We fought the power... and we won
Reclaim These Streets' fight against the Metropolitan Police took 15 months, but it is finally over.
Yesterday at 14:57 I received word from Theo Middleton on our legal team that “the police have been refused permission to appeal by the Court of Appeal” and that the judge concludes that there is “no arguable basis on which it can be said that the Court’s decision was wrong.” I started to get excited and then had to read the rest of the email to make sure that they had exhausted all possible routes of appeal.
Because, we had been here before. We had celebrated in front of the Royal Courts of Justice on March 11th when the High Court ruled in favour of Leigh vs the Metropolitan Police (Jessica Leigh being our lead claimant) The court found that the Met had violated our human right to assemble by not permitting us to hold a vigil when Sarah Everard was killed in March of 2021 by a serving police officer Wayne Couzens.
I learned that the Met were using public funds to appeal the high court ruling whilst I was in front of Stoke Newington’s Police station with Mandu Reid (leader of the Women’s Equality Party) protesting the strip search of #ChildQ. They were denied that permission; but instead of learning from the ruling and taking accountability—- they appealed the refusal of permission to appeal to the appeals court.
I had no idea any of this was possible. It’s been a huge learning curve and civics lesson as well as cost the taxpayers a ton of money. I’ve heard that a Freedom of Information request has been filed and we will soon learn just how much they spent to try to silence Reclaim These Streets.
Some background:
Upon learning the tragic news that Sarah Everard’s remains were found on March 10, 2020; I tweeted that I would organise a vigil to honour her. After watching the news of her disappearance in horror and I along with most of the women in the country were having the same conversations, about how she was just walking home, how she was in a bright anorak, how she phoned her partner. I was privately replaying the thousands of times I had been in more dangerous situations. All of the times I changed my route or behavior to avoid conflict, to avoid male anger, to pacify, to make myself smaller, to get home alive.
During the search, when I heard police were telling women that the only way to keep themselves safe was to stay inside of their own homes, I was furious. We were already in a lockdown. I live alone and I was isolated and furious. I needed to be with other women that were feeling like I was feeling. Furthermore, I felt the need to provide that space.
As an events producer and former publisher I had lots of women’s magazine contacts; I figured that a vigil was something I could do. I would contact the police and council and give women a safe space to come together to grieve. Within minutes of my tweet; I was informed that some local Clapham women were doing the same thing and that night we joined forces and Reclaim These Streets was born.
At the time, it felt like a useful application of my skills and a way to feel a little bit less alone. To take back some power, some land, some space. I had no idea that my whole purpose and life would change so drastically.
On Thursday morning, about 12 hours after the tweet I was trying to get a PA system donated and I ordered a thousand electric tea lights because open flames aren’t allowed on Clapham Common. Everything was in motion. And then all of a sudden Scotland Yard had interjected and forbade the event from going forward because of covid regulations. The Met were threatening us as organisers with £10,000 in fines each and prosecution under the serious crimes act. Within hours we had enlisted human rights lawyers to help us fight this ban and Harriet Harman had written to Cressida Dick saying not only did we have reasonable excuse but that she would be attending.
I was not a politician, I was not an activist. I was a furious and sad woman that needed to do something, anything to fight back. I just couldn’t be silent any more.
Had the Metropolitan Police at any point in time used common sense and performed a proportionate review of our Human Right to Assemble and the Corona Restrictions; they would have relented and given us the parameters in which we could go forward. Instead; we were forced for crowdsource £37,000 to pursue a high court action to allow us to go forward. All of this meant a huge amount of publicity about the vigil and tons of anger at the way the police were handling the situation. Mind you; if I knew that they were simultaneously acting as bouncers at No. 10, the interviews I gave would have been much different.
Instead by threatening and trying to silence us; the Metropolitan Police created a situation bigger than any of us could have imagined. Had they let the vigil go ahead as originally planned; there would have been a few hundred people and a few camera crews and on Sunday we would have returned to our lives. Instead they drew huge amounts of attention and anger to an already fraught situation where one of their own had committed the ultimate abuse of power and trust and then tried to silence women that were trying to give the community a chance to grieve.
As it was; myself and Anna Birley conducted the majority of press interviews that week and they were non stop. Between us we did about 75 interviews that weekend. I had never been on live television before and it was trial by fire. But intimate male violence against women and the pervasive fear for my safety in public was something I’ve experienced for 30 years and can talk about at length. I never asked for anything outrageous, I don’t want a curfew for men. I am just asking to make it home unharmed. I am asking not to have to “text when I get home” for every night for the rest of my life. I am asking men not to hurt me. It is not too much to ask.
On Friday, Justice Holgrave heard the arguments and said it should never have gotten to court—he sent us away to negotiate a route forward. Friday night, while at the negotiating table with the Met and DAC Jane Connors (Incidentally heading up Partygate) the police sent out a press release saying that the event would be unlawful. This was not what the Judge had communicated to us, but why let a judgment or human rights get in the way of policing. We warned them that people would attend anyways without the infrastructure for safety that we had in place. But the threats continued and we were forced to cancel.
We decided to raise money for women and girls rather than have the money from our fines line the pockets of the Met. We ended up raising £550,000 for the Stand With Us Fund through Rosa for Women.
The next day we, along with the world, watched as police manhandled women at a protest about violence against women at the hands of men; specifically about a serving police officer abducting, raping and killing Sarah Everard. A farce of an HMICFRS inquiry followed and Cressida Dick testified to the Home Affairs Committee that we were “naïve young women.” The scorn, the condescension and the lack of accountability infuriated me.
The outrage and outpouring of women’s lived experiences with violence at the hands of men, especially involving Her Majesty’s police force shook me to the core. I could not retreat to my previous state of oblivion, tweeting angrily after reading an article or two. I know longer had a choice, this was what I was meant to be doing and I was really good at it. I was good at articulating a lifetime of fear, of questioning our own choices and of blaming women for men killing us.
We were given the platform to fight for women’s safety at a national level. From that tweet, with Reclaim These Streets, I ended up campaigning full time for the last year; I have been hugely inspired by incredible women like Mina Smallman and Nusrit Mehtab to fight for all of us. We were instrumental in the calls for Cressida Dick’s removal from the force.
Finally, last night, the Court of Appeals denied the Met permission to continue to fight the ruling. The judge found there “is no arguable basis on which it can be said that the Court’s decision was wrong.”
These naïve young women fought the power and won. For all women.