There is one thing that Patsy Stevenson can’t stand when people see the image of her being pinned down on the ground by police on the night of the Sarah Everard vigil: them saying that she looked good.
“Some people were like, ‘Oh, you look so great’, or ‘Your hair looks amazing in that picture’,” she says, after learning that the Metropolitan police have settled the claim that she and Dania al-Obeid, who was also at the vigil, brought against them. “But that was a really traumatic event for me and I don’t think people always take into consideration that I’m not a picture, I’m a person.”
Stevenson, 30, attended the banned candlelit vigil on Clapham Common for Sarah Everard on the night of 13 March because, like many others, she was angry at being told she couldn’t mourn the death of a woman. She expected to be a face in the crowd; instead it was a night that changed her life for ever.
“I’m trying not to cry, thinking about it, to be honest,” she says, still digesting the news of the Met’s climbdown, following her and Obeid’s claim for damages under the Human Rights Act. “My whole life, everything I do in my day to day, is different.”
Two and a half years after that vigil, which left the Met facing fierce criticism for what many considered to be heavy-handed and inappropriate policing, she has been stalked and received death threats, suffered from nightmares and failed a physics foundation course because of the repercussions.
But she has also written a book, which comes out next year, and given a TEDx talk; she writes about activism and has taught herself to code so that she can better campaign for gender balance in artificialintelligence. Next she hopes to set up a charity for activists.
“I think with that level of public attention comes a lot of responsibility,” she says. “No one prepares you for that. I did not intend to be all over the place on newspapers and TV. And it’s very scary, but it’s a real privilege to have that as well.
“So yes, there were death threats and hate mail and things like that. But at the same time I’ve had someone message me saying they are naming their child after me because of what happened.
“There’s certain things that people have done and said to me, where they’re like, ‘You’ve made such an impact on people’s lives’, and that, for me, is 100% what will keep me going.”
Stevenson sees the apology from the police to her and Obeid as the end of a chapter of her life, and one that she is happy to close. The apology itself, while important, is “half-arsed”, she says. “Although they said they regretted that our mourning was interrupted, they’re not actually saying, ‘We’re sorry, we shouldn’t have arrested you.’”
She welcomes the acknowledgement by the Met that it was “understandable” that protesters wanted to attend a candlelit vigil at Clapham Common because they felt that women had been “badly let down” by the force. She is happy that she and Obeid could stand side by side, and that others who attended the vigil have been vindicated. And she is grateful to the legal team who supported her. But she is not optimistic about change in the UK’s largest police force.
“I hope anyone who went through the trauma of that night hopefully finds a bit of justice themselves in this news,” she says. “But I don’t believe [the apology] marks any real change … The vigil itself should have been a moment where [the Met] decided to change things and hold themselves accountable.”
A statement from the Met on Wednesday night said a protracted legal dispute was “not in the interests of any party, least of all the complainants who we recognise have already experienced significant distress as a result of this incident”.
She argues that the passing into law of the Public Order Act – which gives police powers to shut down protests before disruption, outlaws certain tactics and allows six-month prison sentences and unlimited fines for some demonstrators – has seen politicians “reward the Met with greater police powers”. The only antidote, she argues, is sustained public pressure – and she wants to be in the thick of it.
“I don’t think things will change quickly,” she says. “But I hope that awareness and public pressure can gradually change things. That’s probably going to be a fight that I’m always a part of.”
