Even now, a week later, nobody seems quite sure how a dignified vigil with Royal approval came to represent something altogether different. One thing can be said with certainty though. Thousands of women were drawn to a bandstand in the middle of a London park last Saturday with a single shared resolve – to pay respectful tribute to murdered Sarah Everard.
With hushed reverence they laid flowers, lit tea lights, bowed their heads and reflected. Many spoke of solidarity, of a sense of unity. And it was with this in mind that, without fanfare, a dressed-down Duchess of Cambridge clutching daffodils made her way to Clapham Common to lend her support.
Yet by evening, images of handcuffed women beside the bandstand unleashed a juggernaut of Twitter fury. And before the day’s end, with politicians now piling in, there were calls for the resignation of Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey led the way, saying the Met had ‘acted terribly and caused great harm and hurt’, while London Mayor Sadiq Khan called the scenes ‘completely unacceptable’.
People gather during an unofficial vigil at the bandstand on Clapham Common for murder victim Sarah Everard.
Undated handout issued by the Metropolitan Police showing missing woman Sarah Everard, 33,
Rarely in London these days does any large public gathering, however sombre, escape the attention of protesters less keen on quiet reflection than confrontation. And so it was last Saturday at the bandstand, chosen as a temporary memorial because of its proximity to where the 33-year-old marketing executive disappeared on March 3. As Ms Everard’s old university friend Helena Edwards remarked in the days that followed: ‘My friend’s tragic death has been hijacked.’
A Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered that, by nightfall, the vigil was overwhelmed by supporters of groups with an alarming appetite for public disorder.
But while media attention focused on women being led away heavy-handedly, little, if any attention, was given to what one senior officer described as the ‘abuse, resistance and violence’, including a hail of plastic bottles, that his colleagues received.
Few could have foreseen how this tumultuous week would end. Three days earlier, Ms Everard’s body was discovered in Kent woodland after she went missing while walking home from visiting a friend. And perhaps adding extra intensity to the already febrile mood, on the morning of the vigil itself, Wayne Couzens, a 48-year-old Met officer, appeared in court charged with her kidnap and murder.
By mid-afternoon, bouquets of flowers had piled up in such quantities that they covered the ornate green fence surrounding the bandstand. At 4pm, around 200 people had gathered, watched over by six mainly female officers. One woman told The Mail on Sunday that the atmosphere was ‘peaceful, beautiful, touching’ adding: ‘I felt empowered as a woman.’
An entourage with anti-lockdown protester Piers Corbyn – the London mayoral candidate and older brother of former Labour leader Jeremy – arrived on the scene at around 5.30pm.
One of his associates, Dr Heiko Khoo, climbed on to the platform 15 minutes later and shouted angrily about both Ms Everard’s death and coronavirus restrictions.
His intervention, witnessed by Mail on Sunday reporters, prompted some sections of the crowd to start booing and chanting: ‘Not your place’. It was at this juncture that Dr Khoo – now apparently enraged – issued a barrage of invective: ‘Why are you not talking about your officers arresting people in the name of Covid? They are all lying. They are trying to make us all into liars. Every one of us has broken the rules.’
Then he displayed astonishing insensitivity by trying to claim Sarah for his cause on this of all days. In what must have infuriated her family, he said: ‘Sarah was breaking the rules that day.
‘F*** off. People are waking up. This is not about men and women, it’s about these people brutalising everyone.’ Despite continuing to behave in an aggressive manner, Dr Khoo was gently escorted from the bandstand by police officers. He was later seen holding a megaphone, which he used to lead a chant of ‘End the dictatorship’.
Those gathered around the bandstand, some bearing candles, had swelled in number to more than 500 when a minute’s silence was held for Ms Everard at 6pm.
Police scuffle with people gathering at the band-stand where a planned vigil in honour of murder victim Sarah Everard, which was officially cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions
Police attempt to break up the Clapham vigil. The Met was sharply criticised for what was deemed a heavy handed response to a peaceful demonstration
Then came a short address by local Labour councillor Joanna Reynolds, who thanked those who had come to pay their respects. She says she told the crowd to disperse peacefully at the end of the evening. The makeshift stage was then taken over by Sisters Uncut, an organisation originally set up to fight cuts to services for women suffering domestic abuse.
This was a group whose members supported the disruption of an anti-rape rally in Manchester on the grounds that it wasn’t ‘trans-inclusive’.
Last Saturday, they chanted slogans such as ‘Sisters united will never be defeated’ and, when one supporter appeared on the bandstand, she declared that a sound system was being set up so the proceedings could continue. Meanwhile, two men started banging on bongo drums.
When police liaison officers asked them to leave the stage, at least one woman started screaming and jabbing her fingers towards them in a confrontational manner. Helicopters could be heard overhead by then and, at around 6.30pm, more officers arrived to be met with taunts and jeers of ‘Shame on you’.
Police sources have told this newspaper that ‘spotters’, equipped with cameras and specially trained to identify well-known protesters and agitators, began seeing individuals linked to other movements – including Extinction Rebellion – among the crowd.
Other protesters carried placards emblazoned with slogans including ‘ACAB’ [All Cops Are B******s], ‘BLM’ [Black Lives Matter] and ‘No Killers, No Cops’.
Around this time, a group of ten officers approached the bandstand, one of them telling a prominent agitator: ‘You need to encourage people to go home… This is no longer a vigil, it’s an unlawful gathering. We’re in the middle of a pandemic.’
Perhaps unsurprisingly by now, this prompted a further round of jeers and catcalls as members of BLM started to chant: ‘No justice, no peace, f*** the police.’ Just after 7pm, Patsy Stevenson – a part-time actress who was later photographed being pinned to the ground by officers – addressed the remaining crowd through a loudhailer and said: ‘The police should go home. I’m done with being bullied by the police.’
According to officers, the ‘great majority’ had left by that point and only a hardcore element of a ‘couple of hundred’ remained. But there was a fresh wave of trouble – described by one bystander as ‘really scary’ – when police began issuing Covid fines and arresting people.
Shortly before 8pm, protesters started banging on the side of a van in which one of those detained was being held. The letters ‘ACAB’ were sprayed on the side of the vehicle and one of its wing mirrors was broken off.
By the time the Met regained control of the situation, images from the previous hour had been widely shared across social media platforms, including the pictures of Ms Stevenson’s arrest.
But it would be unfair to suggest that the ragtag mob of malcontents behind the skirmishes are the only ones to emerge from all this in a less than glorious light. There were the bandwagon-jumping politicians who barely paused to draw breath before unleashing the most stinging attacks on the men and women of the Met.
Sadiq Khan was quick to condemn the police action as ‘neither appropriate nor proportionate’. Mr Khan, who has ultimate responsibility for day-to-day policing in the capital, omitted to mention that his chief of staff David Bellamy had held discussions with Met chiefs the previous Thursday on how the vigil should be policed.
His office says no further conversations on the matter took place in the immediate run-up to last Saturday’s gathering. In a series of phone calls after the chaos on Saturday night involving him, Ms Dick and their respective deputies, he is understood to have expressed serious reservations about the handling of the vigil. By Friday, he was giving his backing to Ms Dick – after previously saying he was ‘urgently seeking an explanation’ from her over the ‘unacceptable scenes’.
Ms Dick spoke to both Boris Johnson and Priti Patel by phone last Sunday, as well as meeting Mr Khan at City Hall. Reports yesterday suggested that the controversy makes it unlikely that her contract will be renewed when it expires in April 2022.
It is understood, however, that she has won widespread respect in the ranks for resisting political pressure. ‘She stood by the officers on the ground and that’s all we can ask for,’ said one Met employee.
‘Cress has had her problems, but everyone backs her on this – it’s the politicians who should be ashamed.
‘One day they’re calling for protesters to go home and supporting the police who are enforcing the law, the next they’re calling for their heads – nobody knows whether they’re coming or going.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith was among the senior figures to give a more measured response when he said that it ‘ill behoves politicians to get up and pass judgment on what happened without having all the evidence’. He also told the House of Commons that a female officer informed him that she had been ‘threatened’ at the event and warned that she ‘should have been murdered’ rather than Ms Everard.
Meanwhile, senior sources at Scotland Yard have also expressed their shock at the political fallout over the past week, with one saying: ‘Never has the police’s independence been more valued than when you see politicians blowing this way and that.’
Others pointed out that police are working hard to reduce sexual harassment and violence against women. Thames Valley Police’s scheme, Project Vigilant, for instance, which saw plain-clothes officers based on streets outside bars and clubs to help reduce rape by 50 per cent and sexual assaults by 30 per cent, is set to be adopted by forces across the country.
As for the root cause of last Saturday’s unseemly turn of events, there are few doubts among those who saw it all unfold.
‘It was the usual professional activists who turn up to almost every protest, associates of XR and anti-lockdowners,’ one officer told the MoS.