Colchester City Council Passes our Voting for All Motion
Migrant Democracy Project is delighted to see Colchester City Council become the 16th local authority to pass our motion in support of the extension of the right to vote for all residents.
And whilst Colchester is the 16th local authority across the UK to endorse votes for all, it is the first council to pass a motion proposed by one of our own MPower leaders, Kemal Çufoğlu!
Kemal joined our MPower programme in December 2023 and, alongside 8 other dedicated first-generation migrants, trained with us for five months on the role of councillors and building local power. From attending sessions on structures of local authorities to what councillors can do to support migrant residents, our MPower participants became equipped with the tools to become the representatives their communities need.
Now, a year after our first MPower session, the now elected Councillor Çufoğlu, proposed and succeeded in passing his first motion calling on the Government to extend the right to vote to all residents! This calls on the Government to extend the right to vote to over 1 million currently unenfranchised residents across the UK, 2,721 of which are in Colchester.
This could not have been possible without the support of local residents calling on their councillors to vote in favour of the motion. Local residents Ayse (from Turkey) and Hind (from Iraq) spoke for the first time at a council meeting about why they want to be able to vote. Hind shared a moving story of currently being unable to vote either in the UK or in Iraq. Ayse supports her local community doing immigration advice at RAMA and yet has no vote. Their moving speeches empowered councillors to vote in favour of the motion with support from Green, Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors.
The events at Colchester City Council embody our organisation’s vision on building migrant power. Local migrant residents used their voices at the council meeting demanding to be heard and reclaimed the space as their own. A migrant councillor used his power to extend solidarity with all residents and mobilised his colleagues for a progressive vote.
Now, our second MPower programme has launched training 13 new first-generation migrants to represent their communities. They will follow these footsteps, increasing democratic representation and bringing their lived experience to policy-making. Read more about the MPower launch here.
We are drawing on grassroots migrant power to build a future where democracy belongs to all!