Reclaim the Night
Article published: Tuesday, April 12th 2011
Manchester city centre has certainly not been a stranger to marches, rallies and demonstrations over the past few months with student, trade union and council led protests against governmental policies taking place regularly around the city.
On Friday 8 April, a group of Manchester-based feminists took to the streets to protest against a different, albeit similarly imperative, issue — street harassment and sexual violence on our streets. Reclaim the Night marches started in Britain in 1977 after taking inspiration from ‘Take Back the Night’ women-only marches in West Germany. Over the years, they have been focused on the reality of rape, sexual assaults and harassment, giving women the opportunity to reclaim the streets, and feel safe and secure while doing so. This year, the Manchester march was open to all, bringing together different groups who have experienced street violence and harassment.
“We wanted this Reclaim the Night to be open to anyone who experiences any form of street harassment because of who they are. That could be because of their gender; sexuality; race; religion or disability. We wanted to bring all these people and groups together,” explained Emma Kerry, Women’s Officer at the University of Manchester Student Union.
The march, organised by University of Manchester’s Women’s Collective, The Riveters, took to the road around 8pm from the Students Union on North Campus, off Sackville Street, with sound systems blaring feminist songs, and marchers chanting loudly. The protesters stopped outside the BBC Studios on Oxford Road and chanted in unison, while chalking feminist and anti-harassment messages outside the symbolic media building. Upon reaching Oxford Road, the group were met by police escorts.
Many were incredibly unhappy with their subsequent treatment by Greater Manchester Police (GMP), who flanked the demonstration with all-male officers and three vans from the Tactical Aid Unit. As Feminist, Jennie O’ Hara, said: “The unwarranted police escort demonstrates the ineffective treatment of gender based violence by the police. Rather than walking us down the road when we march, or telling us to stay home to avoid rape, why don’t they tackle the street harassment and violence we women face on a daily basis?”
Many participants felt that the main aim of the event was to raise community awareness around the issue of street harassment and sexual violence in a positive and empowering way. One marcher, Meg Venter, told MULE that “Reclaiming our streets is so important because so many of us have been made to feel vulnerable and threatened with behaviour we’ve encountered on streets – and we have been largely told by society to put up with it, which shouldn’t be the case at all. Reclaiming allows us to regain some of the power that such behaviour takes away from us as well as conveying to society that we demand to feel safe on our streets.”
According to the British Crime Survey (2001) there are an estimated 47,000 rapes every year, around 40,000 attempted rapes and over 300,000 sexual assaults. Yet our conviction rate, the lowest in Europe, stands at 5.3 per cent. GMP statistics show that in Manchester alone there have been 4,168 reported rapes in the last five years, 878 of them happening from 2009-2010. These statistics formed the basis of the impassioned chants from the protesters, such as “Three, five, seven, nine the rape conviction rate is a crime”, and “whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no”.
Marcher Sarah Kerton said, “Every day, women, trans people and minorities negotiate rape, violence and harassment. How are we to claim that we are equal when our lives are restricted by these threats? Reclaim the Night gives us both a chance to highlight these issues and also educate a broader range of the community. It’s a chance to put our safety on the agenda, and its essential to show that we are not to blame for sexual, racist and transphobic violence.”
Tabz O’Brien-Butcher
The Reclaim the Night march links in with last month’s Hollaback! Manchester launch, a non-profit organisation dedicated to ending street harassment using mobile technology. For more information see Hollaback! Manchester, the Riveter’s Women’s rights collective and Reclaim the Night.
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Comments
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[…] mentioned in this article from Manchester Mule about this year’s Reclaim the Night march that was recently held in […]
Pingback by Recent Activity | Manchester Hollaback! on April 13, 2011 at 10:23 pm -
‘The protesters stopped outside the BBC Studios on Oxford Road and chanted in unison’
Why?
The only advantage of the BBC moving some of it mass production of brain-rotting trash to Salford Docks is that hopefully all the tedious demos and marches which seem to regard the BBC as a focal point will soon be out of the city centre and in the wastelands of ‘Media City’.
Comment by simon on April 20, 2011 at 6:43 pm -
[…] Tabz O’Brien-Butcher Published in Manchester Mule Original Link The Reclaim the Night march links in with last month’s Hollaback! Manchester launch, a […]
Pingback by Tabz O'Brien-Butcher | Reclaim the Night 2011 on August 18, 2012 at 1:38 am
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