Century apart.. but same old story of cops using force against women
Sheriff investigates horror at sea
ON a day in 1910 known as “Black Friday”, the Metropolitan Police violently suppressed a peaceful suffragette march on parliament.
Swap the corseted waists and Edwardian tailored skirts for fleeces and jeans and the sepia images of that day are eerily reminiscent of the police response to last Saturday’s Reclaim the Streets demonstration.
Following the police brutality on Black Friday, suffragette Saul Solomon wrote to home secretary Winston Churchill recounting a “relentless engine of physical force by the Metropolitan Police”.
Fast forward a century and we see the same strong-arm police tactics and female protesters being grabbed, pushed and wrestled to the ground, their faces etched with a fusion of defiance and fear.
This display of police intimidation was all the more sickening given the women were protesting against male violence following the murder of Sarah Everard.
Last Saturday, the same police force which had so aggressively kettled protesters formed a guard around a Churchill statue, with orders to “protect it at all costs”.
Churchill was not only a warmongering racist but a misogynist who denounced the women’s suffragette movement as “only the small edge of the wedge”.
He said: “If we allow women to vote, it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well-represented by their fathers, brothers and husbands.”
It’s not a stretch to imagine similarly sexist thinking in the thuggish police officers terrorising women last weekend.
Today, Britain’s women are franchised but to walk the streets safely after dark they may well have to be “chaperoned” by men like their “fathers, brothers and husbands”.
In her Churchill letter, Saul berated police as “irresponsible, obedient tools of the government” and said the violence “lies upon the shoulders of those who hold this national force at their disposal”.
We now have a female Met chief in Cressida Dick but if a matriarch is aligned to patriarchal thinking, the result is still gender inequality.
Suffragettes were discredited as
“militant”, in the same way Home Secretary Priti Patel was sure to sully the Reclaim march as “hijacked by extremists”.
She said undermining faith in the police would ultimately fail victims but all confidence evaporated when officers failed in their civic duty to protect and not abuse women.
The protesters were corralled like rats in a corner and it’s little wonder they reacted with fury and panic.
If the event was breaching social distancing, all that was needed was a civilised approach from police.
Police Scotland is far from perfect but it is telling that there was no such melee at the Glasgow vigil for Sarah.
Reclaim the Night began in 1977 after women in Leeds took to the streets to protest against the police who told them to self-curfew over the Yorkshire Ripper murders.
More than 40 years on, women still have to adapt their lives in fear of widespread violence – from dayto-day harassment in the street to sexual assault, rape and murder.
Women are stillinfantilised by the normalisation of male violence, their movements restricted like children told not to play alone after dark.
Patel is introducing a draconian new policing Bill, increasing the powers of forces and giving the Home Secretary carte blanche over whether demonstrations can go ahead.
But it does nothing to help women feel safer on the London streets where Sarah was taken.
It is difficult to stop a tiny minority of men murdering women but there is so much we could do to change cultural attitudes, which are at the heart of why women are harassed and brutalised.
A police force which respects and protects, rather than brutalises women, is a key tenet in a civilised society with gender parity.
CHRISTINE Lampard showed off her gorgeous new baby son Freddie yesterday, saying on Instagram: “We are completely in love.”
The former One Show host and her husband, ex-Chelsea manager Frank, have a daughter, Patricia, together.
Posting a pic online, Christine said: “Let us introduce you to our newest addition… Frederick (Freddie) George Lampard!” Frank also has two daughters from a previous relationship.
A PUBLIC inquiry is to be held into the deaths of three Scottish fishermen whose boat sank almost five years ago amid a string of safety errors.
Martin Johnstone, 29, Chris Morrison, 27, and skipper Paul Alliston, 42, were sleeping when creel vessel Louisa began to take on water while anchored off Mingulay in the Outer Hebrides in April 2016.
All three perished while a fourth crew member, fisherman Lachlan Armstrong, from Stornoway, swam to shore and clung to rocks before being rescued by lifeboat.
A report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) found a series of mistakes contributed to the sinking of the boat – saying the crew had worked to the point of exhaustion – while the emergency response was delayed by almost an hour.
Now a sheriff is to investigate the circumstances of the triple tragedy after court papers were lodged setting a preliminary hearing next month ahead of a fatal accident inquiry, expected to take place at Inverness Sheriff Court later this year. Investigators found a hose had been left running on the Louisa and the crew woke in the early hours to find the boat sinking.
An emergency life raft failed to inflate as the gas canister to fill it was empty and the crew were thrown into the water.
Emergency services were eventually alerted by a beacon from the Louisa, but when lifeboat crews arrived they found the bodies of Martin, from Halkirk, Caithness, and Chris, from Stornoway, Lewis. Paul, of Lewis, was declared as missing.
The surviving crew member, Lachlan, said after the tragedy that his ordeal would haunt him forever, adding: “It will never leave me.”
The then 27-year-old made the decision to try to swim the 820ft to shore after the crew tried to push buoys under the stricken raft in a failed bid to keep it on the surface.
An MAIB report in 2017 said the crew had worked 20-hour shifts for four days before the sinking, sleeping between stringing creels and eating snacks as they tried to ensure they maximised their catch and pay. It said the crew worked to a “level of tiredness that compromised their safety”.
MAIB tests also found the men’s official lifejackets had failed to keep them upright in the water and an urgent review was ordered.
Lachlan said he hoped a review in safety would mean that his “brothers lost at sea” did not die “completely in vain”.