As night fell in the part of South London where Sarah Everard took her last steps 10 days ago, the clouds parted for one last ray of sunshine.
At the Clapham bandstand, where thousands gathered for a vigil supposedly canceled because of Covid, someone started beating a drum – the predictable rhythm recalls the raft of loose misogyny that the crowd said had come to the fore.
Couples held candles, housemates held flowers; there were many men there and women too, and as darkness fell, they fell silent for a moment, remembering a 33-year-old Everard, whose only setback seems to have been to be alone on the street in the dark.
Everard was torn from a busy road as he walked home from a friend’s house in this residential part of London around 9:30 pm on March 3.
The arbitrariness of her disappearance and the circumstances under which she disappeared have shaken women across the capital. Thousands have shared their own experiences of harassment or harassment while walking alone at night.
The fact that the suspect is one of the serving agents made this vigil a difficult event for the London police to oversee.
At first, it seemed they had made an effort to get the optics right, stationing female and male police officers in equal numbers around the crowd.
Less than an hour after the rally started, agents moved in to remind people to break coronavirus rules and leave.
Soon after, more officers – mostly men – came in and said they were now ordering people to go or they would be fined. Arguments broke out.
A woman said, “I can’t go home, I’m scared to go home, I have to walk home.”
Then the stage was stormed with women handcuffed and dragged away and in police vans. The crowd shouted, “Shame on you,” “Leave them alone,” and “Arrest your own.”
The mayor of London demanded a statement and politicians from left and right expressed outrage at the disproportionate use of force, some even asking the head of the Met, himself a woman, to resign.
Like the drumbeat, this turn of events felt predictable.
“It doesn’t look good for the Met tonight, does it?” said a man who was being moved. “Just let these people have their moment,” he shouted.
Everard’s death triggered that moment – a long overdue moment of national reckoning on women’s rights in the UK, calling for new laws recognizing misogyny as a hate crime.
Countless Londoners this week have wondered why it took a senseless death for a young woman before the outburst of outrage finally erupted.
The answer may lie in how quickly the Saturday vigil was silenced.