Recently, following the arrest of anti-monarchy protestors (and one by-stander who was waiting in the wrong place to see the procession) who might, or might not, have disrupted, or at least planned to disrupt, last weekend coronation shindig, I wrote about police powers and about people who thought the police were often going beyond their role as keepers of the peace and stepping in to criticise people for having ‘upsetting’ stickers on their car windows and the like.
Yesterday I read Craig Murray’s blogpost about protestors outside a factory that makes components for drones - the kind used against Gaza. He was one of a small group of mostly septuagenarians standing in the rain.
As regards policing policy, here’s a small section:
“Earlier that day I had witnessed the police harass a mother in hijab. Two male officers, not accompanied by a female officer, arriving to quiz her on why three children present at the protest were not at school.
Truancy is not in general a police matter, and if an intervention was deemed necessary it should have been carried out by a qualified local authority officer. The cultural insensitivity on display was remarkable, and it underlined the fact that every single police officer I saw over two days was white.”
As Mr Murray points out, why were the police asking about those children not being in school? Do they also question parents at airports taking their children on holiday during term-time? I wonder.
Every so often the question of women’s safety in parks and public places pops up again in news programmes. It’s in the news again now. Every time it appears, we find ourselves shouting at the radio or television: “Bring back park-keepers!” Phil and I both remember a time when there were always gardeners at work in parks and, yes, there were park-keepers, reminding people to keep fierce dogs on a lead, making sure unaccompanied children, or even accompanied children, did not vandalise the play equipment. Maybe we suffer from collective false memory syndrome.
Anyway in an article about how to make parks safer I read this the other day:
“Our research found that creating openness and visibility in parks, clear escape routes and better lighting made women feel safer, along with a visible presence of park staff.”
Those are my underlining, by the way. Great minds … etc!
I thought about this the other evening when I strolled out alone, as I often do, and came across a friend, another unaccompanied woman, strolling around as she often does. One of our neighbours walks miles and miles on her own all over the place. Of course, I recognise that we are not walking in city-centre parks. And I recognise that we are fortunate to live in a fairly quiet community where we might not all know each other by name but where you can quickly build up a collection of nodding acquaintances. But there are still people who express their amazement that women like me and like the other two mentioned above have no qualms about walking around alone.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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