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IRON gates to a public park in Shipley were festooned with placards, letters, poems, suffragette ribbons and flowers as part of the weekend’s nationwide Reclaim These Streets actions.
They carried messages which included: “I’m tired of ignoring harassment,” “It’s a men’s issue,” “Teach our girls to stand tall — and teach our boys to respect them.”
Another said: “For all the women who never got to bloom.”
The choice of Shipley in West Yorkshire for the messages had special significance.
Shipley is the parliamentary constituency of Tory misogynist MP Philip Davies, who in 2016 dismissed women’s equality campaigners as “feminist zealots,” accusing them of “wanting their cake and eating it.”
He condemned single mothers as “bona fide idiots.”
As a result of his speech to the “men’s liberation” group, Justice For Men and Boys, women in the constituency founded the “Shipley Feminist Zealots” (SFZ).
Days after Mr Davies’s infamous speech, more than 1,000 women marched through Shipley in protest.
SFZ’s campaigning work continues today and was in evidence on the park gates in Shipley.
