The march and rally coincided with rallies held nationally to support the families of murder victims and to demand a national fight for justice and for courts to hand out tougher sentences.
I only caught the last hour or so after the march had returned to Meryick Park and saw Cathy Franklin, whose two year old son Ryan was murdered by her former partner, Hazel Hayes, the mother of murdered Bournemouth student Luke Campbell, and Lyn Costello MBE, founder of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression.
At around ten to three Cathy Franklin read out a list of murder victims’ names followed by a minute’s silence to mark their deaths, which was then followed by Labi Siffre singing Something Inside So Strong. It was very moving and most of the people who were still there were in tears, I have to say I found the whole thing a mixture of sadness and uplifting emotion which I think was the result of the combined solidarity on show.
Lyn Costello read out a very moving speech saying that rather than blaming the Government or the Police we have to blame ourselves for letting the country get into this state. We had to explain to children that seeing people die on TV as part of entertainment and in computer games wasn't real and that allowing children to kill children to settle arguments or gain respect had got out of control.
Rarely a day goes by where we read about a teenager being killed for the perceived 'lack of respect' or we hear about the death from abuse of a child so small to have been any trouble to anybody during their lives. I could glibly say the usual thing along the lines of 'well if one person is saved as a result of awareness caused by this rally then it will have achieved something,' I think however that many more need to be saved before society can once again call itself a fair and just place in which we can look another person in the eye without fear of being attacked for a lack of 'respect.'
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2 comments:
Thanks for the link. Here in Spain the aggression against women either by their partner or ex-partner is now a seprate law as the problem was so bad (although I'm not sure it was worse than many other countries)
To change things in any perceivable way I believe that the tough laws that already exist need to be policed but that does not mean that the change really MUST start at home.
What really came home on Saturday was the number and age of the children who had been murdered. Why would somebody want to kill a 22 day old baby. What I found personally moving was the description by Lyn Costello about the night CCTV footage of Jamie Bulger was shown, she said she sat and watched it simply stunned that it could happen in broad daylight but then that shock was surpassed by the news that the two boys were aged 10. I remember that clear as anything because my nephew Daryl had the same jacket as Jamie Bulger and was the same age at the time and when I saw the footage the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I don't know why we always say back of my neck, the front of my neck is my throat surely!
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