Who’s to blame for the Clapham Common debacle?

On Saturday evening, daughters, fathers and mothers of daughters and siblings of daughters gathered in Clapham Common at a vigil. Facing these police officers were hundreds of people seeking to remember Sarah Everard. What followed was a clash that turned what could have been a respectful memorial into a moment of apparently callous state repression threatening the future of the Met’s first female Commissioner, Cressida Dick.

Dick has called out the armchair critics of her officers' actions in Clapham. But make no mistake: the Met Police is in the dock. And Dick's condemnation of those criticising her force won't wash, either for politicians or the senior leadership of the Met, who jointly carry the can. 

Both had ample opportunity to evaluate the community impact of this murder, its unique and troubling characteristics and the genuine rage these all engendered. It is a grim statistical fact that the people women should fear the most are the ones they wake up with. But the apparent abduction and murder of a young woman, taken off the streets and slain for the ‘crime’ of being out late, has catalysed the debate about violence against women and girls. 

We now know that in the intervening ten days between Sarah’s disappearance, the arrest of Met officer Wayne Couzens and the planned vigil, the Met's top brass and the original vigil organisers were in contact with each other. We’ve also learned that London’s Mayor, who is responsible for the totality of policing in London (unless things look bad), stuck his oar in too and that a conversation took place with the police minister Kit Malthouse. It defies belief that this coalition of highly paid – and, one hopes, tactically savvy heavyweights – could not foresee the consequences of simply banning an expression of heartfelt grief and solidarity.

What happened next is the consequence of bad law meeting bad judgement in a pandemic. There’s no question that the Government is in an invidious position here, trying to balance competing rights and achieve some semblance of consistency. But it’s surely the case that, in relation to Covid, we have a national emergency that has prevented parliamentary scrutiny of legislation and regulation, making avoidable confrontations like Clapham ever more likely. This led inexorably to the Met’s reputation going into the shredder at the weekend.

Is this an excuse for what happened though? I'm not convinced. Where was pragmatism and common sense in the police's operational response? Putting front line officers into a position where they had to enforce the law against women protesting their lack of protection by the law is nuts. Formally banning what was, in any case, going to take place with very little prospect for trouble only gave a spurious justification to the rag bag of agitators who inevitably turned up at the later gathering.

Recent events on the streets and elsewhere give real concern that there is a dearth of strategic competence in our ruling class. This disconnect has been amplified by the Covid crisis which has permitted (or if you like demanded) a more authoritarian approach, including to the right of protest. The independent review of the Clapham incident ordered by the Prime Minister will make interesting reading. 

By coincidence Sir Tom Winsor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary commissioned to write it, delivered a thematic review on how protest is policed the day before the Clapham protest. His review 'Getting the balance right? An inspection of how effectively the police deal with protests' will be a useful template for measuring the quality of the strategic response and how that connected to tactics that have brought the Met into disrepute. In particular, Winsor will want to scrutinise the public order strategic threat and risk assessments used by all police forces in the country to manage contentious gatherings.

It’s fashionable now to demand the heads of whatever senior leaders have tripped over such difficult issues. But what good would that do in this instance? 

Cressida Dick has one of the most profoundly complex jobs in Britain and is trusted by her people. This has been an awful few days for her and she has serious questions to answer. But the rapacious desire for heads on a pike conceals a more fundamental problem. It also prevents discussion of a more enduring memorial to the parents, friends and partner of another young woman murdered. 

The only thing I have in common with Sarah Everard is that we both went to Durham University. The student newspaper there has chronicled a remorseless rise in the instances of sexual assault on mainly female students there over the last five years. Nearly 100 instances of rape or attempted rape have been reported. All of us parents – fathers in particular – concerned in the business of making men have a role to play by our example. Away from the noise and the instant gratification of freeze frame protest, domestic femicide and sexual violence continues as an unabated horror. All this has to be learned – and unlearned – somewhere closer to home.