This is the one weapon that can save women from the violent monsters that prowl our streets. We must be allowed to carry it – this insanity cannot go on: SOPHIE CORCORAN
Don’t read a book. Don’t listen to music or a podcast on headphones. Don’t look a stranger in the eye or even close your eyes to rest. It could cost you your life.
After the horrific Huntingdon knife attack on a train full of passengers at the weekend, I am terrified of letting my guard down on public transport or in the streets. And millions of people, especially women, share my fear.
An atmosphere of looming dread seems to have taken hold of the country, with a succession of atrocities driving home the message: we are not safe, wherever we go.
Knife attacks, many of them fatal, have become so commonplace that they frequently go unreported in all but the most horrifying of cases. We are told not to use our phones in public, especially in London, lest they be snatched from our hands by criminal gangs on e-bikes.
Police advice is to hand over valuables without question during a robbery and to assume criminals will behave violently with no provocation.
The have-a-go hero is likely to be attacked, as we saw tragically in Uxbridge last week with the senseless death of Wayne Broadhurst. The 49-year-old council worker reportedly stepped in when he saw a man being threatened with a knife. The attacker is alleged to have then turned on Mr Broadhurst and killed him.
Many women, like me, are now afraid to go out alone after dark. With the winter nights drawing in, that means a virtual curfew after 6pm for the next few months.
Indeed, a simple journey home from work feels fraught with danger.
After the horrific Huntingdon knife attack on a train full of passengers at the weekend, I am terrified of letting my guard down on public transport or in the streets, writes Sophie Corcoran
Pepper spray is an incapacitant – a blast of stinging gas and powder that can render an attacker blind and disorientated for a few crucial seconds
There were even fresh calls for Transport for London to introduce women-only carriages on the Tube last week.
The worst part is that we feel defenceless. British law makes it impossible for anyone, however vulnerable, to carry an effective means of self-defence.
I think it’s time this was reconsidered – and that we should all now have the right to carry pepper spray.
Consider the facts. The maximum penalty for carrying a knife, a weapon that can easily maim or kill, is four years in prison.
Yet the current sentence for carrying pepper spray can be more than double that – ten years in jail – since it is prohibited under the Firearms Act 1968.
That is insanity. Pepper spray is merely an incapacitant – a blast of stinging gas and powder that can render an attacker blind and disorientated for a few crucial seconds.
If you’re the victim of an assault with a knife, that could give you enough time to escape.
And your attacker will recover: no one has ever been permanently injured by pepper spray.
If some of the passengers and crew on the Doncaster-to-London train last Saturday had been equipped with the means to defend themselves, they might have been able to slow their attacker for long enough to barricade themselves into a carriage. At the very least, they would have stood a better chance.
It’s chilling to imagine what they went through – the waves of panic and the screams, the desperate attempts of passengers to hide in toilets or under seats.
British law makes it impossible for anyone, however vulnerable, to carry an effective means of self-defence, writes Ms Corcoran
Even more chilling is how shockingly easy it was for the alleged knifeman to roam at large, apparently committing repeated attacks. Robbers, drug dealers and lunatics in Britain today carry lethal blades, often with impunity. But if ordinary people try to protect themselves, they are criminalised.
Surely we should not have to beg the Government to let us now put up a cogent defence?
Experts on YouTube and TikTok advise us to carry makeshift deterrents such as canisters of Deep Heat, the pain relief spray. But even using that to defend yourself is illegal.
Rape alarms are rarely effective – certainly not against a madman on a rampage on a train – and bright torches that dazzle an attacker might work in films but are less useful in real life.That’s why I have launched an online petition demanding that pepper spray is legalised immediately for self-defence. When I published two short messages about this on social media, American friends reacted with amazement.
In the land of the free, they cannot comprehend that British women, faced with an epidemic of violence, are powerless to carry anything for protection.
But it is not only the US. Many European countries permit the carrying of pepper spray with minimal restrictions, from France and Germany to Poland and Latvia. Even the mild-mannered Swiss allow it, though ID is required for purchase.
Regulation is important. Sales to the under-18s should be
prohibited (though a shocking number of schoolchildren do already carry knives). And there must be tough penalties for the misuse of sprays, which will have to meet approved safety standards.
But the appalling events of the past few days should be a call to action for British women terrified for their safety in Starmer’s lawless Britain.
We must not wait for more lives to be lost before stopping to consider how we can best protect each other. I am sick of women living in dread for their safety each time they leave home.
Legalising personal protection tools such as pepper spray would be a small but vital step toward restoring our liberty – the liberty to walk our streets without fear.
- Sophie Corcoran is a political commentator
