Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison (Kate Willoughby) returns to Westminster to launch our Get Out the Vote campaign #GOTV and defend EU Citizens’ right to vote
Photo Credit: Isabel Infantes
On International Women’s Day, actor, playwright and campaigner Kate Willoughby, is launching our campaign to get out the EU Citizens vote.
Kate, who plays the role of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, is dusting off her sash to remind all EU Citizens in the UK they still have the right to vote in the Greater London Authority elections on May 2, as well as in local and mayoral elections in England.
Two tier system
From June this year, however, only EU Citizens who arrived before 1 January 2021 or whose country of origin has a bilateral voting rights agreement with the UK will be able to do so.
This will create a two-tier system for EU Citizens’ voting rights. Local authorities will be faced with the task of removing en masse large numbers of EU Citizens from the electoral roll.
In 2014 and 2019 we exposed the vote denied scandal in which over 1 million EU citizens were denied their vote in the European elections due to the failure of the government to take adequate steps to ensure full participation.
However, such a deliberate and systemic act of voter disenfranchisement has now been legislated for in relation to EU Citizens’ voting rights in local elections has never been done before.
The new measures will not only be complicated, time-consuming and expensive to implement. It also flies in the faces of all who are working to build a strong, and inclusive democracy in the UK.
Kate Willoughby sees a parallel between the right for women to vote at the start of the last century and the voting rights of EU Citizens in the UK today.
Speaking in Westminster, Kate said:
"Our votes are our voices at the ballot box - they are a precious heartbeat that enables our democracy to be fully representative.”
“It’s time for EU Citizens to stand up and make their voices heard, just as we suffragettes did over 100 years ago.”
Britons abroad
We will also be campaigning for all Britons abroad to vote in the UK’s General Election following the abolition of the 15 year rule (which meant UK citizens could not vote after 15 years residency abroad).
How you can help
Past experience has shown that the Government will forget to tell EU Citizens that they have the right to vote, even though they have a duty to do so.
With your support, we will:
- produce information advising EU Citizens of their right to vote,
- put this information in the hands of EU citizens by distributing the information both in the form of printed material and online,
- engage with community groups, public bodies and media across England to ask them to promote registration and participation by EU Citizens,
- contact all those responsible for elections in government to make sure they are proactively informing EU Citizens of their right to register and vote,
- liaise with the Electoral Commission to prevent a repeat of the scandals of 2014 and 2019 when over 1m EU Citizens were denied a vote.
Act now so that we can do all this in good time for the Greater London Authority Elections and local and elections taking place in England on 2 May.
Doing the best we can to maximise voter registration and participation in elections by EU Citizens on 2 May is the best way to defend the long term right to vote of all EU Citizens, now undermined by new legislation.
Pledge your support to make sure the votes of all EU Citizens are counted and/or contact us to volunteer: [email protected]
Else Kvist
Head of Campaigns, New Europeans UK