I watched live streaming of the events in Clapham last night. As I tweeted at the time, the image of male police officers fighting women whose simple wish is to be safe on the streets is not one that is going to be easy to erase from the memory.
Nothing will bring Sarah Everard back. I cannot imagine the grief her family and friends are going through. Nothing I say here changes my sense of shock at the senselessness of her death. And the anger that any man did this, because a man did.
40 years ago I lived in Clapham, with my then girlfriend and another female friend. Both worried about walking home at night. There were occasions then when I went to the tube with them, or to meet them. It's shocking that in all that has happened since then nothing has been done to reclaim the streets of Clapham or anywhere else from the threat of men. I am ashamed of that.
But there was something deeper about last night. The failure of the police to accommodate the need for women to hold a vigil was profoundly wrong, Covid or not.
The attempt to stop a protest demanding that most basic of rights - to walk free from fear at night - is indication that something is deeply wrong in our society, Covid or not.
The reality is that the police should have been joining this vigil. They should have been hanging their heads in shame, for so many reasons.
But instead they attacked women, and it was broadcast on livestream. The world saw it happen. Days after a woman was murdered and the night before Mother's Day misogyny, which is one of the building blocks of the fascist state, was out in force and on ugly display. And all because a fascist Home Secretary would not accommodate the needs of women to speak as they wished.
Next week the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill goes back before Parliament. The whole purpose of that Bill is to remove the right to protest in this country. Of course the target of that Bill was hinted to be XR, or BLM, and others considered ‘woke'.
But now ‘woke' includes women who simply want to be safe. After all, wokeness only refers to an awareness of inequality, and there isn't a woman I know who is not aware of the inequality that they face. And that awareness could now be a crime, because to annoy another person by protesting in support of an opinion will be a crime punishable by up to ten years under that Act. It would just take a man (maybe wearing a police officer's uniform) to say they had been annoyed by a woman for peacefully demanding equality for a crime to have been committed in this country very soon.
Do I think that awareness of that Act would have changed last night's protest? I am sure it would not have done. Angry people will not be told that they cannot express that anger. That is not going to happen in this country. In fact, I think the opposite might happen. The illegality of protest might be the tipping point that makes protest much more likely.
This is not a country that backs oppression. This is a country where people want to be free. That is exactly what the vigil last night was all about. But in the fashion of a tinpot dictatorship a vigil for a murdered woman was violently attacked by police officers. They no doubt used the cover of Covid regulation to break up what was a wholly appropriate act of remembrance because it offended those who think that they have power that they can exercise without responsibility.
The reality is that for differing reasons none of us are safe in this country now.
We are not safe because we have a government that wants us to live in fear, and is going out if its way to make sure that we do.
A line has been crossed.
When the state comes for women holding a vigil they can come for anyone. And that includes you, and me. We have reached the last line in that poem now. There are no excuses left. All we can do now is oppose.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Excellent post. The actions of those cops were not about safety in spite of the pathetic statement put out by the Assistant Commissioner, they were purely about cracking down on the right to protest. Had the Met been concerned with safety the correct approach given the likely make up of the group attending the vigil would have been to ensure that the officers sent to attend to it were mainly female, rather than being almost entirely male, and to make it absolutely clear that any intervention was to be as absolute last resort. The actual approach taken was crassly insensitive, especially given who is being charged with the murder. Ultimately big decisions about Met police actions rest with the commissioner Cressida Dick, and I conclude by posting a link to a petition calling for her to resign as her position is now untenable, and urging everyone to sign and share it: https://r.ippl.es/cressida-dick-resign/
Prescient words on here from over a decade ago.
Welcome to the police state
Posted on December 15 2010
Welcome to the Police State:
Scotland Yard will consider asking the Home Secretary to ban further student marches should the levels of violence which have marred the recent protests continue, Britain’s most senior police officer said yesterday.
Labour were bad on civil liberties. And in the wrong hands their legislation is being abused.
Goodbye to freedom of association and the right to protest then.
Except the truth is people will protest if they want to, whether the police like it or not — and nothing will stop them. Police states always fail in the end. But do we really have to test this hypothesis in the UK?
Now a blog. Thanks.
What amazes me is that you seem to know more about what I have written than I do.
It’s not as if we couldn’t,t see it coming, the old adage your gov is not your friend now applys to the police,all are best avoided, the UK has had it, you are right to be contemplating a move away.
Excellent statement Richard
“A line has been crossed…. All we can do now is oppose.”
So what, other than writing virtue signalling posts, will you be doing about this?
This is not a virtue signalling post
If you are not aware of it, narrative building is key to opposition
“Narrative building”, seems an agenda as opposed to just posting hard facts…I agree with much of your post but I’m not sure you can just define police taking actions as fascism…if that were the case then any authoritative action taken by police through time is fascism? Ie is stopping terrorism fascism? I do think they should have handled it better, perhaps spacing people apart and reminders on masks, whilst laying candles themselves etc? Maybe that was the initial approach and the women there showed arrogance or resistance so got themselves arrested? Then this has been blown up by the media to make a narrative. I haven’t seen the footage but I expect this to be the case.
You haven’t seen the footage but it was all ok?
I despair…..
The images of dozens of masked police violently breaking up a perfectly peaceful demonstration reminded me of Putin’s Russia, or Hong Kong. Is that where we are now?
The police say they were acting to protect people’s safety. By attacking women in the dark? Shocking.
Who took the decision to send the heavies in? All so unnecessary, because the police would not agree a form of event with the organisers that could be held, so we ended up with a disorganised spontaneous event.
Would similar action have been taken if it were a crowd of male football supporters? I think not.
Look at the policing of Rangers fans in Glashow a week ago, despite their hooliganism, and you have your answer
“Who took the decision to send the heavies in?”
Presumably the final decision would have rested with Cressida Dick.
“Presumably” there was a tactical commander on the ground, and a strategic one further away, all operating under predetermined rules of engagement. Someone will have set the policy, and someone (probably someone else) was responsible for implementing it.
And then someone was responsible for that extraordinary statement last night, acknowledging but refusing to accept any of the criticism.
Jess Phillips got it exactly right this morning: “In the eyes of the law, women do not matter as much as cars, fly-tipping or statues.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-56392007
“my team felt that this is now an unlawful gathering which poses a considerable risk to people’s health … I don’t think anybody who was not in the operation can actually pass a detailed comment on the rightness and wrongness” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56389824
What training do police offices have make a careful judgments about public health risk, exactly? How would they quantify the public health risk from a group of masked people standing peacefully in an open public place, compared to for example the risk from people defending themselves against police violence? Some of the police officers were shoving people around in exactly the same way that led to the death of Ian Tomlinson.
Anyone viewing the pictures is able to form an opinion. Rather than defusing tension, the police inflamed it. Given virtual unanimity that the police action was unnecessary and heavy-handed, the Commissioner has shown she is tone deaf too.
But I suppose she has experience of defending herself from the consequences of an operation gone wrong. At least no one was shot in the head this time.
Agreed entirely
The only people creating a public health risk at this event were the Duchess of Cambridge, without a mask for PR purposes, but doing the right thing by going, and the police
Agreed in full.
The fact that this involved women is just collateral damage to Sitting Pretty and her Government. This is another one of those moments we must struggle against forgetting. Hopefully the female vote in 2024 might be lacking as a result – depending of course on HM Opposition’s ability to score an open goal.
Obviously, the rush to close down any form of dissent can only be done as a precursor to the more harsher austerity to come from this venal Government.
They know that they have to choke off ‘dissent capability’ in order to be successful. This is all calculated as far as I am concerned.
And that’s what worries me (as well as the totally unjustified events of last night) – what actually is coming next?
And I understand that Labour are proposing to ABSTAIN on the vote for this Bill !!
That would be the final nail in the coffin of Labour.
Agreed
‘Abstain’
‘Abject’ more like.
After watching videos of the protest it appears to me the police planned this assault on the women.
All they needed to do was stand back and let the women voice their anger and fears then allow them to leave. But no they had to be in control. How dare these women make their voices heard.
We are about to be ruled by a dictatorship and YES we can’t let this happen.
If there was anyone with an eye to the Police’s ‘PR’ management of this event, they got it very badly wrong.
It is perfectly standard police practice.
With a large crowd the procedure is to “coral” the crowd inwards to compress it and reduce the risk of violence.
That way those on the surface of the crowd can be controlled by “a controlled use of violence” and troublemakers removed. It’s called “kettling”.
I did not see the live-stream – but the still images are deeply shocking and will, I would predict, never go away. Not ever.
Cressida Dick’s appointment was always extremely controversial given that many people would have regarded her responsibility in the Menezes shooting as more suitably marked by resignation or worse. Her attempt to deny institutional racism as a useful term in evaluating her command was, at the very least, tone deaf to the moral crises of the times. Her position, as head of a “force” which thought physical confrontation and assault an appropriate response to women’s anger at the murder of Sarah Everard is now surely beyond reclaim. Mass demonstrations – like mass sports events, including horse racing – in time of Covid are not good policy, but the evidence is mounting that police are all too readily using that decent, public health need to behave in ways that are oppressive, inappropriate and, at times, brutal. Though the problem is much wider than the Met – e.g. the appalling criminalistion of a socially distanced protest over the 1% pay award, of 40 nurses and health workers in Manchester – the grotesque mismatch of Met police “force” unleashed on women in grieving and no doubt angry shock at the murder of a woman for which a Met policeman has been charged, is a new low from which no police chief should survive in office – and certainly neither Cressida Dick, nor whoever was commander on the ground last night.
The shocking provisions in the new Crime Bill, I have commented on already on this blog and some of them are aptly aggitating Joshua Rosenberg’s blog today. Where they, as yet still in the process of being legislated, may intersect with the matters I’ve discussed here seems, to me, to lie in the atmosphere which their proposer, a Home Secretary who flaunts her ability to ‘talk tough’, has been creating. The potentially extremely oppressive provisions of that Bill in relation to public protest and assembly are, at present, a very dark cloud on our near horizon – but, in last night’s events, I fear we see the “fewmets of the Questing Beast”.
Who knows? Perhaps we are even – deliberately – being warned.
“there isn’t a woman I know who is not aware of the inequality that they face.”
Yes, Ellie Mae O’Hagan for example was the victim of a misogynistic slur where it was claimed she was only appearing on Newsnight because of a ‘gender quota’. Remember who was responsible for that? You.
Isn’t it time for you to make a PROPER admission of your reprehensible behavior over this? Or do you think doing something atrocious and then ‘saying sorry’ makes everything all right? The eternal ‘cop out’ employed by men.
I have never once pretended I got this right.
I am human. I make mistakes. I have to relearn.
And I made an apology, in person.
And sure as heck I have learned from it.
Now what else do you want me to say since all this has been said before? And sincerely.
“what else do you want me to say”
I don’t want you to ‘say’ anything. I want you to ‘do’ something. Words are cheap and do not help the tens of thousands of woman beaten and raped every day whilst you ‘say’ things. You could actually get up, leave the safety of your home and join a protest. Will you? You could urge your readers to stop sending you money for a few months and send it instead to desperate cash-strapped charities trying to help women. Will you?
You inferred the words of Pastor Niemöller in your article. I doubt his poem called on people to ‘say’ ‘oh look isn’t it awful’, he was calling on people to DO something. Well, will you? Or is it all just words, passing the time until the next time something terrible happens when you can ‘say’ it all over again.
I think you will find that a great many people think that what I do does make a difference
You disagree, and that is your right
But I think creating narratives helps
In fact, I would say it is essential
Opposition is never enough: having a vision of what we want is also important. Of course I can and do more things. And no one has any obligations to donate to what I do, but it does help me and pays for parts of what this blog does. But to say that building narratives is unnecessary is, I think, wrong.
And it’s my right to say so
Paula
I don’t know you from Eve OK? And I am man by the way.
But I’ve been coming to this blog for a long time. I wouldn’t have done that if I did not consider Richard Murphy’s work (his research and his campaigning) to have had some sort of positive effect on the lives of men and women.
As for Ellie Mae O’Hagan – are you saying that the media and other organisations don’t ever think like that in terms of quotas for under represented groups?
Because they do – I even hear it being discussed like that in the public sector I’m ashamed to say. That sort of quota based thinking is the worst basis that I can think of being inclusive and it deserves to be called out and challenged which is what it seems Richard did. If upon his challenge he was put right – then good – the challenge was met. But that would only have been know because of the bravery of making the challenge in the first place.
Logic – yes? Facts – yes? Not emotions please – we want to be progressives here – not populists – savvy? Yeah?
As for your fund raising issues – have you ever considered why you might not be getting the cash you feel you need? Is it Richard’s fault? There’s loads of help out there for fundraising strategies you know. How about asking Richard for his advice off blog?
Speaking as just a keyboard ‘warrior’ (more like a ‘worrier’ really as I have a full time job trying to build affordable housing for men and women) I think it’s really bad when progressives fall out amongst each other and fight in the margins like this. Only one group of people really benefits: those who seek to oppress us and whom apparently we are agreed that they should be sorted out.
This is where the so-called ‘woke’ community goes wrong in my view (and I consider myself proudly woke). It fails to transfer its concerns from micro to macro scale because in its efforts to delineate unmet needs and injustice per segment of the community, it fails to see that only a mass movement of ALL concerns sharing the same need for justice can really lead to change.
All this lack of critical mass does is embed the divisiveness that our Establishment and this fascist government thrive on.
Oh well.
BTW – the fact that I am a male of the species telling you this is purely incidental. You do realise that don’t you? I have no wish to work against you at all as a man.
In case anyone else is wondering what this is about, I’ll just leave this here and let people form their own opinions: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/11/03/the-bbc-has-a-duty-to-offer-expertise-even-if-its-from-54-year-old-men/
I’ll just quote two lines from Richard’s blogpost and his comments eight years ago: “in the end Ellie Mae O’Hagan did the job – and as I tweeted on the evening, made a good job of it. She’s got a strong record as a campaigner and she’s a good journalist.” “I was also misquoted, as noted. That lead to a wrong impression and Ellie Mae O’Hagan, to whom I have apologised as a result.”
Thank you for this Richard. 55 yrs ago I was a student teacher and with a friend we rented a flat just off the West Side of Clapham Common and we never went out alone at night and I only walked along the opposite pavement to the common when I went to Clapham South tube station or for a bus to college during the day. I also never walked across the common on my own in the daytime at any time! I also had a terrifying experience with the police when I had a Nigerian boyfriend that would be classed as racist now but of course it wasn’t in early 1965 and my law student boyfriend understood British Law.
If I lived in London now I hope I would have been at the vigil. I took my children to many Demos in the past but it would not be possible now. We are at a crossroads and I will definitely have to gear up to attend them again.
Thanks
Just after I read this, I read a today’s e-mail message on a completely different topic – which I thought, by chance or not – totally apposite in being C S Lewis’s poem The Condemned:
There is a wildness still in England that will not feed
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer’s hand,
Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed
In a zoo for public pleasure. It will not be planned.
Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgegrow folk
Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make
–We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke
As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.
A new scent troubles the air–to you, friendly perhaps–
But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell.
To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps,
And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell.
Paula & Pilgrim Slight Return
I can understand your anger , Paula , but aren’t we in danger of shooting the messenger
One thing we as males, PSR, should address seems to me to be
Why do so many men / males ( seem to ) hate females so much ?
After all we have mothers, wives, girl friends, sisters & daughters
and more important
1 ) when can we fully acknowledge this
2 ) implement effective laws to protect females
The education of males would be a good start – of all ages ?
There are too many men, it seems from what I read, who think that “othering” women is just what you do, that bad behaviour by men, perhaps especially by powerful men, is normal and that women just have to accept it.
“It’s just part of life! ” Marina Hyde wrote in the Guardian on Friday. I have to say I was astonished by her account, astonished and outraged, that behaviour like she described is just part of life – for women. (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/12/what-happened-women-uk-harassed-street)
As she wrote, “nothing happened. Compared to what happens, nothing really happened”. Why is that some men think they are entitled to behave badly towards women, and sometimes, too often, feel entitled to do violence?
It’s something to do with how men are reared by society, but also historical, when women were regarded as chattels, men’s property. Perhaps some men still think they are. We still have a long way to go.
I admit I did not read her article that way
I sensed it was deeply ironic when saying that
Rob Gray
This is a really complex subject that needs unpicking. I speak as the father of a soon to be 18 year old girl.
Firstly we should be thinking about what is happening in our criminal justice system in terms of funding. Like everything, law and order has been defunded by the Tories – there are less police, less legal aid, less resources to prosecute hate crime or persecution crimes on women especially when you consider the advent of digital and mobile phone means to deliver injustice person to person. Justice seems easy to get only if you are rich. Lack of cash reduces the status of everyone but it is even worse for those whose is status is lower (women being one of the those groups).
Secondly there is just really bad law and regulation out there in action and in the making. It’s really bad having the police as piggy in the middle between citizens and politicians who have acted in bad faith. There is nothing worse than the police having to uphold bad law and policy from a shitty Government as we have now.
Thirdly about ‘hating women’?
The only time men seem to hate women is when the woman is unobtainable from a desire point of view. It is very easy for desire to turn into hate – especially if the man is rebuffed – which the woman has a right to do. And some men seem to have a problem with that, with disastrous consequences.
My view is that markets use women to sell things – female desirability is used to make products desirable and obtainable. The internet has also made pornography more accessible than ever before. Both these factors can lead to distorted attitudes to women – a form of commoditisation?
But hate happens in both sexes. I remember sitting in my local authority canteen minding my own business only to begin to hear an Afro-Caribbean council officer slagging off men to a white colleague. What was worse was that she was shooting glances at me and was getting louder whilst she did it. What should I have done – gone up to her and told she was sexist pig? Asked for her name and line manager? Can you imagine what would have happened? And for all I know, she might have had a bad experience with a male but why take it out on me?
And for such men – where is the help to deal with their faulty thinking? How are boys taught to be men – to be able to handle their desire in a market culture where you are told you can have everything you want? We talk about all sort of addictions these days created by markets.
And again – mental health services – cut to the bone with long waiting lists storing up problems – that cannot tackle this.
Then there is the over emotional response I saw in the ‘Me-Too’ movement which made men out to sexual predators in the work place. I’ve been working since I was 16 years old, and I can tell you that men and women are the same: they both play field when looking for love and companionship even at work (and our work hours are long). I’ve seen women make the first move that leads to the break up of marriages and families as much as men. I’ve had senior female managers do that to me. Are these women ‘predators’ too?
As I said, its all very complicated.
What we need to do is talk rationally about it.
PSR —Hi
agree with your first two points but not too sure about your third re ” hating women ”
As my wife’s just said it doesn’t explain domestic violence —
what happens behind closed doors
It is not only men (I speak from some personal experience – not me, but people close to me) although the statistics make it clear the problem is mostly men. Even when a victim of violence or abuse is a man, the perpetrator is usually another man.
I think it is typically about power and control – a toxic masculinity defined by the desire to have and demonstrate strength, power and control; the fear of not having them; and an inability to show love, generosity of spirit and empathy.
Rob
I think that Andrew answers that question – although I still say acts of violence are/can be driven by men wanting to possess women and not being able to. It’s the ultimately deadly response to a woman’s right to say no and have a partner of her choosing.
Domestic violence is not exclusively a male on female phenomenon – in public housing we’ve seen it with the the gender roles reversed and even seen it in gay couples of both sexes. But men weigh in heavily as the most common proponents.
Domestic violence is about power and control through violence and fear. Too many men even today like to see their women somehow ‘contained’ in some way – held back. And because it is behind closed doors it is easier to get away with. Domestic violence is just a wish to keep people as they were when you first met them. People who do it can’t stand to see the other person grow – they find it threatening and uncomfortable. And the like to feel ‘in charge’ – to be the dominant one in the relationship.
It’s not good. I speak to women who grow their careers or go back to school or University and these events change them as people and how many times have heard of problems with their men folk because the male is now dealing with this more confident assertive, knowledgeable woman? Too often I’m afraid, and it is very worrying.
For myself, I saw my Mother work as hard as my Dad to keep our house and provide for us after my father lost his job to asset strippers in the early 70s and became truly working class.
It broke Mum’s heart to go to work as she wanted to stay at home and raise us. Very often we kids did the house work for her whilst she was out. My upbringing was not easy but I learnt a lot about mucking in. My Dad even cooked for us, made my sandwiches on days out and did the house work. My middle class partner’s Dad never did anything like that! I think it gave me a good handle on equality but there is always more you don’t know.
Cressida position should have been untenable the day after Jean Charles de Menezes was murdered by the Metropolitan Police. That she not only kept her job, but rose to the top of her profession. That tells us all we need to know about government priorities.
I don’t want Dick to go. I want her to sort it. Respond.
And the key to your statement is the word ‘Government’. It is they who set the context.
If Dick goes, then so do all the Home Office ministers from Patel downwards.
I disagree. Dick does not have the capacity to ‘sort it’. Her career is predicated on indecision. In fact, she’s already signalled that she doesn’t intend to, and is being backed by the powerful. Of course the Home Office ministers should go. The entire government should go. However, the message was loud and clear from Blair’s government onwards. The fact that Dick’s career was not affected in any way by her appallingly indecisive behaviour, which led directly to the killing of de Menezes, tells us all we need to know. The Westminster establishment will continue to use the police service as their instrument of control, without consent, and this will not change. In Scotland, we have an option available to change this, but in England, time is fast running out.
………………and by the way, another ‘social conditioner’ of women’s status in society is good old religion I’m afraid.
Religion seem to inhibit women too often – from ideas about keeping them at home, weird attitudes towards menstruation ( a natural part of mammal biology) and this notion that women must be some how pure and asexual.
I read Helena Kennedy’s ‘Eve was Framed’ as a young man and learnt that the law tended to come down heavily on women because of this notion that we put them on some sort of moral pedestal and any woman who broke that was in big trouble.
That vigil was always going to end like that.
The sheer number of police was a guarantee that things would go wrong.
Then watching the police advance as a block along the edges of the crowd, with single officers breaking along the crowd edge to form the “coral” of officers around the women., the classic “kettling” formation.
Things would start going wrong from the moment the crowd was compressed into a cramped block.
Kettling is deliberate, and is designed to intimidate and cause fear. In a pandemic situation it would have been even worse to be in that crowd.
It is also worth considering that the women were holding a vigil in memory of a woman [allegedly] murdered by a serving metropolitan police officer.
Still, since nobody was seriously injured or killed it saves the police from bringing-out their rather hollow excuses ” we received intelligence that some of the women were armed with AK47s’ and Mills Bombs, and intended to lay siege to Buckingham police”…….
There’s a NewsThump for every event:
“I was really worried,” said a witness who wished to remain anonymous.
“They were all just quietly standing and sitting, some of them even lit candles. It was frightening. Christ knows what could have happened next. I’ve got kids.”
https://newsthump.com/2021/03/14/people-of-clapham-protected-from-terrifying-small-group-of-mourners-holding-vigil/