What next in local campaigns?

As well as working together to bring about change on a national scale, we’ve also been focussing on issues that affect specific areas of the UK. We’ve fought to stop the expansion of Bristol airport, and to prevent Donald Trump forcing families out of their homes in Aberdeenshire.

Recently, we had a brilliant local campaign win when Boris Johnson finally agreed to keep his election pledge and provide funding London Rape Crisis Centres. We’d teamed up with the Boris Keep Your Promise campaign to make sure this happened.

But Boris also announced that he’s cutting the funding for important London events like Africa Day and Black History Month, at the same time as giving an extra £100 000 to USA day, a festival celebrating America. This is on the back of canceling Europe’s biggest anti-racism event, Rise, last year.

We asked members in London whether we should take action to put an end to these cuts. We had an overwhelmingly positive response – 86% said yes.

We also asked what other local issues we could campaign on in London. There were a wide range of responses, but the most popular suggestions were:

We should campaign for a living wage.

We should campaign to improve the quality of travel in London, including making city roads more friendly for cyclists, fighting bus fare hikes, and improving disabled access to the tube.

We should campaign further to protect women in the city from violence, and improve provision for victims of it.

If you have a local campaigns suggestion for anywhere around the UK, we’d love to hear it. Please let us know by filling in our campaigns suggestion form, here: http://38degrees.org.uk/page/s/suggestcampaign