As long as humans have been writing down important information, others have been pulling their leg.
So it’s no surprise that serious petitions to governments have always been interspersed with tongue-in-cheek campaigns designed to raise a laugh.
Some of the greatest civil rights advances started with petitions to government, including the abolition of slavery. It’s hard to say the same for the petition to rename raccoons Trash Pandas.
As parliament marks the 10th anniversary of its e-petitions system, the enthusiasm for starting and signing petitions shows no sign of abating, with 57% of people saying they had signed some kind of petition more generally in the past year, according to Office for National Statistics survey data in 2022.
There’s something about the simple act of signing your name to add your support to a cause close to your heart that has allowed the art of petitioning to continue to flourish, even in the digital age.
If anything, the launch of Downing Street’s own e-petition site in 2006 opened the famous black door of No 10 wider than ever to the public, which inevitably led to a flurry of spoof campaigns.
A petition calling for broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson to be made prime minister was quickly backed by more than 50,000 people, although a jokey YouTube response from Downing Street led to Gordon Brown’s government dourly being accused of wasting taxpayers’ money.
By 2011, the new Tory-Lib Dem coalition government decided to move e-petitions from a government website to a parliamentary site and tighten up the rules, but still the joke petitions sneaked through.
These included a call to make wrongly describing a casserole with a pastry lid as a pie a criminal offence, demands to bring Bacardi Breezers back to the UK, and to legislate so “Have I Got News for You” is broadcast during political crises.
Finally, in 2015, a committee of MPs was set up to decide which petitions should be debated by MPs in Westminster Hall, once they have managed to get more than 100,000 signatures, which few do.
This is where backbenchers can sound off about issues that have not made the government agenda, after which a junior minister is sent along to make a speech, praising contributors and usually failing to promise any government action.
But that has not stopped the British public from petitioning for such important issues as ensuring UK road signs feature a geometrically correct football, for the Eurovision Song Contest to be made a national holiday, and to recognise Jediism as a religion.
One notable success where the law was changed following an e-petition was Finn’s Law, for German Shepherd police dog Finn who nearly died from wounds to his skull and chest after he was stabbed with a 30cm (12in) hunting knife while chasing a suspect.
Finn’s handler Dave Wardell said a colleague launched the petition as the pair were receiving emergency treatment in hospital, calling for those who attack police service animals to receive the same criminal charges as for attacking a police officer.
Mr Wardell, who believes his loyal dog “undoubtedly” saved his life, said they hoped the petition would “galvanise” the outpouring of emotion around the attack, although they didn’t expect to reach 130,000 signatures in only 11 days.
“Without that petition we wouldn’t have got the support from MPs in the House of Commons that led to Finn’s Law,” he said.
“The support just exploded and people would say ‘I’ve never spoken to my MP before and now I feel like I’ve got into Westminster’.”
With local groups like schools and Women’s Institutes signed up, MPs also got behind the campaign, and the Animal Welfare (Service Animals) Act 2019 came into force within three years.
“That length of time to get a change in the law is incredibly quick,” Mr Wardell said, adding that he was proud to have left a legacy for Finn and new protection for service animals.
Since the parliamentary petitions committee was set up, there have been 162 successful petitions that have ended up with a debate taking place between MPs and, although not binding, the debates remain a way to put pressure on ministers.
Only five petitions have been signed by more than a million people in the past decade, including one to “Prevent Donald Trump from making a state visit to the UK” in 2016, with 1.9 million signatures.
The biggest e-petitions were both calls to reverse the Brexit decision, with 2016’s “EU Referendum rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum” attracting more than 4.1 million signatures, and 2019’s “Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU” with nearly 6.1 million signatures.
The publicity that can come with these larger petitions is not without its risks, and Margaret Georgiadou, the woman behind the biggest ever e-petition, received death threats and abuse from opponents who disagreed with her.
None of these petitions were immediately successful, but arguably indicated discontent with how the Conservative government was being run at the time.
But a perceived lack of practical change off the back of some petitions has led to multiple people giving up on the system altogether, including Sam Grossick who wants to see the e-petitions site shut down altogether.
“The government’s reply is always the same: ‘we hear you, but we’re not going to do anything about it,'” he said.
“The current system gives the illusion of a feedback loop, but it’s a dead end.”
Asked whether there was any irony in petitioning for an end to petitions, he said: “The irony is not lost on me. Using the very system we want to shut down is the most direct way to highlight its effectiveness – or lack of.”
Mr Grossick said he saw joke petitions as “a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun” but also “a sad reflection on the state of things”, adding “when a serious mechanism for public engagement is so broken, people will treat it as a joke”.
Petitions Committee chair Jamie Stone defended the system, which he said had given millions of people in the UK “the chance to engage directly in democracy” to “help set the agenda in Parliament”.
He said the parliamentary e-petitions system has become “a bridge between the public and Parliament” that showed “democracy does not end at the ballot box”.
Regardless of whether you think they make a difference or not, the grand tradition of petitions taking the mick is continuing into the 21st century, with noble appeals for MPs to stop laughing in Parliament, or to ban lorries from using the second lane on motorways, and for the government to “tell the truth” about Santa.
One particularly despairing prankster appealing for penalty-taking to be made part of the English National Curriculum in place of maths lessons, after England were defeated at a major tournament.
With another calling for action to stop people signing petitions for no real reason, some official responses seem to have belatedly got back into the spirit of things, saying: “We think you started this petition as a joke.”
