Adam Trimingham's Sage of Sussex column

The force they used was totally against the spirit of the event, which was to demonstrate the need for women to have better protection against killers and rapists.

A moving and peaceful demonstration was transformed within minutes into resentment against the heavy-handed actions of some officers.

This all happened at Clapham Common in London where a week earlier Sarah Everard had been abducted and then murdered – a killing that has shocked the nation.

What made it even more dreadful was that the man accused of perpetrating these crimes was a serving officer of the Metropolitan Police.

And in an added irony, the officer ln charge of the biggest police force in Britain is a woman – Dame Cressida Dick.

It is true that the demonstration in London was illegal, as was a similar but smaller event in Brighton. People who had organised legal protests had been told flatly they would be flouting the restrictions on movement made necessary by the virus crisis. They reluctantly cancelled their events.

The police who attended this illegal event were clearly under orders to break up the protests if they became too big.

I do not doubt the extreme difficulty of the police position. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.

They used the weasel word proportionate to describe their strategy that night. It means the freedom to take some actions which many people will regard as unacceptable. So they waded in when the speakers started and began to remove them, using some force and employing handcuffs.

Good policing would have been to stay watching the event but to avoid intervention unless trouble began from inside the crowd.

It was noticeable that in further protests the following day, this time against the Clapham Common policing, that officers did exactly that.

The case of Sarah Everard is rather like several in America over the years when black men were killed or seriously injured by police brutality, particularly that of George Floyd.

People decided that they would keep protesting until something was done to stop these appalling deaths.

In Britain the fight is now on to make it safe for women to walk in the streets at night and not be afraid of being attacked.

It follows a change in national attitudes to the treatment of women by some men. For years society accepted that it was perfectly in order for men to pinch women’s bottoms or to touch them without consent. These practices paved the way for much more serous assaults on women to be tolerated, some of them by well-known entertainment stars.

The Brighton restaurateur Audrey Simpson told me once she was sitting next to a well-known council official at a meeting prior to making a speech.

As she stood up, she felt a sharp pain in her rear and realised that the officer was responsible. There was little point in complaining since the men she would have approaching would have been unlikely to have done anything about it.

This may sound trivial compared with the terrible tragedy at Clapham Common but small attacks on women can often be presages of something far worse.

It is true that murderous assaults by men on women not known to them are rare and that most attacks are in the home. But it is wrong that women should feel frightened while walking in parks at night, often to the extent of avoiding that area altogether.

There have been calls for Dame Cressida to resign. But she is nearing the end of her career anyway and it would not do much good.

The movement is already being taken seriously by those in high places. The Duchess of Cambridge was among those paying her respects by making a quiet visit to Clapham Common at the weekend and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he is seriously concerned about it.

There will be a review of policing events to try and avoid a future Clapham Common melee and there is little doubt the demonstrators will keep on with their actions.

I hope some thought will be given to men in the weeks and months ahead. Most of us respect women and are dismayed by any brutal murder. We do not want to be regarded as potential killers and rapists. We will join our female partners in a bid to make the streets safe.

Most of the time we are happy to obey the restrictions which we hope will end this spring. But we also want the police to be flexible and friendly in the way they keep the peace and to respect our civil liberties.