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FRThe Clapham vigil could have been a moment for police to show solidarity with women (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP) (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
It would have been a peaceful vigil. Women laid flowers for Sarah Everard, lit candles, held placards: “She was walking home,” read one. “We will not stop until women are safe,” another said. The Duchess of Cambridge was there, quietly adding a bouquet to the tributes. It would have been a peaceful vigil, and then it wasn’t anymore. Now the defining image of the protest on Clapham Common isn’t the flowers or the candles or the placards. It’s of a young woman, pinned to the ground by male police officers, eyes wide over her mask.
It is hard to imagine how this could look worse. The man charged with abducting and murdering Everard is a serving police officer; and the Independent Office for Police Conduct is now investigating the Met over its handling of various matters relating to the case. All week we women had been asking ourselves why we don’t feel safe in public spaces, why we so rarely report assaults to the police and why we get so little justice when we do.
Here, in one picture, was the bleakest possible answer: women don’t feel safe because the police are against us, just as they were against the vigil even taking place. Earlier on Saturday, the organisers of Reclaim These Streets had formally cancelled the gathering, saying that the Met “would not engage with our suggestions to help ensure that a legal, Covid-secure vigil could take place”. A representative of the police said: “We take no joy in this event being cancelled, but it is the right thing to do given the real and present threat of Covid-19.”
But the “real and present threat of Covid-19” had not seemed to apply to last summer’s Black Lives Matter rallies, which were policed with an admirably light touch (so light that in Bristol, protesters were able to topple the hated statue of slaver Edward Colston and chuck it in the harbour while the police looked on). And a week ago, in Glasgow, police seemed to take a much less aggressive approach to Rangers fans, who packed their bodies into a heaving mass of virus-sharing celebration.
We know that outside events are low-risk for Covid transmission. So an outside event where women quietly mourned together at a safe two-metre distance from each other is not a plausible superspreader event. Put these things together, and there’s an ugly undertone that when male-dominated crowds occupy public spaces, they’re exercising an essential human right; but when women do it, they do not.
This suspicion only grows when you consider the immediate police reactions to Everard’s disappearance, which included telling women in Clapham to “be careful going out alone”, an echo of the advice given in Yorkshire when the police were failing to capture Peter Sutcliffe. Women were outraged then, just as they are today: why should their freedom be curtailed because of a violent man’s actions?
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SubscribeIf there were eyewitness reports of a black man being a stalker/ killer, I wonder if the author think it would “be appropriate to warn [black] men that those acting suspiciously in the area will be challenged by police.” I sincerely hope she would not.
Should suspicious men be challenged? Absolutely. I think police should have very broad latitude to follow their instincts; those instincts are honed by years of experience in spotting dirtbags before the rest of us. We are foolish to hamstring them with woke policies that make us all less safe. But “challenging” 50% of the population is is a waste of police resources.
“Women are being policed” for mens’ bad behavior? No. Women are being told to be careful. Because women are being targeted. If someone was targeting people in wheelchairs, it would make sense to warn the disabled to be extra careful. Same if men were being targeted. Or Labour supporters. Or barristers. Again, let’s not let woke aphorisms distort reality.
No one is curtailing your freedom; you’re free to walk down as many dark alleys as you like. But if bad things happen in that dark alley, it’s not the fault of the police officer who “didn’t protect you.” Telling women to be careful isn’t “policing their behavior”, it’s encouraging them to be cognizant of the risks of the real world.
Rent a mob show up anywhere they can cause trouble but how many of the “genuine grieving women wishing to show solidarity” would have done so for a vigil in memory of all the young women abused, raped and even murdered in Northern towns? (Not that I can recall any taking place which rather proves the point).
The answer is pretty much none of them. This was mainly about the perpetrators with an unhealthy dose of “it’s important because she was like me” thrown in.
Edit. Sorry this was meant to be a general comment, not a specific reply to Brian.
I agree. The only people protesting about the systematic rape and torture of working class girls in the north were called ‘far right’. Disgusting double standards and to em shows the truly despicable nature of woke activists.
I wonder why barristers would be targeted? Lol.
It’s in Shakespeare: “First let’s kill all the lawyers.” No-one asked _him_ why.
I am sorry to hear that.
Although I am white, several years ago when I was a teenager I was regularly getting stopped by police on my way back home from my friends house. It is shameful if they now only target black people like yourself.
It’s a shame Sarah Everard could not defend herself with a firearm. She might be alive today had she had that right.
As it is, her attacker could be assured that she was not armed.
Legal firearms are not the problem. It’s the illegal ones and you already have an illegal firearm problem in the UK. A rapidly rising one, in fact. Disarming the people who don’t cause gun crime seems to penalize only law abiding people like Sarah.
And then, of course there are always knives but I doubt Sarah would have been saved by carrying a knife.
thanks but seeing the stats we are just better off without guns! Your system has failed if you can’t walk the streets safely! – the answer is not to arm the population but to fix the underlying problem.
You’re not without guns, you’re just without legal guns. As Sarah Everard’s case indicates, you can’t walk the streets safely. Had she been able to defend herself, she’d likely be alive today. Preventing women like Everard from defending themselves because someone else may commit a crime with an illegal gun doesn’t make much sense. The underlying problem is murder. Making a lot of progress fixing it, are you?
I would not suggest arming the population although it seems to work in Switzerland.
This case IS a fact. Not to mention the fact that probably wouldn’t make either Sarah Everard’s family or many posters here agree with you.
How many people killed in knife attacks could be alive today had they had the right to self defense?
Sarah is a fact. An inconvenient one, maybe, but a fact nonetheless.
Exceptions are facts. If people could walk the streets safely, Sarah would be alive.
Excellently argued throughout.
I want to be able to defend myself. I am pro legal guns. Those who advocate against guns need to think through the whole story because they are stuck in the “guns are bad” narrative.
A fact, yes, but not a statistic.
‘The underlying problem is murder. Making a lot of progress fixing it, are you?’
Actually, yes we are.
Crime in the UK has generally been falling.
We’re not particularly keen on wide public ownership of guns in the UK.
We’re not even keen on the police having them, at least not routinely.
We tend to see them as the problem itself, not the solution to the very problem they too often create.
For example, on a very quick look on the internet: Murders with firearm per million population: UK 0.236 vs USA 32.57 (138 times more).
So guns would make us safer in the UK how exactly?
Would Sarah Everard have been safer had she been able to defend herself?
No. In this particular case she was – allegedly – dealing with a rogue diplomatic protection officer who would be trained to disarm and incapacitate an armed and dangerous male assassin at close quarters. Short of holding a cocked & loaded pistol at the ready and spinning around on the pavement like a gun fighter in a saloon bar shoot out, you’re not going to see and hit/deter a potential assailant in the street. Even for a pepper spray the same logic holds true. Walking in pairs is a better strategy imo. Or cycling/driving.
Well, we will never know, will we, since Sarah didn’t have any self defense. In any case, there are certainly people who have used firearms to defend their lives. A recent case in the US was an 86 year old woman who would definitely have been as dead as Sarah had she not had a firearm.
I think you overrate the lethality of ‘PC ‘Blobby. He can’t even kill himself it seems.
Nobody has actually said this was a random killing. Right at the start of this being reported I read something which made me think it was not random.
Who knows what would have happened had she been armed? It’s a moot point.
Had she been armed she might have stood a chance. As it is she was a sitting duck. Hardly moot in my view.
Please give it a rest. Have you never heard the saying “if you live by the sword you die by the sword”
You are advocating a gunfight would be a good idea.
And if you don’t have a “sword” we find your body the next day.
Had Sarah had a “sword” she might be alive today. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
As you can see the ratio of people walking about on the street safely and without problem far exceeds.
gun crime is a problem (a real problem – not “might be” a problem)
No, is not! I think Brits were taught to be submissive, this is why there are so many crimes and so many innocent people die.
Unlikely! unlike the rest of europe only royalty they approved of stayed in power. They fought to get all the rights taken for granted! Brits are not submissive at all!
Up until about 1964 you didn’t need a licence for a shot gun in the UK.
In fact if needed one quickly you could hire one from Moss Bros, in Covent Garden.
Was the country devastated by people loosing off sawn off shotguns at each other?
No, off course not, even though we had also sadly, just given up hanging as well.
In Britain only the criminals and selected police have guns.
You are not keen on arms in UK because you don’t believe in freedom. This is why thousands of girls were raped by “Asian gangs” and British men are hiding somewhere.
I stand with Ben Shapiro who said that Many Jews were exterminated during WWII because they could not defend themselves. I believe that law abiding citizens should have the right to own guns!
Never trust the govern to the extent that you disarm yourselves!
Well, here is a little statistic that the media won’t tell you. The single highest gun ownership per head of population in the world, is Alaska, and yet they’ve had no mass shootings, and a low murder rate from guns..
Yes, I find that to illuminate the issue in a nutshell. Alaska also has an exceptionally low illegal gun ownership rate. Some have problems understanding who is committing gun crime in the US. It isn’t legal gun owners.
That’s even better than the Land of William Tell!
In 1979 in Shaffhausen I passed a smart Peugeot saloon and noticed a submachine gun on the rear seat. Isolated lapse by its trained owner, I hope. Between its challenging geography and its lavishly armed militia, Switzerland would be one tough country to occupy.
How low?
Interesting, but given Alaska’s sIze in relation to its population density and lack of urbanisation maybe less so.
Also what type of gun ownership are we talking about here in rural Alaska when the vast proportion of gun deaths in the US are attributed to smaller firearms?
Switzerland is perhaps the best run, and happiest country in the world in my experience.
It should be a beacon for all, including the wretchedly incompetent and woefully conceited UK.
Yes, although enforced arms bearing goes too far for me. I’m satisfied with having the right as it should be a choice.
it would be interesting to see what Switzerland would do with a flood of illegal firearms and a subsequent elevated gun crime rate. Would it disarm the law abiding leaving people like Sarah defenseless like the UK or would it refuse to address illegal gun ownership like the US? A third path could be leave the legally owned gun owners alone and throw the book at anyone caught with an illegal firearm whether in the commission of a crime or not.
The Swiss would undoubtedly go for your third option.
They are a very pragmatic people and have already had one major gun incident back in 2004 in Zug that left 14 dead.
Yes it’s interesting that they did not respond to Zug by disarming legal gun owners. Very pragmatic indeed!
Here in North America ‘already’ and ‘2004’ make a peculiar-sounding pair.
And that’s even for someone in Toronto, called by Peter Ustinov ‘New York run by the Swiss.’
(Back then, 1973 or so, it was 40 homicides a year for 2m people. Last year it was 71 for 3m, mostly gun murders. We’re all scared crapless it will all of a sudden be 200, and more or less expect it.)
You are missing the point!
You are talking about guns owned by criminals. We advocate for guns for law abiding people.
Criminals will always have a way of getting guns, but disarming good citizens is foolish to say the least.
Switzerland is no panacea of peaceful gun possession, with the highest rates of gun violence in Europe!
The American, Thomas Sowell, who favours gun ownership, has said that burglary increased in the UK when gun licenses were introduced for the simple reason that burglars knew they would not be shot. I haven’t checked the figures, but ownership is one thing, walking around with a gun is another.
I suspect the big factor in this case was the government lockdown rules. She was breaking the rules with the visit and when accused of breaking them she complied with the arrest without putting up a fight. Nobody wants to discuss this. The government killed her.
Good luck with that. In the early nineties a then elderly Russian women was telling me about the high level of street crime in Moscow. She remembered fondly how one could safely walk the streets at any time of the night when Stalin was in charge. The solution can be worse than the problem
I guess it went in a smooth gradient. In Kharkhov in Brezhnev times, you’d carry a screwdriver, according to my acquaintance.
This is a proof for what? That Stalinism was great? Do you realize that Russians are so brainwashed that even now, 50% of them regard genocidal criminal Stalin a good guy that they regret? I hope you don’t want the UK to sink to that level.
Stalin’s track record was tens of millions of deaths.
Proof that the price of safety may be lost liberty.
Annette, you post in so many places that it is hard to keep up with you!
You say: ‘Disarming the people who don’t cause gun crime seems to penalize only law abiding people like Sarah.’
Are you sure? Murders with firearm per million population: UK 0.236 vs USA 32.57 (138 times more).
That’s murders, note, not gun deaths in general.
Yes, I’m sure. Unless you believe that Sarah Everard could not own a gun without becoming a criminal it’s patently obvious that disarming the people who don’t cause gun crime penalizes law abiding citizens like her.
Your conflating safety with gun ownership… How about look at american culture of violence (its rape culture, its glorification of gun ownership. You have a violent culture with or without guns – Although violent incidents occur in other western countries, they are not as frequent… what is it about americans and use of violence…
Maybe, but we don’t know what happened. It’s possible the guy used his position as a policeman to abduct her. Was she supposed to gun a policeman down in the street?
Does carrying a firearm around with you genuinely protect you, or does it create a criminal ‘arms race’? The amount of gun deaths in the USA would suggest more guns, legal or otherwise, are not the answer.
You’re correct, we don’t know all the details. but people have certainly saved their own lives through legal firearm ownership.
Carrying a legally owned firearm, may indeed protect you. An arms race isn’t required when one has the right to bear arms. In my view, it’s highly unlikely that Sarah Everard would immediately commit gun crime were she to have the legal right to self defense with a firearm, which is why legal gun ownership is an important right.
It’s true that the very most cunning fiend is unstoppable, and could spirit the king’s daughter away from her mother’s funeral with no one noticing, though she carried a pistol. You make a real and depressing point even if it doesn’t cover ordinary situations.
Just like expressways with no speed limits, public drinking, and universal suffrage, you can institute it as soon as the people are ready. Otherwise it’s reckless.
Surely you don’t need a handgun to walk the streets. Look at the stats for murder by a stranger. Very low yet no media states them. We are mostly murdered by people we know.Women could carry tasers, illegal or not. The problem for women will always be that whatever you carry to defend yourself could be taken from you and used against you. Then you’re in an even worse situation.
We have no idea yet how it was that she’d safely crossed the common and was taken on a suburban street at that time of night.
It is always going to be the individual’s responsibility to assess the risks of various actions they take. Until we know more about her abduction and murder we cannot make any judgements. It is impossible for there to be a police officer accompanying each of us wherever we go.
If a handgun can be taken away from you so can a taser. But two points 1) in the US an attacker can never be sure (unless they live somewhere like Chicago where legal gun restrictions are very tight while illegal guns flood the streets) their intended victim isn’t armed so they are always taking a chance. And 2) faced with an armed intended victim, some attackers may decide to choose another victim. These are not judgements they are facts.
In the UK, an attacker can be sure their intended victim does not have a firearm.
I don’t personally need a handgun to walk the streets but then I chose where I live specifically because while legal gun ownership is very high, gun crime is almost non existent (and other reasons, good schools, nice climate, etc) . Maybe the fact that there are many people with legal guns here is not a deterrent to people seeking to commit gun crime with an illegal handgun but if you were an attacker wouldn’t you like to be pretty sure that your victim wasn’t armed?
I’m unwilling to blame Sarah no matter what the circumstances.
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If she was able to carry a gun it’s more than likely her attacker would also have a gun.
Well, that makes no sense unless you believe that legal gun ownership turns everyone into an attacker. In my view, Sarah would not have suddenly turned into a murderer simply because she owned a gun and her attacker would have been one without a gun. A murderer is a murderer. You’re stuck on ideology.
“that makes no sense” Actually it makes every sense.! If person A can have a gun So can person B.
It is shameful that a real problem – police racism – gets bundled together with imaginary issues like this latest woke diatribe.
In the middle of a pandemic, with standing orders prohibiting group gatherings, a bunch of woke feminists decide that they are above the law and will thus exercise their “right” to gather anyways. Police performs its public-supported duty of enforcing the law, with clear forewarning to disperse or face arrest. The wokes decide to play martyr because they are being “brutalized”. All they manage to achieve is embarrass themselves, as the world witness their pitiful try to twist into peaceful vs violent an issue that is clearly about legal vs illegal.
To compound their moral misery, they add the suggestion that police’s duty to protect females is somehow to be above their duty to protect the rest of the population… So yeah, what about the gender equality? Only when suitable, right? What a sad lot.
A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the U.S. criminal justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution, or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.https://medium.com/@arkhanguelski/evidence-based-examination-of-systemic-police-bias-in-the-united-states-c2bdce0e1f4c
Thanks. I read that with interest.
I buy it for the most part but not entirely. I really don’t think a woman who murders faces the same consequences (intensity of suspicion, thoroughness of investigation, likelihood of arrest, length of sentence) as a man who murders, on average.
Once charged she probably, in my unlearned but slowly considered view, faces an equally energetic prosecution, and occasionally she may be punished just as severely, or (rarely) more severely.
(I have real-life cases in mind, of course, but also a TV show which may somewhat colourfully give an idea of the spirit of the thing which I’m getting at. The wonderful actress Naomi Watts uttered a memorable line in a Netflix show where she played a criminally wicked character: “If I robbed a bank,” she avowed to her interlocutor, having privately in mind her many awful misdeeds, “they’d probably hold the door open for me on the way out.”)
But if such differences exist and a study failed to find them despite the best efforts of the investigators, I’d understand that. It’d be mildly shocking if it were otherwise.
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If anyone involved in such matters wants to agree or disagree, I’d welcome that. Their views would be worth something; mine are of little value.
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Dislike it though I may, I’m not bitter about this. The police deal with situations far more trying and immeasurably more urgent than almost all the rest of us. Not to put too fine a point on it, they clean up our stinking garbage for insufficient pay. They are commanded, ordinarily, and so are the courts, by principles distilled over a number of lifetimes, and I am thankful for that.
I concur with the David Bowie who (Stationtostation) enjoined us to “drink to the men who protect you and I / Oh, drink, drink, raise your glass, raise your glass high.”
I likewise agree with Jane Austen and the 18th century that prejudice is on the whole a salutary thing. (By that word they of course meant judgment.) It’s pride that wrecks things more often than what we call judgment.
Pride is the enemy, and it’s what generated this news story.
Women murdering and incarceration rates – I would agree with, they probably don’t get as long! About 90% of all perpetrators are men, and ∼81% of their victims are men. Moreover, 78% of the victims of female offenders are also men… the majority of crimes are interpersonal conflict
But if a woman does a crime i’m happy to see her locked up for the same amount of time. Such an individual is dangerous.
the issue you have then is with sentencing but not police!
It’s a simple matter of triumphalism. Once a given party has won, they often can’t resist making a show of it.
Triumphalism is a fancy word, mind you: the regular phrase is rubbing their faces in it.
And nothing will ever change this. I mean, not as long as instincts, hormones, and neurotransmitters are still what we’re all about.
Mr. Musk, have you thought of a technological solution to this yet, with your brain plug-ins? Hurry up, will you?
It’s not a race thing; if it were, police would be going around harassing non-white women all the time. Police are overwhelmingly suspicious of young men because young men commit an overwhelming proportion of crime. I guess that’s the cross young men will always have to bear. If I were the parent of a young man I would just counsel him to understand and accept this basic reality, to try to minimize any reason the police might have for targeting him (not dressing like a stereotypical thug, for example, not driving recklessly, not behaving loudly or belligerently in public, not being drunk or high in public, etc.) and to go along with whatever over-vigilant nonsense the police might subject him to no matter how unjustified he thinks it is, to not argue or resist. You can always sue them later, but if they shoot you dead or bash your skull in, there’s no recourse.
I live in Canada and all our police – urban, regional/provincial, and the RCMP – have always had guns. It’s just an accepted reality like in the US, so it’s hard sometimes to understand Europeans who are so nervous at the thought of their police forces being armed. In both countries, there’s always been a lot of firearms and a very high rate of firearm ownership (people are often surprised to learn that about Canada, but in rural and small-town Canada, almost everyone has always had shotguns and rifles, not just for hunting but for protecting oneself and livestock from wildlife), so it would have made no sense to forbid police forces to be armed. It would have just made them sitting ducks.
Good point. I cannot understand people who actively want people like Sarah Everard to have no means of defense of her own life.
I think the UK and European peoples were disarmed generally many hundreds of years ago to enable the easy oppression and slavery of the people by the feudal nobels and monarchys.
The US founding fathers in their, I believe, wisdom decided that the enforced helplessness of the common people was not going to be a thing for their new republic.
To avoid the eternal problem of the physically strong ruling over the weaker members in a society there are only 2 possible solutions I can see 1) many more police patrols 2) allow people to better defend themselves.
The only reason that neither of these things are being done is our rulers and the wealthy don’t care as they have acces to personnel security and because the original reason for disarming the population is still valid today.
Your conflating the situation. Defense is not certain! The gun can be used against her. Leaving her in a worse scenario. remembering she was up against a trained individual. The gun was not an asset.
I have no horse in this race as an American. However, I did have an experience some years ago which perhaps one must be a woman to understand completely.
I was at an all women’s retreat held in the Michigan woods, sleeping in tents and enjoying nature. Some of us ventured out at midnight to look at the stars and one said, can you imagine doing this anywhere else without looking over your shoulder?
As a city girl, I had not even realized that I was always unconsciously aware of that as I walked in even the safest areas. To be “safe” you had to have your street smarts on alert everywhere you went otherwise the question was, why were you walking in Central Park at all. I offer this only as an example of what life is like for a lot of us.
As a NYC native myself, I completely see your point. I spent a lot of time in Central Park although never at night. Of course today, it doesn’t have to be night for there to be a problem. While I was never bothered in NYC I did have an unpleasant experience in Italy once, in a very public place, no less.
And while I miss NYC and so so many things about it, I am very happy to live in a low crime place now. It took me years to stop frantically locking everything up.
The preception that the requirment to “have your street smarts on alert” to be safe only applies to women is false. I hope when you were in the woods you had your nature smarts on alert. Despite what the modern world would like to believe no-one is ever 100% safe anywhere, its not possible. Realising that you aren’t and taking appropriate precautions is the only sensible course of action.
That isn’t to say I’m not cognisent of the additional dangers and harasment women face.
The reality is that men are in far more danger than women, as statistically we are more than twice as likely to be attacked. Anecdotally, nearly every man I know has been attacked by a drunken stranger at least once, where as hardly any women have. Feminists think we stroll down the street at night carefree, when in reality I had to develop street awareness from being about seven years old.
Please. Every woman i know has been attacked while out in the world just living her life. Usually it’s because we refused the advances of some idiot.
I wish more women carried a weapon that could take an eye. That we’d men would be marked for their behavior.
“Please” what?! How the hell’s your comment in any way relevant to JD’s objectively correct and balanced post? In keeping with the theme of balance, I’ve known a fair few women down the years but none I’ve got to know at least reasonably well have ever been attacked – at least as far as I’m aware, and this has been sufficiently well that I’m sure it would have come up.
As the overwhelming majority of men will never rape and – I’m sure – find it abhorrent, increasing not decreasing the number of them on the streets at night would in all likelihood reduce the incidence of this vile crime. I’d explain why but wouldn’t want to lay myself open to accusations of ‘mansplaining’ or whatever the stupid term is.
I’ve been shot at by violent men in exactly one place on this planet: my own home state of Michigan, in the northern most woods on the shore of Lake Superior.
I was camping with my husband. The men were redneck thugs. We were terrified and my husband told me I could run through the woods faster than he could drive the trail so it might come to that.
The reason: men love violence.
It is not safe anywhere.
‘The reason: men love violence.’
Including your husband?
I do not know the statistics for the USA, but in the UK most women are murdered by somebody they know. Only 6% are murdered on the streets. Facts matter and not unsupported and offensive opinions.
Including men!
No one should fell threatened because of their colour, choice clothing etc its just not acceptable in this day and age, ‘no name’ says get used to it and he sounds scared, I say change the institutionalised police ideas and misunderstandings. If ever there was a case to allow a vigil this was it and now it will be remembered as a riot on the common which is so wrong. This was a gathering of women to show solidarity and respect for this young lady murdered in cold blood and maybe wonder if this might happen to them one day. We the male population need to stand by our wives, sisters, daughters, friends and the lady in the street and ensure that if we hear or see anyone threatening a women we step in to assist not take over just support. The police need to show a little more understanding and it could change our perception of them, women are entitled to feel protected by the police and supported by the rest of us and the same goes for any non white person as well.
This was a bunch of lawbreakers showing that they felt entitled enough to play havoc with society AND the law if they were angry enough. The same applies to Black Lives Matter, muslim groups, far-right groups.
The “right to protest in public” should be removed and protests should only be allowed on private property, in agreement with the owners, and causing no additional inconvenience to others going about their lawful business.
And those who point out that some changes were only achieved by protests need to remember that mobs can also rule by “peaceful protest”.
There are four imaginable types of people. They say, respectively:
‘I will restrain myself, and others must too.’
‘I will restrain myself, but others needn’t’
‘I won’t restrain myself, but others must’
‘I won’t restrain myself, and others needn’t.’
Three of those kinds, there’s some good in them. Only the third kind is no good.
“that everyone in the majority should bend society so that the minority doesn’t feel like a minority. That is silly, most sensible people can see that, surely?”
It’s probably impossible, certainly complex and many (naive) efforts to achieve it seem to produce practical problems and even some injustice. But I don’t think it’s silly to try. You’re being too nice about it.
Yes that is silly. I am a US government scientist and I think race and gender are poor qualities on which to base promotions for these jobs. But that is happenning in a very overt and conspicuous way. It is true that there has been and still is some unfair descrimination based on those qualities. But it’s complex. It might be the case, for example, that very smart black applicants prefer careers that pay more and simply aren’t available to be government scientists. I think that is, in fact, the truth. When you look at some of those new hires, they haven’t published nearly enough.
On the other hand, I am a white man and so far I have not lost out. Moreover, probably more awareness is a good thing. It’s a just a shame people always have to push an idea to absurdity. The reason of course is that the individual people implementing these changes in policy derive personal power from them.
What a rare awareness you’ve attained. If this rightly shows you, you are a complete human being with what I would call complete ethics and a complete mind.
(I’m not one myself, but luckily you don’t have to be one to recognize one.)
In my view you now have the right to do what you can to spread your wholeness outward and impress it on others until they partake of it and emulate it. I might call it a duty if it weren’t an imposition for me to do so.
Good luck in that endeavour if you choose to undertake it. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, since I expect it would be thankless work, and it won’t pay.
I wish you the best in any case.
Do you think part of then problem is that the Police cannot attract enough high calibre people and those that are, go into the various specialised units? Hearts and Minds has been British military strategy since Malay Conflict started in 1948 which is why so many are taught languages. Stopping people without cause is waste of resources and alienates the honest. When I suggested that a detective working in Bradford might learn Urdu she ws amazed. I suggested 6 months at SOAS or Army School of Languages and 6 months in Pakistan.
..and as a white Brit, I completely agree with you. We are all “innocent” until proven otherwise, but we should not be targeted because of colour, race, or suspicion.
As the article makes clear, to me at least, there is no objection to issuing warnings to women: the problem is when that is where police communication stops. The silence that follows is a, “men, you just carry on as normal,” message. It’s almost as if women have no good reason the be on the streets, while men are, understandably, on the streets to go to work and, in happier times, to the pub or to a football match.
I’m white, but have been stopped on several occasions when I matched a description of a perp and was unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In my area of Canada, immigrants and “people of colour” are generally university profs, engineers, and doctors. The typical perp is white, skinny, with bad teeth from his drug habit so the police preferentially stop white males. Sadly, in other areas of Canada, crime is very much more rampant in “communities of colour” (I don’t know the best terminology now, thus the quotes). So POC are the ones who get stopped. I feel their pain, but police can’t go around stopping random little old ladies to make tings “fair and equitable”. It’s a waste of limited resources.
Thanks.
I can understand that. I’m a white guy, so it’s a perspective I can’t ever really have. But I get why that would make you nervous, and probably for good reason. Trusting instincts needs to be tempered with understanding when those instincts are likely the result of prejudice and bias.
My only question is this: were you there? From footage I saw on the Sky News website, right at the front of the crowd, goading the police, was a group of (white) men, as there had been at the front of Extinction Rebellion and BLM protests. By blindly accepting what we’re being told is to become an accessory to anarchy. How about not making this about you and leaving this poor woman’s family, friends and colleagues to grieve this horrific murder?
You expect Sarah to do research?
I saw the same thing.
So why didn’t they arrest those white men, instead of attacking a 5’2″” woman.
Answer: The men were too much risk to them personally. The woman was not. As I said above, they have become cowards.
The writer complains that only 1/3 of the police are women! Then says men are a physical threat to women, and does not see the contradiction! I guess she feels a 999 call should ask ‘is the perp a man or woman’ so they know which police to send out, as I can tell you, women are not capable of fighting tough men except in rare cases. Unarmed women on the beat are one big reason the modern police are so useless. They are forced to travel in packs because this, cutting their effectiveness in half. May as well think that a woman on the force has to have another cop along to protect her, and really reduces the effectiveness of the force.
In USA the woman officer is alone, but has her pistol and thus is a very effective cop.
(edited for spelling, I cannot spell and this spelling program see3ms to be temperamental)
What woman (or man for that matter) would take a job at any amount of money as an unarmed cop in Chicago or Newark?
The truth will out:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/15/rank-file-officers-claim-sarah-everard-vigil-infiltrated-members/
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Gatherings are banned. The police breaks up an illegal gathering. What do you expect – that the police should help you break the law? Because your political views are so right it puts you above the law?
If football crowds and BLM were treated with ‘light touch’ it was surely because the alternative was serious violence. Understandable, but in hindsight it might have been better to have suppressed BLM with force, to avoid setting the precedent that you are invoking here.
The police even JOINED IN the BLM protests, so at that point in time they lost all credibility.
Yes indeed all that “taking a knee” (in English: grovelling) outside Downing St, by Mr Plod & his chums.
How embarrassing can it get?
I don’t think Sgt Dixon of Dock Green would have abased himself in such a manner!
Took the knee and ran away. Not only an embarrassment but a disgrace.
And to think the ‘running away’ was within yards of the Cenotaph.
Not to mention Kneel Starmer!
When Kneel Starmer’s toe curling photo was published, I was instantly reminded of that brilliant line by the chief baddie in Superman 2. The alien gang bust into the White House and command the President to kneel. An aide kneels to protect the President. The baddie sneers: “You are not the President. No one who commands so many could kneel so quickly”.
Yes, I think the police may oppress peaceful women & anti-Covid demos, and tolerate rowdy football fans, for practical/operational reasons, but the kneeling to BLM and also the tolerance for Extinction Rebellion seemed more ideological/political than operational.
The modern view of policing appears to be that the police don’t actually enforce the law. Unless you’re hurting someone’s feefees on Twitter of course.
So why did Cressida d**k go on a rally at the height of Covid?
When was that?
So this gathering should have been organised to be violent so the police would stand back? H’mm
Not necessarily violent. The organisers should just have arranged for a ring of Jamaican gentlemen, all down on one knee, to circle the vigil.
If you had a legal right to peaceful assembly as in the US, it could not be banned. According to SCOTUS, you don’t dispense with civil rights due to a pandemic.
Annette would it sastify you if you were to learn that the below represents the right to peaceful assembly and protest in the UK?
‘…there are often compelling reasons to limit the time, place or manner of communication…. I may not give speeches in the middle of the street without a permit, because the free flow of traffic takes priority… How important is it to speak at this particular time and place and in this particular manner, and how pressing are the countervailing interests of the state? …. Freedom of expression is certainly not absolute in [this country]’
What I am asking about is the actual affirmative law, similar to the first amendment in the US. An affirmative right to assembly. Speech is different from assembly and you may or may not have an affirmative civil right to that enshrined in law. I don’t see the word assembly in your quote which doesn’t appear to be from an actual written law. Is it? Freedom of expression or speech is not the same thing as assembly.
You seem verklempt over my asking this question. It isn’t a challenge I am simply interested in understanding whether there is or is not a right in the UK to peaceful assembly. So far, no one has been able to point to such a law which should be the starting point of the issue. Absent such a right enshrined in law, it’s left to courts and police to make individual determinations. So you have BLM and Extinction rebellion assemblies permitted even during a pandemic while Sarah Everard’s and lockdown assemblies not permitted with the pandemic being the excuse. And this will be the case absent an affirmative right.
Annette, if it’s any help, I think the difficulty arises in the way the question is posed. This is largely due to the different historic circumstances of the two countries.
In the USA, a citizen may readily say: ‘Look, my right is here in the Constitution, nth Amendment.’
In the UK, citizens very seldom ask what the constitution says. The reason is that, in cases such as we are looking at, the principle is ‘I have the right do anything that the law does not forbid.’
Or to put it another way, we in the UK less often look for a right in a document (Constitution). We have the right already, unless it is modified by a law. In other words, we don’t usually need to point to a page in a document, although I understand that this is what you are hoping for.
So I return to an extract on English law which I have recently posted in answer to you, but this time with italics:
‘These freedoms [of assembly and association] include taking part in public meetings, processions and demonstrations… Freedom to assemble means that there is no law forbidding people to assemble. If a number of people choose to go to the same place at the same time this is not unlawful, provided that they keep within the limits of the law.’
The limits of the law are effectively respecting other citizen’s rights: not blocking the streets and roads, not causing disorder or violence, and so on. I should imagine similar considerations apply to safely managing assemblies and protests in the USA.
The question is posed as do you have an affirmative civil right to assembly enshrined in law in the UK. I have mentioned several times that the US does so I am aware there is a difference. In the US, freedom to assemble most definitely does not mean only as long as there is no law forbidding it. Neither does freedom of religion for example, you could not suddenly make Catholicism illegal in the US, the bill of rights would prevent that from happening.
It appears that the UK does not have an affirmative such right. Which means that it is a matter left to police and courts. Your “rights” or what you think of as your rights, are subject to the whims of police and courts. And they may be removed absent court adjudication, Or they may not be. It’s down to whim. and that may be fine with many in the UK although from the conversation here it appears that whim is a problem for many. If one group has the “right” to assembly merely because it hasn’t been removed by the police (which means there is no such right) and another doesn’t, do you see the problem?
Freedom to assemble based only on there not being a law that prohibits it means you have no affirmative civil right to assembly. An affirmative right is very different to having a “right” until lawmakers decide to remove it in some cases and not others.
Annette, I always enjoy your posts, but google ‘Reading the Riot Act’ for your answer, basically it is an act from the 1700s Britain which means once an official reads the act to an assembly they have one hour to disperse or be committing a felony, which was a death sentence max back then. This is not used now, but could be.
The Riot Act, which read outlaws assembly, and any official can read it. ““Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!””
UK has a hundred laws against speech allowed for any one which allows it! Do not believe the post below. UK is ‘Common Law’ which means law is based on judge’s rulings historically, and this means there is a tolerance of free speech, but NO RIGHT TO IT.
Yes I understand your point. The Riot Act is indicative of why the US has a bill of rights today. And I very much enjoy your informed posts as well. And the reason this makes a difference in my view is that if you are not starting any conversation or divisive issue from the point of basic rights that are not subject to whim, then you have little to stand on to complain when courts and police make varying decisions as to speech or assembly or any other “right”.
The right to petition in the US bill of rights, for example is based on the historical occurrence that King George III refused to accept a petition from the first continental congress. It was subject to his whim, IOW. The US bill of rights affirms that the right to petition one’s government is NOT subject to whim.
Two problems with the US approach:
Interesting post.
But even SCOTUS cannot alter the constitution on a whim. In the case of abortion, SCOTUS did not find a right to abortion in the constitution, it decided the case under the due process clause, specifically under the 14th amendments right to personal privacy. So they were not making fresh law so much as adjudicating that the law as it was, contravened the 14th amendment. So whether you agree or disagree with it, it all went back to the constitution, in that you have a right to privacy in your medical decisions. Abortion isn’t a human right in the US and the laws governing it vary by state. The right to personal privacy is.
In the same vein, SCOTUS has never found the right to gay marriage in the US Constitution. That case was also decided under the due process and equal protection clauses.
The purpose of a constitution isn’t to solve problems. Under such an understanding you wind up with something akin to the EU constitution, thousands of pages of law that is far above the purpose of a constitution. I subscribe to the original definition of a constitution as a “body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is acknowledged to be governed”. Fundamental principles and legislation are two different things but the second must flow from or recognize and abide by the first.
IOW, it’s the foundational document. It isn’t meant to take the place of legislation, which changes over the decades while the principles enumerated in the constitution and bill of rights remain constant. To put it simply, it explains why no body of lawmakers could make Islam or Catholicism illegal in the US. Because even if some such lawmaking body wanted to, it contravenes one of our fundamental principles, freedom of religion. It also allows 50 sovereign states which have varying laws to all agree on the fundamental principles. This also explains why the US constitution doesn’t change much while laws do. The fundamental principles really don’t change.
It may be technically true that the Supreme Court did not make fresh law, but simply deemed? discovered? that the law had always been like that. But I think that is sophistry at best, substantially false at worst. Before the relevant judgements, abortion and gay marriage were illegal. I take it you will agree that none of the people who wrote the constitution would have wanted or written or dreamed of that their words could be interpreted in such a way. The laws being struck down would have been universally seen as constitutional, right up until the moment where the Supreme Court decided that they were not. When, and by whom was it introduced in US law that you had a right to abortion or gay marriage?
If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it is a duck. What this quacks like is a group of judges entrusted with a right to decide the law is anything they think it ought to be, taking guidance by a vague statement of principles and infinite use of their imagination. It is not necessarily a bad system, and the professionalism and sense of reponsibility of the judges has done wonders in maintaining respect for the legitimacy of their decisions and their authority, even while they took all the most contentious and far-reaching political decisions over a couple of generations. But out of respect for the truth I think you have to say that e.g. the right to abortion was *introduced* (not discovered) into US law by the justices of the supreme Court.
No SCOTUS doesn’t do anything other than determine if legislation meets our fundamental principles, I.e. the Constitution.
As to the Founders, it’s unlikely that medical privacy would have been a consideration for them.
Abortion was legal in some states prior to 1973. You might want to read the cases covering abortion and gay marriage. You are mistaking a right to abortion and gay marriage with a right to privacy, equal protection and due process. SCOTUS justices cannot “introduce” law, only the legislature can.
I think we must agree to disagree. But as a final comment I will say that it does not follow as a logical necessity that the right to privacy, equal protection and due process must mean that abortion and gay marriage must be allowed – or that there is a free-speech right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political donations. Another group of judges might have decided that the same clauses meant the opposite. Or they might have judged that polygamy was legal. If the legal situation is what it is, it is because a specific group of judges decided to interpret the founding document in a particular way. And they could have decided differently.
We can certainly disagree on whether the right to privacy, due process and equal treatment necessarily lead to abortion or gay marriage (and there is a wide variety of opinion in the US) but there is no disagreement on the facts of the SCOTUS cases and what they decided.
And yes, you are correct, a right to polygamy could be decided, (should a state pass such legislation and a case be brought before SCOTUS by an entity with standing) on due process grounds as well as religious freedom grounds. In fact, those against the Obergefell decision pointed specifically to this, why could three people not legally get married if all were consenting adults. What would be the argument against that? But the fundamental principle doesn’t change that there is a right to religious freedom and no court can eliminate it.
To the kind person or persons who down-voted this comment, and indeed other interested readers, if any: the above is actually an extract relating to US law.
The point is that the US rights to expression and assembly (often closely connected) included in the US Constitution are not absolute.
Unless it is the civil rights of Republicans, of course!
A light touch is one thing, kneeling to them and dancing with XR, quite another. Letting them get away with flaunting the rules (with which I do not agree, by the way), and subsequently using heavy enforcement on other protests was a terrible error on their part.
BLM should have been shut down to send a message to all that NO assemblies would be tolerated. Once one has set a precedent, rowing back on it is practically impossible.
Totally agree. If you’re not starting from the point that the right to assemble is an affirmative civil right, then you’re going to be all over the place deciding who can do what since people will make all kinds of different and contradictory choices. Whereas, if you do have an affirmative such right, the courts and police must start there. From that point, assembly management is a totally different issue from the right to assemble. Some here have mixed the two issues. One concerns a right, the other crowd management, they are totally different issues.
If there are no affirmative rights, then some will have the “right” and others not. It’s how humanity works absent enshrined civil rights.
England doesn’t have a written constitution although famously it is said to possess an unwritten one as a consequences of Magna Carta, parliamentary statutes and common law mashups from the 14th century. The US Constitution has provided endless opportunity for the Supreme Court and the Legislative Assembly to modify, amend and and interpret to the point that it is become a noble palimpsest of afterthoughts. Lord Sumption spoke eloquently on the respective merits of English Common Law and the American Constitution in his recent Reith Lectures. I rather agree with his conclusions.
In actuality, the US constitution is modified or amended very infrequently, (and never by the judiciary) which is probably why it has survived so long. It’s quite hard to amend the US constitution, by design, in fact. Courts, contrary to your claim, cannot amend or modify the constitution, it’s a state process. Don’t forget, the US is a constitutional republic. Getting 2/3 of the states to agree to an amendment is exceptionally difficult. I’m sort of surprised that it would not be commonly known that the US constitution is not easily amended or subject to judicial branch amendment. Perhaps your Lord missed that day in colonial history.
Middle of a Plandemic! The covi-bovine love their shepherd, but us feral sheep refuse to be herded about, we unherd, as it were. ‘The feral sheep have nothing to lose but their masks/chains’ to paraphrase Marx, and I have refused to mask at all –
I didn’t go last night.
I wanted to. Wanted to join in with others who felt so personally connected to this loss, this crime.
I didn’t go. Planned to. Wanted to show my daughters the strength of female solidarity.
But as soon as the victim’s family asked people to stay away, I felt I couldn’t. Because at that point, the nature of the event had changed.
Instead of this being a moment to reflect on this loss, it became a tool for people to air their political grievances. An opportunity for grandstanding and self-publicity.
I went today.
All the trampled flowers replaced. Women laying their Mother’s Day bouquets. Men, women, children. The young and the old. Quietly paying tribute. No megaphones, no speeches. No agitation, no aggression.
Watching the images of last night was extremely disturbing. But being there today was humbling. A collective sense of wanting the world to be a better place, and the question of how our society has deteriorated to such a degree. Sadness, but also hope.
I want my daughters’ futures to be in the hands of those present today. Not the police of last night. And not the girl with the red hair.
I’d like to ask you a question. What is it that made you feel so personally connected to this event? Because a couple of years ago near where I live, in a murder covered in national media, two young muslim women had their throats cut, and while one was being dismembered and shoved into a freezer the other managed to crawl out into the street and raise the alarm. The family of one of the girls had put a hit on her for the sin of planning to marry a darker-skinned man. In the week after there were maybe 4-5 wreaths placed outside, there were no marches, no protests, nothing, even though it made national news. So is it that you don’t feel a personal connection to the sufferring of muslim girls, but when you see a face familiar to your own you empathise? If that’s so then you need to attend unconscious bias training ASAP.
I would perhaps lay the blame at the media who I imagine reported a lot less on the story about the two muslim women than they have about the Sarah Everard case. There is probably a case to make that media stories gain more traction when it is a murder case related to a young white woman, but to effectively accuse this person of racism just because they felt emotionally affected by the murder of a young woman in their community strikes me as very harsh and unjustified.
Why do you think this woman is “in the same community” as Sarah? She does not mention that, you have interpolated that information. Unless by “in the same community” you mean that white women in London form a single community? And that people in one of your self-determined “communities” have no need to care for people in other “communities”? As I mentioned the national media made many reports on the case of the two muslim women, but I guess following your train of thought one “community” did not want to get involved with another “community” and so the death (only one died) went unmourned, the violence unprotested. This is the very definition of unconscious bias.
Middle class white British London women can see they are not likely to be murdered by their relatives over who they choose to marry, but are just as vulnerable to being abducted by complete strangers as anyone else. Things you cannot guard against are scarier than things that seem controllable.
“Middle class white British London women” are actually statistically far more likely to be murdered by a partner or an ex-partner than by anyone else. They are far less likely to be randomly murdered by some-one they have never met than men.
That isn’t to detract from the additional harasment and abuse women do recieve from strangers in the street, but the two should not be conflated.
My God, you are an expert at jumping to conclusions and going off down your own little rabbit hole. By “community” I mean where she lives, this happened to someone in the same general area (community) where she lives, so she responded emotionally to it.
And while we’re talking about interpolating information about someone, you asked a question of her and answered it yourself before she even had an opportunity to respond, effectively labelling her as a racist who only cares about white people dying and doesn’t give a crap about muslim people dying, based on nothing!
Go and redirect your rage at people who actually deserve it, rather than someone who just felt sad that a woman in her city was murdered.
Your question is interesting and fair, but your suggested answer is unreasonable. It is both normal and reasonable that we react more strongly to events that also reflect our own worries, and show more solidarity with people we feel we have more in common with.
Let me ask you: Hundreds of women are killed every day across the world, in India, Papua New Guinea, South America, … Do you react to each of those murders as strongly as to this one, white British victim?
‘Unconscious bias training’, forsooth!
Don’t be ridiculous. We are not talking about Papua New Guinea. Both of these horrific murders took place in London. Both women abducted within 5 miles of each other. Both were reported in national media. Both were mutilated. We don’t know the motivation of Sarah’s killer yet, but the motivation of Celine Dookhran’s killer (for that is her name, I doubt many people even know it) was to exert control over her choice of who to marry. But not a peep from any protestor about the muslim. I am not saying the OP is a racist, I am saying she is displaying unconscious bias. How do you explain the difference in reaction to two very similar events taking place in the same city? The different outcome is a result of different biases acting on the information being processed.
I dont agree. You are trying to bring the race issue in where it doesnt apply .
The better race related case is the indifference to young black men getting stabbed weekly. Why is this not the subject of empathy ? Is it because it requires criticality of those doing the stabbing ?
The race card causes more trouble than it solves.
It’s kin preference. An evolutionary trait hardwired into us. For example would you expect to feel exactly the same way about a child killed in Myanmar, or just down the road, as you would at the loss of your own child?? If you did then you perhaps shouldn’t be a parent. Feeling more for your own, does not mean you don’t care about others – but to expect it to be the same flies against everything we know about evolutionary biology.
You are exactly right. I was hoping that what you are saying showed through in my post as well.
I don’t think it’s just that. The French au pair murdered in north Wimbledon did not get so much attention, because “I’m not an au pair/my daughter’s not an au pair, so that would not happen to me”.
We are not talking about the love of a parent for a child. We are talking about two strangers, both equal. Both women, both in London, both abducted 5 miles apart, both mutilated, both murdered, critically both are UNKNOWN to the original poster. She isn’t their mother, sister, kin, kith, caste, tribe, whatever, both victims are equally unknown to her. She has no relationship with either and has never met either. And yet one triggered a huge response and the other triggered no response. This is the definition of unconscious bias. I am sure there are many reasons why it exists but the OP should not try to deny its existence, she should admit that this disturbing event has exposed her unconscious bias and challenge herself to confront her bias. Maybe next time an unknown stranger is murdered she will show her concern for fellow humanity rather than limiting her kindness to people with whom she shares certain similarities in physical appearance and socio-economic background.
There is crucial difference . This tragic murder has no race dimension. To criticise the Muslim killings would have invited the accusation of racism.
Or, a thousand times worse, accusations of Islamophobia.
Celine Dookhran was murdered in 2017, I remember how awful it was, I remember thinking how beautiful she was and how that beauty had made her more likely to be a victim. It’d take me an hour to get to wimbledon, it wasn’t in my backyard, so I didn’t take it as personally.
I was more shocked and upset by the knife attack of the young black boy from Stockwell who was murdered 100 yards from my house than I was for Celine Dookhran.
2-3 women are murdered every week by men in the UK, there have been many more since then: should I know the name and circumstance of each one?
I am more shocked by things that happen in my neighbourhood and want to ensure that the people I know and are dear to me are safe. It’s very sad that there are so many murders that it’s difficult to keep track.
What’s wrong with the term ‘bias’? And by the way there is no measurable, objectivity to the phrase ‘unconscious bias’. It belongs in the same slop psychology bucket as ‘white fragility’, ‘white privilege’ and the other catch phrases of victimhood vocabulary.
First of all, how on earth do you know what response she had to the murder of the two muslim women? You didn’t even give her an opportunity to response, you just labelled her a racist because it was beneficial for your rant.
Secondly, I sincerely doubt the story about the muslim women was reported on to the extent to this story is, so why don’t you lay the blame for that at the door of the media?
Interesting point.
Huge numbers of people go missing every year. Children go missing at an truly unbelievable rate every day, as do men and women. With the numbers that go missing in the UK every year I have often wondered what makes just one of these numbers in to a media story more than any one of the other numbers
It certainly is a fascinating question. Suzie Lamplugh back in 1986 is the textbook example. Biggest ever search for a missing person in Britain. At a press conference in the early days of the search, a reporter asked her desperate parents what sort of girl she was. Her father said that she was just an ordinary girl, i.e. she wasn’t involved in drugs/etc. Her mother declared: “No, she’ s a super girl”. The reporter who wrote the book on the case credited this sentence as the turning point in capturing media attention, which continues to this day.
But Suzie was white, attractive and middle class…..All three key factors to drive media interest. And she and her family were London based (extra Brownie points).
The only bigger factor to drive media attention is the disappearance/death of a photogenic child or children (as per the Soham murders).
Even terrorist victims get prioritised if they are young, female and appealing. (check the 8 year old in the 2017 Manchester bombing). The three pudgy middle aged guys murdered by a nutter 100 yards from the front door of my church in Reading in June 2020? Sorry guys, not so commercial…..
Wow. Should I justify my sadness to someone who I’ve never met, who knows nothing about me, but has seen fit to accuse me of racism? I’ll try.
My sadness stemmed from many things. Knowing what it is like to feel physically vulnerable. I have been raped, groped, flashed at. I live in London, and know the area well: and I walked to the vigil yesterday. Sarah Everard’s journey home would have been a journey I took myself, taking similar precautions, so there was a sense of ‘there but for the grace of God’. It could easily have been me, it made me remember my close shaves.
There is also a sense that we are all currently incarcerated, that even now with fewer people on the street, she wasn’t safe. But more importantly Jess Phillips reading the ‘counting dead women’ list was a reminder that the most dangerous place for most women is in their own homes. It wasn’t just Sarah Everard.
That I was shocked by this case does not mean that I don’t care about other types murders or violence towards women. When I stood at the memorial yesterday I thought about not just Sarah Everard, but what sort of world it is that male violence and male attitude of entitlement and control over women, all women, is still tolerated. I also thought about the increase of antisocial behaviour and public aggression towards both women and men in recent years, and wondered what the cause was, and what could be done about it.
If that makes me a racist in your eyes, there’s not much I can do about that. I know my biases. Do you know yours, in particular your leap to judge me and make assumptions about the reason for my attitudes?
The same caring Jess Phillips who found the suggestion of a commons debate about the number of male suicides so hilarious.