January kicked off strong with our case against the Met Police being heard in High Court. This picture tells how furious I was.
Worth noting that this was occuring at the same time Partygate was dominating the headlines. The police acted as No 10’s bouncers whilst threatening our livelihood for holding an outdoor masked vigil for a woman murdered by one of their own. To actually be in court as a girl from Philly who had no knowledge of the system was enlightening but also the heat was broken and it was absolutely freezing and pretty boring; Judge Judy it was not. Highlight was getting DAC Twist’s risk assessment where he wrote that the main risk of the vigil was bad optics for the Met not women’s safety. Given how intense and scary it was and how little I hide on my face, one of our barrister’s Pippa handed me back this post it.
It stayed on my door to remind me of the fight, until we eventually won. It is now framed next to a picture of my mother.
Court was the 19th and 20th of January- so obviously I had agreed to speak at the Cambridge Union Debate on January 20th- This House has lost confidence in Her Majesty’s Police Force. I couldn’t stay for drinks with the team as I needed to race to Cambridge to deliver my speech.
We all have our weaknesses and insecurities and some are just more hidden than others. I had received some criticism over the last year about how I spoke and represented my opinions; that I wasn’t polished enough and I heard that as me being too rough around the edges. I had tweets rewritten to make them more proper- and it was hugely condescending and painful. I have rarely suffered imposter syndrome; so the powers that be ensured that this one was a hugely public showing if I faltered. In the context of Cambridge, I didn’t belong and that they would basically laugh at me. Who is this hood rat from Philly coming here to talk about our way of living and our police when Philly is violent and over run with crime. Who does she think she is? How dare she?
In actuality, when Americans are over here, for the most part we are expected to have come from a higher class or how would we be here? But I grew up pretty poor and went to a state university and Cambridge felt like it would be all of those educated proper people thinking I was a joke.
In order to prevent that I wrote a speech that was super cited, super accurate and no one would be able to punch holes in it. I had Pippa (barrister mentioned above) help me with it and another friend sub edit and make it even more official sounding.
The night of Ashling Murphy’s vigil at the London Irish Center, I stood there furious. that yet another young woman just going about her business had been taken from us. Ludo, on of my Reclaim colleagues, said “I’m so sick of buying flowers for women that will never get them. That has stuck with me since.
Afterwards we went to my best friend Gina’s house and I read the speech to her and Ludo, one of the other Reclaim These Streets women. I spoke slowly and accurately. I got every statistic right. I made sure to enunciate and get every word out in the order on the page.
And then I finished. Gina and I have been friends forever and are always brutally honest with each other. She said it was “erm okay.” That it was perfectly adequate. But there wasn’t any “Jamie” in it. That audiences don’t care about specific statistics; they care how you make them feel. She told me to tear it up and start again. Literally. It is a testament to her that I didn’t just do an edit. I really heard what she was saying and recognised that I was trying to pretend to be someone I am not; when the reason that I have done two years of radio and TV is that I am authentic. What you see if what you get and I needed to get over my shit and deliver that speech.
In almost every piece I write I say some way that Gina has helped me; and that everyone needs a Gina in their life. The next day I started from scratch.
I told them why I was enraged when Sarah was killed. I also shared that I had blinders on and since those blinders have come off; I’ve been outraged and radicalised by what I have learned of the processes within the police force that not only allows systemic sexism, racism and homophobia; but encourages it to flourish and remain unchecked. I took the gloves off. My speech was impassioned, it was loud, it was angry and it was me. It was totally me. And students cheered and cried. We won in a landslide. The debate can be found here, I am the first speaker.
That experience would be hugely valuable when preparing for my TEDx talk in April.
February started off with a bleak experience. On February 8th I was informed that someone had created a fake profile of me on Instagram. It was my actual pictures and then close up videos of vulvas and linked to a “FanCentro” account. That night was awful and humiliating, especially when I found out that they had sent it to my father. I tried to report it, but when doing so, it was only that I could no longer see it; the public could. I ended up tweeting to ask people to report it to get it down. It came down in the middle of the night and a friend at Instagram gave me some info in case anything similar ever happened– but I knew the videos were not of me— more worrying would be if it was a sixteen year old and the videos were here and her humiliation meant she hurt herself rather than to have that out there.
https://www.change.org/p/instagram-make-instagram-prioritise-victims-of-impersonation
Once I was able to make it about all women and impersonations, I was able to fight it; but it was pretty awful. I ended up getting 70,000 signatures on a change.org petition and meeting with Instagram’s head of women’s safety.
Also- one of the most surprising parts of the situation was FanCentro’s reaction to my takedown notice. They immediately (talking within 3 minutes here) let me know that it was a fake Fan Centro account. They had used their logos and design, but it was not actually Fan Centro- but that someone had spent a lot of time on it. Their IP lawyers got involved and said they would handle it with the server hosting the site on my behalf and update me regularly. Their entire business model is based on consent and copyright and they took it incredibly seriously and had it down almost immediately. I was shocked that they were the most supportive in the whole process.
The police on the other hand, took a report and then closed the case within 24 hours. And then the i paper reported on that and miraculously the case was re-opened. And the detective that called me tried to tell me that the press coverage had nothing to do with that decision. Don’t spit in my face and tell me it is raining.
And then on Thursday evening, two days later, I was in Phoenix Arts Club on a date with a man and McNulty in her buggy and my phone started to blow up. BBC asking how quickly I could get to the studio, but unable to tell me why.
Gina and Callum, her partner, rush to the rescue to get McNulty (and stay for the show) while I race to the studios to learn that Cressida Dick was out. Did 8 minutes live on BBC News about all of the reasons it was a welcome change. And then ran to LBC to be on Iain Dale about it. If the person who made the fake porn of me was trying to silence me, it backfired spectacularly.
And Dick calling us ‘naive young women that meant well”, well this naive young woman helped make you lose your job.
Ended the month organising a brilliant event for Calm and Humanity about the future of mental health.
March. The joy of March.
International Women’s Day is the only day of the year that I can really make it rain and it pays for ¾ of the year in terms of speaking fees. But is also hugely problematic as it demonstrates that they are just ticking the box instead of really participating and engaging in ongoing work to seek equality in the work force.
And we were approaching not only the tragic anniversary of Sarah’s death, but the anniversary of the vigil where the Met ran roughshod over protesters and why we had been in High Court. The judgement would be handed down on the 11th of March at the Royal Courts of Justice. And it was glorious. Not mildly worded; but absolutely damning on the fact that the Met had violated our human right to protest. Was such an amazing beautiful victory lap. With our incredible amazing wonderful legal team and with Leo, Pippa’s newborn who she was pregnant with during our first high court battle and then was there for the landmark ruling. My voice started to go while giving interviews and I tested positive for covid that day.
The Met then had a week to file permission to appeal. They had till 4 pm on the 18th of March to send the papers. That also coincided with a protest for Child Q outside of Stoke Newington Police station. Officers had strip searched a child who was on her period with no guardian presence because she smelled of cannabis. What amount of drugs on her would justify that kind of state sanctioned sexual assault? Do I sound furious? I was and this is 9 months later. As I stood with the community, I was told the police filed at 3:56 pm. Our legal team needed time to respond, so the plan was to wait till the following week. But as is their folly, the Met sent out a press release about the permission to appeal.
After seeing the fury, and the young Black girls at the protest for Child Q, I was enraged. As a group we sent out a statement about our appeal being a bad use of public money but agreed that we needed to strategically do a legal reply the next week. I then had a pretty hilarious exchange with one of our team that I was not allowed to legally mention anything in their filing as it would be contempt. So I said that I would do press interviews, but just not read their filing; if I wasn’t aware of any of the details then there was no way I could breach the rules. Bless our solicitor who thought I was kidding. It made perfect sense to me, and I didn’t open the file until after the first wave of press appearances.
I tweeted this to the Met: “I’m not going to pretend I am not furious. I was stood outside of Stoke Newington police station when I heard they filed permission to appeal. They want us to give up. They want to exhaust us. Fuck that. Learn the law.” To be fair, I thought saying fuck that to the Met was like humming the Beatles and no one would print it. I think this was the final straw and when my dad turned off alerts on my name. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/18/met-to-appeal-against-ruling-on-handling-of-sarah-everard-vigil
But it is interesting that as a white woman tweeting that; I got no death threats or angry responses. Imagine if a woman of colour said fuck that, learn the law to the Met. She would be pilloried and attacked and subject to dangerous abuse. I get away with it because the media finds me the right side of angry and punchy and that’s a pretty clear distinction of privilege.
Lots of press and podcasts rounded out the first quarter. Being on Emma Gannon’s Ctrl Alt Delete having known her for a decade. And doing a live Guilty Feminist show in Bath with Pippa (and Leo) who danced with us on stage to It’s Raining Men. Well, in Pippa’s arms, he was only a few month’s old. But his baby book is banging.
Pretty full on first quarter. It is no wonder that I am exhausted.