Poverty Action Group and other NGOs held a press conference before handing in the People’s Petition against the Poll Tax at Number 10. For campaigns opposing the closure of community hospitals, schools, or other public services, a trip to London and a photo outside Downing Street was a good way of securing coverage in local newspapers. Indeed, local journalists and photographers as well as constituency MPs were often part of these delegations.
The need to attract publicity explains the emphasis on visual spectacle when petitioning Downing Street. In his 1974 guide to running a pressure group, the journalist Christopher Hall instructed would-be campaigners that ‘your news must be visual’. He added: ‘Any reasonable opportunity to use children or animals in a public display should be taken. If this sounds cynical remember that all pressure groups, when they are seeking publicity, are entering the entertainment business. Newspapers are entertainment, television even more so’. Perhaps following Hall’s advice, in 1991, as part of a campaign to save London zoo, campaigners brought a South American pudu, and a Mexican bird eating spider along with them to Downing Street, while anti-blood sports petitioners, including the Labour MP Tony Benn, brought a fox to Number 10 four years later.
Other ruses including wearing costumes, from nurses uniforms to more theatrical attire, such as the women wearing black mourning dress who presented a petition against atomic weapons to Harold Macmillan in 1957. The mode of transporting a petition could also attract attention. In 1993 Labour delivered a petition against the closure of collieries on a massive coal wagon, while in 1968 mothers campaigning for better nursery education carried their petition sheets in prams. In other cases, campaigners such as truckers, taxi drivers, and motorcyclists brought their vehicles down Whitehall. Alternatively, NGOs selected celebrities to deliver the petition to maximise the chances of media coverage. In 1989, a petition against the Khmer Rouge representing Cambodia at the UN, organised by Oxfam, Christian Aid, and Cafod was handed in by the actresses Emma Thompson, Julie Christie, and Caron Keating.
Another tactic was to make Downing Street the final stage of a longer journey, such as the 1981 peace pilgrimage, or the 1985 jubilee ramble organised by the Ramblers’ Association. Sometimes petitioners brought props with them. In 1970, four women from Sussex calling for an inquiry into the quality of their water supply brought with them ‘three bottles of sludgy tap water’, with one petitioner remarking to the press ‘we didn’t bring Mr. Heath our stained frillies because we didn’t want to embarrass him’.
Petitioning Downing Street remained a useful tool for campaigners because it enabled other forms of collective action as well as attracting publicity. In the later twentieth century, activists from major campaigns such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or Anti-Apartheid frequently combined petitioning Downing Street with demonstrations or marches down Whitehall, rallies in Trafalgar Square or Hyde Park, and lobbying MPs at Westminster as part of coordinated ‘days of action’. In 1980 for example, as part of Gay Pride, representatives from the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group, and the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association presented a petition to Margaret Thatcher.
The growth of platforms like change.org, 38degrees, and the establishment of UK Parliament’s Petitions Committee’s e-petitions system mean that people are more likely to sign online petitions than paper ones today. Yet the fact that many citizens continue to hand in paper petitions to Downing Street shows the continued usefulness of this practice as a campaigning tool even in an era of digital democracy.
Dr Henry Miller is Associate Professor (Research) at Durham University.
This blog is informed by research conducted for the Petitioning and People Power in Twentieth-Century Britain project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, which are both part of the UK Research and Innovation.