 This afternoon police confirmed that remains discovered in a Kent woodland are those of Sarah Everard the 33 year old who went missing on March the third in South London. The horrific murder of Sarah Everard has shown a spotlight on the epidemic of violence against women in Britain with thousands of women speaking up about the harassment they have faced. It's also raised serious questions about the Metropolitan Police. The man suspected of the murder is a serving police officer who had been reported days earlier for alleged indecent exposure. On tonight's Tisgis hour we'll be discussing this week's horrific events and what they tell us about power misogyny and violence in modern-day Britain. I'm of course joined by Dalia Gabriel. Thank you for thank you for joining me this evening. Thanks for having me Michael. It's not not a great news day but we are here to to unpack it and to talk about what the pathways out are. Absolutely. I mean it has caused you know an incredible outpouring in fact and we'll be discussing whether this has become something like a new Me Too moment or slightly later in the show. We will have a couple of guests later on the show. They're two volunteers with the Good Lad initiative and they lead workshops with teenage boys about sexual violence or that speaks to something which so many people have been bringing up at the moment which is that the responsibility should fall on on men to tackle this pandemic of violence and harassment. We'll also close by discussing a completely different story which is Labour's fence sitting on the question of nurses pay. We do want to get more people watching this show so do share the show link tweet on the hashtag Tisgis hour comment under the twitch stream and we will be reading your super chats throughout the show. Sarah Everard a 33 year old marketing executive went missing on the evening of March the 3rd after leaving a friend's house near Clapham Common. The following day her boyfriend who had arranged to meet Sarah Everard that evening alerted the police and a nationwide search began. Six days later on March the 9th a 40 a 48 year old police officer named Wayne Cousins was arrested in Kent first on suspicion of kidnapping and then later on suspicion of her murder. Now according to the Sun investigators were led to Cousins after a car allegedly linked to him was spotted on a motorist dash cam near to where Sarah Everard was last seen on the night of Wednesday March the 3rd. They cited source suggesting the officer who they understand had been working for police that day may have used his warrant card to entice Everard towards his car with one theory suggesting that the COVID lockdown could have been a pretext to begin a conversation. This is of course very speculative at this point. It has since though been revealed that two allegations of indecent exposure had been levelled against Cousins on the 28th of February just three days before Sarah Everard's disappearance. It was not until this Wednesday after he had been arrested on suspicion of murder that Cousins was also arrested on suspicion of indecent exposure related to that prior complaint. Because of this delay there is now an investigation underway into whether the Metropolitan Police properly investigated that first incident that first report about indecent exposure. Reports suggest the officer was still working for the Met on the 3rd of March which would imply the complaint did not lead to any suspension. Finally when it comes to questions about the Metropolitan Police there is also one other incident this week which requires answers. On Thursday Cousins was taken to hospital due to head injuries he'd received in custody. The police have said he was alone in his cell when the injury took place. He has since returned to police custody. Now we're going to discuss the broader issues surrounding policing and violence against women a little bit later in the show and also the social media response. First Darlia can I just get your comment on the specific events we've witnessed this week. It's obviously tragic frightening and there's also lots of reasons to have concerns about the role of the Metropolitan Police in this. I mean of course we're all deeply shaken by this news. It's an appalling story and the arrest of an officer on suspicion here has brought to light a lot of conversations that have been happening you know since the summer last year but also much further back before that about you know police accountability and all of these things. And I think you know as we've seen on social media this week people who have been you know made vulnerable by our system you know vulnerability is not like an inherent thing. Women queer people they spend a huge amount of time and effort trying to do all of these things to try and make them feel impact like in control of what happens to them. And it's something that's drummed into us from a very young age and it's incessant it's exhausting it's unfair it dramatically impacts your quality of life. And I think what's sad is that for so long this you know this violence this anticipation of violence has been portrayed as sort of some kind of natural reality of being a woman or a queer person right. So that's just how it is and to demand or expect to be treated differently is unrealistic it's pie in the sky or it's against nature you know I can't count the number of times that I've been told that you know an outfit or something is like you know go walking into a lion's den wearing meat you know I've literally had that sentence told to me multiple times that this demand for things to be different has to happen in our imagination first and I feel like hopefully that is you know beginning to unfold and you know whatever the details of this particular case turn out to be that conversation around the relationship of the police to this kind of harm to these kinds of violences to the harm of people in our communities and the fact that you know police are not clearly not who we rely on to keep ourselves safe in our everyday lives is a really urgent one. Hmm I mean we're going to mainly be talking about sort of the broader issues this this case raises throughout the show and before we move on to that I do just mention what we do know about the suspect now or what we seem to know about the suspect now of course more details will come out about the incident I mean in the days and weeks and months ahead according to the times cousins had previously worked for the civil nuclear constabulary guarding nuclear power station and other sensitive sites the Sun report that the 48 year old father of two joined the met during a recruitment drive for armed police officers following the 2017 terror attacks I suggest he had previously spent 10 years as a territorial army reservist lots of people have been sort of pointing out that this you know was a police officer was also an armed armed police officer so someone with an enormous amount of power and responsibility and authority due to the job he held which is why I think people are finding the fact that this this man has been arrested on suspicion of murder especially you know especially terrifying let's move on to the social media response to all of this because it has been you know enormous the the outpouring both of grief but also of people sharing their their own experiences of harassment and violence and also what they what they believe you know we need to do to change this in this country I want to start with one of the first tweets to go viral which was this from lawyer Harriet Johnson she wrote every woman you know has taken a longer route has doubled back on herself has pretended to dawdle by a shop window has held her keys in her hand has made a fake phone call has rounded a corner and run every woman you know has walked home scared every woman you know now that clearly struck a chord because it was shared 38,000 times lots of people sharing it obviously with their with their own experiences we'll just go through some more of the of the viral tweets there were obviously thousands and thousands I'm sure you've been looking through many of them yourselves one I want to bring up is is from NHS worker Kate Jarman so she wrote like this tweet if as a woman you've walked home with your keys in your hand in case you need to use them in self-defense if you faked being on the phone as you walk past the man coming towards you if you've changed your route if you started to run in fear and like this tweet if that's been because of the behavior of men whether it's men's behavior needs to change not women's we also have a tweet here from our owner of our zone as Saka who tweeted I can't remember the first time I was targeted on the street mostly because it started so young and I can't think of a time when it wasn't a part of just being in public as a woman it happened when I was in school uniform it still happens in broad daylight as well as at night and finally Helen Bernard who is director of the Joseph Round Tree Foundation pointed out the very important point in response to the people who say well you should get a camp home don't walk home home at night she says there is actually no safe way to get home so she tweets get a taxi so many nights so many nights finishing work late and getting in a taxi calling home so the driver could hear me tell someone where I was tracking the route to judge if I was being taken the right way wondering if I could kick open the door if needed it's exhausting now I mean as I said there are thousands and thousands of these tweets darling I want your your thoughts on how meaningful this moment could be obviously it has lots of resonances I suppose with I can't breathe and with the response to the death of George Floyd also with the Me Too movement where one you know revelation about a particularly powerful man prompted many many women to talk about their experiences of harassment and we can talk about how effective or ineffective that movement was but what do you make of this this outpouring I mean I think that it's it's important to kind of make it when when a voice feels collective it can it can really help I think that what struck me so much about these tweets and you know all of these women talking about like I said earlier the strategies that they take in order to try and feel and control of what's going to happen to them is that it tells me that you know women turn to themselves to keep themselves safe they don't turn and their communities and their friends who they you know call before they get into a cab or they call you know before they start their journey home that we actually don't rely on the police to keep them safe and you know it's something that we hear a lot but it's not something that actually is what happens on the ground and whether it's you know carrying hairspray around keys between their knuckles checking with friends you know I could probably put a mortgage down on a house with the amount of money I get spend on ubers because I'm scared to walk alone at night so you know the police don't actually make women feel safer they're not who we turn to to try and feel safe and any woman who queer person who's actually been through the system when they've experienced a harm you know whether it's harassment whether it's stalking other gender-based violence is you know when women have gone to institutions that they are told are there to protect them and been like I know that this man is going to hurt me and there is you know can tell any woman that's done that can tell you that police sure as hell aren't useful when when that's the case so but I think also you know with with a lot of these messages with a lot of these tweets I think it's also really careful really important to tread quite a difficult line here which is you know it's very important to to talk about how you know we do all these strategies to keep us safe and even when we do them we still can be subject to harassment and violence but I think it's really important to not center this conversation around questions of innocence you know about because it implies that there are some women women who can't take those strategies whether they are sex workers or they work in the nighttime economy or they're women who just love to stay out late and wear what the hell they want to wear enjoy their night somehow you know didn't take the right precautionary measures that they should have taken to prevent harm and I think especially when it comes to harm experienced by the police and obviously you know we don't know the details of this particular case but there is a long tradition of women talking about experiencing sexual violence or experiencing harm at the hands of a police officer and not being able to actually do anything about it it's especially important to avoid that question of innocence because it suggests that if you're not innocent then violence or harm that you're subjected to by the police whether it's on the street or in a cell is somehow deserved or not concerning or or part of the course so I think that these kind of tweets have done a lot of work to I think bring realization to the kind of context that women are living in but I think it's really important again to center on the systemic causes of this and the conditions that make women vulnerable rather than kind of what behaviors women should take on in order to try and assuage their vulnerability even though inevitably because you want to feel some control over your life um you do do them I do them all the time um so yeah I think that's a kind of convoluted response but I'm still kind of muddling my way through trying to think about quite a difficult situation there's also I mean some people might say oh it's Twitter it's not representative in this case it clearly is Twitter isn't always representative here it is there was a you gov poll which was released this week or at least was widely shared this week which showed that 97 percent of women aged between 18 and 24 said they had been sexually harassed and when asking women of all ages 80 percent said they had experienced sexual harassment in public places um darling I want to ask you about a sort of specific subset of tweets which were either sort of men asking what can we do differently or women providing suggestions as to what men can do differently the the ones that um I particularly remember that got shared a lot were specifically you know if if you are not an abusive man how can you make it clear you're not following someone how can you make it clear how can you make sure that you're not making women worried about walking at night and that was things like crossing the road if you're walking behind a woman don't walk behind a woman for for a long period of time either overtake or go in a different direction definitely and don't walk behind a woman down you know an alleyway for example what did you make of that sort of practical advice what do you think was missing also I suppose what would you say to any men in our audience who you know want to as as little as who don't want to be part of the problem let's put it like that well this is a real collective issue it's not something that can be resolved by just adjusting individual behaviors I think what the things around you know cross the street if a woman is on her own the things that I guess that kind of speaks to is that and I think one thing that this the the things that have happened on Twitter really were bringing light to was that you know when we hear about the statistics of when women have experienced sexual harassment or experienced sexual violence oftentimes you know the focus is on when the actual violence has occurred and that has and that you know that is what actually gets recorded but what women are kind of saying here is that actually the issue is not just when the instances happen the issue is the constant vigilance and exhaustion of anticipation of violence and anticipation of harassment and that stuff doesn't get recorded in data you know you don't have statistics for you know how often do you as a woman fear harassment on the street because it kind of is all the time so I think that kind of alertness to this idea that this doesn't just affect women's lives when it come when actually happens it affects our lives because we spend a lot of money we spend a lot of time we spend a lot of energy restructuring our lives and our entire relationship to public space is very different because of the anticipation the constant anxiety around that so I think that that's you know a really interesting kind of angle to take it from and I think that there is you know all the good will in the world there to to sort of try and make individual changes to kind of ease that a little bit but I also think that you know and there are people who are much smarter than me who kind of really deal with this question of gender by gender based violence and what are the root causes of gender based violence and what are the adequate systems that can be put in place to both prevent gender based violence and also allow for healing and recognition if and when that does occur and it's we will be coming back to the issue of how men can respond sort of in a bit more depth later in the show and I want to begin by or now talk about how this movement this response isn't just online or at least people hoped it wouldn't be just online because a protest had been planned for tomorrow at 6 p.m. on Clapham Common in southwest London which is close to where it's believed Sophie Everard Sarah Everard apologies was abducted now the the Met Police provoked outrage by indicating they would not allow the protest to go ahead due to coronavirus legislation and threatened organizers with hefty fines if they were to go ahead with the demo against their advice one of the organizers of the reclaim these streets protests spoke to radio for this morning safety's been a priority from the get go and it would be ironic to organize a vigil to think about women's safety in public spaces without also thinking about the health and safety aspects and so right from the get go we've been hugely proactive on that every piece of literature that we've created and put out has asked people to wear masks and emphasise the importance of social distancing we chose Clapham Common in part because it's such a big wide open space and as a common it doesn't have fences around it so there's no need for people to bunch together and crowd to get in or out so we were trying to be very thoughtful we had QR codes so that people could do track and trace and just really trying to work out how we can do this in a really safe way I suppose what the police might say from a policing point of view is that other groups of people who felt very strongly about other things might then take this as a cue that they could do the same thing and that would mean that a lot more people were on the streets and coming to and from this kind of event than the government wants at the moment and then would be legal I do understand that I think that our right to peacefully assemble is an important one and that when people do feel strongly and when groups of people's rights are under threat because they can't walk on the street safely or as we saw last summer and they experience racism and wanted to assert that their Black Lives Matter and I think that these are you know our right to protest and our right to assemble in those contexts is a human right now just before we went live it was announced that the appeal that those protest organisers took to the High Court has failed unfortunately from from from my perspective and we can get a statement from the judge and this is from the BBC report of that that result which came just before we went live as I say so the BBC right in the ruling on Friday Mr Justice Hullgate refused an application by reclaiming these streets for the High Court to make an interim declaration that any ban on outdoor gatherings under COVID rules was subject to the right to protest the judge also refused to make a declaration that an alleged policy by the Met Police of prohibiting all protests irrespective of the specific circumstances was unlawful and organisers have reclaimed these streets said that by forcing them to cancel the vigil the Met Police would be silencing thousands of women now this is I mean you could say it's a difficult issue or you could not I mean it's you can see what's happened here obviously obviously it looks terrible for the Metropolitan Police to be banning this particular vigil especially as we've spoken about because of the the questions that should be raised about the Metropolitan Police in its particular case the organisers of that march as you saw in that clip have also been very clear this would be COVID secure I presume the reason why the judge has ruled in favour of the police though is that the the coronavirus legislation is actually fairly sweeping and there have been lots of people who have suggested that whilst much of it was completely necessary there should have been things such as opt-outs for protests the sort of things which are essential for our our democratic life should not have been subject to the same restrictions as as going to the pub or any other kind of gathering the argument you know the counter argument would be that it's a slippery slope if you allowed one protest and everyone can call their party a protest and then you've got a bit of a problem um Dahlia what do you make of this I mean obviously it's it's it's it's a real shame um that this demo can't go ahead um I don't know if people will still turn up but I mean the organisers have definitely I think probably taken to heart the fact that now this has been um ruled illegal they could be liable for thousands of pounds if they don't cancel it do you think the balance between you know public health and political expression has has been gotten wrong here I mean we had many of these similar conversations in the summer with with the Black Lives Matter protests and I think that the the point that was made there was that you know we are talking about obviously we're in a major public health crisis and obviously that means that we are doing everything that we can in order to prevent harm against people and you know that is kind of I guess the key question here um but the the argument that was made during the Black Lives Matter protest which I was certainly um you know agreed with was that we are also talking about an urgent need to talk we are also engaging with an urgent need to talk about an address and recognize um a form of harm that is systemic that is ever-present that for women and you know and for people of color uh is very very urgent and it's very immediate and so I really do think that this kind of this this clamping down and this is part of a broader you know which will come to it but later perhaps this is part of a broader trend that we are seeing with you know the crime bill which massively the ability of people inside or outside of coronavirus times to assert their right to protest it massively restricts the kinds of protests and the spaces in which people can protest and you know this all seems to be part of a wider ideological trend and that brings me back again to the question of what are the police there to protect they can't you know take accountability when you know and this is not talking just about the specific case but the many many backlog of cases um where women have experienced abuse and people of color people have experienced abuse at the hands of the police and have not been able to seek recognition or accountability for that but when it comes to stopping women from gathering enough in an outdoor park with you know very adequate measures measures taken in order to uh in order to prevent the the spread of the virus you know holding outside wearing masks having QR codes and you can't tell me that the issue is public transport because you have lots and lots of people going on public transport every day for work uh so the question therefore becomes you know what is the police really there for they've got all this vim in the world against a a memorial for a woman who has been killed in the most egregious and horrific way and where women want to raise their voices to talk about how this is a systemic issue but when it comes to you know protecting a statue from some graffiti they have 10 years um imprisoned right in their back pocket we have a a comment from Richard mischick tweets on the hashtag tiskey sour such a good point just now from darglion tiskey sour about what it's like for women to always be in a state of anticipation of violence i can't begin to imagine how exhausting that must be i think that's probably you know a sentiment shared by many men who've been on on twitter this week sort of seeing seeing that outpouring um we spoke about sort of the the concerns about the police i'm in this particular case in the case of violence against women we're going to talk specifically i'm about that now because the sarah everard case has raised difficult questions for the metropolitan police the man arrested on suspicion of everards murder wane cousins is himself a police officer even more concerning cousins has been reported to the police three days prior to everards abduction he was accused of indecent exposure now given its understood he continued working as a police officer after that complaint questions are being raised about that initial investigation was it properly investigated by the police by his colleagues um finally the fact that cousins was taken from custody to hospital with head injuries raises serious questions about the professionalism of the surface i know not people will not have sympathy with this man and they should not but this is not a good way to conduct an investigation whether it was committed by himself or by someone else um obviously we don't we don't want to speculate on the the details of this particular case but rather use this as a as an opportunity um to remind ourselves of the other recent incidents which shine light on the problematic relationship with the police and to gender-based violence um and it's quite shocking actually it does make the i suppose that the actions of the police or the the suspicions we have of the police not particularly surprising given their recent history and i want to start with an article from 2019 this was by alexandra heal who conducted a really important investigation into allegations of domestic violence against serving police officers this was for the bureau for investigative journalism now heal reported on the extent to which police officers were themselves subject to complaints about domestic violence and she writes police officers and staff across the uk were reported for alleged domestic abuse almost 700 times in the three years up to april 2018 according to freedom of information responses more than four times a week on average the real figure is likely to be much higher as data was only provided by 37 of the uk's 48 police forces that's including specialist forces now heal also reported and this is particularly worrying that victims of alleged domestic abuse consistently accounted difficulties when reporting their alleged abusers that's if they're alleged abusers were themselves police officers so heal writes from across the country we heard claims that alleged abusers got their partners repeatedly arrested stalked them in cars or warned them there was no point going to the police because the force was a family some were too scared to ever report it for those that did go to the police the experience only served to traumatize them further they say they feel their partners colleagues fail to adequately follow up on serious allegations and that they were discouraged from making statements some complained about their treatment but the complaints were not upheld statistics also sort of back up so lots of this article which i do recommend you go and read is based on interviews with people who have had difficulties themselves complaining against police officers but it also has the statistics to back this up it's not just personal experience she writes beyond the number of allegations the figures suggest reports about alleged abuse by police are treated differently just 3.9% in england and wales ended in conviction compared with 6.2% among the general population less than a quarter of reports resulted in any sort of professional discipline greater Manchester police one of the country's biggest forces secured just one conviction out of 79 reports over the free year period now as i say we don't want to speculate on what has happened in this particular case but if it does turn out that the police did not properly investigate cousins for alleged indecent exposure this context suggests you know that might not be a surprise more generally when it comes to how police investigate violence against women we should talk about the murder of Nicole Smallman and Bieber Henry who was stabbed to death tragically and horrifically at a park in Wembley in June last year now back in June the mother of the two sisters Mina Smallman complained about the Met's response to her daughter's disappearance and Smallman said she had personally had to organise the search for her daughters after the police did not act when she reported them missing and it was in fact Nicole Smallman's boyfriend who found the bodies and the murder weapon not the police officers what is most shocking about this story and what you you might have heard about is when police arrived at the scene two of them posed for selfies with the women's dead bodies it was two members of the Metropolitan Police posed with the dead bodies of the women whose murder they were supposed to be investigating now it's important to remember this wasn't in the 1960s this wasn't in the 1980s this was 2020 now at the time the BBC conducted a harrowing interview with Mina Smallman so she's the mother about the incident the lead person said I don't know how to tell you this but police officers were taking selfies and posing for pictures with your dead daughters you know in the deep self when they used to lynch people and you would see smiling faces around a hanging dead body those police officers dehumanised our children if ever we needed an example of how toxic it has become those police officers felt so safe so untouchable that they felt they could take photographs really really difficult interview to listen to now Cressida Dick who is the head of the Metropolitan Police said at the time that the alleged actions of the police officers were disgusting and would be condemned by the entire police force Mina Smallman who you saw in that video also explained to the BBC why she thought the police didn't initiate a search immediately after her daughters were reported missing so this is from from the BBC Smallman says the police were making assumptions when they didn't immediately respond when the sisters were first reported missing I knew instantly why they didn't care they didn't care because they looked at my daughter's address and thought they knew who she was a black woman who lives on a council estate now I mean darling that's the stories I've just run through you know the systematic failure it seems that the police to investigate domestic abuse by their own officers and then this completely you know appalling response to this this murder of two young women we have heard sort of in response to what's happened this week calls for you know a greater police presence on our streets to make women feel safer there'll clearly be many women who don't feel safer by having more police on our streets I mean what do you make of of yeah I suppose the role of the Metropolitan Police especially and the police more broadly when it comes to gender-based violence I mean I think that the way that in the interview that we just heard that idea of the police looked at my daughter's address and thought they knew who she was the implication there is that she wasn't this that they assume that she they they weren't these per these sort of innocent victims that because they were black because they were working class that somehow violence is something that is just part of the course to them it's really important as I sort of mentioned earlier to think about this in that broader context of the crime bill that has recently passed which gave which is giving police absolutely unprecedented powers to restrict protest you know an extension which is an extension of what is being currently used to criminalize the vigil being held that was going to be held for Sarah the crime bill has increased you know the sentence for causing a damage to a statue to 10 years right we then look at the fact that even beyond Sarah's case we have ample evidence that police abuses are not are systematically protected by the system and that you know you outlined that in the article earlier and I would encourage people to go and read that article which begs the question what is the purpose of that system and you know think about the kind of culture that exists that police officers feel emboldened to take pictures of the corpses of two dead women and share them on a WhatsApp group I think it was a WhatsApp group but it was shared essentially so thinking about those two things it really begs the question of what the police are actually for and what and who they are there to protect and you know who is actually made vulnerable by the police and and that doesn't even include that dehumanizing and invasive behaviors like stop and search um you know which are part and parcel of the job of police officers you know and it includes the behaviors that were legitimated by the spy cops bill where essentially said that it was okay for um officers undercover officers to essentially trick people into intimate relationships when we think about the number of people who have died following police contact and the deaths of people in prison the immense amounts of sexual violence experienced in prison um you know the systemic neglect experienced by those in prison which have gone uninvestigated um and you know so it doesn't even need to be counted it doesn't need to be explained those are all part violences of the prison system um that are part of business as usual and I think that's an important conversation and I think you know frankly the response to this cannot be a reproduction of that logic um I've seen you know when I highlight differences in strength of the police force when it comes to you know defacing a statue versus dealing with sexual and gender-based violence I'm not saying that we should make the response to gender-based violence the same as the response to defacing a statue um we saw from Shamberry these calls to make misogyny a hate crime and therefore grounds to arrest and bring more people into a prison system my argument is that the castle or criminal justice system was not designed and is wholly inept to actually deal with these kinds of incidences of harm in our society and you know if we think about prevention of harm of healing from harm a so-called justice system that is centered around punishment and the production of further harm and further trauma does not work on either of those accounts especially when the agents of that system are given the full backing of the state and the full protection of the state to do so and we know this from the data we know that stronger sentences and harsher punishments do not result in lower incidences of harm or lower incidences of crime we know that people leave prison more traumatized than when they went in and you know there's a lot of much far smarter people doing much better work than me looking at what a system of accountability and harm prevention um could look like but I think that these are the kinds of questions that I think are being raised by by this case um very much so absolutely I mean this this is a super difficult question I mean because obviously there is also the problem that you know so many people who are alleged to have committed rape are not convicted so so there is on the one hand that the you know the police can be the perpetrators but also it does seem like we do need a better means of policing perpetrators right and making sure that people do face punishment for their actions because I think that probably would form some sort of deterrent no if if people feel that there will be a consequence for their for their actions I would disagree with that and the reason that I think obviously the question of the fact that the police do not have the tools in order to actually deal with you know as I said you know if a woman comes to the police and say you know this man is stalking me um you will find yourself with a big fat kind of shrug um and that actually so so there's that element that you know the police do not actually have the tools in order to deal with that and but the only institution that women are able to go to that promises some kind of protection from that is the police and so I can understand that desire for conviction I can understand it but I think that when we look at the data what we find is that imprisonment and incarceration and stronger sentences don't actually prevent harm as much as we think it does and so I think it goes against a lot of our gut instincts but I think we actually need to think of this as a much bigger conversation this is actually a much it can't actually be fixed I think personally by simply massively expanding the the rate of incarceration because I think that essentially the data tells us that having stronger punishment does not actually have any dramatic impact on the not on the incidences of violence the question much more is education and it's about tackling the root causes of of those kinds of harm in order to prevent them from happening I think it's a really difficult question the problem is we don't have any other models that we know about but it seems to me that the data tells me that threats of higher you know imprisonment don't actually do the work that we think it does and that's a really difficult but a serious conversation that we need to have that's an important clarification I'm sure it's a topic we'll come back to and I'm also glad you brought up education which is my next topic that's because the outpouring of grief and anger in the wake of the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard has provoked many to question what men can do to tackle violence against women and the trauma it causes on the one hand this has included simple advice that every man can easily adopt but there is also a widespread recognition that men need to take more fundamental changes if we are to challenge the patriarchy and not reinforce it society also has a broader responsibility to properly educate our children or our adults as well ourselves so that boys aren't raised with the expectations that they can get away with abusing women ideally they'll grow up not wanting to now two people who have extensive experience speaking to men and boys about gender based violence join me now Nathaniel Cole is the co-founder of the inner city swimming club swim dem crew and workshop facilitator focusing on masculinity relationships and sex and anti-racism thank you for joining me this evening now Nathaniel thanks for having me and I'm also joined by Sakeeb Ilyas Bakhtewar who is a community and youth worker community and youth worker and the founder of Dicology an anti-racist program working to build more critical caring and resilient communities now I know that both thank you for joining me yeah I know that both of you are facilitators taking part in workshops which sort of bring in teenage boys to talk about gender based violence to talk about misogyny and inequality and which is you know exactly the kind of thing which seems that there is now a political consensus oh we need to teach boys about relationships we need to teach boys about gender relations how have you found that on on the ground do you find that people are perceptive to thinking about sex and relationships at young age or is there any resistance to it when I start with with Nathaniel um well I was actually going to hand that to Sakeeb okay I'll start with the keep going are young people receptive to it yeah I think what I was thinking mostly about just now was how uh young people are mostly hesitant to have conversations about sex and relationships because I think it's about how infrequently they get to happen in schools and so when we come with that conversation quite like breezed in me um there's lots of discomfort but I think they're ready to have the conversation but it takes a significant amount of time to get them like warmed up to have uh like an open conversation around it because some kids still laugh at the word penis um which is fine but then we have we do have to get past that to have kind of deeper conversations um and that's obviously dependent on age groups um yeah what are the kind of conversations you have if you could you know explain to our audience what would a workshop look like with young with with teenage boys or young boys or whoever you're talking to yeah I can I'll do I'll do like a quick run through um so we spend like a time on uh the introduction um which is mostly to set a space in a culture where young people feel comfortable to um speak openly and honestly so a lot that is thumb silliness um lots of jokes but each young person gets a chance to speak um and it allows us to build a relationship with them quite rapidly um in order for us to do the work that we need to do in the few hours that we're there um we then have an activity which is kind of like a word association which um is intended to elicit any stereotypes that exist in the group um everybody is socialized with stereotypes and these young people are not exempt from that um and then we do like uh I mean most people might see this around like a spectrum line um where we provide statements and young people move along the lines to tell us how they feel about it um but it's to encourage the dialogue around things that they haven't really engaged before so about emotions about slut shaming about uh if what women wear impacts how they're received or perceived by men and uh pokes holes and all of those things um any beliefs that might be there and uh then depending on the workshop depending on the year group um we can do a number of things sometimes you have a a little bit about objectification about media and how culture perpetuates this constant environment of a narrative around how men and women should behave um and then there's an activity around uh what it means to come out or um and in an attempt to like normalize different sexualities and gender identities um and then there's some other bit so we might do as an option depending on the group hmm and the teachers are welcoming of this I suppose because you've been you've been invited in to give this workshop haven't you so this is not going to be the case that you've got this this misogynist teacher who's like why are you giving me this gender ideology to my to my kids um I want to bring up a point which has been raised by some people on social media which is the worry that potentially the way we talk about this you know that you know it is so widespread that that means that every man is a potential perpetrator um could potentially vilify young men um now my my prompt here is going to be a tweet this morning from Divina McCall um the television personality so she tweeted female abduction um and murder is extremely rare yes we should all be vigilant when out alone but this level of fear mongering isn't healthy and men's mental health is an issue as well calling all men out as dangerous is bad for our sons brothers and partners um so I mean I suppose my question here is do you ever feel when you go into schools that the the boys feel vilified you know that the fact that you are there talking to them about gender-based violence is to essentially accuse them of being future perpetrators and do you worry you know that that could um do do any damage I think for us is that we we understand that it's it's not all men that do this but the general consensus from a lot of people's that it's obviously too many men for instance um I feel like in the 90s and early 2000s there was a the narrative that's similar to today of boys and men being predisposed to to violence against women and girls um which went down a route that I didn't agree with because I feel like the way people act as a result of a series of factors um what I really think we need to do is create environments and and give men tools to to navigate them you know where they can explore deep feelings desires worries fears so they don't internalize the current power systems at play and seek to take power from people or seek to dominate um or seek to dominate and um champion abusive behaviors um for me it's really important that we get boys to understand I think the reason why the Sarah story's been important is because it talks about something that's talked about a lot in media of a walking home alone at night dangerous alley but we also need to come to terms with the fact that a lot of boys and men are capable of harm and violence and that it's us it's as in someone looking at me in this camera it's us it's our families it's our friends it's our teachers and so on so it's not just these people that have painters as as bad eggs like rapists are are known um and for us that speaks of you know a culture of harm and violence you know what we look at as rape culture so it's not about vilifying young boys and men but more about developing like a a community responsibility so they understand that it's not enough to simply not do these things but to embody a community spirit and attitude that seeks to denounce these things um and go against those two and and sake can I bring can I bring you in to talk about I suppose how far you think education can get us so I mean I think most of my audience is going to think this is a really good idea and these workshops should be given to every boy in the country and it's kind of ridiculous that that doesn't already happen given that we've known this is such a problem for so long but even if that were to happen you know how far do you think that would get us where do you think um the problems would still emerge even if we did give this wonderful education to to all young boys in the country do you still think there would still be an epidemic of gender based violence essentially education is is obviously fundamental to this I think maybe I could speak about the approach of how we do this and then what's needed beyond schools and I think I think one of the things that we run up against quite a lot is it's kind of inconsistent or like infrequent opportunities to have that conversation I think if there were a system where we could speak to young people and see them regularly throughout their school time at school it would mean that we could support their development to be able to apply those things in real life so I think in in the approach that we have it's about planting the seeds or the question marks on things that we believe fundamentally but don't really know where they come from and hopefully those those kind of like those little things that we've done the little plants the seeds that we've planted kind of well at some point like a trigger like a little question mark on their head when they're having a conversation or whether they hear something or whether he see one of the friends do something so it's about developing that kind of alternate approach to seeing things and how they navigate the world and then I think what's really important is it does need to go beyond that because the same conversations need to be happening at school sorry they are at school the same conversations to be happening at home or other youth establishments or I think I think it speaks quite directly to different cultural backgrounds young people have or if kids grow up from or belong to like a faith community it's about having like a consistent message across all of those different areas or environments that young people spend time to like to reiterate that same message. Nathaniel do you want to add something? Yeah I think just with with you touched on it really nicely about it's about conversations that we have at home in other wider community groups I think to make a change and a cultural shift you have a lot of cogs that kind of need to work together to give and equip people with the tools to navigate themselves and to give them things like emotional literacy or comfortability with being vulnerable or the ability to communicate effectively and not just necessarily resorting to things like violence and overpowering people. You do that through compassionate healing spaces, arts focus groups, poetry workshops, expressive dance you know I say those methods because they exist kind of outside the structures that have been reinforcing the the power dynamics that play currently even patriarchy and masculinity like I feel like we've got a community neglected society and school structure that is very much propping up a system that's creating these oppressive structures that is just repeating a cycle and I feel like to break a cycle you need a change that is holistic in nature but also robust so it engages lots of different community touch points to create a communal change over 10 or 15 years. And Saki thank you so much for for joining me this evening I can see from the comments that everyone is feeling quite inspired by by your projects and I mean I really do hope that this kind of education can in the very near future be going out to you know every young person in the country so yeah thank you for sharing your insights this evening. Thank you. We have a final story which is on a different topic which is a story which I don't think is going to go away for a while which is the the controversy over nurses pay I think it's going to soon become the fight for a decent pay rise for nurses at the moment it's still at the phase of controversy instead of conflict. Earlier in the week we said that Tories miserly pay offer to nurses gave labour an opportunity to regain their confidence in challenging Tory injustice initial signs were good. Kia Starm are led with the issues of nurses pay and landed some real blows on Boris Johnson at today at this week's apologies PMQs for only recommending a 1% pay rise for nurses which given inflation would be an effective pay cut. The party strategy has hit a bit of a bump in the road though this is over questions of quite how much nurses pay should be raised by now the Royal College of Nurses they are the Royal College of Nursing Apologies they are the union which represents nurses are proposing a 12.5% increase in pay labour aren't going that far now they have suggested that nurses deserve at least a 2.1% pay rise now that's the figure the government had originally budgeted for nurses pay before the pandemic they obviously changed their minds and when they said all the money's tight now sorry nurses will have to pay for the crisis in terms of the precise pay rise which labour are proposing the deputy leader Angela Rainer was pushed on the party's position on BBC breakfast you're saying you are the party that's behind the NHS and we know what the government said they've said 1% and you know the Royal College of Nursing has said 12% so why wouldn't you as the Labour Party support the Royal College of Nursing's demands for 12% well there's a pay review body and a number of trade unions that are involved in that and I think that that negotiation should start but actually the starting point at the very least should be what the government had legislated and budgeted for because we all know that the NHS staff have put themselves at risk during this pandemic we know we've got thousands of vacancies already across our NHS if we give them a real terms pay cut now we're going to have serious problems in filling those vacancies and dealing with the backlog of cancer patients that we've got and supporting our key workers that have supported us through one of the most difficult times this country has ever faced if I may Angela Rainer if I may at least give 2.1% okay so you're using the word at least if I look back to the Labour Party manifesto of 2019 at that point and this is prior to the pandemic of course when everyone's even more grateful and full of praise for what the NHS has done the Labour Party manifesto 2019 you are saying they should get 5% so I mean have you come down from that marker and if you could say a number then why can't you say a number now well you know we're talking about our election launch for May now and you know we've got to remind ourselves in that manifesto in 2019 the general public completely rejected it you know it's one of our worst election defeats so what me and Keira have done when we took over the leadership of the Labour Party is listen to voters and if you listen to voters now 12 months on from the start of this pandemic they would say that the government should at least honour its promise to our NHS work okay so I'm trying not to talk I'm trying very deliberately not to talk about the government and I'm trying to say our NHS staff deserve a pay rise now it's not a particularly good media routing when you've gone on to attack the government where they're on the ropes you know the government really unpopular for not offering nurses a pay rise here you end up spending most of the discussion attacking yourself from a year ago Angela Rainer stood on that manifesto I did Keir Starmer so they've gone on there attacking the Tories and they end up saying actually the real problem was the Labour Party who voters rejected and because it was such a bad offer we promised and the substantial I suppose takeaway from that interview is that Labour's Labour do want nurses to have a pay rise just not a particularly substantial one it's a very Keir Starmer position a bit more generous than the Tories much less so than the unions the problem this could pose for Sir Keir is that Boris Johnson is quite a flexible Prime Minister and it appears he might have spotted an opportunity to outflank the Labour leader the Times report that a government source has said it was a matter of when not if the current 1% offer is increased the source said ministers were considering a rise of more than the 2.1% proposed by the NHS and suggested that a rise of between 2% and 3% would be realistic there have been suggestions of 5% although this is very unlikely it's also understood it's not just Labour who are publicly speaking out against the prospect of only a 1% pay rise which would be an effective pay cut there are also Tory backbenchers unhappy about the position former minister Caroline Noakes said on ITV's Pestin this week it's a very bad look for the government and as I say I was stunned that it was as low as 1% I think we will see it go upwards it's just a question of how much and I think it's really important that we reflect back on the Prime Minister's words last year when he was talking about the debt the personal debt he owed those nurses who had looked after him and so I'm really surprised that the government came out with this recommendation and I'm very optimistic they won't stick to it so it seems that a U-turn is likely and fingers crossed it comes because as always but especially after this pandemic NHS staff deserve it but if that U-turn comes what impact could it have on the Labour Party now of course if it happens they'll claim it was a U-turn they'll say they've had another victory in Parliament but that argument won't stand up particularly well if the Tories don't just match the demand of Labour which is 2.1% all thereabouts but go above and beyond it if I was a Tory Prime Minister I would certainly be tempted to make that move and I'd be tempted not least because it would undermine the core message Labour are putting forward to vote for them in May's election that is vote Labour to support nurses it is a risky move to say our whole reason for being as a party at this upcoming election is to make sure nurses are properly paid and then only commit to offering them a pay rise of 2.1% when they're asking for 12.5% Darlia this looks like another own goal for the Labour Party doesn't it yeah I mean this is the strategy right like you don't actually have an ideological framework or a politics of your own so every time something happens you just look and you think okay the Tories are here and when it's the case of work the unions are here so whatever that their position is we'll just go like five degrees closer than the Tories were but that kind of robotic approach means that you miss these golden opportunities not just from a moral perspective but from a political one you know this is exposing the government for a whole campaign could be done here about how you know exposing the government for clapping for nurses and clapping for carers and then capping their pay right like it's a simple you know it's popular amongst the public it's in line you know it should be in line with you know any the politics of any organization that calls itself a Labour Party it would make the Labour Party more popular and the Tories less popular and I don't know what stage of STAM is three phase plan that actually becomes the strategy because I have yet to see it so you know maybe like in the response to that kind of robotic approach unions should adapt the strategy of just going really really really hard on demands so that that sort of halfway point although it's not even really halfway is closer to what would actually be reasonable but for me the whole conversation about work actually in this pandemic has been really derailed and that's really unfortunate because just before the pandemic you know people who do sort of underpaid like logistical infrastructural urban work urban service work you know delivery drivers taxi drivers couriers care workers nurses supermarket workers etc were all called you know low skilled and they were sort of weaponized in order in a fight to increase border security then suddenly they became essential workers we all realized that not only do we really really need them but they're having to put their lives on the line and undergo really risky work in order to keep our society going and you know the government felt there was this sort of brief moment where we had this really good conversation about work and you know the government felt very embarrassed and they had called this workforce you know the reliant the reliance upon whom has become very very stark you're embarrassed that they called them low skilled but that hasn't really yet been translated into the idea of okay so we recognize that these workforces are doing essential work so now what what does that mean and I think you know to me that means being treated with respect not being worked to the bone having more than enough money to take care of yourself and your dependence and live a good life and be comfortable having humane working conditions it means actual material consequences that aren't just you know nice words and some claps on a Thursday evening but I think that that and you know thanks to the Labour Party in part that part of the conversation has conveniently been lost. Very much so I also want to talk about polling because as Angela Reigning was saying in that interview she was basically saying our position will be led by the public they rejected our manifesto which said a 5% pay rise which means that we essentially have to go for less than 5% otherwise we're not listening to the voters well it turns out politics doesn't actually work like that. A poll from YouGov this week asked people whether they would back a 10% rise in nursing salaries and 75% said yes it wasn't 75% said oh they might need a tiny pay rise 75% 10% yes let's do it. What's important to recognise is this is across all voting groups it's not one of those situations where they'll say oh it's only the core voters if we offer 10% to the nurses that will just pile up votes in the inner cities where we've already got seats no across the country Tory voters Labour voters Lib Dem voters everyone wants a big pay rise for nurses and so they should it's another own go come on just take a position a strong position and stick to it and you will probably have a much better electoral result than constantly trying to second-guess the electorate which is what Keir Starmer is doing at present people see through it. I am going now to read you an advert and this is not an advert because we have a sponsorship deal Tisgy Sauer still is only supported by our kind viewers it's an advert for a job at Avara Media which I'm going to read you now are you a versatile designer who enjoys communication and working in a team well we're looking for a digital designer to join our team thanks to your continued support we're constantly expanding and right now we're looking to hire someone who can combine technical skill with creative flair in all aspects of our digital infrastructure if this is one for you then you could soon be working on a number of highly visible projects and designing everything from web page interactions and user experience to graphics and t-shirts the closing day is next wednesday the 17th of march at 10 p.m and for more details and information on how to apply just go to navara media navara.media slash designer that's navara.media slash designer I promise we are a very fun organization to work for so if you are a a graphic designer or a digital designer do make sure you apply for that I also actually have another incredibly important shout out which is my two guests earlier and I understand in the comments people were discussing how they could get involved so do follow them on insta or you can email them so on insta sarkeb is at sarkeb which is s a a q i b and nefanyl coal is at nefanyl a coal I'll probably tweet these out afterwards or we'll put them in the youtube description and what I'll actually do is is I'll put I'll put the the emails under the youtube as well that's definitely a form of political action that it's worth getting involved in um darlia for now thank you so much for joining me this evening thank you for having me michael it's been a pleasure and thank you for watching um if you haven't already do make sure you hit the subscribe button if you aren't already please do become a supporter of navara media to do that you go to navara dot media no you go to navara media dot com forward slash support I got confused because it's because it's navara dot media slash designer fox is shouting at me in my ears now um for now you've been watching tisky sour on navara media good night