The event had been planned on Clapham Common, near to where the 33-year-old was last seen alive.
image copyrightPA Media
A vigil planned for Sarah Everard in south London will not take place, organisers have confirmed.
Reclaim These Streets had planned to hold the vigil on Clapham Common on Saturday evening, near to where the 33-year-old was last seen alive.
On Friday, a High Court judge refused to intervene in the group’s legal challenge over the right to gather for a protest during Covid restrictions.
Similar events have also been cancelled in Edinburgh and Cardiff.
Ms Everard’s disappearance, when she was walking home along a main road in Clapham on 3 March, has prompted a public debate on women’s safety.
The Metropolitan Police has urged people to find a “lawful and safer way” to express their view on the issue.
On Friday, serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens, 48, was charged with the kidnap and murder of Ms Everard.
Anna Birley, an organiser of Reclaim These Streets, said they did not want to put women at risk of fixed-penalty notices.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “sadly” the vigil will not go ahead because “we don’t in good faith think that we can”.
“In part because of the massive individual risk that gives us as organisers and that we don’t want to be putting women at risk of fixed-penalty notices.
“All the women across the country who are seeking to organise their own events too are at risk of criminal prosecutions from the Serious Crimes Act, which is what we’ve been threatened with.
“The inability of Scotland Yard to constructively engage with us means we can’t be confident they’re going to police the event in a way that’s Covid safe.”
Reclaims These Streets tweeted that the group had “repeatedly tried to find a way forward for the event”, including staggering start times and splitting the event into time slots, but the Met Police had been “unwilling to commit to anything”.
It said it would now seek to fundraise £320,000 for women’s causes – £10,000 for every proposed fine for the 32 vigils originally scheduled.
The group said it would “strongly encourage” people not to gather at Clapham Common, adding that doing so might put people at “legally at risk”.
Details of a virtual gathering will be announced later today, it added.
Vigils had been planned across the UK, but two in Edinburgh had already been called off, while one planned for Cardiff will now move “entirely online.
For almost a year the ambiguities and omissions within the coronavirus restrictions have left both the police and public grasping for answers.
Gatherings in public are generally banned but, at the same time, the rules recognise there can be reasonable excuses to be outside.
The problem is that the law doesn’t specify whether a demonstration on a major issue of public importance – such as this vigil – is one of those excuses or not.
Police officers must enforce the lockdown laws and they have been under pressure from ministers to do more to reduce the risk of the virus spreading.
But they also know that the right to protest is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, a cornerstone of our complex constitution.
That means they can’t just impose a blanket ban on all protests under the coronavirus restrictions – and the judge in Friday’s case urged both sides to keep talking.
In the absence of further legal clarity, the police maintained their position that the balance came down in favour of preventing a gathering, rather than allowing an exception to mark a very exceptional and tragic death.
In the ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Holgate refused an application by Reclaim 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.
Labour’s Harriet Harman, who chairs the Joint Committee on Human Rights, said the law on freedom of association amid the coronavirus pandemic should be clarified.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We have said previously that the law on this should be made clearer.
“The relationship between the Human Rights Act and its protection of freedom of association and the new Covid regulations has not been clearly spelt out.
“The police’s response to do a blanket ban, to say we can treat everybody equally by stopping all freedom of associations, is not the right way to go about it.”
Senior Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, who had previously said she asked Home Secretary Priti Patel to “step in” and allow the vigil to go ahead, said she hoped people would now take the advice of organisers to gather virtually instead.
She told BBC Breakfast: “It is important that women come together. We can do that virtually and recognise the ongoing issue there is with violence against women and girls, perpetrated by men, but do it in a Covid-safe way.”
Ms Everard’s body was found in woodland in Kent more than a week after she was last spotted on 3 March.
Mr Couzens, 48, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Saturday charged with her murder.
- Under the current lockdown rules two people can meet for recreation outside, which can include “coffee on a bench”
- From 29 March people will be allowed to meet outdoors, either with one other household or within the “rule of six”
- Police can break up illegal gatherings and issue fines of £10,000 to someone holding a gathering of more than 30 people
- During last year’s restrictions, when Black Lives Matter and anti-lockdown demonstrations took place, police took a hands-off approach to protests
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