Journal Hope of change Springs again

The first bunches of daffodils are nodding brightly in my garden as spring brings promise of silky summer days and long light nights. It’s a time of hope and flowers.

And, even more cause for hope, the vaccine is being rolled out; Scottish Government figures show more than two million people here have received theirs to date. Plus, Nicola Sturgeon has unveiled the plan for the easing of lockdown restrictions from April. Social media is filling up with joyous news of first jabs – and future hairdressing appointments.

This time last year, almost to the day, I started working from home, having left the office clutching my laptop and feeling, like all of us, apprehensive and bewildered by the sudden drastic change. We couldn’t comprehend it, not really, what a year of living with a deadly pandemic would come to mean for us, for our family life, businesses, education, social life – life as we knew it.

As the grim reality unfolded we found solace in small things. With less traffic on our roads the air seemed clearer and cleaner; we noticed the wildlife more.

For years I’ve walked from the Stannergate to the Ferry of an early morning. In the first days of lockdown there was a new feeling among us strangers along the path. Fear and wariness crept in but on beautiful mornings we’d smile at each other more.

When I saw a seal it seemed a selkie had come to offer encouragement. People put rainbows in their windows and stood out to clap each week for the NHS workers on the frontline, fighting the deadly, microscopic virus that threatened us all.

I watched a pile of carefully chosen driftwood form the letters NHS below the Sailing Club in poignant tribute and we waited, and waited, for lockdown to ease.

Then one morning last summer the gulls were shrieking and squabbling as I approached the Tay, the peaceful morning shattered by angry avarice as they fought over rubbish.

Fast food outlets reopened. had

More lockdowns followed and we got used to it. But now there’s hope again, and if we’ve learned anything it’s that we’re all in this together. We need each other to survive, we need to keep ourselves and each other safe.

But safety takes many forms. The UN Women’s UNITE campaign to end violence against women likens it to a pandemic, it’s an issue that has stalked us since long before Covid-19.

Just weeks ago, the grim news broke of a big police presence at Troon Avenue in Dundee. Andrew Innes, 50, has since been charged with the murder of Bennylyn Burke, 25. It is alleged he struck her repeatedly with a hammer; he is also charged with the murder of her two-year-old daughter, Jellica, by “means unknown”. Prosecutors allege the murders were committed between February 17 and March 5.

On the evening of March 3 Sarah Everard, 33, left a friend’s house near Clapham Common to walk home. She never made it.

On March 9, Wayne Couzens, 48, a Metropolitan Police officer with the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection unit, was arrested in Kent. Sarah’s remains were found in woodland near Ashford, Kent on March 10 and Couzens was charged with her kidnap and murder two days later.

As outrage grew, a vigil for Sarah and a protest against violence towards women was held at Clapham Common on March 13 and controversially broken up by police for contravening Covid-19 regulations.

Inspired by information collected from her blog Counting Dead Women, Karen Ingala Smith launched The UK Femicide

Census with Clarissa O’Callaghan in 2015. From statistics gathered between 2009-2018, the 2020 Femicide Census estimates a woman dies violently at the hands of a man in the UK every three days.

The anger at Sarah’s fate was akin to the spontaneous social movement #MeToo, which sprang up after allegations of sexual assault and harassment emerged against the now-jailed former Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein. Around the world, lasting awareness and policy changes arose from that movement.

After Sarah Everard’s death, most revealing were the thousands of stories shared by women of assault and abuse at the hands of men, of the precautions we have to take to simply walk home safely at night, of the many times we have been harassed, followed, stalked, or worse. And domestic violence against women is a major social issue.

If you’re not safe in your own home, where are you safe?

This week, MSPs voted unanimously to pass further protections for victims of domestic violence, which will enable courts to implement domestic abuse protections orders (DAPO). It will also help prevent victims of domestic violence from losing their homes.

Scotland also sees psychological domestic abuse and controlling behaviours as a crime.

The struggle to eliminate the Covid-19 pandemic is not over, but there’s hope.

The struggle to eliminate violence against women will most likely take much longer.

But, you know, hope is not only the thing with flowers. It’s the thing with policy, too.

DIFFICULT TIMES: Clockwise: Spring daffodils; tragic Sarah Everard, whose body was found last week, and somebody working from home.