One week in England

One week in England, from 8th-14th March 2021:

Monday

• International Women’s Day is celebrated.

Tuesday

• Meghan Markle is disbelieved and derided by the public and a prominent male figure in the British media after sharing in an interview that she had been suicidal.

Wednesday

• Sarah Everard has been missing for a week. She was last seen walking down the street after leaving a friend’s house to go home.
• There’s a lot of talk about how Sarah did everything ‘right’ – informed people of her location, dressed modestly, was on the phone to her partner on the way home, took a well-lit route – yet she was still abducted.

Friday

• Sarah Everard’s body is found.
• A covid safe (socially distanced, mask mandated) vigil is organized for Saturday on Clapham Common, near where she went missing. Organisers of the vigil are in court for whether it can go ahead.
• The Met Police are instructed to work with the organisers to ensure the vigil is safe.

Saturday

• One year ago Breonna Taylor was murdered by the police in her sleep.
• A Met Police officer is charged with Sarah Everard’s murder.
• The vigil goes ahead because women need to protest the right to walk home alone at night.

• The Met Police refused to work with organisers and wait until the sun goes down to start manhandling and arresting peaceful, crying, protesting women.
• The flowers many women left in Sarah’s memory are trampled by the police.

Sunday

• Mother’s Day is celebrated.
• A protest is held outside Scotland Yard and at Parliament Square for the disgusting treatment of the women protestors last night and to protest the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill going to Parliament on Monday.

It’s been an incredibly heavy week for women. To have had this week bookended by International Women’s Day and Mothering Sunday is some kind of twisted irony.

The Met Police refused to work with the organisers to hold a safe vigil, ‘safe’ in terms of coronavirus transmission and peoples’ general safety. It was a political act that they chose not to work with the organisers, even when instructed to by the courts.

The irony of the Met Police brutalizing and arresting peaceful women, who were only gathering in the first place because a Met Police officer murdered a woman who was simply walking home is almost too much to comprehend.

Should the vigil have taken place after being called off?

One woman is killed every 3 days in the UK. What happened to Sarah Everard is not a rare occurrence, and the message it sends to women everywhere is that we aren’t allowed to be out alone at night, essentially saying we should be living under an unofficial curfew or bear the consequences; assault, rape and/or murder.

Should anyone be out protesting anything during coronavirus?

I wear masks, fully support lockdowns because they’re necessary to stop the spread and like many others am willing to do all I can to stop the spread of coronavirus. I therefore don’t think large groups should be gathering for any old reason. However, like the Black Lives Matter protests last year, this isn’t ‘any old reason’. This is a matter of life and death. Also no outside protests have been proven to spread coronavirus.

It’s hard to explain what myself and many other women are feeling today, reflecting on this week. I was at the protest today at Parliament Square, because the videos I witnessed last night were equal parts shocking and disgusting and I felt genuinely compelled to stand together with others to show we won’t let this continue to happen.

The importance of protest

Protest has always been an important part of British history and historically has brought about change. 99% of protests are peaceful and without them, our ability to show the Government the view of the public is greatly reduced and basically mandates riots instead of protests. Also, it works. My mum was part of the Poll Tax protests in the late 80s/early 90s and yesterday’s protest has made Labour change their voting stance to oppose the bill tomorrow.

We deserve to uphold our right to protest and women deserve to walk the streets at night without fear of getting harassed, abducted, murdered or raped.