Fiona McCade: A chance for women to noise up status quo

Published on Tuesday 24 May 2011 16:03

You couldn't make it up. This Saturday, there will be a Reclaim the Night march in Edinburgh city centre. The march, raising awareness of violence against women and women's right to walk the streets unmolested at all times, was supposed to happen at night - there's a clue in the title - but the city council thought that was too dangerous.

They asked the protesters to march earlier, and also requested that the route be changed to avoid pub-lined Grassmarket, because there's rugby and the Champion's League football final that day, so who knows what might happen? When this plan was rejected, the council suggested that if the marchers insisted on going through the Grassmarket, they should do so in silence "to ensure (their] safety".

Let me get this straight. Women have the right to go where they please without fear of being attacked, right? However, in Edinburgh, they should only go out in daylight, and if they really must wander around areas with a high-concentration of alcohol-imbibing menfolk, they must do so quietly and in deference to the serious drinking taking place. If they have the temerity to make a noise, they run the risk of finding themselves in an unsafe situation.

Welcome to Edinburgh, City of Liberation, where the rights of women to protest against oppression take second place to the rights of blokes to have a rowdy night out.

Not surprisingly, the marchers insisted on keeping the route through the Grassmarket, and they won't be silent, either. However, they did eventually bow to the council's insistence that the march start at 8pm - when it's still broad daylight. Ah, well. At least they weren't forced to re-name it the Quietly Reclaim a Bit of the Evening, If It's OK With You march.

To be honest, calling it the Reclaim the Night march rather supposes that there was some bygone, golden age when women could walk freely at night without fear. There's no historical evidence for this, so although the Reclaim the Night movement is over 30 years old, it should probably be renamed 'Claim the Night'. There are so many sad things about this situation, it's difficult to know where to start, but I know that if I were a man, I'd be asking myself this question: when did I become such an enemy of half the population of the world, that it's deemed too risky for them to walk down the street in front of me after dark?

Believe it or not, statistics prove that most of Scotland's men are not violent, uncontrollable psychopaths who would attack any woman unlucky enough to hove into view. Unfortunately, Edinburgh city council obviously reckons an awful lot of them are. And that's scary.

Before panic sets in, we mustn't forget that every midsummer, on the Moonwalk, thousands of women march through Edinburgh at night, flashing their bras to raise awareness of breast cancer, and nobody attacks them.(Well, except the lunatic on Seafield Road, who stays up especially to shout drunken abuse at everyone going past, but let's not trash everyone with a Y chromosome because of him.)

Apparently, Scots men can be trusted on occasion, but what else can we do to reclaim their good reputation?

The first thing to do is involve men as much as possible, because this is not a straightforward, women-versus-men fight. We need the good men to stand up and be counted. If I were a bloke, I'd be so offended and outraged that simply being a male drinker in the Grassmarket meant I was branded a potential danger to society, I'd want to prove that I wasn't The Enemy. Unfortunately, as my husband discovered when he tried to support a similarly female-orientated cause in his student days, men are sometimes discouraged from joining in. I hope this won't happen on Saturday.

What I hope will happen is that all the decent, sane men in Edinburgh will turn out to march side by side with their women, to show that everybody, irrespective of gender, has the right to be safe at night. Even lads from the Grassmarket and Edinburgh councillors are welcome, so long as they're not quiet.