On March 14 a petition against the Bill was announced. There were several MPs behind this petition, including, Norman Jones, Graham Lee and Geoff Braybrooke and a Labour MP called Alan Wallbank. There were two religious fundamentalist businessmen, Sir Keith Hay and Sir Peter Tait they were the chief petitioners. The Salvation Army were also behind this petition and went door to door to gain more support. This campaign also held marches to show their opposition.
On 24 September 1985 the anti-reform petition was presented at Parliament. There were ninety-one boxes presented to parliament, one for each member. It was claimed that there were over 800,000 signatures. In fact, some of the boxes were nearly empty, and some petition sheets contained several signatures in the same hand. This shows that these are unreliable results but the strong opposition to the Bill is still evident.