Update (27/12): Accommodation details added.
Update (26/12): Transport details added for Portsmouth and Scotland - see below.
Update (19/12): The organisers are calling for volunteers to help steward the event.
Five sex workers from Ipswich have been murdered in ten days. The leader of the County Council, Jeremy Pembroke, has urged women not to go out alone. But as a response local people are organising a "Reclaim the Night" event to assert their freedom to go out at night (Press Release). The event will take place on the 29th December, starting at 7pm outside Ipswich Town Hall. There will be a few speakers and then a walk to the "red light district". The organisers are inviting both women and men to join them in showing their "love and solidarity for the friends and families of the murdered women and all the people of Ipswich".
People are expected to come from all over the country to show their support. Transport is being organised from Birmingham, Cambridge, Portsmouth and Scotland.
Links: [ Announcement of Reclaim the Night Ipswich | Reclaim the Night marches, 2005 | Herstory of Reclaim the Night ]
Reclaim the Night marches in 2006: [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ]
The current situation is similar to the time of the first "Reclaim the Night" marches in the UK - they happened on the 23rd November 1977 as a response to the "Ripper Murders" in Leeds. Women in Leeds were angry at advice to stay indoors since the last "Ripper" killing, so they marched with torches through the town and challenged men in the street, asking them where they were at the time the "Ripper" killed Jacqueline Hill? On this occasion hundreds of women sang protest songs in the city square. Marches occurred simultaneously in 11 towns, from Manchester to Soho.
An Amnesty International UK report recently revealed shockingly low knowledge about the scale of sexual violence against women in this country and worrying attitudes towards such crime. Every year there are thought to be up to 50,000 rapes in the UK. Currently only 5.6% of rapes reported to the police result in conviction.