SHAMING OF THE MET
Huge backlash over police crackdown on vigil for murdered Sarah ++ Yard chief faces calls to quit ++ PM ‘deeply concerned’ ++ Thousands join protests
CRESSIDA Dick was facing mounting pressure to quit last night over an ugly crackdown on women at a vigil for murdered Sarah Everard.
The Scotland Yard chief’s officers are accused of ‘manhandling’ protesters on Clapham Common, close to where the 33-year-old marketing manager vanished.
To cries of ‘shame on you’, police made four arrests – just hours after a Met constable
appeared in court accused of Miss Everard’s murder. Politicians demanded the resignation or immediate sacking of Dame Cressida while one of Home Secretary Priti Patel’s advisers said the police response looked ‘abusive’.
And in a statement last night Boris Johnson said: ‘Like everyone who saw it I was deeply concerned about the footage from Clapham Common on Saturday night.
‘I have spoken with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner who has committed to reviewing how this was handled and the Home Secretary has also commissioned HM Inspectorate of Constabulary to conduct a lessons learned review in to the policing of the event.’
The Prime Minister said he would lead a meeting of a taskforce today to ‘look at what further action we need to take to protect women and ensure our streets are safe’.
‘The death of Sarah Everard must unite us in determination to drive out violence against women and girls and make every part of the criminal justice system work to protect and defend them,’ he added.
Dame Cressida, who refused to resign last night, will attend along with ministers, other senior police officers and the Director of Public Prosecutions. She was already facing calls to quit over her role in Scotland Yard’s
‘A complete tactical and moral failure’
botched VIP sex abuse investigation. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey was among those calling last night for Dame Cressida to go. He said: ‘It’s already crystal clear that what happened was a complete tactical and moral failure by the Met police.
‘Cressida Dick has lost the confidence of women in London and she must now resign.’
Sadiq Khan appeared to be on the brink of withdrawing his support as well. The London mayor, who is responsible for overseeing the Met’s day-to-day policing operations, said: ‘I received assurances from the Metropolitan Police last week that the vigil would be policed sensitively. In my view, this was not the case.
‘I asked the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner to come into City Hall to give me an explanation of [Saturday’s] events and the days leading up to them. I am not satisfied with the explanation they have provided.
‘I will now be asking Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to conduct a full independent investigation.’
Mr Khan said he had last week insisted police found a way to ensure the vigil could ‘take place legally and safely’.
Losing the support of the Labour mayor would effectively force Dame Cressida out. Her predecessor Sir Ian Blair had to step down in 2008 when it became clear he did not have the backing of then-mayor Mr Johnson.
A spokesman for Miss Patel said there were ‘still questions to be answered’ after she was briefed by Dame Cressida yesterday.
The Met cited Covid-19 regulations to shut down the south London vigil. Similar events around the country were peaceful.
Miss Patel’s independent adviser on tackling violence against women and girls, Nimco Ali, strongly condemned the police tactics.
Miss Ali, a close friend of Mr Johnson’s fiancée Carrie Symonds, said: ‘Honestly, it does come from a handbook of abusive men, where... you’re constantly blaming the victim for your act of violence. So rather than actually taking accountability, it was more like “women shouldn’t have turned up”.
‘The police had the opportunity to choose how they reacted and they reacted in a terrible way, in a disproportionate way.’
Former Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw tweeted: ‘Tonight required sensitive policing and intuitive understanding; a rebuilding of confidence. Instead the authorities have lost their heads.’
Catherine Mayer, co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party, told Sky News the Met chief ’s position was ‘untenable’.
Glasgow City Councillor Rhiannon Spear said: ‘I have no words left... How are women meant to trust the police!?!’
Tim Loughton, a Tory member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: ‘Until Cressida Dick has accounted for her actions I don’t think it’s helpful to have calls for a knee-jerk resignation.
‘But if the police were at fault then she needs to consider her position. She has some serious questions to answer, given the sensitivities of this case.’
Green Party co-leader Sian Berry said: ‘It’s hard to see how the Commissioner – and the mayor and the Home Secretary – could not be considering her position right now. There was literally no chance of this being a violent event if it had been left in peace.’
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer rejected the demands for Dame Cressida to quit. He said: ‘We need to see the reports that have now been called for.’
Others compared police actions in Clapham to those in Glasgow last week, when officers did not attempt to arrest hundreds of fans who gathered to celebrate Rangers’ premiership win.
Sky News home affairs correspondent Mark White said of the George Square incident, ‘intervening would undoubtedly have escalated that situation’.
Last night Dame Cressida said she
was ‘very comfortable’ with the watchdog review by Tom Winsor of the HMIC. Asked whether she would quit, she replied: ‘What has happened has made me more determined, not less, to lead my organisation. I’m entirely focused on growing the Met to be even stronger.’
The Met chief said she did not want to see the vigil end as it did, adding that ‘if it had been lawful, I would have been there’. She said the event was peaceful for six hours but: ‘Unfortunately, later on, we had a really big crowd that gathered, lots of speeches and quite rightly, as far as I can see, my team felt this is now an unlawful gathering which poses a considerable risk to people’s health.
‘A really invidious position for my officers to find themselves in but they then moved to try to explain to people, to engage with people, to get people to disperse from this unlawful gathering and many, many, many people did. Unfortunately a small minority did not.’
The women’s group Reclaim These Streets had intended to organise a socially-distanced vigil on the common on Saturday, with volunteer marshals.
‘But it was forced to cancel after being told by police that organisers would face £10,000 fines under Covid rules.
Thousands of people still visited the common despite the cancellation, including the Duchess of Cambridge, who paused in front of floral tributes on Saturday afternoon.
THE message was crisp, clear and sorely needed to be said. Boris Johnson addressed the Scottish Conservatives’ virtual conference yesterday and spoke plainly about the difference between Scotland’s two governments.
Downing Street had one overriding priority: getting us out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Bute House has its own overriding priority: getting Scotland out of the UK.
The Prime Minister expressed incredulity that ‘the SNP think this is the time to turn us all against one another’ when to him it was obvious this was a time ‘to shift the focus in Scotland from division and debate onto recovery and rebuilding’.
Rather than ‘go back to the divisions of the past’, Mr Johnson exhorted us to ‘heal from coronavirus and move the whole of the United Kingdom forward’ for ‘an economic recovery that levels up every single part of our country’.
The Prime Minister is often caricatured as a court jester. What a blow that cynical world view was delivered yesterday.
When Mr Johnson appeared on screen, he spoke firmly and fluently about how the pandemic response had drawn us together. He hailed the efforts of our UK Armed Forces. He recalled that it was ‘the broad shoulders of the UK Treasury’ that kept Scotland’s economy afloat and more than 900,000 employed through the job retention scheme.
The endeavours we have seen – selfless, compassionate, committed to duty – were evidence of the ‘British spirit’.
Turning to the alternative agenda on offer, the Conservative leader declared it ‘incredible’ that the SNP would choose a time like this to agitate for another divisive referendum. After the enforced separations of the past year, he insisted, ‘people want time to renew their lives and to rebuild relationships’.
The contrast with Nicola Sturgeon’s reckless separatism could not have been plainer. When the Prime Minister spoke yesterday it felt like there was at last a grown-up in the room.
He made the case that the Union not only still works – it works even more for Scotland than ever.