When did you first attend the SODEM protest outside Parliament and why did you come? 

I think it was autumn 2017. A friend invited us. I had heard of SODEM and wanted to support them and the cause.

Roughly how old are you?

56

How frequently did you come and when was the last time you attended?

I think I have been around 15 times and the last time was January 2020.

How far from Westminster do you live and what was your travelling time?

I live in the West Midlands and door-to-door travelling time by train was 2 1/2 hours.

What’s your favourite memory?

Gosh, so many, but probably one of the highlights was robotic dancing Theresa May style to ‘Dancing Queen’ with SODEM. It was surreal and very funny. 

Tell me your story

I am a middle aged woman getting angrier with age! Before the referendum I knew very little about the EU and how it works. I did some research and looked at who was supporting Remain. As an environmentalist I was particularly concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on the fight against climate change. Friends of the Earth, The Green Party, WWF and the RSPB were all in favour of Remain. That, alongside those public figures supporting leave (Nigel Farage et al) was enough for me.

The morning after the vote I cried and spent the day in shock. Then, for the next 4 years campaigning to Remain/People’s Vote took over my life. I became an activist for the first time in my life and it dominated  everything. The more I discovered about the referendum campaign, the more horrified I became. Removing our rights and protections that our EU citizenship gives us because of a  marginal win of a binary, advisory referendum following a campaign of misinformation and voter manipulation based on lies and the breaking of electoral law is not democracy.

And now look where we are. We have an extreme right-wing government whose only focus is Brexit at any cost.  I am so concerned about the future that I spend hours investigating ways for us as a family to leave England and move to the EU to retain our EU citizenship.  We had planned a trip to Ireland at Easter to investigate potentially moving there before the end of the transition period. This would have meant the family separating indefinitely as one of our children is about to start 6th form at a specialist performing arts school here [in the UK] that she has worked so hard to attend.  

Covid put a stop to that plan and every day I feel more desperate. My mental health has been affected, and as a normally peace-loving and placid person I have become so full of hate for the enablers of Brexit. I don’t know what we are going to do, but I have an overwhelming urge to flee this country which I no longer recognise as home. 

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