When night fell in the southern part of London where Sarah Everard took her final steps 10 days ago, the clouds opened up for one last ray of sunlight.
At Clapham’s bandstand, where thousands began to gather for a vigil supposedly canceled because of Covid, someone started playing a drum – its predictable rhythm a reminder of the casual misogyny raft that the crowd said they had come to highlight.
Couples held candles, roommates held flowers; there were many men there as well as women and when darkness fell, for a minute, they were silent thinking of a 33-year-old Everard, whose only misfortune seems to have been taking to the streets alone after dark.
Everard was kidnapped on a busy road while walking home from a friend’s house at around 9:30 pm on March 3 in this residential part of London.
The randomness of his disappearance and the circumstances in which he disappeared left women reeling across the capital. Thousands shared their own experiences of being bullied or harassed while walking alone at night.
The fact that the suspect was one of his officers on duty made this vigil an event that was difficult to oversee by the London police force.
At first, it looked like they had made an effort to get the optics right, placing female and male police officers in equal numbers around the crowd.
Less than an hour after the meeting began, the police stepped forward to remind people that they were violating coronavirus regulations and needed to leave.
Soon after, more police officers – mostly men – moved out and said they were now ordering people to be, or would be fined. Discussions broke out.
A woman said, “I can’t go home, I’m afraid to go home, I have to go home.”
Then the stage was invaded by women handcuffed and dragged into police vans. The crowd shouted, “Shame on you,” “Leave them alone,” and “Arrest yours.”
The mayor of London demanded an explanation and politicians from the left and right expressed their outrage at the disproportionate use of force, some even calling for the resignation of the head of the Met, herself a woman.
Like the beat of the drums, this turn also seemed predictable.
“It doesn’t look good for the Met tonight, does it?” said a man being moved. “Just let these people have their time,” he shouted.
Everard’s death sparked that moment – a long-awaited national recognition of women’s rights in the UK, and calls for new laws that recognize misogyny as a hate crime.
Countless Londoners have wondered this week why it took the senseless death of a young woman for the outburst to finally explode.
The answer may lie in how quickly the vigil was silenced on Saturday.